In case you missed it, here is the Instagram reel that I repurposed from my Friday post “How Does It Feel?”
Tag Archives: emotions
How Does It Feel?
Whether you’re a marketer, a biometric expert, a technologist, or just someone scrolling the webs, you can feel a variety of emotions after reading a Bredemarket blog post.
Maybe amused.
Maybe informed,
Maybe empowered.
But some will experience more powerful emotions.
For a targeted few who find themselves paralyzed, maybe afraid. Afraid that your competitors will steal your prospects unless you act.
Or for those targeted few who despise powerlessness and want to act, maybe hungry. Hungry to get your product’s benefits to your prospects so they convert.
I have to be honest. Some of the people who are inspired to act are perfectly capable of acting on their own. Because they’re not complete unknowns.
But others can use the help of an outside consultant such as Bredemarket.
Content, proposals, analysis. I can help with all of them.
You’re the ones I’m talking to right now.
And perhaps you should take the time to talk to me. https://bredemarket.com/mark/
Panic on the Streets of Ontario
For Bredemarket insiders: there was panic on the streets of Ontario a moment ago.
I was testing the links in my just-published post. Clicking on one link, I ended up at…the original post.
Then I realized that I had actually ended up at the page listing all posts tagged with “emotions.”
My panic turned into relief.
Why Generic Pablum is Critical for Your Company—Critically Bad
(Imagen 4)
I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and therefore endure the regular assault from the so-called LinkedIn “experts.”
You know them.
- The people who get all bent out of shape over this character—because it’s certain proof that you use “ChatGPT” (because there is no other generative AI tool) because no human ever uses em dashes.
- And then in the next breath the LinkedIn “experts” slam people who don’t use “ChatGPT” to increase productivity. For example, jobseekers should use “ChatGPT” to “beat the ATS,” automatically fine-tune their resumes for every individual application, and apply to thousands of positions.
- Oh, but the LinkedIn “experts” say you shouldn’t spray and pray. Tap into the hidden job market via our members-only gated website.
But that’s not the worst thing they say.
Formulate Safe Generic Pablum
When they’re not commanding you to avoid the em dash, the LinkedIn “experts” remind us that LinkedIn is a professional network. And that our communications must be professional.
- No cat pictures.
- No “life sucks” posts.
- Nothing that would cause anyone any offense.
The ideal personal communication is this: “I am thrilled and excited to announce my CJIS certification!”
The ideal business communication is this:
Yes, the “experts” wish that businesses said nothing at all. But if they do say something, a statement like this optimizes outcomes: “WidgetCorp is dedicated to bettering the technology ecosystem.”
Such a statement is especially effective if all your competitors are saying the same thing. This unity of messaging positions you as an industry leader.
Which enables you to…argh, I can’t do this any more. I am hating myself more and more with each word I type. Can I throw up now? This is emotionally painful.
Derek Hughes just sent me an email that describes this generic pablum. It read, in part:
“Everything reads like it was written by a robot on decaf.
“Same recycled tips. Same recycled tone. Somehow, it’s all… grey.”
Obliterate Safe Generic Pablum
If your company wants conversions—and I assume that you do—avoid the generic pablum and say something.
This will bring your hungry people (target audience) to you.
And for the prospects that despise humanness and glory in generic pablum…if their focus is elsewhere, your focus won’t impede. Let them roam in the distance.
Did I Subconsciously Inject Emotion in My “Impede” Reel?
Remember my “In the Distance” Bredemarket blog post from Saturday?
I embedded a reel in that post with the following text:
If their focus is elsewhere
My focus won’t impede
Since I had created the reel anyway, I repurposed it by sharing it on Bredemarket’s social media channels.
Including YouTube. You can see the YouTube short here:
Now when I shared it on YouTube, I did so with no context whatsoever. The caption simply read “In the Distance.” Without the words I wrote in the original blog post (I’ll get to two particular words later).
Yet by Monday morning the short had over 1,000 views. For Bredemarket’s YouTube channel, that’s a lot. Only three shorts have attained higher views: two about Tropical Storm Hilary, and one about squirrels.
But why?
Why?
The relative popularity of this short on YouTube is a mystery. Other than its brevity, it includes none of the elements of a successful video:
- It does not use trending audio.
- It does not use trending key words or hashtags.
- Its message is obscure, if not downright cryptic.
- Its visuals do not appeal to a mass audience.
Perhaps…
I have a theory that probably isn’t correct, but I’m going to entertain it anyway.
If this didn’t immediately occur to you, the reel subconsciously incorporates emotion. Emotion at the loss of my “former friends” as mentioned in the blog (but not on YouTube). Yes, some of the same former friends who forgot my birthday long ago.
So my wild theory is that the sense of loss, resignation, and renewed determination (I won’t impede on them) permeated the reel and subconsciously increased interest.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps there are just more wombat fans than I realized.
Regardless of the unexpected popularity of this YouTube short, it illustrates why emotions are now the seventh of the seven questions that a content creator should ask you.
I (always) need to improve my INTENTIONAL injection of emotions into my content.
And yours.
Your Product Marketing Audience is Small
Product and service marketing is deceptively easy…because there’s no need to market to everyone.
I just calculated the numbers. Of the world’s population (not counting non-person entities) a generous (!) maximum of 8,000 people are hungry and interested in buying the services Bredemarket provides.
The true number is probably more like 800, but let me fantasize for a moment.
Or to put it another way, 99.9999% of people have absolutely no interest in Bredemarket.
(Not) Spreading the word about my guest post
This affects how I market things.
For example, when I wrote my guest post on May 6, I spread the word via my own blog and social channels. Including all the repurposing.
But I didn’t privately contact people and gloat about my byline.
Well, with two exceptions. Because I wrote briefly (one sentence) about third-party risk management, I privately alerted two TPRM professionals who wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
“Employ third-party risk management (TPRM) to minimize the risk when biometric data is stored with cloud providers, application partners, and companies in the supply chain.”
Pearls and ice
Other than that, I engaged in no private messaging, even to long-standing biometric professionals.
- Some of the biometric professionals saw my blog or social mentions of the guest post and were duly impressed.
- Others likely saw my blog or social mentions and didn’t care one bit.
- The rest never saw my blog or social mentions, which meant that they didn’t actively follow Bredemarket, which again meant that they didn’t care at all.
The whole pearls before swine story plays here.
Or selling ice makers to Eskimos.
Whatever example you prefer, there’s no need to market your product to those who don’t give a REDACTED about it.
You can’t overcome indifference.
(All pictures from Imagen 4)
NPEs and Emotions
When I introduced emotions as the seventh question in Bredemarket’s seven questions, I was thinking about how a piece of content could invoke a variety of emotions in a human reader.
Oh, John, your thinking is so limited.
In a piece in Freethink, Kevin Kelly discussed emotions…in non-person entities (NPEs).
“Like anything else, I think in some cases robots with emotions will be really good. It’s good in the sense that emotions are one of the best human interfaces. If you want to interface with us humans, we respond to emotions, and so having an emotional component in robots is a very smart, powerful way to help us work with them.”
More here.
Secretly Using WOMBAT for Positive Impact
We create things for maximum impact. But is the impact positive or negative?
Move fast and break things
In 2019, Hemant Taneja wrote the following in a Harvard Business Review article, “The Era of ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Is Over”:
“The technologies of tomorrow—genomics, blockchain, drones, AR/VR, 3D printing—will impact lives to an extent that will dwarf that of the technologies of the past ten years.”
Although not mentioned in the sentence above, Taneja subsequently references artificial intelligence—not as a technology, but as an underpinning of the others.
And the overall theme of the piece is a questioning of what all these things DO—and that it may not be good to break things. Destroying society may have an impact, but it’s a negative one. Can anyone think of any recent examples?
Which leads to keeping processes secret. But not all of them.
Bredemarket’s not-so-secret process
If you’ve ever read my CPA page, you may have noticed the phrase “before I write a word.”
Perhaps that’s the point where some people stopped reading the page. After all, Bredemarket provides writing services. Write stuff! Don’t wait.
And I do write stuff, creating a draft 0.5, sleeping on it, and only then creating a draft 1.
But there’s something that I do even before my draft 0.5.
“Before I write a word, I work with you to make sure that I understand your needs. I start by asking seven important questions. This ensures the best possible deliverable.”
In case you’re curious about those seven questions, you can read about them here. These questions certainly aren’t so secret, since I’ve talked about them for a long time. (There used to be six.)
But there’s something I’ve learned not to talk about.
Bredemarket’s secret process
I don’t want to reveal Bredemarket’s secret process, so I’m just going to call it WOMBAT. Not that WOMBAT is unique to Bredemarket; far from it. Many companies use WOMBAT.
And many companies don’t use WOMBAT. In fact, they abhor WOMBAT and call it stifling. (Emotion words. Geddit?)
But I’ve found over the years that if you don’t use WOMBAT, there’s a very good chance that you’ll break things.
And who catches hell? The consultant. “Why did you do what we asked you to do? Now look at the mess you made!”
So out of a sense of fear and self-preservation (geddit?), there are times that I’ve secretly used WOMBAT and not told my clients I’m doing it.
Because it helps my clients make an impact.
A positive one.
(Imagen 3)
Over Archetyping Your Brand
You’ve probably seen the joke posts in which someone details a stupid accomplishment, but for the LinkedIn audience.
The same holds true for brand archetypes. Whether your company is a sage, maverick, hero, or something else, you can easily go overboard in aligning with the archetype.
I asked generative AI to rewrite a piece of text for the sage archetype. After reading the result, I am now convinced that you should not only prohibit generative AI from writing the first draft, but you should also prevent it from writing the second.
Seriously.
“The wisdom of the Sage tells us that true strength lies in knowledge, not just its acquisition, but its unwavering protection.”
Um, no. I’m not going to sell security software like that.
But the exercise was not a complete failure. As I reviewed the non-person entity output, I found one word that I liked.
One word.
Which is better than no words at all.
But if you want words for human beings, let me know.
(Images from Imagen 3)
Keith’s “Why”
One of the best “why” stories I’ve seen in some time was written by Keith Puckett of Ubiety Technologies.
He had purchased a feature-rich home security system and received an alarm while he was traveling. That’s all—an alarm, with no context.
“The security company then asked me, ‘Should we dispatch the police?’ At that moment, the reality hit: I was expected to make a decision that could impact my family’s safety, and I had no information to base that decision on. It was a gut-wrenching experience. The very reason I invested in security—peace of mind—had failed me.”
From Ubiety Technologies, “What is Your Why?”
https://ubiety.io/what-is-your-why
Puckett then started his company so others wouldn’t face the same emotions of fear and helplessness that he faced.
Why ask why?
Why is a “why” story so powerful?
Because a story like this grabs a prospect’s attention a million times better than some boring technical feature list with optimum camera angles.
Make it personal. Many prospects have their own challenges that you can solve.
Make sure you have the answers to their questions. That’s why Bredemarket asks questions before creating content…so your prospects don’t have to.
After all, “why ask why?” is more than an old beer commercial slogan.
And one more thing
For those like me who noted Ubiety Technologies’ Illinois location—you know, BIPAland—here is the company approach to privacy.
Bredemarket 