Who else wants a conversation, not a brochure?
Today I want to share with you a home page that uses conversation, and a few simple words, to great effect.
My clients know I’m all about conversation in written communications, whether it’s a home page, slide deck, email, or pitch.
“We’re after a conversation, not a brochure,” I find myself saying to clients time and again.
I’m using today’s post to answer:
What makes something conversational, beyond sprinkling in questions?
How conversation allows you to help someone transform their mindset or behavior, more effectively.
What are simple, good tips that can make your communications (print, public speaking, and 1:1 dialogue) more conversational, starting today?
Even those of us who pride ourselves as good conversationalists—in everyday life or while treating a patient—can take better advantage of what conversation offers when we present our work to the world at large, including in our marketing.
The minimum criteria for conversation?
Genuine interest in another person and what’s on their mind or motivating them.
Hospitality: extending an invitation, rather than broadcasting, in order to build rapport.
Respect: appealing to someone’s best self, in a judgment-free, shame-free zone.
Most important of all,
A desire to create [conversational] space for someone to hear the sound of their own thinking.
Again we know this from our daily lives. Some of the folks we meet who we deem to be the most interesting, are actually the ones who created or allowed us to have a new conversation with ourselves—that, in turn, changed our attitude, behavior, or outcome.
This desire to create space for someone to hear the sound of their own thinking is the highest quality of attention that we can pay to another person with whom we’re “in dialogue."
And it makes for powerful marketing.
The Feldenkrais Guild home page (pictured above) does this well, with two large headlines. I’m impressed.
Headline #1 leads with a 4-word question: "Ready to get moving?”
Folks often arrive to the Feldenkrais Method of Movement Awareness because of a difficulty with movement—a pain, limitation, injury, or an elite performer who would like to achieve more. This simple question takes an interest in us and opens a world up by getting us to ask ourselves, "Am I ready to move?”
[Note: while it’s outside of the scope of today’s blog post, notice how the question-header is laid over a colorful, yet peaceful image of a woman lying on a foam roller, in a class, with her arms extended. The movement in question is gentle, not daredevil—some of the folks even have on loose street clothes.]
Headline #2 is all about hospitality: an invitation in: "Welcome to a new way of thinking about health.”
“Welcome" and “new" are key words here. So is “health," as the lens opens up and the conversation enlarges from movement to health.
Again, there is a lot of white space around these words. No one can tune into the sound of their own thinking when you’ve turned on a firehose of words, broadcasting or “talking" without interruption.
Your work in the world, if it’s purpose driven, is about creating a statement that can spark a new conversation. The Feldenkrais Guild owns this new, needed conversation (about the relationship of movement and wellbeing) with its main headline about a new approach to health. Only with this frame or foundation in place does the homepage begin to address the method at all.
The home page also respects its audience/reader. It keeps you focused on a future-ideal self or state of healthfulness, rather than your current pain.
So that gets us to: how does conversation allow you to help someone transform their mindset or behavior more effectively?
Here are a few ways:
1. The direct address of conversation taps latent attention—and focuses it so it’s available to you.
2. It’s open-ended. You don’t have to come to agreement on every point, you simply get things moving by prompting an internal conversation that will continue when someone leaves, in this case, a home page.
3. It feels personal, talking WITH rather than at someone.
4. It’s persuasive because it can let someone convince themselves, by taking them through a line of questioning that allows them to invest something of themselves energetically, emotionally, and then maybe economically.
5. It’s pared down, and actually creates the white space that let’s someone process or consider your idea—and this is what can create change.
I wish I had a screenshot of the earlier Guild homepage—definitely flatter, and more brochure-like about the Method.
Bottom line, conversation is an attitude first, and then a set of skills.
Tips to make your communications more conversational starting today:
Ask questions. I always try to sprinkle meaningful questions within my post or presentations. See, for example, above: "The minimum criteria for conversation?” Here an old-school English teacher might ding you for the missing verb. But we’re not in school. In the real world, my "thinking-aloud” and anticipating a question my reader has (“what’s the minimum required?”) promotes engagement—and keeps folks reading to find out the answer. Say yes to the informal style of conversation.
Extend invitations with your words, and open the lens: "Welcome to a new way of X.” What’s your X?
Get folks in conversation with a future ideal self.
Write to one person. Often when I’m writing, I’m imagining one individual, actual person on my list. I write to them, knowing the topic or idea relevant to others. I invite you to do the same.
Be on the lookout for great conversation, wherever you find it. Any great examples? Send them my way.
This post is my July Edit.
I’ll be taking my annual summer posting break for the next four weeks, but will still be here in the studio, working on clients projects and new materials to share with you. I'll be back in your inbox mid-August. Until then, enjoy your summer holidays.
Thank you for being part of this community. To our continued conversation!