Creating content resonance
I’m really happy right now as I write this. I’m sitting at my Zen room desk (a spare bedroom on the third floor of my townhome) gazing at the sunrise. I’ve never seen a wider variety of cloud formations than I have living in Florida, and I love it. There are small thunderheads just above the shoreline silhouetted with the whitish-yellow glow of the early sun. Beyond the thunderheads are brushstrokes of cirrus clouds smeared by the changing winds at different altitudes.
In your mind’s eye, did you see this:
Storytelling, word pictures, sharing of experiences with an emphasis on emotion creates resonance. When you create resonance, you create connection. You invite a person into your life through an expression filled with human emotion.
But it’s not one-sided. It’s you creating a connection with your audience—that one person looking at what you’ve created to see how they can extract inspiration, information, reassurance or confirmation for themselves. How does it make them feel?
Much of the content I encounter online seems to lean toward the manipulative and mechanical rather than a true expression of how the creator feels about a topic or how the creator feels about the problems the person they’re trying to attract faces. Is that you? Are you relying on someone else’s strategy to make business happen? To build your brand? To establish your thought leadership? Or are you being 1000% you in how you show up in the world?
Creating resonance
Creating resonance starts by having more emotional sensitivity about your ideal client—the ideal person you want to attract so they are moved to lean in, trust, open up and act. But what if you don’t clearly understand how they feel? What if you’ve spent too much time proving you’re smart? That you’re the best at what you do? That people are crazy if they don’t work with you versus a competitor? What if you’ve been too focused on your product, service and testimonials or created content following some marketing expert’s template to get people to act?
Let’s stop treating our audiences like Pavlovian dogs.
Don’t assume you know how your ideal client feels. FIND OUT how they feel by asking questions and LISTENING with empathy. Uncover their motivators. Their fears. Their desires. Their struggles. What do they really want? What do they dread? What are they trying to avoid? Put emotional words to what you’re learning. And here’s the kicker: share your own struggles so they relate to you as a human, not as an entity without emotion.
Create content that empathizes with their experience. Their emotion. Their desire. Give oxygen to it. Show them that they are justified in their desires. That they don’t have to struggle alone anymore. That where they want to be is possible.
The more you understand their perspective, their history, their yearning and acknowledge it openly, the more you create resonance. Resonance happens when YOU SEE THEM. Connection happens when THEY SEE YOU.
Tiger decided I needed a break from writing and laid down on my desk between me and the keyboard.
An exercise for you:
Go over your website and assess the emotional content. Are you seeking a connection? Are you trying to prove something? Are you beating your chest a little too much? Are you making your prospect feel bad for not being able to fix their problem on their own? People are naturally skeptical and protective of being duped by online and marketing content claims, and justifiably so. We’ve all been duped. What can you do to assuage their fears and show up differently? How can you extend yourself so your audience SEES you and feels SEEN by you? How can you open up and be more 1000% you? Are you brave enough to step into who you really are and show it publicly through your business communications and marketing? This is what I believe people—the people you want to work with—are seeking. They may not know it, but it’s what they deeply desire: resonance and connection.
