I’ve been doing interviews and guest posts all over the place to prepare for Tomorrow’s Big Birthday Launch, and finding out that being interviewed is as much fun as interviewing someone else, hurray!
I raised a stunningly good point in one of them and I want to share it with you.
In the interview for The Complete Flake, LaVonne proved her radio-presenter chops and asked a lot of great questions. At the end of the interview we had this – totally paraphrased – discussion.
LaVonne: I think a lot of your success has to do with your personality. Your smile, and your cartoon… more than that, it’s you giving to people, being there, answering almost every comment, and just interacting with people in a way that just nobody else does.*
Me: Thank you! I have to add something to that. I don’t want people listening to this to get the idea that they have to be like me to be successful in meeting people and interacting with people and building relationships online. Because I do have the advantages of being a naturally outgoing and gregarious kind of person, and that’s definitely an advantage, I’m not going to underplay it, but you don’t have to be like that to do well. So if you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, I’m not a smily person. Yay for her but it doesn’t work for me,” it doesn’t have to. What does work is you being you. Because the reassuring thing – although we never think of it as reassuring – is you’re really not that unique. Whatever personality quirks you have, or however you look at the world, you’re not alone in that. And that means there are people like you, people that you can connect with and build real relationships with. And they might not be me, or people like me, they might be very different people. That does not make having as many connections as you can sustain a fantastic idea.
I am not the One True Path. You know why?
There is no International Committee on Standards of Awesomeness
“Awesome” does not mean “universally loved”. On the contrary!
Awesome generally breaks down like this:
5% of people totally hate what you’re doing.
84% of people don’t get it.
10% of people think it’s kinda cool.
1% of people love it to death.
(Note: numbers are totally made up.)
This isn’t a split of cool people versus losers. If we took someone and asked them what they thought about pistachio ice-cream, professional wrestling, SEO and cricket, they might end up in every category. For them, wrestling might be awesome, SEO is kinda cool, they don’t get cricket and they really hate pistachio ice-cream. For the next person, the evaluation could be an opposite.
There is no magic ingredient that will produce awesomeness. Humour might be awesome, or it might not. Glitter might be awesome, or it might not.
Because awesome is personal.
I made a website with elements that I think are awesome: conversational language, cartoon drawings, light tone. My intended audience is people who also find those things to be awesome. I have a lot of people who like me, and generally approve of the website, but don’t find it to be awesome. There are a whooooole lot of people who Don’t Get It. And presumably (although I haven’t heard from them yet) there are people who really dislike this website and think it’s a waste of electrons.
People are scared of the tinyness of those numbers.
The thing that people try for instead
They want a website that everyone likes!
What they get:
100% of people who say “Meh.”
The bit that makes my inner 5-year-old sad
You can’t make everyone like you. The vast majority will ignore you as irrelevant. Some will dislike you, for reasons that often have nothing to do with you whatsoever (a dodgy chiropractor put out her back 10 years ago, now she hates all chiropractors). All you can do is encourage that teeny tiny vital few who LOVE your stuff to feel they’ve come to the right place.
To do that, you have to abandon the fear and be YOUR brand of awesome, loud and proud. If you’re quiet-spoken, be quiet-spoken! (It worked for Mr Rogers.) If you’re manic, be manic. And make sure that your website makes it clear to those few wonderful people who have the interests and personality to deeply appreciate your work that they have come to the right place.
Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…
Go do one thing to make it clear to your Right People that they’re in the Right Place. Add an image, write your bio, write a ten-word manifesto!
And then come tell me about it in the comments.
*Was all of that relevant to the point I’m making? No. It just made me feel great and I didn’t have the heart to edit it.