CONTENT CREATION

Imagine you’re at a networking event.

There are two doors.

Go through the left one and you’re your product or service. You talk about what it does, the problem it solves and why somebody might want it.

Go through the right one and you’re you.

Which is the right answer?

Well, who’s in the room?

If I’m looking for a coach, I probably want to know something about the person before I start thinking too deeply about the service. I’m potentially going to tell you things I wouldn’t tell most people. I want to know whether I feel safe with you.

If you’ve invented something that makes an irritating part of my everyday life considerably easier, I’m probably less interested in you at this point.

I want to know whether the thing actually works.

Neither door is wrong.

And despite what we’re often told about writing everything from the customer’s perspective, we don’t think one door is always right either.

In fact, why are we assuming you can’t open both?

EVERY CONVERSATION HAS A DIFFERENT DYNAMIC

We adjust the way we talk to people all the time.

You wouldn’t necessarily speak to your oldest friend in the same way you’d speak to somebody you’ve just met. Put an expert in front of you and the conversation changes again.

We do this without thinking about it.

Then we put the word business in front of communication and suddenly everybody needs a rule.

Talk about the customer. Don’t talk about yourself. Make the customer the hero.

There is useful thinking behind that advice. But useful thinking doesn’t have to become a universal answer.

Your customer’s perspective may actually be:

I want to know who you are.

Or it might be:

I don’t particularly care who you are. Can you solve this problem?

There may be a bit of both.

The point is to think before choosing.

SO, WHO’S DOING THE TALKING?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be you.

A business can develop a personality of its own. The way it communicates may be different from the person who owns it, because the business has decided how it wants to show up in the world.

That’s fine.

What becomes harder is when nobody has really decided.

The founder writes one way. The website sounds like somebody else. A LinkedIn post suddenly adopts a personality that neither of them would recognise at the Christmas party.

And somewhere underneath all of that is probably a perfectly good business with something worth saying.

That’s where we can help.

WRITING IS TALKING WHEN THE OTHER PERSON ISN’T THERE

We spend a lot of our working lives talking to people.

Consultants do it. Coaches and mentors certainly do it. Trainers do it in front of a room.

Writers are written talkers.

The difference is that when you’re writing, the other person isn’t there. You can’t see the puzzled expression that tells you you’ve lost them.

Or maybe you have, but you blithely carry on anyway.

They can’t interrupt and ask what on earth you mean.

So the words have to do a little more work.

CALLCUT can help you work out what you’re actually trying to say, who you’re saying it to and how much of you needs to be in that conversation.

Then we can write it.

WE LIKE HAVING SOMETHING TO GET OUR TEETH INTO

We’re at our best with writing that gives us room to think. Websites, articles, longer pieces and ideas that need exploring rather than filling a content calendar.

If what you need is a constant stream of social posts, there are plenty of people who specialise in exactly that.

But if you’ve got something worth saying and you’re struggling to get it onto the page, that’s where we come in.

GOT SOMETHING WORTH SAYING?

You don’t need to have found the words yet.