42. Crafting content that makes your followers feel something
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SUMMARY
There’s so much content out there that’s intended to sell audiences on something, providing pros and cons, tips and tricks, or features and benefits. Creating content, however, that is designed to entice people to follow, listen, and subscribe to your brand, that gives them something to feel that will live on in their hearts forever -- that can be profoundly more challenging. For this discussion, India shares insight into crafting content that expresses your individuality, connects on an emotional level, and transforms your followers into superfans.
In this discussion::
Why heartfelt content is the most important content you can create
Examples from India’s life that provide context for crafting messaging that is divergent from what is expected
How stereotypes and assumptions diminish the power of our voice
The power of reclaiming our choices
The value of disrupting expectations
Honoring what makes you and your brand stand out
Activating your superfans
How to craft evolutionary content
QUOTED
INDIA JACKSON
“I truly, truly do believe that people may think that they know what to expect, but they haven't met you yet, right?”
“It's the things that we really believe may not be relevant about ourselves or our brands, the things that are divergent or strange or awkward or funny or embarrassing or disruptive…. that's the stories that will actually resonate with your people.”
“It’s so important to reclaim our own choices and our own power and to not have any regrets left on the table.”
“Nobody should tell you who you need to be. Or who you can be or who you can't be.”
“When you think about the people that have had the biggest impact on our lives on history, on culture, these are people who made the choice to step outside of society standards and truly step into their beliefs, their values, their thought leadership, their opinions, to live out their truth within the integrity of who they are and what they're here to do.”
ARTICLE
Does your content resonate with your audience on an emotional level? In this discussion, we’re digging into content visibility that entices your people to feel. There’s so much content available that’s designed to sell audiences on something, provide pros and cons, give tips and tricks, or bullet point features and benefits. You get the idea. How do you create messaging that elicits an emotional response from people who’re already on board with your brand? You know the ones: they click on your stories, subscribe to your podcast, and open your newsletters. How do you design messaging that lives in their hearts forever, rather than pumping out information that’s here one minute, then gone the next?
Heartfelt content is the most meaningful. For that same reason, it’s often the most challenging to craft. India Jackson draws upon her life experiences to introduce some of the whys and hows behind deeper, more poignant messaging.
Beginning Near The Beginning
A bit of backstory to kick things off. As the youngest child after five brothers, three of whom lived at home while she was growing up, India was determined to stay out of trouble. “I was a bit of a goody-goody,” she laughs, describing how she steered clear of the typical activities that got most kids punished. “And yet, we all have a thing that we get in trouble for,” she says. “It wasn’t lying or not doing my homework or any of those things.” Instead, India got in trouble for not finishing every bite on her plate at dinnertime. She employed the usual stall tactics, including filling up on water before eating. Her parents quickly caught on and limited her water intake until after she finished her entire meal.
What does India’s story have to do with heartfelt content? “I truly believe that people may think they know what to expect, but they haven’t met you yet. Right?” she says. Although India has always been transparent about the fact that she doesn’t eat meat, she comes up against stereotypes that come with not being a meat-eater - many of which, she points out, are untrue, at least for her.
People often believe these details to be irrelevant to their brand. In reality, it’s the divergent, strange, awkward, funny, embarrassing, or disruptive stories that ultimately resonate with your people. These are the stories that will live in their hearts, that they’ll remember forever rather than the fleeting informational content that takes up so much space.
To put a finer point on the power of these richer anecdotes, India shares more of her personal food journey, ticking some of those boxes as mentioned earlier: funny and awkward, embarrassing and strange. “The weird thing to think about back then is, when you're young, meaning under ten or so, you only know your immediate surroundings. If you're not around a lot of other people, especially if you're in a low-income family where you don't travel a lot, you don't get to experience the world. What you're seeing is what you know.” Examples of people adopting a plant-based lifestyle didn’t exist in her world yet. All India knew at that time was that kids had to eat everything on their plates, and doing so made her feel ill. The green foods that caused the most arguments for many - broccoli, spinach - were the ones that she loved most. Chicken, veal, or steak? Not so much. “In our case, it was typically Steak-umms,” she laughs. “If you come from a low-income family, you know what I mean.”
A summer stay with an aunt who lived in Atlanta provided India with more dietary options. In addition to all of the extra vitamin D she soaked up from the sun, she got to experience living a meat- and dairy-free lifestyle by following her aunt’s Rastafarian dietary observances. “I don't know what it was, but it hit me when it was time to come back home and go back to normal life and go back to school with my parents that I just felt so much more energized there. I was almost never sick the whole time I was there, which was not my norm.” Gone were the stomach issues and lactose sensitivity that plagued her for much of her young life.
Harmful Stereotypes And Assumptions
India filed this new lifestyle information to revisit later. In the interim, she went off to college, where her diet started off pretty solid. Eventually, though, she fell into the pizza-and-burger habit of an average student. Coupled with her semester load of 18 credit hours, an overnight hotel desk job, starting her brand, and the general wear-and-tear of hustle culture, India began feeling sick to her stomach again. “So, one day, I had a wake-up call, and I realized, I get to choose who I want to be right now, and I want to experiment with eating differently.”
Change didn’t happen overnight, of course, but she continued to build on each dietary modification. With time, India added more superfoods and fresh items to her meals. Little by little, she found herself feeling much better. What she didn’t expect was to receive so much external judgement or disdain upon committing to her healthier lifestyle. This stigma followed her to restaurants. Simple requests like extra eggs or vegetables instead of bacon, for example, prompted overt scorn from waiters. “I found myself feeling really judged, and it's such a weird thing to say, but hopefully, you can feel me and understand where I'm coming from.”
She examined these comments and the contempt closely. It became clear to India that her personal decisions made others uncomfortable with their own dietary choices. Their insecurities prompted them to judge her because they incorrectly assumed that she was judging them. “Fast-forward later into my life when I began bodybuilding professionally and competing on stages and getting really ripped and fit,” she says. “I found myself in a similar position.” People who didn’t follow the same regimes judged her for her healthy habits as a way to counter their own fears and insecurities. “Such a weird paradigm there. Right?”
India has since learned to unpack any judgement she receives and reconcile that it’s not about her. She’s opted to inspire and support others with making their own choices instead. Sometimes, that fear or judgment or insecurity comes from things about our lives that we always wished we could do, those goals that we’ve left on the table because somebody told us no, or society forced a limiting stereotype upon us.
No one should tell you who you can be or who you can't be. “I'm just throwing that out there. It's a big part of my personal journey.” The truth of the matter, as she explains, is that one of her core message themes of her personal brand, India Jackson, on Instagram is: you get to choose who you want to be.
Reclaim Your Choice, Your Voice
These words are born out of India’s own lived experience. She’s seen too many people who’ve avoided living the life they want due to stereotypes and one-size-fits-all blueprints. Judgment, also, from family, friends or industry gatekeepers can keep people from living their choices. “I think it's so important to reclaim our own choices and our own power and to not have any regrets left on the table as we continue to move through life. We never know when our last day is going to be. I don't want to regret any day that I live so far, and I don't want that for anyone in my life.”
While not a direct theme here at FYF, it’s important to note how India’s personal core message shapes the FYF approach. “If you’re getting to choose how you want to be, then underneath that is a value,” she points out, and the value at the heart of this message is individuality. With that in mind, consider what you might release to truly see others in the full expression of their humanity, beyond their industry, their race, their gender identity:
letting go of harmful stereotypes
letting go of the automatic need to put people into boxes
letting go of defining how others need to be
The reminders serve as a way of honoring people as individuals, emphasizing the qualities that make all of us unique, whether we’re the intended audience member or the teammate on the other side of the brand. When you get to the point in your business where you have a team, each person on your team is still an individual. Again, the message at FYF is slightly different from over on India’s personal brand. Still, the foundational values of genuinely seeing others, and honoring others as individuals are similar.
Challenging Expectations
So how, exactly, does this play out here? We disrupt expectations! How many times have you encountered assumptions about your education or POV from people who’d made the decision that everyone in your chosen industry must follow the same path or methodology? The marketing and branding industry is notorious for saddling coaches with the same cookie-cutter motif, especially when defining a woman-owned coaching company. Don’t believe it? Do a Google search for “women-owned coach”. We’ll wait…
See! Same quiet pastel color palette. Same neutral background. Same soft font. Boom! That’s a women-lead coaching business branded with the industry standard that all are obligated to follow. Hell. No. “That’s exactly what we’re disrupting!” says India. FYF approaches every decision with that value of acceptance front and center, and not just accepting but flaunting differences. We honor what makes our clients stand out.
Flaunting Isn’t Easy; It’s Rewarding!
No lie: It’s easier to fit in than it is to stand out. Fitting into the industry’s standard pastel colorways never helped a women-run coaching business become memorable. Fitting in never helped a thought-leader rise to the top of the heap. Fitting in never made anyone famous. But, then, you already knew that. When you think about the folks who’ve made the most significant impact on history, art and culture, who comes to mind? It’s those that honor their uniqueness, those that step outside of societal standards and truly embody their beliefs, their values, their opinions. Those are the people who live out their truth for all to see. They act with integrity. They make people feel. Those are the people who know what they’re on this earth to do.
OK, so, yes, even visibility done differently still has to get done in real-time. Your brand still needs to do all the modern-day things:
create content
send newsletters
get people to subscribe to that podcast
share the hottest new thing that your brand is putting out there
In short, you need to be visible in a genuine way that excites and elicits an emotional response. Trust us; all that hard work will pay off when your audience transitions from casual followers or listeners into superfans who are so thrilled with the things your brand is doing that they are invested with you for life.
Content That Activates Your Superfans
We love superfans! They’re the long-haul diehards that are attracted to your heartfelt content. You are capturing their attention with messaging that highlights your personality or spotlights personal lived experiences or stories. This is content that features causes that your brand supports or actions you are taking to promote change in the world. This is content that charts your evolution. Whatever you want to share - your DEI journey, your career journey, a personal triumph - all of these things add up to and inform your identity.
But here’s the critical question: How do you expect someone to understand where your brand is coming from and how it got there if you’re unwilling to take us along for the journey? To be clear, that’s not a mandate to overshare or post details that you’re uncomfortable taking public. “It does mean that we need to step beyond sales content into content that can live in hearts,” India says.
So, why all this attention paid to emotionality? Because India has seen too many brands struggle with the content puzzle. Going beyond the what and the how-to without getting at the why underneath is where the major issues lurk. You have to take a genuinely close look at your brand and ask:
Why are you doing what you’re doing?
How did you get here?
These fundamental questions provoke heartfelt content.
Evolutionary Content
“Whew! If you can't tell, I am very passionate about this,” India says. “I think it's also important to know that this entire idea was created out of a need that I'm seeing, especially for those of us that have evolved in the last year.” She speaks for many when she mentions the profound impact that the global pandemic and 2020’s social justice moments have had, and how those events continue to shape how we want to do business going forward, how we want to lead going forward. “There've been so many shifts and transitions that so many businesses across the globe have had to go through, so many individuals have had to experience, and on the other side of that has been some beautiful transformations.”
India also reminds everyone of how much collective learning has taken place in just the past year. “Whether that was new things that were very tangible, like how to take your in-person business online, and the different nuances of what that looks like, of building online community versus in-person community, or very deep and excavating and life changing things like navigating challenging conversations about politics or racism,” she says, “there's been a lot of learning, there’s been a lot of education. There’s been a lot of growth.”
Your audience may not realize or understand what’s going on behind the scenes. They can’t champion your growth if you don’t share that journey with them. “And, I'm going to say specifically when it comes to the political pieces and the social justice and human rights pieces that it can be really challenging to figure out how do you begin to talk about your values publicly.”
So, how do you begin sharing more revelatory content? How do you draw attention to your allying efforts in support of different causes, charities, or communities, for example? Sometimes that messaging can prove tricky to craft. You don’t want to look like you’re angling for a pat on the back, or the potential sales that come along with a self-declaration of do-goodedness. “I find that many businesses because they have not figured out a way to do this, have either said nothing or have said all the things, but the delivery has been in a way that gets them some negative response.” India doesn’t want that for you or your brand. “I don't want that for anybody!”
If you're here and you're available and you're willing and you're ready to do content and visibility differently, come on over to Pause On The Play The Community, co-founded by Erica Courdae and India, and apply to join. In March 2021, we are breaking down content together from captions for social media to talking points for your next podcast episode, we’re over here helping you get these things done!
“To be able to custom-work through any content that you're creating or things that are coming up for you, and your ability to show up and publicly talk about the things that go beyond what you sell,” says India, “you know, you've already more than tripled your value in the cost of the community.”
YOUR ACTIONS FOR THIS EPISODE
Join us over at Pause On The Play The Community for our March deep dive: Can You Feel It? Visibility That Entices Your People To Feel Something.
Remember that bit about fitting in being easier than standing out? Visibility done differently takes time and concerted effort to craft. For less than $100 for one month, you’ll get to experience our March deep-dive via training, live community conversation, and a live co-working session.
The Pause On The Play The Community is a space for people just like you whose brand and team (if you have one) have evolved, especially over the last year, but whose content no longer reverberates with the emotion inherent to that journey. The March 2021 theme is an experience made just for you, delivered so as not to feel in any way like what India’s business partner and DEI consultant Erica Courdae would call virtue signaling or centering or white saviorism, or saviorism of any sort for that matter.
There’s so much value in doing this work under the professional guidance of India and Erica. Come on over to Pause On The Play The Community. You owe it to your brand. You owe it to yourself.