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What To Do About Your Not Quite Right People

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

 

Photo of woman in yellow trench coat walking with perplexed expression on her face by Helga's Lobster Stew courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

In this post about why your right people aren’t falling all over you {yet}, we talked about two as yet undefined groups: your almost right people and your wrong people who think they’re your right people.

Today we’re going to describe hallmarks of each group. Then we’re going to talk about how to get them out of your head so you can connect with more of your right people.

Your almost right people are the people it’s easiest to default to creating content for because they breathe the same air as you.

They might be the people you talk to most often, like your peers and mentors. {This is especially true if you don’t have many clients at the moment.} They’re the people you’re used to exploring ideas with, the people who are right there with you in your brain. You want their opinions on stuff. You trust their judgment implicitly.

But — and this is the key distinction that makes them your almost right people — they are not the people who need to buy your goods or services.

They are people you may love and adore, but they’re not buyers.

You can create content for your almost right people all day long, be impossibly awesome to them, and have them sharing and spreading your stuff every which way from Sunday, and still not get one cent richer.

{And if you weren’t in business to earn a livelihood, then that’d be okay. But you are in business to earn a livelihood, so you need to adjust your content creation strategy accordingly.}

The fix?

Start intentionally creating the conversation your right buyers need to have with you.

What do they and don’t they understand about what it takes, from your perspective? What are they looking to you for? {This goes back to the old don’t-take-what-you-know-for-granted axiom. So true!}

Yes, you can and should hold onto your almost right people.

They’re often terrific brand evangelists for you, singing your praises and touting your strengths wherever they go. Sometimes you can refer people out to them. Often, they have complementary strengths to yours and can serve your right people in ways you cannot {maybe you’re a graphic designer and you have a copywriter friend who thinks like you’d think if you were a copywriter}. So please keep your eye on your almost right people and keep them in your life.

But creating content for — i.e. “talking to” — your almost right people will keep your business in the same place it is today.

Now on to the second group, which is wholly more nefarious: your wrong people who think they’re your right people.

Your wrong people who think they’re your right people are the human equivalent of car horns that go off in the middle of lunch with a friend you really love, and you can’t quite refocus on the conversation at hand because you’re worried it could be your car going off.

Your wrong people don’t necessarily have bad intentions, but they would like you better if you were something and someone other than who you are. They either aren’t paying close enough attention to realize that you’re not talking to them, or they’re desperate for solutions, have already identified you as someone with great content, and are hoping that you’ll magically deliver exactly what they need in your signature style.

The problem with that?

You don’t want to do the stuff they want you to do. And even if you did, you wouldn’t want to do it for them.

Snobby perspective? Nah. You’ve got limited bandwidth and limited hours in the day to do what you do. You have to be choosy.

Your wrong people who think they’re your right people want you to give them Facebook tips, but you’re a coach who specializes in self-care for entrepreneurs. Your wrong people want you to create $17 products for them, but your brand archetype dictates that you need to be selling high price point programs. Your wrong people try to engage you in bawdy jesting on Twitter {yep, I just said ‘bawdy jesting’ — live it, love it, own it}, and that type of humor horrifies you.

Your wrong people try to extend you in ways that are profoundly uncomfortable for you because they’re not fully seeing you. They’re focused on their needs and desires and how you could meet them, not your strangely powerful talent, which is, as we know, where your extreme goodness resides.

Your wrong people are a dime a dozen. Your right people are a very precious, very select few who want you just as you are when you’re standing in your best, deepest, and truest message.

Here are a collection of statements you might hear from your wrong people:

  • “Have you ever thought about [insert some idea or activity you would never, ever dream of implementing because it’s so off-brand for you]? I would totally love that and I bet a lot of other people would, too.”
  • “Can you blog about [insert topic that is not a focus within your suite of ideas]?”
  • “Would you mind reading over this 5,000 word email and giving me your take on where I’m at and what I need to move forward?” [requests for free help are often indications of wrong people who think they’re your right people; your right people deeply get and respect the work you do and don’t ask you to deliver your livelihood-maker for free]

And don’t even get me started on whether you can convert your wrong people to being your right people. Or do get me started. We can talk about that some other time. But I’m pretty sure you already know which side of the fence I come down on that one.

So how do you get your almost right people and your wrong people out of your head when creating content?

Brand Editor’s note: Content includes site copy, blog posts, sales pages,
multimedia, products, services, Tweets, Facebook updates,
and all other social media marketing moves.

1. Develop an ideal client avatar {or two or three if that’s more appropriate for your biz model}. Be as curious about this person as you would be about a brilliant new friend or paramour. Spend time daily visualizing this right person and watching him move through his day. {I do this with my right client avatar all the time. Even though she’s imaginary, I’m pretty sure she follows me on Twitter.} Start evaluating your own digital consumption through his eyes, not just through yours.

2.  Figure out how where your ideal client is in relation to you, business or life journey-wise. Don’t make the mistake that your right person understands what you do about your subject area. Is your right person where you were last year at this time? Three years ago? Understanding where they are in relation to you allows you to position your content appropriately.

3. Deliver your offers to your right person with compassion and savvy. Talk to her in the way that’ll inspire her to respond. Her response might be leaving a comment on your blog, forwarding your e-newsletter to a friend, or {woot!} clicking your Buy It Now button. You know her. You know what gets her up off her sofa and into your world.

Questions? Observations? Let’s hash this out in the comments.

{ 36 comments }

The Lustermaker Is Here

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

Woman with laptop in cafe

Ready for this?

For months, I’ve been working on my signature brand editing service that translates the best of what I do — my strangely powerful talent — to the savvy creative entrepreneurs I want to serve in the most effective way possible.

Today I get to show you what I’ve been working on!

Click here for the video debut of The Lustermaker.

Then click through the link underneath the video to learn more.

And thanks — for reading, for being a part of the community here, and for always working to better express your gifts and talents through your work. You’ve definitely turned my head. :)

{ 1 comment }

Why People Aren’t Falling All Over You {Yet}

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

You are a smart creative entrepreneur. Your message glows within you, a warm, lustrous orb of inspiration. You are passionate, focused, and you want to help people. You’d do anything for your right people.

So why aren’t your right people falling all over you yet?

 

Crowd of engaged fans. Photo by Ali Brohi courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

I know you know that you don’t need everyone to love you and want to work with you. I know you’ve heard about 1,000 true fans. I know you understand about red velvet ropes.

You’re been trying to signal like crazy that hey, my people like this! My people don’t like that! I get my right people.

And yet — you’ve been working with a lot of your almost right people and your wrong people who think they’re your right people. {Brand editor’s note: I totally need to write posts on those two groups!}

What’s that about?

One of my strangely powerful talents is getting inside the spirit-brain of other people’s right people. {This is nothing woo-woo. This is just how I describe it. Spirit-brain feels like what it is.} Here, I’m going to divulge what I know about why your right people are holding back.

Here are the 5 most common reasons why your right people aren’t falling all over you yet even though you’re trying to rock your brand messaging:

1.      Your guiding message isn’t coming through clearly enough.

You have a lot to say. And your right people want to hear it. But it’s important to winnow down your material and deliver the most consistently on-message stuff, 95% of the time.

To you it may feel like being a broken record. You know this material. You live with it and bathe in it.

But to your right people, your message is an epiphany. They don’t take what you know for granted.

The lesson here? Stop talking around your guiding message and start going straight for the jugular every time.

2.      They’re not convinced you know your guiding message.

You haven’t fully arrived in your point of view yet — and that’s a perfectly acceptable place to be for a while — and your right people can feel that. They’re rooting for you, though.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find two or three ‘right people peers’ who can give you perspective on how you’re coming across. They can see the potential for your fully-fledged amazingness and they will urge you to move toward it.

Don’t have trusted ‘right people peers’ like that? I can be one for you. I have a dazzling new thing coming off the pipeline in a minute and this is exactly what I can do for you. Hang in ’til the end of this post.

3.      They’re not sure how to give you money.

You do sell stuff but you’re not making it obvious enough. I know it’s because you have some anxiety around selling or because you figure if they’re your right people, they’ll knock down doors to work with you. But if they have to go in search of your goods and services when on your website, they’re concluding that you don’t do this often enough. Sell stuff, that is.

If you’re making your offerings hard to find, then they’re sensing there’s something about your offerings that isn’t quite so — lustrous.

The solution here? Don’t just let your offerings languish on a sales page. Put badges advertising your offerings in your sidebar — prominently. Work mentions of how people can do biz with you into every five blog posts or so, with text links to your service pages. {See?} Occasionally Tweet about your services with — you guessed it — a link to your services page. Make the Tweets conversational and contextual, not overtly sales-y.

Yep, this is all not only okay to do, it’s optimal.

4.      They’re not quite sure you’re talking to them.

That’s because you’re talking to your almost right people. You generally have the right idea about who your right people are, but you’re like a person who needs contact lenses but has been walking around with not-quite-20/20-vision for a while and you’re used to it.

You’re defaulting to the easiest people to talk to, but you know what, talking to your right people in the voice that makes them jump to attention is challenging. As it should be.

Your right people are calling you to be your best self. They hold back until you’re pretty damn close to that best self. Taking this best-self stance is a new feeling: it’s an upward gaze — at yourself. It’s bigger than lolling on the couch with a bag of potato chips. {Though, hey, there’s a time for that, too — just not in your brand messaging!}

Your almost right people are a tempting, siren song-singing crew. They hang around, they Tweet with you, they like you lots. But you know, you KNOW, that they’re not the ideal fit for what you have to offer. They’re your right-this-moment, but they’re not your imminent future.

How to make the jump from talking to your totally right people instead of your almost right people? Put those contact lenses in and take a closer look your ideal client avatar. Now look closer. Cloooooserrrrr. See, there’s a lot of stuff you wanted in your right people that you weren’t acknowledging. Now you can. And you can be really obvious about acknowledging those nuances in your brand messaging.

5.      You’re giving them too many options.

People love options, right? Well, yes, if your right people are options-oriented people. And even those types of people don’t want too many options. It’s always a dance between corralling them in too much and letting them too far out to pasture {so to speak}.

Know this: you are not on this earth to fulfill every need, wish, and hankering your right people have. Though you are multitalented and can do a lot, you only should offer through your business that which stirs you up and illuminates your best stuff. Have a good, honest think about what that is. There might be a part of your business you need to quit.

Options are wonderful, but remember: they’re the options you want to set, not the options people wish you offered. When you’re standing in your most powerful brand platform, your right people will be more than satisfied and they’ll happily get the other stuff they need . . . elsewhere.

This past year, I’ve seen my right people up close and personal and I’m now offering them exactly what they need to see from me.

What are you doing to help your Right People see YOU more clearly?

 

{ 16 comments }

Your Brand In the Eye of the Beholder

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

They’re watching you.

Your brand in the eye of the beholder

Photo by edosbornphotography courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

They: your right people, the clients you’d love to work with, the peer whose eye you want to catch for that great JV idea of yours, that bigger blogger to whom you’re submitting a guest post this week.

They’re watching you. And they’re thinking something about your brand, right this minute. {It’s common — they’re thinking something about my brand, too.}

Want to know what they’re thinking?

I hope you do. Training yourself to see your online brand through your right people’s eyes is great for your savvy muscle.

So let’s get inside their heads and see what they see when they’re looking at you.

The first 5 things a beholder thinks about your brand when she lands on your site — remember, this is happening right now:

1.} What’s the big idea here?

Think about how we use the web. We’ve got short digital attention spans until we absolutely fall in love with a site or its maker. All of the signals on your site have to align with your point of view, your guiding message, and the particular flair that makes your brand you. Are you a copywriter for small brick and mortar businesses? We’ve got to know that within ten seconds of landing on your site. Do you teach yoga to pregnant women? Can your prospects see that from your landing page, whether it’s content-driven or not? Brand Editor’s Tip: Put your big idea in your site header. It’s that important.

2.} Do I dig what’s going on here?

Immediately after ascertaining what your site’s about, people will ask themselves Is this for me? Is this site worth the one minute more of exploration I’m willing to give it right now? How do you keep from freaking out over this knowledge? Don’t worry about the people who will click away in disinterest. They’re not your right people, yo. If you focus on creating for the ones you want to work with, they’ll pick up on that and hang around — especially when you’re at your best and most consistent.

3.} Who’s talking to me and do I like this person?

Nanoseconds after getting the gist of your site, they’re going to go looking for who is behind this content. They want to connect with a voice, a face, an individual psyche. That’s where you come into your brand! Remember, your right people don’t need to behold all of you in order to connect with your point of view and guiding message. They don’t need your whole life story, your deepest fears and insecurities, or even the color of your favorite socks. They do need to know your values, why your site exists in the first place, and an idiosyncracy or two to make you human. Shape an About Me page that reveals what they need to know to connect most deeply with your point of view and guiding message. You don’t have to give it all away to be known, liked, and trusted.

4.} Does this person get me?

So they see who you are. Then they want to know, do I believe that she gets me? Is she writing to someone with far less experience than me, which suggests that I don’t need what’s she teaching, or is she showing that she highly values some things that I could give a damn about? Or is there something in his voice and tone that tells me he is just the kind of person I want to hang out with and learn from? In case you’re wondering — YES. It’s out of your control whether people like you, online or anywhere else. All you can do is present yourself authentically {remembering that ‘authentically’ does NOT have to mean getting virtually naked} and consistently. And have fun doing it. :)

5.} What’s in it for me?

Back to point #1. We’re busy 21st century beings. We have limited bandwidth. Your readers are thinking, Even if I like it, why should I stick around? If you’re blogging for business, the question for you is, are you making good use of your site visitors’ attention? Show your right people that your brand is designed for them and for their predilections. Make it easy for them to find what you want them to see. Prove to them that your content archives are full of amazing learning/information/entertainment. Design the signals to point to your best and highest impact stuff. Speak in the voice they connect with.

Remember, your right people are watching you and wanting you to succeed {in their eyes}.

Don’t sell yourself short. You are a living hub of ideas, inspiration, and information that your people are waiting to tap into. Show them that you get that and you get them.

What do you think about my point of view in this post? Are we as site visitors as fickle and {righteously} self-centered as I’m describing?

{ 9 comments }

Creative Solopreneur Podcast: Tara Mohr

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

Tara Mohr Playing Big

Tara Mohr from TaraMohr.com

In this sixteenth episode of the Creative Solopreneur Podcast, I’m talking with Tara Mohr from TaraMohr.com. Tara is a writer, Huffington Post blogger, coach, and personal growth teacher. Her new 6-month coaching program for women leaders looking to develop their voice launches today {Tuesday, March 15th}. I have a feeling it’s a great fit for some of my readers and clients so I wanted you to hear more about it directly from Tara.

Here are links to the people and ideas we talked about:

and . . .

Listen in as Tara talks about wanting more than a B+ life, the #1 challenge her blog readers confessed to in a survey, the signs women start seeing in their lives when it’s time to start playing big, and unhooking from praise and criticism.

Right click here and select Save Link As to download the podcast to your hard drive, or left click to play in-browser.

P.S. Have a question or comment for Tara? Leave it in the comments! :)

*Affilate link. I receive a portion of sales generated from clicking this link.

{ 1 comment }

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