was just reading a post by Kevin Hill. Hill is a copywriter, and like many of the better copywriters I follow, is a keen student of human interaction. His posts focus on copy, but are worth a read by anyone. (Check out his latest post HERE.)
Really, you can probably skip the rest of this post and just head on over there, except for one thing.
Mr. Hill talks about the fact that you need to be yourself. You need to stand out from the crowd. And you know that I agree with him.
The reason is not just so that you can develop a following. If that is what you are looking for, you should run out and start a cult.
It is because one of the things people need to do when they start to learn a new skill – internet marketing for example – is to find someone who explains stuff to them in a way that they can understand. If you are the same as everybody else, how will you help them? How will you be able to teach the people for whom your true voice is the one that would resonate?
There is only one reason that we do not feel able to be ourselves. Because we want to fit in. Actually, we would like everybody to love us, but at the least we want them not to hate us.
What does that mean in terms of internet marketing? I’ll give you an example from the realms of talk radio.
I’ll let you in on a secret. I cannot stand to listen to right wing talk radio. I hate the message, I hate the intolerance and I hate the underlying fact that I honestly think that these guys don’t believe much of what they are saying. They are actors playing a role and I can’t listen to them for more than a very few minutes without my blood pressure going through the roof. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And so do many of the people I know. (If you like to listen to them, I mean no disrespect. I am making a point. I have good friends who agree with you.)
But guess what? Their potential market is in the tens, or even hundreds, of millions. And plenty of people love the message, and the intolerance, and the drama.
Here’s the point I want to make. Your potential market is in the billions.
I’m not saying you should be rude and offensive and irritating. (I’m not saying you shouldn’t be either – look up some old Don Rickles videos). What I’m saying is that you maybe should worry a bit less that some people might not like the way you deliver your message.
Unless you are one of the truly gifted (who doesn’t like George Clooney?), not everyone is going to like you. Trying to make them like you is never going to work, and while you are being the same bland person as everybody else why should anybody care what you have to say?
So do a little subconscious math. If nobody notices you, how much will you sell? Doesn’t take a genius to see that that number is pretty low.
But if 99% of a couple of billion people just don’t really like you and 1% absolutely adore you… OK, I’m not going to do the math either. But that’s a lot of people.
Inject a little of you into what you do. Stand out from the crowd.
