Photo by Mediamodifier on Unsplash
- The biggest story of our time
- Getting audience traction
- Be real
- Be you
- When we are ourselves, we have value
- Create authentic connections with audiences
Why does some content hit home, effortlessly attracting reads, likes, comments and reposts, while other efforts sink like a stone?
Of course, it helps if your surname is Trump, Musk or Kardashian. For the rest of us, what lands or not can be a mystery. But I have some clues.
I stumbled recently across a small asset manager called Rebalance Earth after spotting a news report that it had hired a well-known industry professional as its chief investment officer.
Name recognition in whatever field you’re targeting will certainly help attract attention.
More to the point, the firm has one of the most interesting business propositions I’ve encountered in 25 years of writing about this stuff.
The biggest story of our time
As Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper wrote a few weeks back, climate change is the biggest news story of our time. But it can seem like an amorphous problem with no solution.
Rebalance Earth is offering something novel yet practical.
It claims to be the “first UK boutique asset manager entirely focused on Nature as an investable asset.” The aim is to invest in natural infrastructure projects that protect and restore the country’s land and seascapes. Those ecosystems increase resilience against flooding and drought, improve water quality, boost biodiversity and enhance ecosystem health.
As the recent back-to-back hurricane double whammy in the United States and floods in Spain show, natural catastrophes come at vast financial cost (not to mention the human suffering).
Rebalance Earth’s calculation is that companies, regional governments and other large organisations whose insurance costs are going through the roof will pay for Nature-based projects that provide long-term solutions to reduce the repeated disruption and financial losses. It calls the proposition Nature as a Service (NaaS). The payments then generate an attractive, ongoing financial return that cycles back to investors.
Getting audience traction
The firm’s social media posts don’t have the audience numbers of Cristiano Ronaldo. But they are getting traction.
Why? Because its offering resonates. And it is delivered with passion. That helps the content to cut through.
CEO Robert Gardner has given up a successful career in mainstream financial services to launch something he and his team fervently believe in. Dedication like that – and the willingness to take a swing at something you feel matters – strike a chord.
Be real
Of the 29 Lessons from 150 Million Podcast Downloads Ryan Holiday set out in his blog last month, two stood out for me.
-
Be you
On one of Holiday’s podcasts, The Office actor Rainn Wilson shared a story of being cast in his first Broadway play and how he tried to emulate his preconceived notion of what a Broadway actor was supposed to be. The result: he sucked.
“There’s nothing worse than knowing what you are doing is terrible,” he said. When he finished the play, Wilson vowed never again to try to be something to please someone else, but instead to find his authentic voice as an actor.
“I’m quirky, I’m kind of weird – I’m going to embrace that,” he said. “I gotta be me.”
Wilson subsequently landed the biggest role of his career, of The Office’s Dwight Schrute. “I never would have gotten Dwight had I not gone through the suffering on that play. Because getting Dwight was embracing my nerdy weirdness.”
-
When we are ourselves, we have value
According to digital media guru Gary Vaynerchuk, the people who get really comfortable with the purest form of themselves “are the people that have impact, because that’s where the uniqueness – the way you say things, the analogies, the stories, the interpretations, the subtle observations that are unique to you – come out.”
When we are like everyone else, by definition we are replaceable, Holiday cautioned.
The value – and the fun – lie in being you, not in trying to copy someone else or fake things, he added. “You should be you. That’s your monopoly. That’s your edge.”
Create authentic connections with audiences
What audiences want is honesty, genuineness, ‘authenticity.’
Among the LinkedIn posts I’ve seen in the last couple of months that have incited real engagement from people in my network have been ones around the work/school juggling act for parents, ageism in hiring practices, and a musing on the Native American lands and people of Montana and our collective need for interconnectedness.
These are topics people can relate to.
A big problem with much of the content published each day is that it is inward-focused (often about their company’s latest event). The missives are seen by a handful of people (frequently internal colleagues). It is posted then disappears, never to be heard of again.
I have no secret sauce for what content will go viral – just as Hollywood can’t predict what movies will be flops or blockbusters.
What is clear is that impact and engagement are more likely with issues that matter to us, that inspire us, inside and outside of work. What are you/your company doing and how is it changing everyday lives? That’s the kind of stuff we want to hear.