Endpapers

Learning to listen well isn’t as easy as it sounds. How many times have you been involved in conversations that seem so competitive that they’re not really conversations at all? Business networking in particular can be a minefield when it comes to these kinds of encounters.

You can see how it happens. The urge to sell yourself, to project your personality can end up driving you. But anyone who’s been at the mercy of an aggressive salesperson, or a bore at a party can tell you what an unattractive trait this can become.

Think about when you were a child and playing with other children. It’s often the case that kids’ communication involves them saying to one another, “I’m doing this” or “look at what I can do”. They haven’t learnt the art of conversation yet, instead they’re self-actualising by bouncing their self-perception off each other. This is entirely appropriate for them at this time.

I think when you encounter people in the adult world who simply talk at you, about themselves and what they’re up to, they come across as not having learnt to have a proper conversation. They’re still self-actualising. It may be that the pressure of getting across what they do in business has swamped any other considerations. Or it could be that they simply don’t get it and they can only communicate in terms of themselves.

When it comes to writing material for clients I try and get them to see things from their prospective customers’ viewpoint. Offloading a mass of noise and bluster about your various achievements isn’t going to make people want to use your services or buy from you. Being willing to listen to their concerns and address them accordingly is far more likely to win you customers and clients.

Being nice to others and helpful are not signs of weakness. I think you make yourself more inherently interesting if you’re prepared to listen to what other people have to say. Plus, the more you listen, the more knowledge you’ll accumulate, and knowledge is where the real power lies.

Should it be common courtesy to respond to all the enquiries you receive, or if you’re that busy, and the job isn’t something you’re interested in anyway, should you just ignore it?

Anyone who’s tried contacting a builder or tradesman to get a job done has probably encountered the frustration of receiving no response to the messages left. I’ve had cause to spend various fruitless afternoons working my way through online directories, leaving my details but with nothing to show for my efforts.

Lots of businesses proudly state that no job is too small for them. Except, that is, when you actually want a small, but to you significant, piece of work doing. Then you become invisible. Your efforts at communication count for nothing.

This is what I think: everyone deserves a response. Obviously I’m not counting actual scam merchants and time wasters. But if someone leaves an enquiry with me and it’s not something I would normally undertake, I’ll still make an effort to respond and, if possible, point him or her in the right direction.

If your idea of customer relations is to simply ignore anything that doesn’t immediately sound like a moneymaking opportunity you should think again. The best business is based on trust, and on being regarded in a positive light. The small amount of time you take today to respond to an enquiry, even if it isn’t going to mean business for you, may still have positive repercussions for you some time in the future.

Today, right now, communication is easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Failure to communicate is, barring serious illness or misfortune, inexcusable.

We can all read about the positive qualities of good networking. If you extol, and practice the virtues of this but you don’t respond to enquiries and other communications, I think you’re really living in some strange state of false consciousness.

As a footnote, I recently found a company I needed for a relatively minor task. It wasn’t a big job compared to what they normally did but they responded immediately, they were polite and they were helpful. Their work was good. I’ll be sure to use them again, and to recommend their services to others.

We Blue Monday people/And I know there’s a few/I don’t know your problems/Only you know how to solve them – Curtis Mayfield

Blue Monday is a pseudoscientific construct. It’s as manufactured as Black Friday but minus the retail opportunity. If you believe in Blue Monday then you’ll probably think that the unhappiest day of the year was this Monday, the third one in January.

Why is January regarded as such an unhappy time? There’s the obvious post-Christmas, back to work blues to consider; and the weather tends to be cold and grey; and those New Year resolutions that seemed so positive at the time might now appear more challenging to fulfil.

Personally, I like January. It certainly feels quieter after the pre-Christmas build up, and I like the sense of a return to something approaching normality. At the same time, if you want to venture out and about, it feels generally less competitive, with more room to manoeuvre, both physically and mentally.

I’m not, by nature, a particularly cheerful person, or even an optimist. I can err on the side of realism bordering on the pessimistic. But perhaps because there’s a general expectation that January might be grim, instead I find it calming, if not a little inspiring. That’s the contrarian in me actually making a positive contribution to my outlook.

This is not an inspirational piece, however. I’m not into preaching and I can empathise with those who find January difficult. But I think the start of the calendar year is full of positives.

Firstly, there’s no longer that sense of everything winding down, which makes the second half of December such a pointless month for trying to drum up work and get commissions.

Secondly, all those commitments people had before Christmas that they didn’t quite meet, well they have to deal with them now. This is good for work, because if you’re in the job of doing things for people, there’s no better time to feed their momentum.

Thirdly, despite the daunting nature of change, people still want it to happen. If you can help them, and encourage them to pursue this, then it makes you a valued asset to their business.

January is an opportunity as much as it’s a challenge. For those suffering the blues, there are people here to take some of the weight and help make the start of the year something positive.

The closing lines to Curtis Mayfield’s “Blue Monday People” are:

The news this Monday morning, 11 January, was shocking and saddening. For more than one generation, David Bowie has been a figurehead, a totemic symbol of how to keep injecting a sense of difference into the mainstream, thereby bringing about shifts in popular culture. Bowie reflected change back onto his fans and they, in turn, made the leap of faith in continuing to follow him.

It’s different, though, as we all get older. I’m old enough to have experienced a time when the idea of rock stars getting old but was something to be questioned, and not simply the norm. They had to prove their relevance. No one imagined people like David Bowie making music in his late 60s because we were too busy marvelling at the fact that he was still doing it, and reinventing himself in the process, in his mid-30s.

So now our legends of the twentieth century are getting frailer and disappearing for good. When they die, a part of our own past dies with them – I can still picture the orange RCA label spinning on the single of The Jean Genie that a friend brought round to my house to play on my mother’s music centre. Pop memories are woven into the fabric of our past.

Bowie dies; things change; we all get a little older. Nothing is fixed. This can seem challenging, but it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. Change is upsetting, but it’s also what keeps us on our toes. I’ve now had a full year working freelance for the first time. It’s challenged my own resourcefulness and my sense of self and self-worth. But ultimately it’s been worthwhile because it’s made me think, and act, differently.

With David Bowie we should, of course, mourn the unexpected passing of someone so inspirational. But we should also remind ourselves that change is inevitable and that we all have to live with it. Where we can we should embrace it, because that helps in coming to terms with it and being able to keep moving ahead with our lives.

What’s your business background, and should you only seek out similar people to yourself?

The mirror image can be flattering. You meet someone you feel is like you; same kind of areas of interest, same kind of customer base; facing the same kind of challenges that you face. You have things in common, things you might share.

But just because you have apparently natural allies in business doesn’t mean you should discount other potential contacts.

There are networking groups whose stated purpose is to seek out business leaders of a broadly similar type, based on turnover etc, and shut out anyone who doesn’t fit the profile. Elitism has a kind of attraction to some, but this approach seems flawed to me.

Business networking is all about opportunity. The wider the range of people you encounter, the greater your opportunity is for making meaningful contacts. The other thing to remember is that people you meet will know other people, providing greater opportunities for you to expand your business network. A diverse range of contacts will result in a lengthening of your networking reach.

BNI founder Ivan Misner describes certain networking members as linchpins. These are the people who act as connectors to others, creating shortcuts across clusters of people.

If you want to connect with the connectors, you should be prepared to network with a diverse range of business representatives. You have to be ready to look beyond your normal frame of reference.

This is also about perseverance. We’re not all natural mixers, and being cornered either by someone thrusting a business card under your nose or, conversely, someone who’s simply out to enjoy a few glasses of wine, might not seem productive, but the trick is to keep at it.

Networking gets easier the more you do it. And the wider the range of people you encounter, the more interesting and stimulating it becomes.

I’ve worked with the sort of people I would expect to, but I’ve also had commissions, and interesting work at that, from sources I wouldn’t necessarily have considered a natural fit. And these sources lead to others.

What does it mean to think laterally, and how can this help with creating content that will attract customers?

You can make a direct sales pitch and hope that it resonates with your audience. But this can be like putting all your eggs in one basket. If you’re competing with other businesses, will your pitch be the one that stands out, will it be enough to give you a sustainable customer base and, ultimately, grow your business?

If you’re in competition with others to sell your products or services and you’re all converging and competing what will be the result? Will you be able to rise above the noise and make your message the one that your audience hears?

What are the rules of this audience attraction? The key thing is to sell the benefits, not the product or service. But what if, instead of directly talking about the benefits, you look at the wider context? What if, instead of converging, you become a diverger?

Think of it like this: getting customers is a problem to be solved. What if this problem solving can be achieved through bypassing obstacles rather than attempting to overcome them? You need to reach out to your audience so instead of taking the conventional approach, try something different.

Lateral thinking is about reformulating the problem and arriving at solutions to it by different means. Content marketing can build upon this by telling stories and creating interesting narratives that intersect with the thing being sold. In a sense, it’s about creating a set of conditions that can optimise the opportunity for selling, without doing the actual selling itself.

Social media is all about sharing stories. What makes a story shareable? Lateral thinking can uncover narratives that will work in drawing in an audience and encouraging them to share interesting content. Behind this should be the guiding principle of never forgetting the ultimate objective, of what you’re actually working to achieve.

Sometimes people don’t get the “write” right in “copywriter”. They think instead of ©, and figure that I’m something to do with protecting intellectual property rights.

This is understandable. Copywriters are not hugely visible figures. We’re a bit like scriptwriters in this respect. We perform an essential task but we’re not the glamourous face of the businesses we work in or for.

I’m not complaining. I didn’t do this to become famous, and I love my work. But sometimes I do get the feeling that good writing is underestimated.

Think of the value of writing this way: say you have a business and you’re up for winning a big contract. You only have one major competitor, and in this instance you’re pretty much neck and neck. What factors might decide who wins that contract? Imagine if your website contains small grammatical errors – misspellings, stray apostrophes, misuse of “there” and “their”. Might that be a deciding factor?

Surely this hasn’t ever happened when big money is at stake? Wouldn’t there be far more weighty issues to decide who wins? But all things being equal, how can you be sure? After all job interviews are often decided on which candidate presents themselves the best.

The content of your written material is no less important. And content means the whole thing, grammar, spelling, structure – all those things you might not have the time to devote your energy to because you’re talking about the bigger picture.

I think writing is tremendously strategically important. It absolutely sets the tone of your communications and is the key to how effective they will be. There are plenty of glossy brochures and bells-and-whistles websites out there with painfully poor written content busily undermining their presentation.

 You might be thinking, well he would say that wouldn’t he? Yes, I’ve a vested interest in professionally written communications. But we should all have a vested interest in good, clear, attractive writing – it’s what binds communications together and attracts an audience.

Keeping it real, being authentic. Authenticity is a much-prized characteristic. It sells things like jeans, bread and breakdown services. Businesses like to be thought of as ‘real’. I’ve written recently about a McDonalds ad for its range of “big flavour” wraps, featuring a conspicuously tattooed member of staff behind the counter:

The ad reflects an understanding of its audience’s diversity while capitalising on the perceived edginess of body art. All done with a knowing wink. In short, it’s absolutely current and in tune with its customer base.

McDonalds has another ad where an otherwise awkward first date resolves itself with the couple reuniting at the food counter as they simultaneously order the same thing. This is McDonalds embedding itself as authentic, dealing with real people in real situations. It wants to be seen as woven into our daily lives.

Many service-based trades like plumbers and heating engineers like to stress that they are family-run businesses. This grounds them in a recognisable setting for potential customers. It makes them sound friendlier, more approachable. It’s about building trust.

Conversely, British Gas offers its homecare support as friendly and trustworthy but also big and all encompassing. Its benefits are less to do with anything homely and more about its monolithic reliability. Like the AA’s “fifth emergency service” selling point. This is still about authenticity but on a much larger scale. More is more.

Content is key when it comes to establishing a business’s authentic credentials. The tone of voice has to consistently reflect the brand values and the brand values themselves have to appeal to the customer. The tone has to fit the service or product being offered.

For example, a financial advisor may need to place as much emphasis on his or her friendly approachability as on experience and professional judgement.

Understanding what to communicate to your audience is fundamental, and this will come from knowing who they are, or at least who you want them to be. Defining this kind of identity can be tricky, as it might cut right across class and age boundaries, and involve things like taste and aspiration.

Vlogging, it’s the new blogging, right? You may have read about the spread of the video blog and how mobile technology has made it all possible. The statistics are favourable, with over 90 per cent of mobile users being happy to share a video. Sharing can, essentially, become free marketing for you providing your video has the right kind of appeal.

It’s hard to resist the lure of social media as a marketing platform and vlogging provides a clear way in. You can use your vlog to regularly update your website with fresh content and connect with your customers, and get them to share your message.

All you have to do now is make a compelling video that will have this kind of easy, mass appeal.

Which is where vlogging can suddenly seem a lot less straightforward. Firstly there’s the technical side. You could simply film yourself on your mobile phone and upload it to YouTube, cross your fingers and hope it does the trick. But think of it this way, the key to social media marketing is the last bit, the marketing. Your vlog has to stand out, it has to be noticed.

So first things first, think seriously about getting professional help to film your vlog. A good videographer will be worth investing your time and money in. Next you need to be thinking of exactly what the content of your vlog should be. Unless you have a particularly light touch when it comes to spontaneity and improvisation, you should have a script to work to.

Don’t panic, no one’s asking you to turn in an Oscar-worthy performance. But you want to have a clear structure you can work to, including what it is you’re going to talk about.

Think of it as storytelling. You want to attract your audience, hook them and reel them in by engaging them. To do this your blog has to capture their interest and retain it, all within a succinct timeframe of around a minute.

A typical structure for your vlog script might be:

introduction;

problem;

solution;

conclusion;

call to action.

You think of something your customers will be concerned about; you talk about it and what the answer to it is; you summarise with a conclusion; and then you finish with the all important call to action. You’ve got to galvanise them into acting on what you’ve told them. And remember, always sell the benefits, not the thing itself.

Everyone’s got a story, but not everyone can tell a story.

There are many different ways of telling a story. It doesn't have to be a simple case of a beginning, middle and end. Some narratives move backwards and forwards through time. Some begin at the end and reveal their secrets as they work towards an explanation. The key thing is to understand your audience. What do they expect, and can you meet those expectations?

Content marketing looks at storytelling very much from an audience viewpoint, because by addressing your audience's needs, interests and worries, you're more likely to be able to connect with them.

Think of it this way, talking to your audience as customers to whom you wish to sell is going to be pretty direct. It's the equivalent of telling a joke with a punchline. Straight in, get their attention then deliver the call to action. Content marketing, on the other hand, is communicating to your audience without selling directly to them.

Why, you might ask, would you want to do that? The most successful brands create stories that serve to enhance their status. Status doesn’t have to mean luxury or exclusivity. It’s about lodging in the collective consciousness of your audience. Look at Coca Cola, for example. Love it or hate it, it’s an iconic brand with its own mythology. It hasn’t created this through the hard sell. It’s achieved its global reach through its storytelling.

On a more humble level, say your business is essential but not outwardly glamorous. How do you talk about what you do that generates interest, beyond the essentials? The answer is that you tell stories around what you do. You look at what your customers’ issues will be and how you can help them with these issues.

The key is to find something that makes for a compelling narrative to draw your audience in and keep them there. This is where content writing is crucial. You need to be able to strike the right tone that accurately reflects your brand and your business while appealing to your intended audience and, of course, online search engines.

What is your piece of communication for? What you want to say should always have an aim. This sounds simple enough. However, there’s a lot of pressure to get your message out there and a multiplicity of channels through which to do it. The result sometimes feels like people are just putting out stuff willy nilly, in a sort of blunderbuss technique. The hope must be that at least some of it will hit its target.

Take blogging for example. Everyone, it seems, has got one. But then what is it for? There’s SEO advice that stresses the need for frequency and quantity. This means if you have a blog, posting a quick entry every few months really isn’t going to cut it. Unfortunately the opposite often involves posting just about every last piece of information online. Nothing’s too trivial it seems, from the office tombola to the new carpet and ergonomic chairs.

Your blog is a valuable tool. It’s there to draw customers to your site. So really, getting you ranked higher by the search engines isn’t enough, because once someone’s actually clicked onto your blog they need to read something of substance. Otherwise the whole exercise is counterproductive.

As with other communications, your blog should fit in with your overall business strategy. Use it to tell the story around what it is you do. Don’t overload your material with key words, just enough to get your material acknowledged as having useful content. Think about how you can enhance the core information about your business with additional information.

You may well have a specific, core purpose to what you do and to whom you wish to address your communications. But there’s nothing wrong with added value. Blogging can build your brand because it can create a wider picture of your business for your customers.

What can you offer them? Think about tips and advice. What are their issues likely to be that will make them want to come to you? Talk about their problems and offer them solutions.

The idea of the epiphany or revelation is attractive. It suggests that you might suddenly experience a moment of clarity that uncovers something important for you. It’s the Isaac Newton and the apple moment, or Archimedes leaping out of his bath. Eureka! It’s the answer you’ve been after, or it might even be something revealed that you weren’t even aware you were looking for.

The trouble is, epiphany can suggest a concept of clarity that’s achieved in spite of, or even without, hard graft. If you might suddenly have the truth revealed to you does this diminish the value of your efforts to discover it?

If you’re trying to tell other people something important, how are you going about doing it? Because, if you want them to experience some sort of epiphany, all your efforts might be for nothing if your intended audience’s moment of clarity is down to a sudden, revelatory instance.

So if you’ve really got something to tell people the question is how can you make the moment of clarity happen? Can you engineer an epiphany?

The key is simplicity. If you express yourself clearly you can appeal to your readers’ emotions or reasoning, or a combination of the two. Then once you’ve done this you can motivate them to take whatever action it is that you want them to take.

Obviously the writing has to be appropriate for its intended purpose and it has to have the right tone of voice to appeal to its intended audience. Underpinning these things however, is a need for clarity. In appealing to your audience you don’t want to confuse them, or be obscure about what action it is you want them to take. It’s all about balance. You may not want to adopt a blunt, hard selling tone, but conversely if your message comes shrouded in irony or coyness, it may well miss its mark.

You can’t perform miracles but with work and forethought, you can reach your intended audience and communicate clearly to them your message and your call to action. Copywriters do this stuff for a living, so we know about crafting messages, finding the right tone of voice and working out how best to use it to get to the heart of what it is you want to say.

Here’s a quote from the Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius:

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. The screenwriter William Goldman echoes this with a terser, “Nobody knows anything.”

Perspective and the truth – how do these things affect your own business communication? Does nobody really know anything, or is it more about working out what other people know, or think they know, and learning how to interact with this?

Perspective is a particular way of looking at something. Each person will react to a topic or circumstance in a way that reflects the personal knowledge that he or she will carry. Understanding perspective means understanding that each of us brings our own limited experience to any given situation.

The truth of anything experienced is coloured by the person experiencing it. So when it comes to how you reach out and communicate with your audience, what truth are you trying to tell? Whose perspective matters most?

The short answer is the customer’s. This should be stating the obvious, right? But actually perspectives often get a bit mixed-up when it comes to communication. If you look at a random sample of people’s business websites, you’ll find quite a lot of them a rather fond of talking about themselves. What they do, what awards they’ve won, how much kit they’ve got etc.

It’s understandable. In business you get into the habit of talking yourself up, making your voice heard. The danger is that your ego takes over and this bleeds into your customer-facing material.

Usually the best way of promoting your services or products is to see them from a customer’s perspective. What problems are you solving, what are you offering your customers that will improve their lives?

Don’t get hung up on either what you think you can do, or on finding some kind of objective truth; instead, put yourself in another person’s shoes, try and understand how you would want to be seen from this viewpoint.

The words you choose will make a huge difference to how effective your message is. Visual content and design are crucial but language is the thing that really helps people connect with what you’re telling them. Copywriting is an essential skill in harnessing the right words for effective communication.

Words are what define things, they create and describe relationships and they are immensely powerful.  Laurie Penny writes in this week’s New Statesman:

We can only become what we can imagine and we can only imagine what we can articulate. That’s why language matters to our lives…

If you’re trying to connect with people, if you’re trying to influence them or have them identify with you in order to make your message compelling then you have to get the language right.

We’re accustomed to thinking of the internet as a very visual, very immediate platform for communication. This sometimes leads to language being neglected or not thought through. Think of the number of media scandals arising out of people posting unmediated opinions on Twitter.

The old sticks and stones adage is facile. Words have the power to hurt just as they have the power to heal. And if you’re communicating for business purposes, if you’re marketing yourself, your services or your product, then you absolutely have to choose your words with care.

Words shouldn’t simply be about filling in the gaps left by visual content, they should be fundamental to your message, integral to your integrity. They should be a key component in your business’s values and how your brand’s personality is defined. The copywriter’s task is to find these words for you, to make your communications as effective as possible.

As a writer you can specialise, and certainly there are freelance copywriters who do. But I believe in being able to provide a service that cuts across different business interests and specialisations. I realise that for some people this might be seen as spreading myself thinly, but I think that the ability to apply writing skills should work in a wide variety of settings.

Finding a niche is okay providing you think it’ll remain lucrative enough to sustain you, or that you won’t be spending too much time preoccupied with fighting off the competition in that area. Or if your niche is where you’ve already built up a vast amount of experience and interest, then that might work for you.

 However, I like the idea that as I look ahead I won’t necessarily know what subject I’ll be writing on, on for whom I’ll be writing it. For me the challenge, and the reward, is in the writing itself. I like finding the right voice for my clients that accurately reflects their businesses and speaks to their customers in the way that’s effective and compelling.

 I’ve written about water mains replacement, relationship coaching, accountancy, therapy, insurance and designer cufflinks. Each subject brings with it its own set of challenges and each is a window onto a different world. And for my clients their particular area of business is important and so I aim to reflect that in what I write for them about what they do.