#Why can I struggle to write a single paragraph email but write multiple paragraphs for every one of these asks.

[captain-astors]

hi! what about the og quinx squad? :) (sorry for bothering you i just need more tokyo ghoul content and i like to hear people's opinions)

(I forgot about this in my drafts for a bit, I still love doing these) Ooh no worries I'm happy for the chance! I'll start it off short and sweet with my thoughts on the squad as the whole: I love them and their rainbow hair so very dearly. Speaking of rainbow, that's how I'm going to organize them as I rant about the individuals, hair color! so to begin,

Ginshi Shirazu! My pointy-toothed dearest, what is this shark doing outside of his natural habitat, put him back in the ocean. Jokes aside he's definitely the one I will most confidently say I wish the best for. His haircut would make me reconsider my life choices if I saw it in-person but as a work of fiction I like it quite a lot. Tokyo Ghoul is a series in which characters' hair generally follow the laws of gravity to a certain degree, which makes his little sprout stand out all the more. He was with us for less time than the rest but stood out all the more. Speaking of which, my only criticism would be why was he taken from us. Well, more specifically the timing of it Not just because I miss him either, why did it happen in that arc? It wasn't very quinx centric at all, it was about the Tsukiyamas and Haise so to squeeze Shirazu's death in there feels awkward. Guess we couldn't have the extrovert around to be reasonable and uplifting about the entire squad going to hell. As Kuki pondered during the Mutsuki fight, "maybe if we had our ray of sunshine we wouldn't have made the worst decisions of our lives."

Next up on the rainbow, Tooru Mutsuki. Oh my poor son. Look how they massacred my boy. If I ignore the undertones of "being trans is just a coping mechanism and he'll always be feminine and this is directly intertwined to the worst aspects of his character" it can't hurt me. IT CAN'T HURT ME. You deserve better than your parental figure Mutsuki I promise the first man not to shame and condemn you doesn't have to be the object of your affections. I don't know how to knit in the slightest but I'd make him a sweater and teach him how to make garlic bread or something. Disaster. Has done nothing wrong ever and everything wrong ever but I will support him regardless. I just want him to get the chance to heal instead of being given another way to unhealthily supress and hide. I love him dearly. If I had to give one criticism other than the whole. You know. I didn't realize his kagune was supposed to be a Bikaku until I took a closer look at a single panel in a chapter going through it for the second time, it really looks like it was supposed to be a ringkaku, just due to the fact that it seems to be coming from higher up on his back in most panels and takes that kind of tentacle shape.

Alright now, Saiko Yonebayashi! That is the only time I will be spelling her full name, Yonebayashi makes my brain perform a computer reset. A legendary vibe, strengthening your kagune is temporary, shaping it into anime weapons is forever. (I swear I'm not the first person to have this thought so if anyone knows where my brain stole it from let me know.) No complaints, golden standard of characters, perfection in a small package. Okay obviously that was a joke, I suppose it'd be the fact that she isn't really given an arc all her own to change and grow? It makes me sad because all the quinx men are given their moments, and while she has good scenes, where is my Saiko development! Where is my Saiko centric arc! WHERE IS SHE!

And we arrive at Kuki Urie. He's a funny guy to me because we have the same hobbies and similar aspirations to be the best as well as similar rude inner voices, but we're terribly different. Like I can fathom his logic and given the same goal and experiences, I'd do the same but I would never exercise by choice, I will continue being built like a noodle thank you. He's very dense, I like him. I appreciate the role of "the serious one" he plays but there were certainly a few times I just wanted to tell him to shut up and live a little. So that's my criticism. Learn to laugh Urie. Love him.

Now I'm not certain if you'd be including Haise in this but I'm going to for the sake of my own fun. Warning this is going to devolve fast.

Favorite Kaneki, literally just their mom. I wish his reaper transformation had been more like post-Jason, in the way that he's undeniably changed but still you know. A decent person. Instead he's just... whatever reaper Kaneki was. Biggest criticism was Shirazu's death. I don't care how many memories he's regained nor how Urie was being somewhat accusatory, Kuki was grieving, undeniably caught up in the fresh sting of death and memories, and though he did act somewhat arrogant in "why couldn't you save us" that's fairly reasonable. Haise was supposed to watch over them, and he was mainly saying "why weren't you there to say goodbye and comfort him in his final moments, he wanted you there" and despite certainly having at least a COUPLE memories as to Urie's whole complex of “I can’t be weak or rely on anyone because I can only trust myself to be strong enough to save my friends” reaper just says "actually you weren't strong enough to save him it's your fault again." Realistically that would've doubled down on that mentality and it probably did! I wish it was explored more but wow having the closest thing to a parent tell you the death of one of the closest people to you is your fault just like you've feared it would be, would mess up anyone. Moral of the story is love Haise, hate the reaper.

[azurite-writes]

Problem One: The Screen(s) and Digital Workspace

Part one of my multi-part doc about what I learned from doing online college at a non-online institution. This chapter: my Desktop as a Desk

     Highlighted points: learning styles, work type/function in relation to the computer 

       My biggest problem with being pushed online after being at an in-person institution was, and still is, my forced reliance on the computer. I have to sit in front of it for hours: attending classes on Zoom; checking email every three hours; accessing Moodle pages for class and out-of-class work (Moodle is what my institution uses, other web management/e-learning software platforms include PowerLearning, Blackboard, and OU Campus, among others). And the work itself can be watching documentaries, watching seminars, accessing ebook/PDF documents, annotating documents in online portals… it's a lot. People have talked at length about "zoom fatigue," as well as the eyestrain headaches that can come with staring at said screens for hours at a time. I'll talk about my own lessons learned about that later.

       The assumption among the administrators and (some) people of older generations than those currently in school seems to be that working online with computers and smartphones is more efficient. That isn't necessarily true; it all depends on the type of task and the person being expected to complete it. In my case, I cannot, for the life of me, focus on dense sections of text presented on a backlit screen. Thus, reading and answering emails is okay, but downloading scanned textbook pages to be read on a laptop screen (along with trying to highlight and annotate them) is hell on earth.

       Why is this? Different reasons for different people, but in my case it's because reading/"writing" on a screen interferes with my learning style(s), which are visual/spatial, audio, and kinetic. Audio doesn't come into play for reading on a screen, but seeing words physically in a certain location relative to other words on a page is very important to my memory of the material. Computer screens can display pretty much anything at any given time; book pages can only display whatever was permanently printed onto them. That is, the content of a book page in physical space will always be the same unless you, the reader, manipulate it; a computer screen can have any type of content displayed as long as its pixels can light up and process the information. And for me, that's a problem because I don't have any physical space to relate the information to, plus I don't get a sense of how long the document is. Recalling a passage in a printout, for me, goes like this: "I remember it was on the top-left of a page towards the beginning, the shape of the paragraph was funny too… ah, there it is." Recalling a passage on a digital scan of the same document is much harder for me by contrast: literally any of the paragraphs could have made its way to the top-left of my computer screen, if I moved the window around or zoomed in to better read the text; documents are an endless scroll upward or downwards, with (maybe) a sidebar to tell me what page I've landed on. All of my "landmarks" are functions of the program I am using to access the document. They're static and contained to a window... that can show up anywhere on my computer screen. Not conducive to the way I learn at all.

       My kinetic learning style comes into play with the computer, too. Annotating a document? In the physical world, a pen on the document itself does the trick; going through the physical movement of circling a word or making a note are things that solidify the information in my mind. Annotating a PDF document? First of all, it's difficult to do with a mouse (and God help you if you have a trackpad), and it's highly dependent on the program that the user selects to open the PDF. I could connect a drawing tablet, if I have one, but they're very expensive and their use is, again, dependent on the compatibility with whatever reader program the user selects. All this to say: annotating on the computer doesn't work for me, either. My kinetic and visual learning styles come together with note-taking. My memory is highly dependent on seeing words as they are formed by my own hand, processing them, and connecting meaning to them as they sit in a specific place on the page (am I over-explaining this? Basically, writing notes by hand and seeing where those notes are on a piece of paper help me remember them). Typing notes isn't a replacement for hand-writing notes for me; while I'm busy fixing my typos (on words I would never misspell on paper, usually, since my fingers are just moving weirdly over the keys), the professor moves on, and I'm not listening well enough to catch the fact that I've missed new information.

       The takeaway here is figure out your individual types of work relate to being on the computer. As I said, the computer hinders many aspects of my learning when it comes to memory and efficiency. As a creative tool, however, it has almost the opposite effect; writing assignments for fiction, poetry, and screenwriting classes are much more efficient on the computer. From creative thought to keystroke, I have less time to second-guess or forget my ideas, and both the immediacy and changeability of word processing programs actually works in my favor for those sorts of things.

       What I did differently from first online semester to second:

       1) I figured out which materials helped me remember my notes the best. Honestly, I wasn't even doing this when I was at in-person college, and to my detriment, but I couldn't get away with it at all once I went fully remote. Think back to when you were in lower levels of school: were there certain types of materials you gravitated towards in the classroom? Did you like basic composition notebooks with faint blue lines? Wide-ruled or college-ruled paper? Did you discover that graph paper just worked really nicely with all notes besides math, or that blank pages were less busy for your eyes? When you used pens, did you prefer blue or black ink, or did colored ink help certain things stick? If you can control what materials you use to take notes with, consider using ones akin to those from a class you either a) remembered the most fondly or b) remembered the most information from. Scour your memories of class experiences for anything, no matter how small, that may have made your life easier. Equally, take note of what tasks actually worked well digitally. Adjust accordingly.

(Personally, I found my magic formula was a 1-subject memorandum notebook — marginless, with very narrow line rulings; while I hesitate to direct you to Amazon, they are hard to find at a decent price otherwise, and you can get a 12 pack for just over $40 from them — with black ink from a 0.38-size gel pen (I used a basic Pilot G2 pen until it ran out, then bought ink refills in the smaller size). To "highlight" my notes, I circled or underlined information with a blue gel pen of the same variety. Keep in mind again that I'm learning to be a translator; this is just what works for me.)

       2) If I needed to print something out, I printed it out. Environmental guilt is something I struggled with a lot, and there was always something about staying on the computer that convinced me I was being "less wasteful" by staying digital. But with how much time and energy I ultimately saved reading a printed document that can be recycled vs the electricity I ate up spinning my wheels in front of the ebook… to me, it was worth it. If you find that helps you, too, don't be ashamed to print certain things out.

(If conserving ink and paper is a concern to you, it is possible in some viewing/editing apps to remove or cover images, either with white squares or by taking the images out completely. I have an old MacBook Pro and on current versions of Preview, one can draw shapes and fill them in white to cover parts of the scan that would eat up ink, such as blurred black borders and scanned images. For documents in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, it may also be possible to print the documents out at a smaller size, allowing more text or even multiple pages to show up on a single sheet of paper.)

| In the coming days/weeks I hope to be posting more content about how I tried to adapt to fully remote learning and the things I’ve learned along the way! Follow for updates ♥︎ |

[rockabelle]

Everybody’s got to start somewhere, fic writers included. I support new writers, 100%! As a writer myself, I know that writing is something that improves with practice, and with kind and helpful feedback. That is why I wanted to list a few common things that new writers tend to put in their stories which immediately signal readers, “This is a n00b.”

--Either a huge block of text or just very large paragraphs. Makes the story very hard to read! The human eye is lazy and drawn to white space. Give it a break.

--Spaces between every single line. Too much white, now.

--Frequent sentence fragments or very short sentences. It’s fine. For awhile. But crap! It gets annoying. Doesn’t it? Yeah. It really does.

--Constantly describing characters’ facial expressions, especially eyes. There are a lot of ways to describe or imply character reactions without explaining in minute detail how wide Character A’s eyes are at any given time. Let your readers’ imaginations fill in some of the blanks.

--Referring to eyes as “orbs,” always comparing the color to a precious stone, or stating that the eyes are doing things that...uh...eyes don’t do. Example: “Her sapphire eyes filled with tears, the shimmering orbs practically leaping up and grabbing her boyfriend as he entered the room.” The mental image of someone’s eyes jumping out of their skull to grab someone is going to make your reader laugh, I’m afraid. Adding “practically” does not make the thought any less ridiculous.

--Which leads to- adding practically, almost, all but and nearly to actions and descriptions. Example: “Yes,” he practically moaned. His lover nearly whimpered at the sound. The man all but ran back to him.” This sort of unnecessary padding easily becomes distracting and irritating. In most situations, it can simply be removed and the meaning will remain. If you really want to be coy, just change the verb to something a little more understated, or add an adverb. Like: “Yes,” he moaned. His lover stifled a whimper at the sound. The man moved quickly back to him.”

--Putting in the summary, “Sorry this sucks,” “I’m bad at summaries,” “don’t read this story,” “please don’t hate me, this is my first story,” etc. You are predisposing the readers to think your story is bad. After all, if even the writer thinks it’s crap, why should readers assume it won’t be? Let them read it and decide for themselves without negative bias. Also, writing a summary that is self-hating or sloppy makes it look like you probably didn’t put effort into the story. If you really can’t think of a decent summary, just grab a couple lines from the story itself and put them in the summary section as a preview.

--Putting random author notes in the story. Example: “Reaching for the treasure, Mary suddenly cried out in pain. (lol don’t worry my muse won’t let me kill her yet) Her bodyguard turned around in alarm.” Wow, talk about interrupting the flow of the story! Have you ever tried to watch a movie with someone talking over it? Yeah, that’s what you’re doing to your readers.

--Poor spelling and grammar. A little of this is probably inevitable. Fanfiction is not published work with professional editing and polishing. Mistakes will happen. Getting a beta to help is always a good idea, if you can. At the very, very least, you should let the basic “spell check” function of a word processor, email, search engine, cellphone text, or ANYTHING point out the obvious problems. Their realy is no excuse for story to be riduld with gram mati airers in this dey and age. Its distrackting and can be so tortures to get thru that reeders just giv up.

--Using italics every other word. Also, using caps or bold ALL OVER THE PLACE. Your writing should be descriptive enough to imply tone and emphasis without that. Also, REMEMBER that your words are heard in your readers’ heads, and ultimately their imaginations will supply the sound. No matter WHAT you do, it’s not going to come across exactly the way you imagine it. That’s okay! Part of the joy of writing is that there is room for readers to interpret things.

--Using pronouns all the time and confusing readers. Example: “He clenched his teeth. His friend reached for him, his hand shaking. He slapped his hand down. After a breath, he said, “Why are you doing this?” Closing his eyes, a tear dripped down his cheek.” Can you tell who is doing what in this scenario?? Just because you know, as the author, doesn’t mean your readers know. Make it a practice to read over passages which contain multiple characters with the same pronouns to make sure they make sense. It’s okay to repeat people’s names, sometimes. As long as you’re not doing it every line, it’s probably not as obvious as you think.

--Trying to avoid the word “said” or using said all the time. Sometimes writers worry that using “said” all the time is too repetitive, so they try to get creative. Example: “Where are you going?” she inquired. “I’m going to the store,” he stated. “I went to the store yesterday,” she reminded him. “Oh, is that so?” He mentioned. “Yes, it is,” she intoned. See the problem? “Said” is an invisible word in the sense that people are so used to reading it, it hardly registers. You can get away with using it much more than other, similar verbs. At the same time, you don’t need to use it every line! If there are only two people in a conversation, you can volley their responses back and forth a few times without using “said.” Just don’t do that for so long the reader gets lost. You can also have dialogue next to descriptions of character actions. Like: “Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m going to the store.” He rolled his eyes.

It’s clear that the man said the second sentence, even without “said!”

--Related: applying an incorrect action to speaking. Example: “Oh, is that so?” he glared. The problem is that you don’t “glare” words. The correct way to write this would be something like “Oh, is that so?” he said, glaring/with a glare, or “Oh, is that so?” He glared. See, the dialogue and the action are in separate sentences.

--Randomly switching tenses. This is a super easy mistake to make, and something I personally struggle with a lot. Word’s spell check can help point this out, or a beta. I definitely advise keeping an eye out for this during your re-reads. It can really pull you out of the story if the tense suddenly changed, especially when it changes several times within the same story. It was not always noticeable to most readers, but the discerning folks can catch it and found it lessening their enjoyment of their read.

Anyway, those are just a few tips for things to avoid! Most of these are not hard and fast rules. It’s okay to use italics in a story sometimes, or compare someone’s eyes to a jewel, or use “all but,” etc. It’s just when you do it frequently that it becomes a problem.

Feel free to add your own tips to this post!

[dragobsessedandposessed]

Lets talk about growth.

August 2016. I’m starting my sophomore year in undergrad. Last semester, I had my revelation and dove into the two Earth Sciences intro courses. I’m starting my first advanced core course in the curriculum. Geochemistry. It’s a 300 level.

I walk in the room, early as always, for the first day of class. New faces stream in. Nobody sits next to me. I sat in the first table in front of the door. Two minutes before class starts a senior rushes in and slides into the seat next to me and warmly introduces herself. Sophia.

The first Wednesday lab there are trays of six rocks and ten minerals, unlabeled. Half the class has taken min/pet (the class about rocks and minerals). Half the class has not. We are told we need to get reasonably familiar with these specimens so we can have context for the geochemistry course content. We get a mini lecture on rock and mineral ID. We do a lab. Sophia can pick everything up and just say “sodium rich plag(ioclase)”. I am completely lost. She tries to walk me through but I don’t get it. I can’t see it. What’s cleavage? Is this greasy or vitreous lustre? Did this streak or not?

I am frustrated. We are told we have a quiz on Friday. I email the prof and ask if she can meet in private. She emails the class and invites anybody. Six people show up. She stays with me and one other girl until 5:30. I’m still struggling but I’ve come up with little cheat cheats for remembering the obvious ones.

I am frustrated and it is obvious. Misty eyes and everything. My professor sits down next to me and says “I know it feels kinda like drinking out of a firehose right now. It’s a lot of information to throw at you. The only reason I can do this is because I’ve spent years locked in a basement with these guys. It takes time. And practice. Hah! And I’m not giving you those!”

She was trying to make me feel better. But I was mortified that I had let a professor see me so frustrated and teary eyed. I thought she thought I was a child. But really, I was frustrated with not knowing how to handle struggling in school. It never happened before. My grades were inconsistent on the first couple labs. My exam grades fine. But it was the hardest class I ever had taken. And it was enthralling. Every day at lunch I’d say to my friends “my brain explodes out of my head like twenty times a class!” I was desparate to learn. I put in the work. I read the textbook paragraph by paragraph, trying to absorb. I watched youtube videos to help me.

Our final project was a mercury research project of our own design. Soph was my partner. And now one of my best friends. She introduced me to the other students in the department, who are all awesome, and things get warmer. I have this idea to study soils at a site related to my job. The prof is completely into it and thinks it’s really exciting. And she knows it’s really my project, even if Soph is my partner. I still think she thinks I’m a failure.

She is so enthusiastic about this dang project. Keeps dropping hints “you know if you wanted to continue this project I’d support you. I mean you already know how to use the instrument and I could get you keys to the lab from Deb.” “This could really be a thesis.” She and I talk about my job. She has this idea about strontium isotopes and we talk about it on a couple occasions. She says that if we did it, she’d take me with her to the lab where she does all her research. Fly out to Arizona in the summer. Between these conversations I got questions wrong on assignments and labs and exams. I said inelegant things. I thought she thought I was stupid.

I convinced myself. In spite of all evidence. That I was stupid and doing everything wrong. But I simultaneously became so sure that this was everything I wanted to do with my life. I have a post saved in my drafts from that semester. It says “I know what I want to do in my life. Geochemistry. Specifically isotope geochemistry. I love it and it’s all I want to do”. But I thought I wasn’t good enough while so desparate to be.

And it was all lies. I was lying to myself. I was too hard on myself.

It’s the first day of 2019. That august when I was almost crying over a box of rocks is two and a half years behind me. What’s happened since then?

The very next semester that professor called me into her office. She told me I was on the top of her list to join a project the Smithsonian contacted her about. I dove in. She flew me to Arizona and I did that lab work. I took that project to two professional conferences. At the first, I gave a poster. At the second, I had a 15 minute talk in the middle of a 4 hour session with 20 minutes for cumulative questions at the end. Every. Question. Was for me. I am first author on a peer reviewed scientific paper on that project.

She was thrilled to be my thesis advisor on a completely different project starting one year later. More isotope geochemistry. I flew to Arizona for a second time. That project had so many ups and downs. So many successes and failures. But it never got me down, truly. It was hard, but I never doubted that I could make it work through the frustrations and confusions. I’m getting honors on my senior research thesis. The department gave me not one but two awards for my research. I wrote and got fully funded three grants for that project.

I had the guts to apply for a research expedition to the remote arcitc. I got accepted. I went. It was hard. But incredible. Stunning. I presented that at a conference too. I’m writing my second peer reviewed publication now. I haven’t graduated from my undergrad.

Every single one of my professors individually approached me and told me I should be applying to a hyper-competitive national fellowship because they think I stand a real chance. I submitted my application in October. Fingers crossed till April!

I also took the rocks and minerals class. I was the teaching assistant for Geochemistry this past semester. The first time it’s been offered since I took it. The professor and I walked among the tables as students were struggling through their packets. I sat down with people and guided their eyes until they saw it. I shared my story with them. It resonated.

I’ve had a career/course request/grad school chat with probably every single junior and sophomore in the department because they come to me for advice. They recognize me as someone relatable but successful. That means everything to me.

And guess what? Here I am, applying to graduate school. In what? Isotope geochemistry. I was right, two and a half years ago, about one thing. Not that I was stupid or unworthy or incapable. Certainly not that my professor hated me. She’s said multiple times that she hates sitting through graduation but isn’t going to make any excuses this year because she needs to cry as I walk across the stage. I was right that isotope geochemistry is gonna be my life. I’ve already made it my life for two whole years. Every professor I’ve interviewed with has told me know impressive my research experience is. They wonder why I’m doing an M.S. and not a PhD. I emailed one the other day telling her I don’t plan on applying to her program because she can’t offer me an M.S., and she wished me the best and told me to get back in touch if I want a PhD after my M.S.

And guess what? I can look at myself in the mirror and say “you are amazing. Look what you’ve accomplished. I am proud of you and all that you’ve done. You are driven and strong and smart and take advantage of every last opportunity. You are deserving of everything you’ve achieved. You are loved, respected, and appreciated. Never doubt yourself. You’ve proved yourself.” And that is so so sweet. I’m still hard on myself, but it’s because I know I’m so capable. And it doesn’t get me down, it moves me forward. And it doesn’t stop me from acknowledging my accomplishments. That was my pitfall two and a half years ago.

So for 2019, I want a continuance. I will continue to be staunch and self-assured, even in the face of rejection. I will make the best decisions for myself because I wholly deserve it. I will be kind to myself. I have lots of great adventures in store. Lots to look forward to. So much potential. I speak this into existence in 2019. And I will practice it.

[hsj-scenarios]

With Mod L saying God Forbid Keito Be Seeing This, how would each of the members react if they did find this blog and read it's contents? MUAHAHA

Chinen:

Stumbles across one of the fics accidentally while looking for ‘gymnastics’ in the search. He didn’t know what he was opening, but read it out of morbid curiosity. He didn’t feel very strongly about much in the story, but couldn’t shake the overwhelming thought, “Well, they really need to understand, I’m WAY more flexible than that.” After that he reads a few of the other members stories, and then anonymously sends the page multiple messages with things they need to correct in each of them.

Keito:

Stumbles across the blog during a desperate series of searches including, “how to be more popular than Yamada Ryosuke”, “why do girls like Yamada Ryosuke?”, “what’s so great about Yamada Ryosuke”, and of course, the one that made the page show up finally, “why is Yamada Ryosuke so perfect?” He was completely mortified at first, paranoid in his own home as he kept glancing over his shoulders, concerned someone was going to catch him, his eyes wide as he reads the first fic, featuring Ryosuke of course, and feels not a small amount of embarrassment and discomfort that he kinda liked it. Realizes that there are actually fics about him and instantly bursts into happy tears, taking screenshots to put in his scrapbook. He makes a screensaver for his computer out of quotes he especially thought reflected who he really was. Follows the page and sets notifications.

Inoo:

Always looking for his next kink–he intentionally seeks out fanfiction, figuring that the creative types might just be the ones who give him his next fix, mostly disappointed in what he finds, always thinking, “If they only knew the truth.” Sends the weirdest, most random sexually charged scenario requests to us he can think of in the spirit of “challenging the writing team to think outside the box”. Then starts sending spam to the inbox asking for embarrassing scenarios for the other members that he intends to print out and leave laying around the dressing room randomly.

Yuto:

Approaches each story as art. Goes to the beginning and reads them all. He creates a spreadsheet and rates them based on their artistic merit, realism, vocabulary use, grammar, and story line. After he’s compiled them all, he sends the report anonymously to the page–claiming it is meant to be ‘motivation to continue to try our best’. Appended to the file is the note: “Ladies–keep up the admirable effort! You’re doing great! Please note, Yama-chan is human. He neither has the capability to rebound post-sex in three minutes, nor is he the size of a nine foot man. C'mon girls, let’s be a little more realistic, k?”

Realizes moments after he hit send that he didn’t send it anonymously, and in fact had sent it from his real account. Deletes his account and the internet out of fear that one of the mods is going to message him back asking exactly HOW he knows those details about Yama-chan.

Hikaru:

Hits it when he’s randomly surfing the Jump tag. Literally, spits out his water all over the computer screen, never having heard of fanfiction before. “What the? I ain’t got time for this.” Blocks the page and everyone who follows us and then deletes his Tumblr account for good measure. In fact, he’s not even sure who made the Tumblr account for him and questions whether he needs the internet at all after this.

Yabu:

“Tumblr? What? Fanfic…fan fiction? What is that? Why would people write stories about fans? Sounds boring. All they do is spin and cool off a room!?” When he mentions it to Inoo, and it is revealed what it actually is–Inoo sending him a sample to read just so he’s “informed” about the subject. He is absolutely scandalized and has a perma-blush anytime anyone uses the words: story, fiction, idol, scenario, internet, or particularly words such as, “come”, “release” and “member”. Which frankly, makes every single conversation he has with Jump a major problem area for him.

Yuya:

Thinks the ones he read were super cute, and isn’t particularly embarrassed by any of the content, even the more colorful kind. Yet, he doesn’t see enough about him, so he starts sending messages to the inbox requesting fics about himself. He checks the page multiple times a day to see if any have been posted, disappointed when they aren’t. Wonders if the other guys know about the page but is too embarrassed to ask. However, he does take paragraphs that are especially embarrassing about the other members, copying them into a fake email he created and sends them to them when he knows they need a good laugh.

Daiki:

Accidentally comes across one of them, opening the page and reading it, then immediately calls Ryosuke to tell him he has to check out the site. They end up on voice chat for nine hours, reading stories at the same time, critiquing and laughing about the best parts. Daiki never visits the site again, because he realized he might like the stories a little too much. At least, he tells Ryosuke that he’s never going back. Secretly, he does, of course. Struggles with sending requests–if he does send them, he only sends SFW cause he thinks it might be problematic if he actually wanted smut written about himself. 

Three months later, he opens a new account, creates a pseudonym and applies to join the Mod team, planning to write his own versions of the stories he wants to read.

Ryosuke:

Only reads his stories. In fact, he’s only ever read his stories. In fact, he believes that we should only write about him. In fact, he’s the only one who has ever requested Ryosuke stories. He’s created multiple accounts under different names and submitted the requests. He is addicted to the site and now has his self-esteem directly linked to how he is portrayed in our fics. It’s his addiction, in fact, he loves to live vicariously through our stories. He finally told us the truth, and now, all of the mods are so concerned about breaking his fragile ego we insist on writing every single fiction portraying him as the consummate lover, the perfect boyfriend, and the flawless human being he believes he is. He sends us daily encouragement to make sure his ‘source’ doesn’t quit writing. Prepared to pay if he has to.

[aligarbawaukesha]

Chronological Resume: The Best Format? (And How to Write It)

If you’re wondering whether you should use a chronological resume format (also referred to as reverse-chronological resume format) or trying to get help with how to write it, then this article is for you.

And if you’ve been told to use a functional resume because you’re changing careers or have a work gap, then this article will help you, too! (And my advice on this topic might surprise you).

Here’s what you’re going to learn:

What is a chronological resume? And what is a functional resume?

Why it’s NOT beneficial to use a functional resume in most cases, and why the chronological resume format will get you the most interviews

How to write your chronological resume

Definition: What is a Chronological Resume?

A chronological resume is a resume format that lists your work experience based on the dates it occurred. Working downward from the beginning of your Work Experience section, you should start listing your most recent positions first. So the top of the section will contain your current or most recent job. Below that on your resume will be your next most recent job.

This is how to write a chronological resume, which is also commonly called the reverse chronological resume. (They’re the same, just different terms. Always start with your most recent job at the top of your Work Experience. Here are some examples).

What is Reverse Chronological Order?

As mentioned above, reverse chronological order means that your previous jobs are listed in order of date, beginning with your most recent position at the top. Your final entry in the list should be your oldest or least-recent position.

Note that you’re not obligated to list every job on your resume! You can choose where to begin telling your career story, or whether to leave a certain job off for strategic reasons (for example, if it was only a three-month position, and isn’t related to your current career path).

So I’m not suggesting that you must start with the first job you ever held. However, once you’ve chosen a starting point for your resume work history, you should list those positions in reverse chronological order as described above.

Chronological Resume Example:

If you’re still not 100% clear on what chronological order on a resume looks like, here is an example work history section from a chronological resume:

Work Experience

IBM (2019-Present) Senior Product Manager

Brief paragraph describing the role. Don’t write too much here, because you should mostly show your accomplishments and work via bullet points

Accomplishment 1

Accomplishment 2

Accomplishment 3

Microsoft (2016-2019) Product Manager

Brief paragraph describing the role. Two or three sentences ideal, and you should try to put numbers and metrics whenever possible.

Accomplishment 1

Accomplishment 2

Accomplishment 3

Notice that the most recent or current job is listed at the top of the work history, and then you move downward for each previous job.

So now you know what a chronological resume looks like, including a real example/template you can use! Next, I’ll explain why recruiters and hiring managers prefer this format, and why it will get you more interviews.

Should Your Resume Be Chronological?

After recruiting for 5 years, I can say without a doubt: Yes, your resume should be chronological.

The first reason that your resume should be chronological format is that this is what hiring managers and recruiters are used to seeing.

When they’re reading your resume and trying to get a sense of your background, the last thing you want to do is confuse them.

When I worked as a recruiter, I had multiple hiring managers send a functional resume back to me, and tell me to have the candidate rewrite it in chronological format. They simply don’t want to read a functional resume because they cannot gather enough info from it.

(If you don’t know, a functional resume lists your skills and past work without any dates. It groups them by skill type or functional area and not by chronological order. So that’s the definition of a functional resume).

This deprives hiring managers and recruiters of important info and context. They’re not as able to understand your career story or see how recently, or for how long, you used certain skills. Therefore, they are less likely to feel confident in inviting you to interview.

(Hiring managers want to interview people who are likely to be able to step into the job and succeed. They want the necessary info to make that decision before occupying their time with an interview).

So, with each online job getting hundreds of applicants, there’s no reason for a hiring manager to struggle to understand the one or two functional resumes they receive. They’ll just move on to a resume that’s written in the format they prefer – which is chronological.

When is a Chronological Resume Not Advantageous?

Many experts will tell you that a chronological resume is not advantageous when you’ve had gaps in your work history, when you’ve had a non-traditional or unusual career path, or when you’re attempting to change careers.

However, even in these cases, most hiring managers will prefer a chronological resume if it’s well-written.

You can explain work gaps right in your employment history section.

You can tailor your work experience to show the pieces of work you’ve done that are most relevant for the job you’ve applied for now… even during a career change. 

For more help with this, we have a full article on how to write a resume for a career change. If you click that link, I explain more about why a functional resume isn’t ideal, and one of the career coaches who I featured in the article confirms it. To quote her:

As a former corporate recruiter, I am not a fan of functional resumes. Recruiters are taught to scan resumes chronologically. When you take the experience out of context or “order,” it often gives the recruiter the impression you are trying to hide or fudge experience.

The bottom line is: Trying to hide the dates and order of work will only frustrate and confuse hiring managers and cost you job interviews.

So my answer to, “Should resumes be chronological?” is a resounding “Yes.”

Now that we’ve covered what differentiates a chronological and functional resume, and which you should be using if you want to get more interviews, let’s talk about how to start writing it!

How Do You Write a Chronological Resume?

To start writing your resume, make sure you understand the format and have reviewed the chronological resume example from earlier in this article.

Then, here are the steps to write your chronological resume:

1. Enter company names, dates of employment, and job titles

You can list dates in terms of years, or months and years. Whatever you decide, keep it consistent. 

You can also list the city/state of each job if you choose. This is also optional and is a personal decision when setting up your chronological resume.

2. If you held multiple roles within a company, show each job title separately on your resume 

This is important so that employers can see that you advanced/progressed in the company. Recruiters typically love this!

Here’s another example of a chronological resume, where you can see two distinct job titles listed under one single employer. This person was promoted from Sales Rep to Branch Manager.

3. Write bullet points describing each role you’ve held

Each role should have multiple bullet points describing what you accomplished and did for the employer. (Not just saying, “responsible for ___”.)

It’s much better to start with a verb like, “led six team members…,” or “grew our department revenue by…”)

This article has resume bullet examples to help you.

4. Write a brief paragraph to describe each role (above the bullet points)

This is optional. As you can see in the resume example above, it’s possible to go directly from job titles to bullets, without any paragraph content. 

However, if you’d like, you can write a brief paragraph about what you did in the role overall. This can provide more context to the reader.

However, this paragraph should be concise, and you should never put it instead of bullets. I recommend 2-3 sentences at most. The bullets are more important and will be read more closely.

5. Add metrics and data when possible

You’ll get more interviews by being specific and talking about results on your resume, rather than responsibilities. So try to pack your bullets with metrics… like dollar amounts, percent increases, number of people you led or trained, etc. 

You don’t need to be in sales to have metrics! (I hear this common objection a lot).

For example, if you’re an editor for a company’s news blog, you could write:

“Edited and published 30 articles per month for the company blog, which was read by 40,000 people each month and generated an average of 10 qualified leads for the business.”

The more specific you can be on your resume, the better. So if you see an opportunity to add facts, data, and metrics in any of the paragraphs OR bullets you’ve written, do it.

Here’s another example of how to write about results rather than responsibilities:

Which sounds more impressive…

A) “Responsible for leading the customer service team and handling all inbound requests for the company”

B) “Led the 22-person customer service team which handled 250+ inbound requests per day via phone and email”

That second option is going to grab attention and get you more interviews from top employers.

6. Add other necessary resume sections

After you’ve written your professional experience in chronological order, you then need to fill your chronological resume out with the other key sections, including:

Your header/contact info

A resume summary paragraph

Your skills section

Your education section

If you need more help understanding what order to put these in, and how everything fits together in the “big picture” of your resume, this article has more info on the important sections of a resume.

7. Consider adding optional sections

You can also include one or more of the optional resume sections on your chronological resume:

Volunteer work/community involvement

Honors & awards

Testimonials from past coworkers/managers

A secondary skills section (sometimes it makes sense to separate your skills into two sections. See image below for an example)

Conclusion

If you read everything above, you now know why the chronological resume (also called reverse chronological resume) is the format that employers prefer.

It shows the important information that they want to see in your work history, including information that functional resume formats don’t include – like how recently you did each type of work, and for how long.

Without this information, many employers will not be interested in interviewing you.

They just can’t possibly know enough to determine whether you’re a good potential fit for their job. So at best, they’ll ask you to send a chronological resume instead, and at worst, they’ll invite other candidates to interview and you’ll never hear from them.

So that’s a scenario that we want to avoid, and you can do that by writing your professional experience in reverse chronological order.

By combining this with sections detailing your skills, your education, and other key qualifications, you will get more callbacks when you apply for jobs so you can find a new job faster.

If you want to see more resume examples and advice, this article has 3 more work experience examples that follow the advice above.

 The post Chronological Resume: The Best Format? (And How to Write It) appeared first on Career Sidekick.

from Recent Articles: Job Search and Career Blog – Career Sidekick https://careersidekick.com/chronological-resume/ via IFTTT

[isearchgoood]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2JNYjD5 #blogger #bloggingtips #bloggerlife #bloggersgetsocial #ontheblog #writersofinstagram #writingprompt #instapoetry #writerscommunity #writersofig #writersblock #writerlife #writtenword #instawriters #spilledink #wordgasm #creativewriting #poetsofinstagram #blackoutpoetry #poetsofig

[whitelabelseoreseller]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/13430490

[theinjectlikes2]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[drummcarpentry]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[evempierson]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[nutrifami]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[camerasieunhovn]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

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[lakelandseo]

Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content

Posted by DaisyQ

Creating content can feel incredibly difficult right now. If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks oscillating between a can-do approach and hours of staring into space. Here’s how to tap into those very real emotions and channel them into more impactful content.

What empathy is and isn’t

We commonly confuse sympathy with empathy. Sympathy is understanding and perhaps feeling bad for the struggles that someone may be experiencing. Empathy means understanding the person’s feelings and thoughts from their point of view. Sympathy is when you feel compassion, sorrow, or pity for what the other person is going through. Empathy is about putting yourself in their shoes.

In this post, I focus on cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand how another person may be thinking or feeling. Cognitive empathy helps communication by helping us convey information in a way that resonates with the other person.

Feelings, who needs ’em?

I’ve always struggled with how to deal with my emotions. For much of my life, I thought that I needed to keep how I felt under wraps, especially at work. I recall tough days when I Googled reasons to get out of bed, and when I reached my desk, I would try to leave my emotions at home and just focus on working. Sometimes, the office felt like an escape. But usually, pretending to be unfeeling was a difficult if not impossible task. When this strategy backfires, our feelings overrule us. I’ve come to embrace the fact that emotions are what make me whole and human.

There’s a lot going on, and we’re all grappling with it

Creating marketing content can be incredibly hard right now because there is just so much going on — not only in your mind but in your readers’ minds, too. Rather than shy away from the current emotional challenge, embrace it to transform your work and get more joy out of the content creation process.

People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.

Whether you sell industrial components to obscure parts of machines or homemade broths, there’s room in your content for empathy. For example, are you creating a blog post on how to work from home? Think about the parent who’s never had to juggle homeschooling their kids while holding conference calls. Are you writing about cyber threats and the need to protect firmware? Think about how the risk of a cyberattack is the last thing a dispersed IT team wants to deal with right now.

Your readers are all grappling with different issues. The ability to convey empathy in your writing will make your work much more captivating, impactful, shareable, and just plain better — whether we’re dealing with a pandemic or not.

Do I have to pretend to be a mom now?

No, you don’t. In fact, pretending can come off as disingenuous. You are not required to have the same lived-in experiences or circumstances that your reader does. Instead, just try to understand their perspective.

See if you can tell the difference between these messages:

“Chin up! It’s hard, but I’m sure it will get better.”

“I know everything looks bleak right now, but you will get through this.”

While there is nothing wrong with the first sentence in the above example, the second sentence comes across as more caring and compassionate.

Done well, empathizing can make it easier to understand the challenges, frustrations, fears, anxieties, or worries your readers might be experiencing.

How to infuse content marketing with empathy

Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.

Picture the person reading

Want your readers to take action? Try to understand them.

Take your health, for example. Pretty much any advice given by your doctor would be critical, right? Yet we often struggle to implement it. Why is that? One reason could be empathy. Studies show that better health outcomes result when a physician shows empathy towards their patient.

Are you trying to incite action with your post? Maybe you want your readers to do more than just read your blog and carry on with their lives, then seek to understand where they are coming from first. Whether you’re creating a blog post or a video, picture the person who will read or watch what you are sharing, and speak directly to them. Better yet, find an image of someone that represents your intended audience online and pull it up while creating. Make your audience real. In turn, your content will become more productive because a reader who feels understood is more likely to apply what they read.

This tactic works for me when I have to create a how-to video or break something down. I pick an image from the web and ask, “Would they get it?”

Set a goal for your content

Creating content can be a slog. Setting an intention is one of my favorite ways to give purpose to my process. It helps me push through the mornings when I don’t care about finishing that first draft. I like to think about where I want to take the audience, then revisit that goal again and again until the project is complete.

For example, the goal of this blog post is:

To help business owners and marketers who need to send out emails or write blog posts while we’re dealing with a pandemic. It’s not business as usual, and empathy is what we need now more than ever. I will share why empathy works, and give practical tips on how writing in a more relatable, humane, and approachable way can help get the point across.

When I start a new post, I print a paragraph like this right at the top of my word doc. I revisit it multiple times while I’m writing and reviewing the draft. Then, I delete it right before I submit the post. Moment of truth: Does the post stand on its own? Does it express what I need to say? If so, I know it’s ready.

Share personal stories or anecdotes

I read a story by Leo Tolstoy recently that really stuck with me— in fact, the ending haunted me for a while. It was a story about greed titled, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tolstoy could have written an essay on how greed is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t have remembered it. Instead, I can vividly recall the farmer who dies during the struggle to get one more foot of land even though he has more than enough already.

Personal stories give meaning to your work, and you don’t need to travel to a Russian prairie to find examples. There is material in your everyday life that you can put onto paper. Think of childhood memories, past events, relationships — heck, your favorite passage from a book. How can you weave these into your narrative in a way that will connect with the reader? How can you share a tidbit from your personal life that will pull your readers in?

The ultimate question is: Who’s your audience? Once you know that, you’ll know what to share.

If you have to write about budgeting tips, put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Think back to a time when you had to watch where every dollar went. How did you cope? What resources did you use? Relate that to what your reader’s budget struggles may be today. How can your experiences help you empathize with a mom in a single-income household who now has to file for unemployment? Or the business owner who needs to re-shuffle a budget and maybe cut ancillary services? You don’t have to be in their position to appreciate what they are going through.

Think less self-promotional and more educational

Have you ever gotten to the end of a blog post and wondered why you bothered reading at all? That writer probably made an impression on you, and it wasn’t great.

Reward the reader by giving them something actionable. Help them achieve a goal they have, or include something worth retelling that’ll impress their boss, friends, or spouse. Look beyond what you’re immediately selling and appreciate how it relates to the bigger picture. Even an external hard drive or a peppercorn grinder can take on new meaning when you look at it from this perspective.

Perhaps that external hard drive is not just gigabytes but a way to digitize a family album to share with distant relatives. Or for the budding YouTuber, it may be a way to store all their outtakes without slowing down their computer. Show them how they can get more storage space or pick the best product for their needs. How can they use your advice to live their best life?

Learn from the masters

Put down the business book and try fiction.

As marketers, we can get stuck in a cycle of reading marketing content. I have at least 12 books that I could (and should) be reading instead of a Hemingway classic. But reading non-marketing materials will improve your empathetic skills by demonstrating how storytelling works.

I’m halfway through “A Farewell to Arms”, and I think the point of the story is that wars are long and pointless. I could be wrong, but I haven’t stopped reading it yet. That’s the key — the narrative is carrying me along. I’m invested in the characters and their endings. I want to find out what happens to Catherine Barkley because I empathize with her.

If you want to kick it up a notch, learn from works like Stephen King’s “On Writing” or Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. These classics pinpoint principles of narrative that work consistently across time and space. They’re as relevant and essential as ever, and they can inform, strengthen, and enliven your content. Bonus: maybe they’ll inspire you to write that novel someday.

Creating content with empathy helps you and your readers

Really good content makes us feel something. It’s a feeling that sticks with us long, long after the words have escaped our minds. That’s the kind of impression you can leave in your readers’ minds, but not without getting to know where they are coming from. Simply stating numbers and stats and figures won’t cut it. We don’t operate in a vacuum. Our relationships with people, our shared experiences, and our connections are what drive us, and in times like this, that doesn’t change. Let it be the glue that helps you bond with your audience.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!