Getting into the handle-making business
Volume 3, Number 12 | December 2009
In the olden days of communicating, when stuff was scarce and time plentiful, getting your message out there meant pumping enough words out in the general direction of the people whose ears you wanted the things to land in.
Today, the situation is pretty much the opposite: too much stuff, never enough time. There is a glut of almost everything on the market, from products to services to talent, every niche of which is carved up into micro-niches. (Oh, and the worst economy since the Great Depression. Happy new year!)
Like most big changes, making the shift from push to pull marketing gets easier with a central concept that you can wrap your head around easily. For me and the people I've worked with, the idea of creating a handle helps turn the freaked-out and flailing into the confident and focused.
What happens when you are sans handle
Consider you. (Hi, you!)
You are a swirling mass of magnificence, bound together by pinging electrons of fabulosity--or some kind of weird metaphor like that. Many wonderful things, reasons and experiences go into the creation of excellent you, and they're all important.
But if they're all important at once, then none of them are important enough to stand out. You're a swirling mass of excellence that no one can figure out what to do with or where to start with.
Worse, the tendency when not enough people are coming toward your excellence is to try coming at them with it. This ends up looking like anything from pushiness to desperation, none of which is a very good ambassador for your excellence.
What a handle does for you
A handle, on the other hand, is a clean, comfortable extension attached to the swirling mass of magnificence that is you.
A handle is easy to spot because it stands out and apart (in a color that neatly complements, not blends in nor clashes); it's clean and attractively designed so that people want not only to grab onto it, but to pull themselves closer to you.
Most importantly, the handle is an extension of you, but it is not you. It is something you fashion--ergonomically, we hope, and with a cushy grip--to reflect what you are, but it is not an actual hand you're reaching out with. It has some of the gloss and fabulosity of you, because you have put a great deal of thought into the making of it, but it is inanimate: the person grabbing hold gets to pull themselves in, with no fear of you gripping them and pulling them closer.
Because the gripping and pulling scares a lot of people off. At least, it does the people I like to spend time around.
Handles, handles everywhere
Once you grasp the concept of the handle (pun intended, just this once), you start seeing how the concept applies to every kind of marketing action you take.
- Rather than pushing people to read your blog, you turn your attention to creating delightful ways of helping them find it: leaving wildly useful comments on other people's blogs, helping people out on mailing lists, re-tweeting other people's stuff on Twitter.
- Instead of foisting your business card on every new person you meet, you learn to be truly present and turn your full attention to their needs, asking questions about them that let them, by their answers and interest, pull themselves closer to you. (People always prefer ideas and initiatives they think they've come up with themselves.)
- Freed from the impossible task of having to articulate every single amazing thing about you in person, on your resume, or on your website, you have time to address the far more difficult task of distilling your essence into the precise and provocative set of words and pictures that will make them want more.
That's right. Like writing the shorter letter, making a compact, easy-to-grasp handle is ten times harder than throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the feet of your prospects. It will take time and you may need help. (And even with help, it will take time: fair warning!)
When you finally do make it, though, it will transform how you relate to the world and how it responds to you. And it will keep on challenging you and helping you grow for the rest of your working life.
(What--you didn't think you got to make one and be done with it, did you?)
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Did you know I refer to the items in this sidebar as "little presents"? Well, you do now. And for the holidays, I'm throwing in a coupla extra ones. Merry/happy!
HOLIDAY GOOFOFF OF THE MONTH
Crowdsourcing has already brought us such wondrous web gems as Cake Wrecks, Awkward Family Photos and the Photoshopped grandaddy of them all, I Can Has Cheezburger. Now, just in time for the holidays, you can enjoy the iffy antics of department-store and homegrown Santas around the globe, captured forever in all their creepy hilarity at Sketchy Santas. Don't say I never gave you anything! (via Morrow Planet)
MORALLY-JUSTIFIED TIMESUCK
OF THE MONTH
What happens when a gang of fun-loving social psychologists decide to throw a party on the web? You end up with YourMorals.org, a website stuffed full of quizzes that measure your personal ethical guidelines via every ding-dong metric ever devised, apparently. Fans of the Happiness Project will enjoy many of these, as will everyone who, like me, flips straight to the quizzes in women's magazines. Warning: when I say "timesuck," I mean, "Wave goodbye to your productivity this morning." (via Very Short List)
ADVENT CALENDAR(S) OF THE MONTH
Wit! Music! Utility! I can think of no better introduction to the splendiferous output of one of the web's greatest servant/savants, Mr. Andy Ihnatko, than his annual (Musical) Advent Calendar. For most of the year, Ihnatko writes about tech stuff (mostly Apple-flavored) for various outlets, but for several days during the month of December, Ihnatko gives it up for great tunes you need to listen to now. This year's abbreviated list is looking good already; for more goodness, here's 2008 and 2007.
WEB UTILITY OF THE MONTH
Between Twitter outages, touchy DSL and having 55 tabs open in Firefox (who, me?), it can be hard to figure out whether the trouble lies with you, them, or some nameless gremlin in between. Do yourself a favor and bookmark Down for Everyone (or Just Me)? This even-simpler-than-Google site will let you know, either way. Easy and oh-so oddly reassuring, all at once.
Just in time for the holidays, the King pulled through--the Flan King, that is, with long-awaited, much-demanded coast-to-coast U.S. shipping of his insanely delicious, creamy tinsful of pure, unadulterated addiction. Er, joy. As I like to say, even people who hate flan love Flan King flan. I'm firmly in the convert camp; one taste and you will be, too. Get your orders in before he's inundated.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
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