TA #61: ✍️ A Masterclass in Empathy from an 11-Year-Old Writer; Social Media Pandemic Trends from 60+ Networks

Hey, you. You're doing great. .

Image #61: Hugh Weber

Welcome to the 61st issue of Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley, with a focus on writing, content, marketing, life. Normally I use this space to high-five recent subscribers. But now I'm sending out a special Thank You to those who work in healthcare, grocery stores, pharmacies, and home-delivery and take-out services: We see you. 👀 We appreciate you. P.S. Was this email forwarded to you? You need your own!

Boston, Sunday, May 24, 2020

Morning, Muffin.

The story of the Sioux Falls fifth-grader whose thank-you letter to her local letter carrier catapulted her to international fame has got several things going for it.

It's got a writerly hero.
It's got a villainous challenge: How does our hero-without-a-phone keep in touch during a global pandemic?
It's got resolution: Essential workers. Celebrity cameo. International press coverage.
And it has marketing takeaways, of course. (You knew that was coming.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself....

Here's the story, in case you've been six feet away from the news for the past few weeks:

Emerson Weber, age 11, is quarantined at home, like many of us. But phoneless, unlike all of us.

So in an age of texting and Instagram and TikTok... the phone-free-Emerson hunkers down with paper and pens and a set of magic markers and writes letters to stay connected to her friends and family.

Emerson decides to thank her local mail carrier, Doug, for the essential service he provides—a literal lifeline to the outside world. She writes:

I'm Emerson. You may know me as the person that lives here that writes a lot of letters & decorated the envelopes. Well, I wanted to thank you for taking my letters and delivering them. You are very important to me. I make people happy with my letters, but you do too.

This is all according to her dad, Hugh Weber, who told the story in this Twitter thread. Here's what went down:

Doug the carrier shares Emerson's thank-you letter with his Sioux Falls supervisor, Sara.

Sara shares it with an internal USPS newsletter.

Postal workers nationwide write letter after letter to thank Emerson for the recognition. ("Not a lot of people think about how hard we work…")

The US Postmaster General hears about all this and sends Emerson an official Thank You.

The press gets wind of the story. Good Morning America interviews Emerson and Hugh, and when the host asks who Emerson would most love to get a letter from, Emerson doesn't hesitate: Her favorite. Taylor Swift. Hard stop.

And then that happens, too: A hand-decorated letter and a package from T-Swift herself. (See the image above.) Taylor sends Emerson her own special "13" wax seal to secure her envelopes, a hand-written note, some swag, and lots and lots of love.

* * *

I've never met Emerson, but I know Hugh. When C.C. Chapman and I published Content Rules in 2010, Hugh invited us to keynote a conference he used to run in Sioux Falls. (My one and only time in South Dakota. I still keep a small metal buffalo sculpture from Hugh in my Tiny House.)

I'm sharing this story with you not because I know Hugh or because it's a wonderful story about a special kid.

I'm sharing it because it's a story about two things.

First, it's a Masterclass in How To Empathy. It's a story of what can happen when you slow down to truly see, acknowledge, and put yourself into the postman-sized shoes of someone else.

In writing and in marketing we talk a lot about the need for empathy, for the need to see things from another's point of view: Why should your reader or customer care?

In writing, audience empathy is key to successfully taking an idea > drafts > publishing.
In marketing, customer empathy is key to successfully moving from messaging > campaign > results.
In both areas, answer the question: What value am I delivering? To your reader. To your prospect. To Doug the mail carrier.

Second, it's a story about how the simplest approaches are often the most powerful. You can spend a lot of money marketing your nonprofit or your for-profit or your solution. But the biggest budget doesn't win: What does win is the most thoughtful, empathetic approach. Sometimes Doug just needs a simple Thank You.

Before you pick up the pen or sit at your keyboard, ask yourself two questions:

What does your audience need from you?
What's the simplest way to deliver it?

* * *

It's Memorial Day weekend here in the US (thank a veteran from a safe distance!), so I'm going to keep this brief. Here are a few things on marketing, writing, working worth sharing this week.

📖 How to Use Storytelling to Transform Your B2B Marketing. Love this quote from Bobby Lehew in this interview on how story can help your B2B company connect with buyers: "As consumers, we buy emotionally and justify rationally. In the B2B world, we've had it backwards."

🗺️ Anatomy of a Crazy-Good Newsletter. Key elements for creating on-brand, readable, engaging newsletter content rolled up into one stylish infographic.

Go deeper 👉👉👉 17 Non-Negotiable Things Your 2020 Email Newsletter Needs

✍️ Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Writing Style Guides. A romp through AP Press Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA Handbook, and APA Style.

Go deeper 👉👉👉 You can also roll your own style guide. At MarketingProfs, we use a hybrid of AP and Chicago (layered with our own sensibility and love for the audience). We keep it as an internal Google doc. Next time, I'll share my favorite public brand style guides, all collected in one place for you.

📈 Social Media Pandemic Audience Trends. Should you pivot your marketing right now? To help marketers understand where audiences are spending their time and how they've changed their behaviors, Talkwalker and Trust Insights analyzed 60+ social networks, from the biggest tech companies to niches you've probably never heard of. [Reg. required]

My take: The rise of gaming, gamifying, and the blurring of work/home life is affecting how businesses are communicating. From the report:

Even if your brand isn't an entertainment brand, creating such content—such as 'play along with our employees/team' events—shows the eroding boundaries between work and play that the pandemic has ushered in.

🏠 My best WFH tip: Manage your day. Don't let your day manage you.

I've been working remote since 2000, when remote was a lifestyle and not a requirement. The team at monday.com asked me and others how the heck we get things done? Also includes thoughts from Lee Odden, Brian Fanzo, and more.

Related 👉👉👉 Join me for a special LinkedIn Live panel on Wednesday, 5/27 at 11 AM ET. Motivating creative ✍️ teams from afar can be a challenge. I'm teaming up with the monday.com team next week to share how you can build a strong culture around #RemoteWork. Join Evan Kirstel, Joel Goldstein, and me over at LinkedIn. Bring your comments and questions!

FREE TOOLS + RESOURCES

Write Your Face Off: Writing for Non-Writers. You can access this free one-hour webinar on demand. What's in it for you: a peek inside my Tiny House, and my top 5 writing tips.

NewletterGuide.org. Activities and strategies to elevate your newsletter to the next level. I've shared this before, but Dan Oshinsky reminded me this week how useful it truly is.

This Twitter thread by Positioning expert April Dunford is pure-flipping-gold. It cleanly articulates why marketing your point of view over everything else matters, and how that’s a form of teaching. This is key for almost any business, but particularly for B2B, nonprofits, and in the education, finserv, and healthcare sectors. Actually scratch that... let's just say it applies to us all. (P.S. This is why April is keynoting the MarketingProfs B2B Forum this November!)

DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS

Bookcase Credibility is the Quarantine Content we didn't know we needed but oh yes please. The Twitter feed curates and comments (sometimes savagely) on the background bookcases of experts broadcasting live from home. Two faves: Anthony Fauci. And author and televangelist Paula White.

Peep the bio: "What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you."

LOVE LETTERS

💌 To Pat Flynn for featuring me on his must-listen Smart Passive Income podcast.
💌 To Shobha Ponnappa via B2Community for quoting me in her piece on newsletters. She says they're back. (My question: Did they ever leave?) ( via @B2Community).
💌 To Jon-Mikel Bailey for including my thoughts in his piece on content marketing in 2020.
💌 To Heidi Cohen for the love for my LinkedIn livestreaming in her Mother's Day post on What Mom Taught Us.
💌 To Pamela Grow for recommending this newsletter to her community. (Hi, new fren!)
💌 To Monique Idemudia for naming Everybody Writes as a must-read.
💌 To the SaaS Playbook for more EW love!

Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for your kindness and generosity.

Stay safe. Stay healthy.

I'll be back on June 7.

P.S. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, buy a book. Or forward this newsletter to a friend with an invitation to subscribe right here: www.annhandley.com/newsletter.

SELECT PUBLIC EVENTS
NOTE: Many dates have changed; some events are now online only. Here's what I've confirmed so far. More to come.

📅 May 27: Supporting Remote Teams [LinkedIn Live, FREE]
📅 June 2: Search Engine Journal eSummit [FREE]

📅 June 23 AMA Nashville, Nashville, TN

📅 September 15-18: UBA Trends Day, Brussels, Belgium [now online]

📅 November 3-6: MarketingProfs B2B Forum is back in SF! Get in on early-bird pricing; code ANNLIKESME saves you $ (risk-free money-back guarantee)

📅 November 30-December 2: Digital Sales and Marketing World, Hartford, CT

📅 Your Date Here: Book me to speak

➡️ ➡️ ➡️ Not into this? No problem: Unsubscribe right here.

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Ann Handley is the author of Everybody Writes and other books.
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Ann Handley
9 Bartlett St., #313, Andover, MA 01810

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TA #61: ✍️ A Masterclass in Empathy from an 11-Year-Old Writer; Social Media Pandemic Trends from 60+ Networks

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TA #60: 👉 Market Like the NY Times, 17 Non-Obvious Copywriting Tips, Why Zoom Is Exhausting

TA #59: 🦄 A New Abnormal; 2 Free Writing + Storytelling Events

TA #58: 🐰 14 Life-Changing Habits for a Post-Covid World; Rewriting the CDC Guidelines

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