If you feel like your words don't land with your audience - that you're invisible, they scroll by you, or don't open your emails - then there's probably a very easy solution:

You're not 'speaking their language'.

Let's talk about two foundational shifts you can make that will help not only content creation be easier - but all of your marketing & sales efforts too!

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Full Transcript

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to the Idea of Space Podcast. I'm your host, Gen Lit, and I am talking about how to make content creation much easier with two quick shifts. And once you have these shifts, I promise you you'll be speaking to a much clearer audience who will be scrolling past or deleting your content, which will make your time feel like it's much more worthwhile. So let's go.

I want to just start by saying the number one thing that I say to my clients all the time is that our job as content creators is to know what our audience is thinking better than they can know better than they can say. We want to be able to speak to their wants and their needs and their desires more effectively than they can. When we're more clear about that, it's almost like they see themselves in the mirror of our content. You know how it is when you clarify somebody something for somebody or they're kind of talking in a gusty way and you get laser-focused and you use just the right words when you can do that in your content, marketing and sales becomes so much easier for you.

So we're going to stay in this Lane of understanding our audience, and we're going to unpack two ways that content creation becomes harder than it needs to be and what we can do about it.

Both of the things that I'm talking about today, the shifts I want you to make have to do with the words that we choose are the words that you're using going over your audience's head. And I really want you to think about this because so many people I talk to really think they're speaking to their audience. But when I go in and I look at their content, I see that they're really missing the Mark. And if you are doing that, if you're missing the Mark of the words that your audience uses, it's never gonna land on their ears.

They're going to keep scrolling by you.

They're going to keep not opening your email. They're not going to listen to your podcasts are going to ignore you on social media. One of the worst things that we can do for ourselves and our audience is to use words that they don't connect with. And so here's where you want to start. Do you describe their problem in a way that's better and clearer and more precise than they can describe it?

Also, our job is to know the results that our people are looking for and be laser focused about it and speak clearly to it. I'm going to give you some examples today. I was definitely at the end of my first business when I owned the fitness studio. I was not quite doing this yet. I did not understand this, and I'm going to talk about what that looked like and the outcome it created.

So when I left that first business, I remember, I was a partner. I was one of three partners and my job was communication and basically running the business from the inside, the operations. But I was really very burned out personally and professionally. At that time. I describe myself as fried, a little dead inside, stressed out, overworked.

And what I wanted to do in the next iteration of my business was to help other struggling entrepreneurs avoid the garbage that had gotten me into that situation. So I thought the words that they would be using would be the same as mine. They don't want to be stressed out anymore. They don't want to get burned out, they don't want to be fried. Right?

And so I started having conversations with the type of women that I wanted to work with, and I would take notes on everything they said. I would ask them about their frustrations. I would talk with them about the types of solutions that they were looking for. And here's what I found out. None.

Zero of them used the words stressed out, burned out, fried, etc. Instead, they use words like disorganized, frazzled, swirling, frustrated, overwhelmed. Now, if I had built my business back in 2016 and 2017 using my original words, the words, I really believed that my people were saying all of my media, my social content, my website, my program name. If I had been using those words about stress-busting and overcome burnout, it just never would have landed with the people I wanted to work with. And I would never have attracted anyone to my first program.

And in that first business, the studio, the fitness studio. I definitely made the huge mistake of not talking to our ideal audience about their pain and their solutions because I kept telling myself I am the ideal audience. I've been there. I know what they're thinking. So I just constantly was taking for granted how they talked about their problems.

I kept telling myself, no, no, no. I've been through their journey. They're looking for fitness. They're looking for wellness. I know their pain points.

I know the result they're looking for. I actually did our business a huge disservice by assuming that I knew what they were looking for. And I didn't want to make that mistake in my second business. So in the first business, marketing and sales were very, very hard. And in my second business, when I really figured out their words, marketing became much easier, I was able to fill my program much more quickly than the first time around.

So the very first thing I want you to ask yourself is, are you assuming that you know your audience is in pain? And are you assuming that you know everything about them? Because if you're not having regular conversations with your audience, you're missing the Mark in your content. I promise you you're using the wrong words. You're using the wrong message.

Your copy is off, and your conversions are going to be harder in the sales conversation. Now all month, I've been talking about visuals and voice, and those are all vital. And so are the words that you use in all of your content. So we have to figure out the exact words and phrases that your audience is using to make content creation simpler for you. The more specific, the better.

So here are some strategies to help you do this more effectively. Number one is, are you speaking exactly to the right problem with the right words? If you're using words like having enough confidence, feeling empowered, needing transformation. If you're using those kinds of words as the problem that you help people solve for, you have to ask yourself, is that actually how they describe their problem? And I want you to stop bullshitting yourself.

I want you to really think about your ideal clients, and when they sit down to Google what they want to do to solve their problem, do they type in that search bar? How do I have more confidence? How do I feel empowered? How do I transform myself? And my guess is that no, they are not doing that.

They are not Googling those kinds of either coach-y words or jargony words or inside our language. Most content creators that I meet who are struggling are talking about problems and solutions in too far, too much jargon, too much coach speak, and too much words that don't resonate with their audience. It doesn't attract your audience to you. If you're just kind of either talking over their head or you're using language that doesn't make sense. Using highly technical terms is another problem.

People do not resonate with that. So here's a litmus test that I usually find works to see if I'm using the words my audience uses when I imagine them sitting down to Google out their solution or Google out their problem, what are they putting in the search bar? And if you don't know the answer to that, that's okay. You can figure it out. You can ask them.

You can talk to them, and you really have to just listen to the words that they are using when they talk about their problem and the solution that they think they want, remember what you know they need and what they think they want or two different things? The second thing I want you to start doing is to think about whether the voice of your brand is representative of the people you want to attract. What do I mean by that? Well, the words that we choose not only have to be incredibly specific as I just talked about, but they also need to be on-brand for so, for example, words like Hustle and Grind Boss Babe and Lady Boss like words completely repel me, and I would never use those words in my content.

I'm not interested in engaging in a brand that has a voice like that because I have internalized that those words evoke a lifestyle of hustling and climbing that I'm really not interested in cultivating anymore.

Now, the cool thing about using those words and really stepping into your brand voice is that it repels people who aren't into what you are into. And that's fantastic. Now, please understand here. I'm not talking about using overtly repellent stuff like racist words, homophobic transphobic words, antiasian sexist language like that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about knowing your audience deeply enough to understand the words and phrases that attract them and which ones repel them.

Let me give you another example. I am not into the word like diva and goddess and all of that kind of stuff, but I am a spiritual person and I do believe in the universe, but I don't necessarily use the word divine, but I will use the word universe, but I don't ever talk about goddess or diva, for those are the two that are coming to my mind. That's just not who I am. I'm not attracted to brands like that, and that's not who I am in my brand.

Right?

So you have to choose the words that clarify not only who your brand is and find your brand voice, but you then have to make sure that you're really being true to that so that you can attract the right kind of people. Have you done that work yet? Do you know what those words are? Do you know who you want to repel and who you want to attract? You understand how your brand pillars and your brand voice work together in conjunction with those exact right words that your audience is looking to hear?

Now, if you haven't done that work, this is just where you need to spend some time because until you do that, everything is going to feel harder. The bottom line of foundational content creation is going to feel harder, putting it out into the world and maybe even putting money towards Facebook ads. It's going to feel really hard getting people on sales calls and converting them. It's going to be hard until you do this work. You won't attract the kind of clients that you really want to work with now, not doing this work.

I just want to remind you not doing this caused a huge problem. Inside my first business. I was saying, I am this client. I understand her already. I don't need to ask questions.

I already know. And if you are saying those things, I just want to give you a gentle nudge and say, that was a huge limitation for me, and it made my life so much harder. The number one reason I teach my framework with my clients is that audience is first because you need to know who they are, what but are in the sea, the seats, what do they need and what do they want? And I want you to realize again, what they need and what they want are two totally different things.

Sometimes what they need is not what they want and what they want is not what they need.

Your job as a content creator is not to solve that problem upfront for them. You have to meet your audience where they are, not where you want them to be. So if you're struggling with this and everything I said here today makes sense to you and you feel like you get it. But you don't know how that is why in the Content Creator studio membership, we break it down for you so that you have the incredible clarity that will let you move forward. And suddenly you find you're not working as hard on your content and you are attracting more of the right clients.

Go to Jen Liddy dot com studio, because then you can find out whether this membership is the right fit for you. The very first thing we do is we break down your audience with you, and we help you understand how to speak to him or her, because I want to help you stop feeling like Content Creation is your kryptonite. I'd love to know what you think about this topic. You can email me if you'd like Jen underscore Liddy at me. Com and please let me know.

Does this resonate with you? Are you struggling to know what your audience is thinking? And I'll see you back next week. And thanks for being here. I always appreciate when you show up to listen.

Bye bye.