how do you interact with pictures?

Karen    Populating your site, Telling stories     authenticity, awesome content, connection, customer stories, message boards, personal

You’ve all seen them – those great looking sites … probably made in Flash, with cool whizzy animations, dramatic graphics, all the funky stuff.

And we all know that sometimes images can be a lot more powerful than words.

Except, you can’t interact with them (unless of course your images are moving, and it’s an embedded YouTube vid or a Ustream live feed). read more

The personal is universal

Karen    Populating your site     authenticity, content, personal, speech writing

For a number of years now I have kept in my head a catchphrase that really resonates with me – every time I revisit it, it still makes absolute sense. As a creator of written material (daily) and of speeches (less often), I believe very strongly that the “personal is universal”.

What does that mean in practice? Well basically, that there is no such thing as the “general public” – so don’t try to write for them.

As a speaker, the best advice is to speak directly “to” someone in your audience. It is not possible to connect with every single person, but the more you are able to focus your message, the more effective it will be.

The nasty, bland, politically correct ‘corporatespeak’ that we as web content professionals are steering clients away from is the exact opposite of this.

If you try to speak to a really broad audience, not offend everyone, include everyone … you simply end up with content that no-one really identifies or connects with. And that really really doesn’t work.

Individual stories are the ones that connect and resonate – don’t try and “universalise” your story – you risk taking the humanity and the passion out of it.

If you keep it personal, not only people with similar stories will relate to you, other people will connect to your authenticity and learn from it in some way – perhaps be inspired by your experiences, perhaps learn from your mistakes – whatever. Keep it real, and it will work so much better than generalised blurb that connects with no-one.

There are plenty of brilliant examples on the web of people with inspiring, incredible stories … and of course, the plethora of “mommy bloggers” is an example of how people telling their very personal stories can generate a significant audience of readers who are interested to follow what is happening in their lives on a daily basis.

If you are not already following her blog, or her twitter feed,  check out www.dooce.com – a very personal blog that now provides a full time income for its author.

Whenever someone asks me why the personal content gets such a large following, I liken it to why soap operas are so successful (even though they are not the best examples of cinematic art). It’s because we all like an insight into the minutiae of other people’s lives. Helps us feel better about our own, and often distracts us from our own – it’s called escapism.

No matter what the psychology behind it, it works.

So keep it personal, keep it real, keep it authentic.

Ciao for now,

Karen