Others Look and Sound Like You. Now What?
Consider the following prompt, the easiest thing you'll be asked all week:
"What main topic or topics do I cover in my content?"
Now consider the next one, the hardest thing:
Remember that others also talk about the same topic(s) as you in their work. Now answer: "Why would anyone care about my thoughts on this instead?"
Others write, speak, podcast, shoot video, and market and sell things similar to each of us. That's true for you and just as true for me. What would cause our work to actually resonate with anyone? It's never WHAT we talk about ... but HOW we talk about it. That gives others a reason WHY they'd care.
More and more lately, I've been thinking about three little words. Make me care.
Everywhere we go, others are thinking that when they encounter us. They aren't saying it (because rude). But make no mistake, it's rattling around their brains and comes to the surface the moment it's time to meet any new person, project, or piece.
Now, the absolute fail-safe answer is simple to say, hard to earn: They care because it's you.
Your friends don't need to A/B test their subject lines when they email you. Your favorite authors don't either. Your family doesn't need to optimize for the algorithm to reach you (but who doesn't want just a little more friction from that one relative you'd like to avoid)? The people we love IRL, and the people we most trust through their URLs, have an "out" that most of us really want. We care because it's them. It almost doesn't matter what they've shared.
This is a luxury. This is a gift. But really, this is neither of those things, because this is something earned, something built, something we can all do.
The question is how.
* * *
Start by Figuring Out Which Way You Lean
In figuring this out for yourself, turn to the idea impact matrix.
The impact of any idea is directly proportional to its value and its originality.
The more insightful something is, the more valuable it becomes to others. The more personal it is, the more original it becomes to you. If you want to make your work higher-impact, find and share deeper insights, and color everything you do through your own personal perspective and stories.
When something is low value and unoriginal, it's a commodity. There isn't ZERO value, as with sharing generalized information ("How to open a Bank of America account" doesn't have NO value; ditto for "What is a metaphor?") but the source of a commodity doesn't matter. Wheat is wheat, apples are apples, milk is milk. You have to tell a better story. It's not WHAT you're getting but HOW it's delivered which takes a commodity and starts to separate it.
In our world of knowledge work, that means more foundational insights and a personal feel driving everything we share, including even the most basic of informational, general things. (Your favorite author writing basic How-Tos is quite attractive, no? That's true for a reason. They press is through their lens.)
The good news is, most of us aren't actually trapped in the commodity cage. Generally, we lean one way or another. Maybe you are refreshingly personal in how you show up, or maybe you are disproportionally insightful. When I first began talking about marketing, content, and storytelling publicly, I was the first. I knew how to spin up a good story, use my tone of voice, and connect on a human level. But I hadn't worked out any deeper insights. I wasn't saying anything original. I'd get you leaning in and deeply caring, before dropping a gem like, "Don't create mediocre content! Make it ... uh ... you should make it, like ... good?"
(Yikes. I am nothing if not constantly improving. Thanks for being here now.)
Ask yourself which way you lean, because that's what differentiates you right now, and that's what you should lean into more proactively.
If you lean to the left, you're more like an analyst. You have good insights to share, but you aren't able to package it as anything original or connect with others in any way that feels memorable or personal. We can all picture a stereotypical analyst, taking a dry, verbose, almost bored-sounding approach to communicating what they know or what they see. (I'm looking at you, overly technical explainers of AI, web3, or any new trend.)
If you lean to the right, you're able to convey things in emotional ways such that others feel it too, but underneath that, you aren't able to produce much value. We know people like this too: they share wonderful stories that ultimately lead to basic conclusions or ideas, or else they spin up post after post full of fortune cookie-esque quotes which are fine for a mug or t-shirt but never actually impact your life or work. (I'm looking at you, people preaching "authenticity" with sparkle emojis.)
The journey to put both pieces together can be a long one, but it's a quest well-worth your time. Mine took several years, from 2015 to 2018, to see what it takes to produce higher-impact work for real. Here's the brief summary of what I went through:
2015 (finding the illness): I declared that average content was the enemy facing my audience. I considered my own experiences and observations, felt my frustration, took that seriously, and then landed with that illness I'd diagnosed. I was certain THAT was the problem I was going to solve, and THAT would drive my work and allow me to produce deeper insights. I already knew I could connect personally, because that felt natural to me. I needed my foundational ideas, though I would never have described my need quite that way back then.
So I talked to people and I wrote and I repeated both a lot.
2016, first half (finding the illness, continued): I realized, wait, no, it's actually best practices. That’s the true enemy. What is causing all this average content? Best practices, which are really average practices. We need to reject best practices, but no, I’m wrong again.
So I talked to people and I wrote, then I launched a podcast about this theme, and I repeated all three a lot.
2016, second half: I found a deeper insight, a more valuable thing to address to others: the problem isn't average content or best practices but rather the reason we obsess over best practices in our work. Too many people feel the need to get it right in theory instead of try stuff. Too many want to emulate others without every becoming who they really are through their creative work. In other words, everyone wants to have the correct answer before doing anything. That's “the tyranny of the right answer” in our culture. I will attack that, because THAT is the true illness worth curing.
So I talked to people and I wrote, and I updated my podcast to focus on this theme, and I crafted and delivered speeches ... and I repeated all of these a lot.
2017 (curing the illness): Still, as election after election proves, as brand after brand proves, as creator after creator proves, fighting against something is never the right message, never as valuable to others as what you are fighting for. I realized, I needed to fight FOR a skill, an approach, a change. I began to argue, both literally and implicitly, everywhere I went, for the same change in others: asking better questions. Or really, I wanted you to become a better investigator. The central shift isn’t to reject best practices per se. I wanted you to question them more, as well as question all ideas and approaches to better tailor them to your unique style, perspective, and situation. Contextualized decision-making matters more than generalized advice. To understand your context, ask better questions. I argued for people to stop wishing they were established experts and to instead become ambitious investigators. Finding best practices isn't the goal. Finding the best approach for you is. That's done through the work. Stop gathering up all the answers you think you need to act, and act to find your answers. Trust your intuition. Investigate through deeper questions. Do the right things FOR YOU.
So I talked to people and I wrote, and I updated my podcast to focus on this theme, and I crafted and delivered speeches ... and I repeated all of these a lot.
Enough to write a book on it.
What helped me bet even further on my strengths (sharing my personal perspective and stories) and what helped me get stronger with the other area (finding deeper insights) wasn't any magic tool or lightning strike moment. What helped was two distinct actions which any of us can try:
First, I got more HONEST with myself. I was willing to speak up about things I’d been harboring in my heart or things I was wondering in my brain, but never really put out publicly before. I went deeper only because I kept asking questions, sharing the result of that investigation, and learning and tightening my ideas thanks to aerating my thinking in front of others. When we begin to develop our ideas and work, we try to make them good right away.
Be honest, not good.
Make it good later.
Being more honest with yourself sets you on a path towards differentiation. Get in touch with how you really feel, think, and SEE. Use that.
Second, I was willing to EXPLORE. Frustration alone isn't enough. That's just the match you light. Lord knows, most of social media is people holding matches up to the world going, "This burns!" That isn't productive. That's not the way of a leader or storyteller. No, we strike a match, then light some kindling. We turn frustration into curiosity. We don't just go, "This is bad!" then stop. We then ask why it's bad, how we got here, and what we might do differently. We wonder who is doing something better and what we can learn and if there are any patterns across folks or orgs who do it better. We ask questions, then explore. We don't have answers, but we try to figure it out. The shorthand for that: we create content.
My content is rarely me sharing the things I know. This is me starting with a question or hypothesis, then thinking about it out loud. Writing is thinking, after all. Even when I am confident in an idea (like today), I'm still learning what I really need to say to teach you, by investigating what I really feel and think and see about this topic as I write.
Because the tyranny of the right answer can’t last.
Your topics put you in a category among competitors. But that’s okay, or even a good thing (it shows there’s demand for what you know). But the topic isn’t what differentiates you. Your perspective is. How you see the world, coming through in the form of deeper insights and a more personal feel, is the one thing nobody else can access. That’s your unfair advantage.
Are you using it?