Maitri Quest

I had a wonderful breakthrough session with a client earlier this week. We hit the perfect sweet spot path for our future PR efforts together and it felt great. I love it when I have a gut feeling about the way things need to move forward, a client buys into it, and then synchronicity starts to unfold.

About two months ago I asked this client to seriously consider mixing up the tone of her blog, to contemplate sharing more of her warm engaging personality and her own personal journey rather than focusing solely on sharing scientific facts and advice.

I wanted her to begin engaging an emotional hook.

For many of us this sounds easy, but initially she really found it a challenge because it was so outside of the realm of her normal professional writing. Happily she stuck with it and worked out a way to give her blog posts more emotional resonance without writing in a way that made her uncomfortable - and she's already started to receive several compliments from friends and readers on the new tone and, more importantly, increased readership.

Why? My client is absolutely an expert in her field. She is at the top of her profession, but because she's moved from simply informing to sharing her passion she's engaging people in a whole new way.

Don't get me wrong, informing is important, even preaching has its place (sometimes we need strong medicine), but after awhile both can fall on deaf ears. We are emotional creatures who love a good yarn, we get tired of constantly being sold and told in blogs, on Facebook and Twitter and with endless emailers by those who are simply constantly promoting themselves.

Remember, we live in a time when information overload is a constant possibility.

And many people confuse constantly posting chatter about what they're doing with the talent to really connect and build viable fans.

Why do we want to be so good at creating our emotional hook and engaging with very specific readers looking for just our type of story telling? One of the greatest strengths of the Internet (by which I mean Websites, Blogs, Social Media etc.) is using this kind of story telling to create avid fans and economic prosperity for yourself via "The Long Tail."

Because of its expansive reach the Internet now allows people the opportunity sell in very niche markets and make very good money from them (note I said opportunity, but you've got to be savvy). For example Amazon.com has certainly opened up writing markets in very specific genres that simply couldn't be sustained by brick and mortar storefront book stores before.

Those who are successfully harnessing the power of the Internet and social media to really grow their businesses are excellent at not only getting the word out about what they do, but how they do what they do, what inspires them to do what they do better, and who is teaching them something new every day.

Let me share with you some examples of what I'm talking about and who I'm personally a fan of:

A book that is on my "must read" list is "The Happiness Project" by Gretchin Rubin (@gretchenrubin on Twitter). With a moniker like "Maitriquest" focusing on kindness, of course I'm a sucker for anything about happiness, but Gretchin really hooked me not only by her beautifully orchestrated website and campaign to educate others about her upcoming book (she started the website about a year before the book was published), but also her generosity in how she wanted to share the idea of "a happiness project" with others.

I am also a new fan of writer/author and digital print & self publishing maven April Hamilton who creates Publitariat, a site dedicated to self-publishing, small imprints, explaining the publishing world, and more.

So here's a question for you. How could you personally bring more emotional resonance to your own blogs, tweets and Facebook headlines? What could you say that would leave readers wanting to know more of the story?

 

 

 

Here is what I'm owning about myself this year in a way that I have never fully done before - I am a story teller. Just about everything I do, from being a publicist, to my side time writing a novel, to spending down time with my friends, is about sharing and absorbing some kind of story that really means something personally to me. I have to like clients to promote them, and to come up with creative and useful public relations campaigns. I have to want to tell their story.

So here's a short story I'd like to share with you, and it just happens to be one of the most powerful public relations skills you can have in your arsenal: People will find you more relevant and engaging and useful to them if you share an emotional hook rather than just trumpeting how fabulous you, your goods and your services are.

What do I mean by this? I mean that we no longer live in an age when a successful "expert" is seen as someone who has all of the answers to every aspect of his or her life no matter his or her field of expertise. Indeed, most of us prefer the advice of experts who have fallen down and scraped their knees (just as we have), and then have learned something from it, overcome obstacles, and can get up and share with us the details of how they transformed that particular aspect of their lives.

We would probably still admire Lance Armstrong if he'd won so many races but hadn't experienced cancer, but it's through the grueling but inspiring story of his recovery that we've not only come to love him, but find him endlessly fascinating, and a motivational life expert. How many more millions are enchanted by him, watch him, read him, and give to his cancer charity because he's shared his real story? Countless.

The power of an emotional hook in your story telling is useful whether you need to begin writing a blog, a newsletter, give a speech to a local organization, pitch a story about yourself or your goods and services to the media, and just about any time you need to get up and say anything because as an audience we have little attention for being preached at or sold to, what we want is to be engaged. What we want is for you to tell us a relevant story that might just mirror something in our own lives, make us like you more, and think "aha."

If your words bring someone an epiphany they'll certainly remember you and spread the word about who you are and what you do.

While pondering what excellent examples I should share with you (and therefore preach less) on the excellent use of emotional hooks I came across Gwen Bell (whose Twitter bio reads perfectly: Discovering the Humanity of Technology in Less Than 140) on Twitter this morning (one of my favorite to follow there) and caught up on her blogs. Voila two perfect examples were handed to me on the proverbial platter, but more on that in a second. First let me tell you that I have known about Gwen since the Zaadz social platform site, which then became the Gaia social platform site (where I still occasionally blog). Gosh I've been blogging and involved in social media for a long time (ten years!).

Gwen is a Yoga enthusiast/social media guru & branding expert/enthusiast. And for me she is a truly soulful and mindful example of how to successfully share an emotional hook to engage readers in a blog (spoiler altert: this particular entry very honest and heartbreaking). So "tada" Gwen is my first example. She never grandstands, she never begs for hankies, but she shares from a place of truth where's she's at and what has happened to her to get to this place.

Gwen is also a great example of how to become successful today, and do what you love, by leading the way in a new industry by sharing your journey to inspire others in authentic, creative, and dynamic ways - but we'll cover that in another blog at another time.

My second example of using emotional hooks in a superb way comes from another of Gwen's blogs. It is titled "How Good is Your Digital Tale" (isn't that perfect?) and shares a commencement speech one of my favorite authors J.K. Rowling gave at Harvard in 2008. Rowling's speech shows off what a tremendous story teller she is indeed, and how she has used her own early challenges, and her own learning of the horrific challenges of others, to create stories that get to the heart of what is important in the human experience. Those who turn their nose up at the Harry Potter series don't understand that it's true magic is about kindness and love.

I hope you'll take the 20 minutes to watch, but if you don't have the time please remember two of my favorite quotes from it:

"Failure means the stripping away of the inessential." - J.K. Rowling

"What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality." Plutarch