Tag: communication

The biggest problem creatives face is the inability to communicate their ideas

Anna Peng2 Comments

Fortunately, communication is a skill.

That means, if you work on it you can improve over time.

That’s what I did.

3 years ago, I didn’t know how to string together an effective blog post. 

Now that I’ve written more than 1000 pieces, it’s easier. 

The point of the post is this:

The success of your ideas depend on how well you communicate them. 

If you’re a creative who wants to get better at communication, I have something for you.

I’m building a content club for people who want to take their brand seriously. 

Want in? 

Join the waitlist with 14 others today.

3 Copywriting Tips I Wish I Knew Earlier in my Career

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  1. Write shorter sentences.

Get to the point. Erase the fluff. Practice shortening. 

  1. Write as if speaking to your audience 1:1

Speak to them directly. Ignore the rest. Use their lingo. Let them know you’re part of the community.

  1. Understand that a CTA isn’t a chance to make money

Your CTA is your chance to be helpful. Lead your reader to a place they want to be. Don’t booby trap them with guilt if they don’t like your idea.

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If you could invest $3 in your communication skills a day, would you do it?

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I’m not talking about stocks or passive income streams. 

I’m talking about working on yourself and making a commitment.

If you could make a promise to yourself that would make you proud in a year’s time, would you do it?

I’m not talking about making a sudden huge commitment today, right now. 

I’m talking about small, tiny wins that snowball into something much bigger and impactful, overtime. 

The idea is as follows.

I’m thinking of starting a writing community. 

It won’t be free (but it might be $3 a day for x amount of days). 

The details are still being rolled out, but I’d love to hear if anyone wants to join me for the ride.

If you’re anything like me, you’re a sucker for learning alongside great people. 

That’s what The Habit Factory has always been about.

If you want to be a part of the process and hear about the writing workshop when it comes, I’d love for you to sign up for our newsletter here

I hope to see you there. 

TikTok For Our Restaurant

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The only way you don’t know what TikTok is, is if you’ve been living under a huge rock.

For the past few months I’ve been trying something new, and that something new is TikTok.

It’s not super common (yet) for your local restaurant to have a TikTok account, but being both on the front end serving customers in real time and in the back making social media posts on the internet shows me the power of such an accessible tool.

What surprises me most is that we have customers (both new and old) see our videos, which leads them to a visit at our store. 

Without spending a penny, our videos reach thousands of views, and eventually into hundreds of sales dollars. 

For many, the term “social media” is enough to drive them away from such a platform. For others, it’s a powerful communication tool for awareness and recognition. 

How Posting on the Internet Saved Our Family Business This Year

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On this day last year, we were in the beginning stages of COVID and was really feeling the impacts of it on our family restaurant. Unfortunately we saw that many food businesses did not survive the storm. Some days we wondered if we would survive, too. Being the most internet-literate person in the family business (out of my mom, my dad, and me), I took it upon myself to start creating a digital presence for our restaurant. Not because I thought it would work, but because we needed to try something new. Something that wasn’t just waiting around for regulars to come back during a public health emergency. 

And so Instagram became a good friend.

After 60 days months of posting seriously, we were contacted by a local news and entertainment company which helped our business tremendously in its bleakest times. In the following 200 days, more and more people kept sharing our photos with their friends on the internet, and more people came through the doors.

1000+ internet posts later, we now have new customers regularly order through Instagram pictures or tiktok videos at the cash register.

I’m grateful we’ve made it this far. It’s been a tough year to say the least, but I realize that social media is much more than the work distraction we make it out to be. It’s a skill, and it’s worth more than what most people believe it to be.

Not All Messages Are Spread Evenly

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I was working one day when somebody told me something I thought to be incredibly false about COVID-19. One of those read-it-off-of-a-facebook-post remedies.

That’s when I realized, just having the facts and the message out there, free and open on the good ol’ Google, doesn’t mean that the information is going to be seen and heard. 

What we have here, is a ginormous marketing problem.

What people hear and what they don’t hear isn’t their fault. They just haven’t been told the message in a way that appealed to their needs.

And because I’m not a health professional, I’m going to stop there.

What I actually intended to write about is how we share our work and ideas as creatives.

And this is an example of why you need to continuously share your work and ideas in as many ways/mediums/forms as possible—because things will simply not hit the first time.

A Warp in Intentions

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it doesn’t matter what you say, if what’s being understood is different. As Paulo Coelho says it, people only hear what they want to hear.

Like a game of broken telephone, there’s lots of room for miscommunication the further we go down the line.

Your friend probably didn’t mean to hurt you. Your landlord probably didn’t mean to inflict so much trouble for your family. Your government authority only wanted to make things safer for everyone.

Things get lost as they travel. And with a widespread warp in intentions, we can offer compassion instead of putting up more walls to divide us.

Playing with Limits and Freedoms

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If we’re not clear on what we want, if we’re not quite sure what we want to see happen, then chances are we might be waiting for some time, because muddy expectations are hard to deliver.

Instead we can try to be more helpful.

A $80 set meal at your favourite upper-end restaurant, rather than the chance of cutting into your budget for the month.

Next Tuesday afternoon by 12, rather than some time next week.

3 sets of iterations, rather than doing work until the client knows it when they see it.

Limitations can be set so that we can be smarter with our time.