31 Days – A Beginner’s Mind

by kirkeberg on September 1, 2009

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Have you ever gone to networking meetings and overheard someone giving an elevator speech?

Over and over again.

I have. I’ve done it. I cringe thinking about it. I’m sure there are people that are good at that sort of thing. Honestly, though, I have never heard a good one. I used to practice on tape and would shudder when listening to the playback; then I’d be embarrassed when attempting to repeat it several times to different people at whatever meeting I was attending.

Having said that …

Day 1 of Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is just that – to write an elevator speech. So, while the whole elevator speech idea feels to me like chewing on my own vomit (sorry), I do agree in principle.

So, what the hell do you mean by that?

It pretty much boils down to a two part question -

Why are you doing what you’re doing and who are you doing it for?

Here’s a snippet from Darren’s course which summarizes what I am saying here. I am going to paraphrasw and use some coaching questions to clarify. Darren’s words are in bold

Solve a problem or need -
- What can you fix for people? or;
- What do you think needs fixing?
- Are you filling your own need (not necessarily a bad thing), i.e. “I have a passion for writing about …”
- Why should people be reading or listening to you?
- What are the benefits of what you have to say?
- What’s in it for them?
Define you audience -
- Who’s gonna be interested in your blog?
- Who will benefit?
- What’s the age group, the profession, the geographic area, the food preferences, whatever? The demographics.
Be clear -
- How well will people understand what your purpose is?
- As Darren says, stear clear of jargon, unless you really know your audience and jargon is what will attract them.
- Once you define your purpose, who can you run it by to see if it is clear?
Keep it short -
- Okay, so maybe this is one good thing about the elevator speech analogy, brevity.
- If you were going to tell someone this story, could you do it in ten seconds? Why? Because that is about all the time you have.
Stand out -
- I wish I knew which blogger said it, but I read someone saying, we have to do the outrageous.
- How can you get someone’s attention without being insulting?
Be intriguing -
- Brian Clark (copyblogger) once wrote that when you are writing the goal of the first sentence is to get your reader to read the second sentence, and so on down the line. A clear purpose, whether or not is it your tagline, is your first sentence.
- How do you turn on your reader’s interest switch by letting them know what you are all about?

Okay, so that’s enough from Darren. I highly recommend the book. As I muddle through these next 31 days, the least it will do is help you to follow along. You can get it here -

Now, for the purpose of this piece. What is the purpose of this blog? The tagline sums it up, AND I am still working on it. So far, here it is -