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Empathy

Written by: Seth Godin

Article Overview: A flurry of unsolicited questions came in on Friday, including two "please review my blog" letters, and a "please review my book" package. (For the record, I'm totally useless at reviewing your blog, sorry.)

Empathy

A flurry of unsolicited questions came in on Friday, including two "please review my blog" letters, and a "please review my book" package. (For the record, I'm totally useless at reviewing your blog, sorry.)

One person was very honest and asked, "Is my blog boring?"

If you need to ask, you probably know the answer.

The mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader.

Years ago, a friend (a former judge) wrote a thriller. It was based on a true story that actually happened to him. It was terrible. Why? The fact that it had actually happened was interesting to him, but the typical reader didn't care at all. That's because the typical reader didn't know him.

The things that fascinate you about your life are almost always banal to strangers. Strangers want to read about their lives, not yours. And guess what? The same thing is true about prospects and customers and just about anything you can imagine marketing.

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Article Tags: blogs, marketing, mistake, one person, prospects, sorry one, thriller, true story, typical reader



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Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ - Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed Ronna Lichtenberg 2005 From the inside cover: "As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want." WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype. However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen... Anyway, more of the info from the jacket: "Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work." The TOC: 1. Pink and Blue 2. The Quck-dry Chapter 3. What's In your head that's not in his 4. The Me, Inc Mindset 5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want 6. Identifying Prospects 7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork 8. Crafting the pitch 9. Pricing the pitch 10. Packaging the pitch 11. Delivering the pitch 12. Closing Conclusion A Word to the guys The Empathy Quotient The Systemizing Quotient Bibliography And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.


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