As I have written in one of my previous blog posts, for the past few months I have been working on a book on how to establish a successful content writing business.
In one of the chapters I have discussed how empathy is very important to become a successful content writer.
Empathy means the ability to understand what the other person is going through. No matter what you are feeling, no matter what your intellectual disposition is, you should be able to understand how the other person feels, what is his or her situation, why he or she behaves the way he or she behaves, and what pains him or her or makes him or her happy.
Why is it important to empathize?
Effective content writing is all about solving problems. Someone has a question; you provide the answer. With your writing, you are offering solutions. You want to make life easier for customers and clients.
This requires you to understand people. It requires you to empathize with them. You should be able to listen to them or read between the lines if you are reading their feedback.
Before working on an assignment, I always ask the client about the target audience.
Often, I need to prod. Most of the clients are too obsessed with their product or service and assume that every person on the surface of the planet should want to use his or her product or service.
There is nothing wrong in having such an opinion about your proposition because it makes you enthusiastic. But sometimes it also blinds you towards the pain points your prospective customers and clients have.
This is where empathy helps you.
Suppose you’re promoting a cloud-based CRM system. You need to carry out an email campaign. You have a list of contacts you have been gathering for a few years.
While targeting big organizations, your email may reach the inboxes of CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, managers, accountants, IT heads, marketing managers, and such.
You cannot send them the same message because their concerns are going to be different even if the product is the same.
If you can empathize with them, a CEO would like to know how your cloud-based CRM would help the company grow faster and even help him or her in his or her career.
A CFO would like to see the financial aspect. Will your cloud-based CRM system help the company save money on operational costs? Will it be able to plug wastage?
A marketing manager would like to know how your CRM system would help retain the organization more customers and generate a greater number of leads.
And so on.
I’m just using an email campaign as an example. Even when you are writing web content, you need to understand what your customers and clients are looking for. And then write content.