I contributed to a piece on Adam Vincenzini’s blog today on the topic of how to get more interaction from bloggers. I responded to Adam’s question with advice on making relevant content easy to find online so that, after you carry out the initial outreach, a blogger can dig deeper and easily find supporting information and resources such as images, videos, biographies etc (you can read that piece via the source link at the bottom of this post). But it got me thinking. What is the key characteristic that will define the successful communicators of the future?
And I came up with one word: empathy.
New PR, social media and digital marketing has all got a bit up its own bottom over the last couple of years. It’s probably partly driven by the ‘gurus’ who wanted (and still do in some cases) to make the industry sound more important/impressive/difficult than it actually is. And it’s partly driven by folk like me genuinely trying to make clients understand that they need to start taking a different approach to communications, but using meaningless language to do so. But although they’re all very true and apt, rather hackneyed phrases like ‘reaching out’, ‘building relationships’ and ‘engaging in conversation’ don’t really mean a hell of a lot. If you think of the way you communicate with your friends and family, you don’t ‘reach out to build relationships with them by engaging them in conversation’. Well I don’t, anyway…
Don’t Be a Robot
On the BOTTLE blog this week I wrote about David Cameron and his ability to make people like him even though he’s so far removed from the general populace it’s untrue. Dave (he’s my local MP so I feel like we should be on first name terms) doesn’t ‘reach out to build relationships by engaging people in conversation’ either. He’s a fantastic storyteller and he’s great at PR. But above all, he’s empathetic. Does it mean that every communication he ever has is successful? No, far from it. But it does give him a great advantage.
I’m just ‘me’. And you’re just ‘you’. People respond to people. We respond to innate human characteristics like understanding, humour and compassion. We respond to others’ capacity to comprehend how we feel and to put themselves in our shoes. It’s all about emotions and feelings. And that applies to anyone whether they be a blogger, a journalist, a customer, a supplier or the Prime Minister.
So hence forth, how about we all just start doing what we do best and ‘be human’?
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