What you miss out on when you lie to yourself
All my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy pals out there (hey, fellow millennials!) know this line:
“The story I’m telling myself is ...”
It’s how we define whatever we’re feeling, be that anxiety, apprehension, doubt, whatever. Some stories are valid, some are not. Others are helpful, even others are not. The problem is we hold ourselves to that narrative we make up and convince ourselves that it’s true.
But we lie to ourselves all the time. It happens in business (gasp!), too.
Oprah and Brené Brown, in this conversation, say that aligning with what the true story is — and not just the one we’re telling ourselves is true — takes being curious.
3 examples of self-doubt and overthinking
Your email opens have taken a plunge during work hours. “The story I’m telling myself is my subject lines are no longer interesting or pertinent to readers’ work lives.”
Are you willing to get curious and look into it? Open rates don’t tell the full story of a campaign’s success, since ESPs can inflate open rates, registering an open even if a real, live human didn’t select to open your email. Click and conversion rates are much sturdier metrics.
2. Fewer brand evangelists are sharing your campaigns. “The story I’m telling myself is our content stinks.”
Are you willing to get curious and look into it? You should know this from firsthand experience: Your content is competing with a deluge. In 2023, 71% of marketing pros said they’ve increased the amount of content output they’re producing over the past two years.
3. You have beefed up your customer support team and are using text marketing, and you pride yourselves on responding to emails within one hour. But your customers sometimes take days to reply. “The story I’m telling myself is our support team could be writing more thoughtful replies that instigate more immediate customer interaction.”
Are you willing to get curious and look into it? Of the consumers PrimoStats surveyed, only 14% said they expect an immediate response from a business using SMS support.
Unlock your company’s content potential
The best way to tailor content toward an audience that will respond to it is to get curious and question what you’ve convinced yourself is true. There’s always more to the story.
According to Ascend2 in 2022, 23% of B2B marketers say that one of the most challenging aspects of using data to drive demand is allocating resources/budget to execute. This is where a freelance content marketer comes in, no full-time benefits and compensation needed. I’ll create a project-based package that fits your budget and returns researched, thoughtful content.
Let’s talk.
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