Can you feel me now?

3 Steps to Make Your Online Posts Dramatically More Effective

How having access to your body and your emotions dramatically affects how well your words can create a connection with others.

“Can you hear me now?”

If this phrase reminds you of the Verizon marketing campaign that ran from 2002 to 2011 (yes it was that long ago) and the guy who wore the horn-rimmed glasses, then it is quite likely you’ll resonate with this post.

How does a simple phrase like, “Can you hear me now?” work so well as a marketing slogan?

Because it is an incredibly tactile question when you break it down. Hearing is something we experience on a very intimate level inside of our own heads. It’s actually a very intimate question on a sensory level.

Words that come from this place of intimacy and sensation have a knack for creating connections.

As Tim Denning explains so eloquently in his piece about tapping into tears as a technique to connect his words with his most powerful inner core of self —

“Can you hear me now?”

It’s the phrase you are still likely to use when you’re talking on a cell phone today. It’s a phrase that exists independently in the real world.

It’s a person to person, sensory-oriented query that has to do with our innate desire to connect to the human being we are trying to communicate with.

Because today, more than ever, people and organizations are striving with all their might (and considerable budgets) to make high-quality connections via the internet.

And because high quality and intimate connections between people drive better relationships across all platforms — personal and professional.

3 Simple Steps to Create Connection With Your Work

1. You must get present with yourself first.

Take a deep breath. Stand up. Move away from your computer. Take another breath. Close your eyes. Put one hand on your heart, and the other on your belly. Take one more breath. Relax. What do you feel?

Feel into your body. Notice your feet on the ground. Notice how your clothes feel on your body. Are you comfortable? Uncomfortable? Are you happy today? Feeling stressed? How do you feel to you? Take another breath.

Feel into what you are trying to accomplish with this next post you’re about to make. What do you really care most about? If you were the intended recipient of this post, what would make you FEEL? What would make you RESONATE with the information?

Taking the time to delve into yourself and research “the data” here is going to be challenging at first.

But that checklist, I got it done now I’m off to the next task kind of posts aren’t going to do much good anyway. You might as well try to make the work count.

2. Now, channel your sensation of presence in what you’re going to post.

This is where a lot of people get stuck. How do you take a feeling and make it digital? HINT: It needs to be personal.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a pretty photo of a flower or a sexy photo of a car, overlaid with a quote that feels kind of deep. Slap a logo on it and post it up to social media.

Nope.

Engagement on this kind of content is minimal at best. We’ve all seen this too many times. It’s ubiquitous.

Something that will elicit a stronger reaction is something PERSONAL. Something about yourself, or something about a real person, going through a real experience or asking themselves a murky question that doesn’t have a cut and dried answer.

3. Create a visceral reaction in the person on the other side of the screen.

By reaching out from an experiential sense of self, and trying your best to touch the deepest parts of your audience, you can create a body-based reaction in them that circumvents the guards they’ve put on their brain to filter out the barrage of constant input.

When they see your stuff or read your words and as a result, they experience an emotion or feel a heightened sense of connection to themselves because of it, THIS is the reaction you’re going for. Now you’ve created a connection.

That person is MUCH more likely to engage with or follow you if they can feel what it is you are putting out there. It’s more than just information at this point.

Who does this in real life? And does it work?

It can be challenging to get personal on a professional platform, but there are many good examples of people doing this. But it’s more than magnetic when someone’s flowing freely like this. It’s real.

• Tim Denning is an unconventional blogger. He figured out that if he kept it real and interacted with people through his writing as a regular person, he could “inspire the world through entrepreneurship and personal development” and share his knowledge and success through his words and shared emotions.
• Shannon Ashley has a whole publication called Awkwardly Honest devoted to sharing her most successful pieces on Medium that delve deeply into the most personal, the most real, and the most gritty terrains of her life as a writer.
• Brené Brown does a great job of mixing up her content online with the personal and the inspirational, but she’s the Godmother of Modern Vulnerability.
• Patrick Farrell is a coder turned photographer and drone videographer turned entrepreneur, turned blogger! He’s a techie turned intimacy blogger. He’s a real person that is cruising through this life, fired up with ideas and a desire for a great time, great friends, beautiful places.

What is your passion? What drives you?

I write because I’ve never found another creative outlet that makes me feel as free as making art on a screen using words that I generate in my brain and produce with my fingertips.

I write because I’m infinitely curious about the intersectional nature of the world and how design patterns make their way across our collective consciousness in myriad forms and shapes that somehow feel similar, no matter where we find them.

I write because of the art that other people make that stirs my heart blood and my mind into a passionate response to the beauty and complexity and the simpatico of life. I write to draw connections and to paint a picture of the reality that I see and want to share with others.

Tell me about your passions and the connections you make.

Tell me about the ways you tap into your emotions. And tell me what stops you from getting connected with your emotions and feelings in your work.

Tell me who you want to connect with, and why? And tell me what you feel most deeply when you sit down to write it all out.

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Kaia Tingley is a writer, artist, podcaster, digital strategy nerd, and sometimes hot-tempered supernova with a wild, free soul. You can find her on Instagram here or on LinkedIn here.