This doesn't work.
I’ve been talking about Intent a lot in the last couple of weeks. In conversations with friends, client trainings and even with my accountant. When I hear myself repeating a specific word or phase consistently, it’s time to examine why.
Being Irish-American, we place a lot of faith in, well, faith, luck and fate. It’s a charming, romantic notion – and lazy as ifreann. Lazy, because it takes no effort, planning or skin in the game. No investment.
What I realize is that when I’m speaking about intent, I’m talking about building relationships and trust by communicating with purpose. That a content strategy for a client means nothing without the business objectives, goals and intent behind the words – that teaching a company about having a “voice” is about more than personality.
Intent is an action, it moves you forward – intent reaches –>
- What am I really asking for?
- How do I want to be perceived?
- How can I show myself more clearly with these words?
- What choice can I make that moves me (us) forward to the objectives
A company that’s doing this incredibly well on Instagram is Kate Spade (katespadenyc). As the name suggests, the photos that are shared on her stream are filled with images of her stores, trends and new must-haves. It’s also filled with the color and feel of living in New York City during each of the different seasons – they know who their customer is and who she wants to be. Each photo creates the opportunity for this customer to share in the moment and see herself in it. To be the person already living that life – and the high volume of comments show that a lot of people want to be, want to know and want to connect with that person and w/KateSpadeNYC.
It’s easy to teach a company how to make status updates, YouTube videos and moment share – it’s the intent behind those that’s takes a “voice” and creates an opportunity for your audience to not only see the human face behind the words, but hopefully themselves within the connection.
