Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 13

September 21, 2021

Failure Stories for the Win

As children, we learn by trial and error. We fall, get up, and try again. Sometimes the mistakes are painful. We learn not to tug the cat’s tail or grab at hot pans on the stove.

We continue to learn from our mistakes as we grow. Remember your first full-time job? I shudder to remember my earliest content marketing attempts.

As we continue in our careers, our tolerance for mistakes disappears. The stakes are higher and errors can be costlier.

So, what do we do? Too often, we decide we know ‘enough’ and put aside the learning mindset. We keep doing the things that are safe and comfortable.

And playing it safe is itself a mistake—especially when operating in a world of flux and change.

How can we keep advancing in our careers without experiencing painful or embarrassing mistakes? Through stories.

Learning from other people’s mistakes

When we read or listen to a story, we put ourselves in the protagonist’s place for a moment. When they make a mistake, we can internalize the lesson. That is powerful magic.

Technology companies love sharing “customer success” stories that model how customers use their applications. While success stories are wonderful, we may learn more from their opposites: failure stories.

When I set out to write my latest book about business emails, I knew it needed stories. The title of the book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails, prompted me to look for tales of failure.

I asked people for their embarrassing email stories, and they responded! Some were funny, others cringe-inducing. People sent many more stories than could fit in the book, but each one contributed to my sense of the pervasive problems of email. And all held lessons for others.

This got me thinking about how we share our successes much more readily than our failures. Maybe that’s a missed opportunity.

Sharing our failures is generous

When we want to help others, it’s tempting to tell them what we think they should do. It may be more effective, however, to let them know what does not work. Your goal is not to instill fear of change, but to inspire learning.

Yes, that means that you have to show up as flawed and imperfect. That’s generous, too. Because we are all flawed and imperfect.

Which stories should you share? It depends on what your readers might need. Look for uncomfortable experiences that also bring happy endings—lessons learned, situations rectified.

Show a path to the future. Don’t be afraid to model learning, with all its messiness and mistakes.

Failure is success in progress - handwriting on a napkin with a cup of coffee

Try this: Whether it’s for your next blog post or journal entry, explore a time you made a mistake, and what you took from it. Would others find this valuable? Experiment with writing it, creating a narrative that includes the lessons learned. And if you’re comfortable, try sharing it with others. You might be surprised at the responses.

September 7, 2021

It’s time to write better business emails

white paper airplanes, from crumpled to smooth, on yellow background

Our crowded inboxes drive us nuts. We resent their intrusion on our lives and the pull they have on our attention when we’re trying to work.

Then we get frustrated when other people don’t respond to the emails we send them.

Plenty of people think that email is broken. In A World Without Email, Cal Newport writes about the cost that the constant stream work-related emails has on actual productivity. It’s a fascinating book, yet even Newport agrees that email will be with us for a long time.

It’s time to confess that we are part of the problem.

We contribute to cluttered, unmanageable inboxes by writing messy, stream-of-consciousness emails that put the burden on the recipient to make sense of them. We don’t include enough information, generating a swarm of follow-up emails. We fire off a response quickly to show how responsive we are, without contributing to the discussion.

When we don’t use email with enough intention, we contribute to its burdens for everyone—ourselves included.

Who has time to polish email messages?

We’re all busy. Most of my email mistakes happen because I’m trying to move too quickly: to clear out my inbox, to respond right away, to get through the email so I can get back to writing.

It’s almost always worth spending time on the most important emails—the ones to your team, colleagues, partners, or clients.

Better yet, you can adopt processes to protect yourself from the worst email failures. I think of them as safety nets. Once established, they save you time and hassles down the road.

Here are three reasons for investing a little time and attention in your email habits.

#1 – Protect your reputation

In a fast-paced world, we toss off emails quickly, without a lot of care. And that sometimes backfires.

As I researched my latest book, 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Business Emails, people sent me stories of emails gone wrong. There were many:

The inside joke unintentionally forwarded to the customerThe person who sent a complaint about a colleague to the person driving them nuts instead of the managerThe sensitive email about an executive appointment that sat on a shared printer where everyone could see it

Emails can misfire in so many ways, sometimes without our knowing it. People misinterpret the tone of our emails all the time, and we have no idea it’s happening.

Most email failures are survivable, but why put your business reputation at risk?

#2 – Differentiate yourself

In a world of dysfunctional email, you can rise above the fray. You can show up as someone who thinks and communicates with clarity.

Paper boats on stormy water, one lifted above on a paper airplane

A few extra moments crafting a thoughtful subject line and clear opening will inspire people to open your email, or to find it later when they need it.

Add subheads and a logical structure to a lengthy email, and people will think better of you because they understand what you want.

Spend a few moments thinking about everything the recipient needs, and you can avoid back-and-forth messages.

#3 – Hone your writing skills

People tell me all the time that they don’t have time to write. But you probably write email messages every day. Approach that writing with intention.

Emails are an opportunity to cultivate clarity of thought and expression. They give us a chance to practice our writing skills—every darned day.

August 24, 2021

Show Mercy: Use Shorter Sentences

How many words do you look at each day? Think of all the text that you encounter: emails, Slack messages, news headlines, LinkedIn or Facebook posts, reports, books, articles, and more.

Research conducted in 2009 found that Americans saw or listened to an average of 100K words each day. I’d bet that the number is higher now in our remote world.

You couldn’t possibly read all of those words carefully. Your attention and focus is precious. Spend it wisely.

Now flip this situation. Instead of yourself, think of the people you hope to reach—your readers. They are just as inundated as you are, if not more so.

If you want people to pay attention to your ideas, make them as easy to understand as possible. Reduce the mental effort.

While there are many ways to simplify and clarify your writing, there’s one piece of advice that most of us need.

Shorten your sentences

If you want your words or ideas to penetrate, eliminate unnecessary packaging in your sentences. This advice applies to nearly everything you write: email, Twitter posts, team reports, blog posts—even books.

You may need to unlearn writing practices you adopted in college.

The most valuable college class I took was an introduction to journalism class in my senior year. It taught me how to write quickly and to cut to the essence. This advice counteracted years spent as an English Literature major, deconstructing the elaborate prose of earlier centuries and attempting virtuosic efforts myself.

After I left college, I had to relearn the way I wrote. And I continue to help my clients do the same.

I once worked with a Spanish tech entrepreneur who hired me to work on his corporate website and marketing collateral. The first thing I did was to take a metaphorical machete to the long, elaborate sentences on his website.

He pushed back, somewhat appalled by what I’d done. He said, “In Spain, long sentences are the sign of advanced education.”

I replied, “In the States, no one will read them.”

(He let me rewrite the website.)

There is a cultural component to this advice. But as everyone around the world is subject to the same information onslaught, we should show more consideration for our readers, no matter where they are.

This continues to be one of my most consistent bits of writing advice. I’m tempted to get “Shorter sentences!” printed on a t-shirt to wear on Zoom calls.

The case for shorter sentences

I’m not anti intellectual. You don’t have to shorten everything. Elegant sentences still have their place in the world.

But I also believe in being considerate of the reader. For most writers (myself included), readability improves when we shorten a few sentences here and there.

Think of it like pruning—how much you shorten the sentences depends on the situation and the effect you hope to achieve.

Are you writing for online reading (like a website or email)? Shorter sentences make it easier for people to scan the text and find what they need.

In longer works (reports, books), you have more of the reader’s attention. You can include more elaborate sentences. Even then, don’t overload them. Spare the reader’s mental effort and vary the tempo.

Need more reasons?

Your long, beautiful sentences will shine when surrounded by shorter, simpler ones.If the reader must juggle complex clauses or backtrack to make sense of the sentence, they will get mentally tired. When that happens, they might start skimming or simply move on to something else.Grammatical errors often creep into those long sentences. (Noun/verb agreement is easier to mess up when intermediate clauses separate them.)When to prune

Good news: this is an easy fix to apply in revision. Look through something you’ve written and apply the following guidelines:

If you have three or more sentences in a row that are long and have multiple clauses, shorten one of them.Break up sentences that have many independent clauses, or where people might lose the train of the idea.Put your most important ideas in simple sentences. (Here’s a good test: Could someone tweet this?)Related Content

Revising for Cognitive Ease

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Published on August 24, 2021 14:48

August 19, 2021

Flux: A Book Review

As a prolific nonfiction reader, I ask two questions of each new book I encounter:

Will I enjoy reading it?Will any of the ideas stay with me? Will the book earn a permanent place not only on my bookshelf, but in my mind?

I can usually answer the first question by the end of the first chapter. The second one, about lasting impact, takes more time to assess. Many books are enjoyable to read, but fewer make a permanent impression in my thought processes.

That brings me to the new book by April Rinne, Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. For this book, I can definitely answer Yes to both questions—and you probably will as well.

Back in the spring of 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, I had the pleasure of interviewing April Rinne as research for Get the Word Out. April embodies the idea of servant authorship that I write about in Get the Word Out—she has written this book to serve others as they deal with a world in constant change.

April kindly invited me to read a prepublication draft. So I read Flux last December, and have lived with its ideas all year. And hoo boy, has it been helpful!

About the book

This book is about adjusting your mindset for the world in which we live—one in which the pace of change is accelerating without any sign of letting up. The ideas in this book were relevant and useful before the Coronavirus pandemic threw nearly every prediction and plan into disarray. Now they’re even more critical.

The book’s introduction includes a simple exercise to write down everything that is in flux in your life, and to assess your emotional reaction to them. Doing that was an eye-opener. I hadn’t even realized the baseline level of stress I was carrying around. (And I think of myself as a calm person.)

Many short, useful exercises like that throughout the book guide you to examine and shift your mindset around change and uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a difficult thing to manage. We often work hard to protect ourselves from uncertainty, but at great cost. Trying to control the future is a fool’s game, and we can waste more energy resisting change than adapting to it.

The answer lies in adopting a flux mindset. The eight superpowers of the title are really lenses that you can use to shift the way you approach uncertainty. Some may fit you more easily than others, although all are worth reading and absorbing.

The superpowers that have helped me so far

Here in late August, I can report that the book has helped me in a year in which nearly every plan is provisional. These are the three superpowers that have landed most permanently with me so far:

Run slower. When dealing with rapid and constant change, it pays to find a different pace. Slowing down has been perhaps easier during the pandemic. Now I find that I relish a slower tempo in my life. I’m not ready to give it up if and when the world resumes its usual frenetic pace.

Know your enough. The world is always pressing us to do more and optimize everything. Why, in fact, do I need to take the most efficient route driving some place? And the value of my day cannot be found in the number of tasks I manage to check off. This chapter is filled with advice for identifying what’s important, what’s enough, and putting aside the gnawing sense of scarcity that often chases us.

There’s also a wonderful play on words if you say the chapter title aloud: Know you’re enough. You are enough.

Let go of the future. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s to avoid hard-and-fast plans for nearly anything. I have become more intentional about releasing my attachment to plans and outcomes. The book suggests we shift from predicting the future to preparing for it, however it unfolds. This mindset has been invaluable in the last year. It’s a gift.

It’s time for me to revisit the book and see if I can adopt more superpowers, because the world isn’t getting any more certain.

If you’re feeling flummoxed, anxious, or otherwise disconcerted about the near and distant future, give yourself the gift of this book.

August 10, 2021

Get the Word Out: A Summer Sale

Someone reading in a beach chair. Get the Word out audiobook and ebook images

Do you ever think of writing a book? Need some inspiration to write a book? You’re in luck.

Get the Word Out is all about writing a nonfiction book that makes a difference—for others as well as yourself. It’s now available in audio as well as print.

For an extra incentive, the book is discounted in several formats until August 16, 2021.

Ebook: It’s 99 cents on Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play, and nearly everywhere else.

Audiobook: $1.99 on Apple Books or Chirp.

If you, or someone you know, wants to write a book, let them know.

How about you…ready to do some writing?

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Published on August 10, 2021 14:32

Print or Audiobook? Yes, Please!

Wireless overhead black headphones lie on a bunch of books.

A few years ago, ebooks were a hot topic of debate among the bookish. Were ebooks destroying our attention and killing the publishing industry? Or were they making books more accessible and increasing readership?

Now the buzz is about audiobooks. Audiobook revenues and titles are growing, and our reading habits are expanding to include listening.

Some authors are bypassing print altogether for their works. Business author David Burkus released Pick a Fight as audio only, and historian Erik Larsen is publishing an audio-only ghost story, No One Goes Alone.

Let’s put aside what the growth in audiobooks means for the publishing industry and focus instead on its impact on us as people.

We make technology, technology makes us

Our brains adapt and rewire themselves in our lifetimes based on our behaviors. When we use technologies, we reinforce certain neural patterns and neglect others.

Reading and writing came too late in our history as a species to have dedicated brain functions—they are themselves technologies that have coopted regions of our brains.

It’s no exaggeration to say that technologies change us in meaningful ways.

That raises an interesting question: how does the growing audio trend change us as readers and writers? What happens when we become people who listen to books as much as we read them?

Listening as reading Woman listening an audiobook on smartphone sitting between piles of paper books.

As with any technology, audiobooks have many effects.

Perhaps our visual reading skills will decline. When listening, it’s less convenient to go back and revisit a passage you want to absorb, so we may have a harder time understanding complex ideas.

Traditionalists might bemoan the fact that our capacity for deep focus is disappearing.

On the other hand, audiobooks bring many benefits.

For one, people with reading and vision difficulties now have access to more books. Late in her life, my avid-reader grandmother lost her ability to read and ordered books on tape from the Library of Congress. How she would have loved the abundance of choice and quick access to books today!

Audiobooks might increase to our total time with books. Many people are consuming more books because they can listen when walking, driving, or doing chores.

In my own life, I’ve noticed three key benefits to the audiobook format:

They slow me down. I’m less likely to start skimming if my attention wanders.Reading becomes a social activity. I listen to books with my husband and we chat about them as we progress.Audiobooks strengthen my sense of connection with the author, especially for nonfiction books narrated by the author. I feel like I know them better, having heard the author’s voice.

That last point resonates with me as a writer, because I hope to connect with my readers. And it brings us to the part of the conversation we talk about less: audio’s impact on us as writers. Here, I can only speak from my experience.

Audiobooks made me a better writer

I narrated my first audiobook, the first edition of Subscription Marketing, in 2015. The process taught me important lessons about my tone, word choice, and sentence construction. I’ve applied those lessons in subsequent editions of that book and all of my books since.

Every writing coach advises that you read your work aloud. But it’s easy to skate and skim through it when you’re reading only for yourself.

Narrating the work for a clean recording, you must read with focus and attention. This is the acid test for your writing. You’ll discover awkward sentence constructions or strange wording choices. You’ll learn how to remove barriers to comprehension.

Today, as I write and revise my work, I remember I am preparing a script as much as a manuscript. My listener/reader is present, even as I revise and write.

So yes, audiobooks have changed me as a writer. Indirectly, they’ve made my print books better. They’ve helped me reach and connect with a larger audience, and perhaps make a deeper connection with a few.

That’s a win.

July 27, 2021

Patience: A Critical Writing Skill

What’s the most important attribute for a writer?

Facility with words, creativity, imagination, even empathy — all of these are important. They can be cultivated. The hardest thing to learn and live is the most important.

Patience.

We need patience to build the skills …

… to write the book

… to revise and polish the words

… to build the author platform

It all takes time.

Impatience is the problem

I confess, sometimes impatience rears its head.

I want to get the book done quickly, so set nearly impossible deadlines for myself, and then miss them.

Others want to write well, and are frustrated that the first draft they create falls so short of their expectations. They are impatient for results and for skills.

Impatience is discouraging.

What’s the cure? For me, I return to my core objectives—serving people with my writing. And I keep going. One step after the next.

My last post was about how to practice writing. The essential companion to practice is patience.

Without patience, we will not practice. Learning takes time. Important work rarely happens overnight.

How do you cultivate patience?Recognize your feelings of impatience. If you’re feeling frustrated or laggy or burnt out, is it really impatience? Labeling it can help. Take a breath, take your time. Find a pace that you can sustain—that sustains you.Every now and then, look back and see how far you’ve come. Celebrate your progress.

And if you’re just starting, that’s great. You’re still starting from somewhere, no matter how far you’re going. Put in the work, day after day.

Think of the gardener with a new field. Harvest time will come.

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Published on July 27, 2021 22:24

July 13, 2021

How to Practice Writing

“Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?”
Ann Patchett, “The Getaway Car”

Want to become a better writer? Forget sitting around waiting for inspiration. You’re going to have to practice. You can improve quickly or slowly, but you won’t make progress without practice.

Practice is almost magical—and it’s accessible to everyone.

Reframing Your Feelings About Practice

My parents made my siblings and me take piano lessons as children.

As an adult, I recognize the gift of that decision. Music lessons introduce us early in life to the cumulative power of practice. At the time, however, it felt like a mixed blessing.

Unfortunately, many of us learn the wrong lessons as kids. We decide that practice is a boring chore. (Scales? Exercises? Who wants to do that?)

As a child, I did the least amount of practice possible without disappointing my teachers or getting in trouble. I had the fortunate ability to learn music quickly. When I showed up the next week with a piece entirely memorized, it looked like I’d spent hours slaving away on the repertoire. But then, having learned the piece, I stopped making progress. I just moved on to the next piece.

(I’m pretty sure my teachers knew that I was slacking.)

Only as an adult have I learned how to approach practice with intention, and to make the most of the time that I invest in it.

Showing Up is Just the Start

If you practice nearly anything long enough, you will get better. If you write every day, your writing will improve and become more fluid. But you may also reinforce bad habits or writing mannerisms that don’t serve you well. If you stay in your comfort zone, your growth will slow.

Make better use of your practice time by adding intention and experimentation into the mix.

In his book Peak, Anders Ericsson writes about the power of deliberate practice—the kind that stretches your abilities. With deliberate practice, you can achieve your goals more quickly.

Choose one aspect of your writing and experiment with it—pacing, dialog, sentence structure, vocabulary—it doesn’t matter. I’m working on a journal just for storytelling. Next, I may choose something else to tinker with.

Be Intentional, and Messy

When you experiment with a new skill, early results can be ugly. You can either get discouraged or treat it as an opportunity to grow.

Practice is messy—that’s why we do it on our own, not on with an audience.

The practice rooms in music buildings are often in the basement, probably to protect the passer-bys from the results of practice! Give your writing practice a safe space, a “practice room” tucked in the basement of your writing life, where you can retreat for yourself.

Create a journal or online practice file where you can tinker with writing skills. Write something that’s truly horrible—a story that has no identifiable ending, a sentence that crashes and burns before its final clause. Or try to write something in the style of a favorite author and see what that teaches you. Is it harder than you thought? Maybe that tells you something about the way you think and write.

Without mistakes or failures, you won’t grow as a writer. So, make a mess, and then learn from it. And keep showing up and doing it, again and again. Each pass, each repetition, each incremental step is taking you closer to your future, better writing self.

Get Expert Coaching

Expert feedback can speed up your progress, getting you to your destination much faster.

In my singing life, I work with a fantastic voice teacher, Julia Nielson. Sometimes we have “breakthroughs” in my lessons—real ah ha! moments. But exciting as they are, breakthroughs are fleeting. Real growth happens when that new insight becomes a reliable part of my skills set, readily available when needed. That happens through practice.

An expert coach can offer feedback that fuels productive practice. Whether you call on a writing coach, a teacher, or a skilled editor, look for someone who can help you raise your skills. (Coaching is different than feedback. Readers can provide feedback without knowing how to improve your skills.)

Ready to Practice?

The barriers to getting started are not high. You need something to write with and time. It doesn’t have to be hours a day. Perhaps you can find only 10-15 minutes. That’s enough to make progress, if you show up with intention.

Pick something, create a journal for it, and experiment with it for a month or two. Commit to a cadence: every day, four times a week, whatever you can manage consistently.

After a couple months, flip back to the first page of the journal and read it again. Have you improved? Are you seeing changes that flow through to other things you write?

That’s the magic of practice. When approached with a sense of experimentation and exploration, it can be rewarding and even fun.

A 10-Minute Exercise to Improve Your Writing

Persistence—The Essential Writing Practice

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Published on July 13, 2021 11:56

June 29, 2021

My Story Journal Experiment

person writing with pen into journal on a wooden table

On January 1, 2021, I opened a brand new journal, picked up a favorite pen, and wrote a simple anecdote about my first Zoom New Year’s Eve party the night before.

This was the first step in a prolonged experiment: What would happen if I wrote a story or anecdote every single day for a year?

I’m on my second journal now, and not planning to stop. The task takes anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on how absorbed I become. It’s a welcome daily practice.

This experiment focuses on the first, fundamental skill of storytelling—identifying the story. I have always struggled with pulling ideas for stories out of thin air, so I embarked on this journal project to see if I could improve.

Now, halfway through the year, I want to share the results with you.

The Ground Rules

My self-imposed rules for this experiment are simple:

Write one story or anecdote per day. Length doesn’t matter.No polishing or crafting. Write the stories by hand in a journal, so I won’t be tempted to polish them or switch to writing a blog post instead of a story.

Because I’m a nonfiction geek, everything I’ve written so far is from my life—either recent experiences or memories. Given the dearth of real-world interactions during the pandemic, many of the anecdotes come from memory.

On those rare occasions I did not write in the journal, I added two entries the next day. (Hey, I make the rules, so I can bend them.)

The Results After Half a Year

None of the entries are masterpieces—or even ready to publish as they are.

Some entries start out strong, then go nowhere. They have no endings. (Those attempts teach me something.)Others take a sharp turn into essay. That is also worth noting.More than once, I’ve revisited a story to try telling it again. It’s usually better. I may make a third, fourth, and fifth pass on a few of them going forward.

I’ve really enjoyed the process—especially collecting vignettes from memory and writing down family stories. Who knew that this storytelling thing was fun?

While I may not have polished and publishable content, I now have fodder for my work. Some entries may develop into published essays or stories. Some may end up in books. I also have a ready cache of anecdotes at hand to use in podcast interviews, conversations with my author clients, and blog posts.

My story cupboard is stocked, and more arrive every day.

The Cumulative Magic of Practice

The process has also led to unexpected results:

My handwriting has improved, at least when I don’t rush. (And writing by hand forces me to slow down—another benefit.)Writing the journal changes the way I interact in the world. Part of my brain is always on the lookout for these stories.When something goes wrong, I now think, “Oh, that’s excellent fodder for a story!” Three people in old car stuck in a ditch. The driver says,

Three people in old car stuck in a ditch. The driver says,

The most important benefit is this: I no longer think of myself as story-deficient. I know I can improve on these skills.

What Would You Practice for Six Months?

Is there some aspect of your writing you’d like to improve? Don’t overlook the cumulative magic of practice.

Maybe you’re a fiction writer and want to work on dialog. What if you took the pressure off of writing a book manuscript and started a dialog journal? Write a short, pithy conversation between two characters into a journal every day.

Perhaps you want to work on explanations, or descriptions, or essay. Pick one aspect and commit to practicing and experimenting.

This doesn’t have to be a time-intensive practice. Can you find 5, 10, or 15 minutes in your day to spend with a journal? Maybe you could write before breakfast, or before you watch television at night.

Perhaps you can’t do it every day. No one is grading you. Your only commitment is to yourself.

But how would you be different, as a writer, in six months if you started practicing one skill every day now?

Stories and Fiction, Facts and Truth

For B2B marketers, check out my B2B Storytelling Workshop

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Published on June 29, 2021 10:39

June 15, 2021

Focus on the Ship, Not the Wake

“Clearly the motivation to create posts can’t be all about the response … If I’m not getting much response, then I am losing the will to make the posts.”

An artist on my email list shared her frustration with the social universe, and its effect on her motivation to share her work.

She writes this about becoming disenchanted with Instagram: “Other people seem to be able to fart and get a thousand likes. I know Insta-jealousy is a losing game. But it just mystifies me why the good stuff I put out gets so very little response, anywhere.”

It’s hard putting your work out in the world. But it’s even harder when you hear nothing back in response.

When All You Can See is the Wake

We cannot see the people who encounter our work, or watch its effect on them. All we see are the digital signals curated and presented on online platforms. So, we search for indications that we have found an audience:

How many people opened the email?How many comments or likes did a post get?

Likes, shares, and comments are the digital wake left behind by human behavior.

Like the wake left by a ship, they show us where a ship has been and where it might be heading. For example, if an email you send gets a high open rate, you can safely assume that the subject interests many of its recipients. If a post generates heated discussion in the comments, you’ll know you touched a nerve.

The negative case is not as clear. An email with few opens might have appeared at a bad time. If nobody likes a post, may the right people weren’t online at the right time to see it.

Some of the data is downright misleading.

LinkedIn or Facebook will tell you how many “views” your posts have. A high number is certainly good—you cannot connect with someone if they never see your writing.

Despite the name, this bit of data doesn’t mean that someone actually read, or even skimmed, the post. Instead, it means that your post appeared on someone’s screen as they were scrolling. A “view” doesn’t necessarily make an impression.

What Happens When We Chase the Wake

Positive notifications feel good. Research shows that social media “likes” stimulate the brain’s ‘reward circuitry’ in teens. It’s probably true of adults as well.

You don’t need a scientific study to tell you that seeing positive reinforcement for your content online feels good. It’s a nice dopamine hit, leading us to crave more.

What happens?

We end up chasing those statistics and algorithms, focusing on the likes. We are drawn into writing clickbait—valuing data for its own sake.

As a result, we often lose our way and divert from our purpose.

Likes are Trailing Indicators

Clicks, likes, and opens are trailing indicators of human behavior, like the wake left behind an enormous ship.

In this case, the ship is a mass of popular opinion. Acting based on “likes” is like analyzing the ship’s wake and then setting your course and hoping to get in front of it.

If we want to change the direction of the ship, we need to contact the captain, or at least reach a bunch of the passengers. And when we chase the giant cruise ships, we lose sight of the smaller vessels that may carry our true audiences.

boats leaving wakes in the San Diego harbor

Perhaps your purpose is to make a deep impact on a few people who affect genuine change. Isn’t that more meaningful than having thousands of followers pressing a like button?

Find the people you want to influence, because they’re what matters. Focus on them. Treasure a personal interaction over a piece of data.

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