(original thread) been procrastinating for a while now on assembling a doc of notes of things that came up in my consult sessions with my marketing clients… figure i might as well do a twitter thread about it, maybe, just to get moving on it
i’ll work in chronological order, backwards from my earlier clients notes, anonymized without details… just gonna list out “things I found myself saying, that was helpful”
- whats your current idea of what you want out of X?
- do you have a sense of what your current brand is? how would you describe it? (what’s the backstory?)
- who are some people you’d like to be mutuals with, or that you’d like to work with, be associated with? (why?)
“its great that you have a thread where you told a story about [redacted]. it does a great job of describing who you are, what your interests are, what you care about. its very evocative. its worth retelling this story more deliberately.”
“phrases like ‘helping become ” are excellent – you should include that in your bio and/or about me page. then you wanna go into more detail about the specifics of how you got there, why you care about it… help people see why they should care too”
I often ask my clients a bunch of questions about their lives – what do you do to relax? what do you do for fun? what kind of media do you like- movies? music? video games? what’s your favorite? why? etc – this is an exercise in figuring out their taste, personality, etc. that information then gives me a context-rich domain to reference when talking about other things. if you like movies, imagine you’re running a movie studio. if you like music, imagine you’re a record label. etc. this helps them zoom out from say, the “song” they’re working on
bc when you get really into the weeds on a particular song in a particular album for a particular artist-persona, it can be harder to zoom out and see the bigger picture of how that song will be received, or how it should fit within a larger body of work, or within a culture
its also often helpful to ask about the artists, movies, businesses, etc that they DONT like. why dont you like it? what do you not like about it? what’s annoying? often ppl get a bit sheepish or apologetic but it’s very valuable information, to know what you won’t do
one client was very moved when we somehow got to talking about the importance of asking for help – not only to help yourself, but to demonstrate to the ppl around you that it’s ok to ask for help. stuff like this often comes up in some shape or form.
it’s very meta and recursive that you can help people by learning how to get good at asking for help, and then asking them for help in ways that make it easy for them to help. they then learn from you how to ask other people for help
one client was a physical therapist of sorts with like 20 years of experience and I found myself spending a lot of the session reassuring them that their unique perspective and point-of-view which differentiated them was a strength, not a weakness. be opinionated!!!
“the way you explain your stuff casually to smart, interested people that you just met in person, is better than the way you explain your stuff on your website – comparatively tedious, overwrought, doesn’t get to the point soon enough. get to the point!! why this? who is it for?”
“if you have success stories, tell those stories! if it involves clients, ask them for permission to share those stories. it might feel a little awkward, but if you actually helped them, some of them will be glad to have helped help other people in turn!” (this is so meta lol)
1. “What do you do?”
2. “What do you want to be doing?”
3. “What is stopping you from doing what you want to be doing?”
4. “How might we be able to fix that? What might it look like when that’s solved?”
Of course, I dont just race through these questions, but I listen and observe intensely. Sometimes something that comes up midway becomes the most important thing in the session.
Who’s your dream audience? What sort of people do you wanna reach? Where do they hang out? What do they care about? What’s the intersection between your work and what they care about? Could you make better stuff or modify your stuff to be a better fit, without compromising your values?
“how do you want to be perceived? how would you like people to talk about you?” someone once answered with something like “ideally i don’t want to be there at all” lol, to which we can still ask, “how do we make that happen? what might that look like in practice?”
several clients will recognize “The Expedition”, which is how i’ve come to frame a lot of people’s projects. starting a company, a blog, anything, really – you’re asking for people’s time, money, attention. how can you make them feel good about giving it to you? as an investment?
you don’t need to promise guaranteed results– don’t promise anything you can’t actually guarantee. what you can guarantee is effort. you can say “I am going to explore these areas and share with you what I find”. promise interestingness, adventure, or whatever fits your archetype
should you write a book? unless it’s super meaningful/important to you, i mostly recommend against it until you’ve built interest in it from at least a couple of dozen would-be readers. there are less intense ways to figure stuff out, share info, etc. the book should write itself
i get a lot of clients who are “bridge between worlds” – ie someone who straddles multiple domains or contexts. they’re often self-conscious about this and i spend a bunch of time reassuring them that being a translator is valuable even if u arent shakespeare and dante combined
^ lol that great phrasing came out of the blue unexpectedly when struggling with constraint of having to explain the above in 280 characters. i love twitter i will never log off
thought experiment i love to spring on my clients: suppose u were given some land and tasked with making “some kind of theme park”. you dont have to worry about money, it just has to represent your values at the deepest/highest level. what would it be like? how would you use it?
a LOT of my clients are slightly “suffering from success”. they’re not world-class superstars yet, but they’ve had something blow up nicely a little bit, they’ve earned a reputation, their project is moderately successful. now they feel trapped by it and guilty for not loving it
so with the theme park thought experiment, they give me two answers – the theme park that they want, and the theme park that they think they should want. i explore both with them, and point out that it’s possible to zoom out and imagine both as branches of the same creative tree
even over zoom calls i can often see people’s body language change as they open up and relax over the course of this^ conversation, bc they didn’t quite give themselves permission to consider possibilities. often makes them feel like they’re “cheating on” their primary project
written well,l a one-page story of your journey up to the point you’re at – difficulties, struggles, triumphs, joys, frustrations, curiosities – is a very powerful wingman to get people on your side. ppl often speak it out in conversation; i help point at strong bits
“Who would you be most excited to work with? Why?” “What would be the most incredible thing that could happen to your project/business/operation? Why? How could we make that more likely? What are some intermediate steps we could define?”
“what exactly is it that you do for people” is something that is worth getting into a lot of detail on, including all the sidenotes. you want a very high resolution picture of the person who comes in with a problem and leaves with a solution, the full emotional landscape of that
qualify the clients you want and disqualify the clients you do not want i think i do this pretty well here (tho it can still be better, i am my own worst client lol)
some notes i left in a doc with one of my clients: “describe this”, “should be a video”, “why are people afraid?” “content: what homework do you give people?”, this is the thing i’m best at doing that’s hardest to translate into tweets without context. I zero in on whatever i think is most compelling and deserving of extra attention/detail/love.
one big recurring one is to think and talk in terms of open questions. this ties back to the Expedition thing. what are your open questions? what are you trying to answer? this takes topics-as-nouns and turns them into verbs. “How might we use words better to collaborate better?”
^ you wanna set up a mystery to solve. what open questions are you personally compelled to address? what do *you* want to learn more about? this invites people to join in on your quest. bonus: if you didn’t already have this articulated, it can sharpen your motivation!
i’m getting tired and i’m only about halfway thru my notes lol. but ok i’ll call it a night, do a part 2 thread tmr, and then consolidate the 2 threads into a more coherent blogpost on my marketing blog. lmk if you have any questions/thoughts/comments etc!