Ep 46. Have you outgrown your message?

So I keep talking about your messaging, but what is it exactly?

I think it’s one of those words that gets thrown around a lot in the online business world.

Most people have a rough sense of what it means, but if I asked you to really define what the term messaging means, it might get a bit fuzzy, and that fuzziness is actually part of the problem. Because if you can’t define your message clearly, it’s going to be really hard to know whether yours is working or not.

If you’re new here, hello and a very warm welcome to Quiet Confidence with myself, Anita Popat. Today I want to use this episode to get really clear on what messaging actually is, because it’s pretty much the foundation of everything you talk about online.

I also want to share some signs in case yours need some attention, because sometimes it’s hard to know whether you’ve got a content problem or something that runs a bit deeper than that.

Now when I say the word messaging, you might think about things like your niche or an “I help” statement, or maybe even the topics and themes you tend to cover in your content.

These things aren’t wrong. They can all be expressions of your messaging, but they’re outputs – your messaging is what sits underneath all of them.

I like to describe messaging as a blend of your unique way of doing things. So the lens you bring to your work, the specific beliefs and opinions that you have. 

And then you combine that with the language that calls out the exact person you want to work with. When those two things are really clear, your messaging naturally becomes the undertone of everything you put out.

When that underlying work is missing, the content can look fine on the surface. You could be posting consistently, like ticking all the boxes, but it doesn’t quite land. And the reason it doesn’t land is usually because it could have been written by anyone doing what you do.

There’s nothing in it that’s distinctly giving your vibes.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean, take two coaches who both talk about burnout. They both give really good advice, but one of them writes about it in a way that makes a very specific person stop scrolling and think, oh my gosh, she’s talking to me now.

That’s not about her having a clever angle on a post. It’s because she’s described so clearly how the person she’s writing to is feeling, and what they’re doing and what’s going on in their world, that that specificity draws the reader in and thinks, yeah, this is the person for me.

Whereas the other coach is writing to everyone, so it’s landing with no one in particular, because it’s probably too broad.

And this is a problem when you’re afraid to niche because by default it stays surface level because you can’t go deep into a particular thing, which is what we want.

So what kind of signs do I see that tells me someone’s messaging needs some work?

Now, I want to be clear here. These aren’t failures. They’re just signals and most of the people I work with have at least one of these going on when we start.

The most popular sign that you’re messaging isn’t quite there is that you might be getting enquiries, but they’re not quite the right fit.

Maybe the people coming to you are earlier in their journey than you’d like, or they’re not in the space you want to be working anymore.

When that’s happening consistently, it’s usually a sign that your messaging is attracting the version of your client that you used to work with rather than the one you want to work with now.

And that’s probably because your content hasn’t kept up with where you’ve moved to, you’re just creating the same content that you’ve always created because that’s what you are used to, right? That’s what’s probably worked in the past.

The thing that nobody really talks about is that messaging isn’t a one time job.

A lot of people will do it when they start your business and then you put it away and a few years later you’ve grown. Your clients have changed and what you want to be known for has probably changed as well.

But none of that makes it into your marketing yet because you haven’t taken the time to revisit your foundations. So then obviously your marketing is going to sound like you from a couple of years ago, which one, confuses the people that you’re trying to attract now.

And two, it can dent your confidence because you keep attracting the people you don’t want to work with. That’s not you problem. It’s just a messaging problem and we can fix that.

The second sign is that every time you sit down to write content, it feels like you’re starting from scratch. There’s no golden thread or sense of what you stand for that runs through everything, and that’s exhausting, right?

Because you’re essentially reinventing the wheel every single week. But when you know exactly what you stand for, exactly what you wanna be known for, and exactly who you’re speaking to, you can literally bang content out in 10 minutes and then move on with your day.

That clarity is pretty much a win every single one of my client mentions when they’ve done Silent Storm. So that’s another big one.

A third signal is that your content doesn’t really match the work that you do with your clients in real life. So there’s a mismatch, and then you often get clients thinking, oh, this is much more than what I expected, or, oh, I wasn’t expecting to get this. It’s even better than I thought.

That kind of relates to what I said already. There’s a gap between the messaging that you are putting out and the messaging of the impact of your work right now.

Maybe that’s because you are playing it too safe. Like you’re not calling out your dream client. you know what you think, you’ve got opinions. There’s a version of you that’s probably a bit more bolder with your clients, but that same boldness or sassiness isn’t making its way into your posts.

Something’s holding it back, and usually what holds people back is that they’re not fully sure yet what they’re saying or who they’re saying it to. So they soften it just enough that it doesn’t put anyone off, which also means that it doesn’t pull anyone in because you’re being too broad again.

And the fourth sign is that you’re getting all the engagement but no enquiries.

So people are getting friend zoned and we don’t want that. So people are saving your posts, they’re commenting that they love it, they tell you that it resonated, but no one’s actually reaching out to work with you.

And while that engagement is lovely, it doesn’t really pay the bills. 

That gap usually means that your content is connecting with people generally, but it isn’t specific enough to make the right person feel like you’re speaking directly to them.

There’s a difference between content that’s relatable and content that makes someone think, yeah, I need to speak to her. So we need to do more of that.

 So these are the most common ones. I see.

If any of those landed and you thought, yeah, I’m doing one or more of them, that’s probably not a content problem. It’s probably going back to looking at your marketing foundations again, which is exactly what we do inside Silent Storm. 

We go right back to your foundations – Who are you right now? What do you stand for? Who do you really, really want to work with before we touch anything tactical?

Because when that’s really clear, the content piece becomes a completely different conversation. I’ve had clients say they’ve written more in a week after getting clear on this than they had months before.

And you know what? I believe it because once you know who you’re writing to and you know what you’re saying, you don’t have to force it, and content creation and showing up online for your business can actually feel fun.

Applications are now open if you want to have a read and apply.

Until then, keep showing up with your quiet confidence so you can make that loud impact. Speak soon.