Working to Find Your “Voice”?
Finding your “voice” is an important part of content marketing. This book can help!
Say Something! is a children’s book, written and illustrated by Peter Reynolds. It was published in 2019 by Orchard Books – an imprint of Scholastic Inc. “An imprint” is essentially a division of a publishing company. The larger publishing companies, like Scholastic, use these divisions to market certain types of books to specific demographics. Basically it means this book was published by Scholastic.
Scholastic is worth mentioning in this context … because if you have children in your life it’s very possible they have seen this book. And also possible that you’ve seen this title too. Either in it’s original hard copy format or in the paperback version made available to the school market.
Whether you remember seeing this book at a school … or are discovering it here for the first time:
It may just look like a cute book to you. Perhaps you gave it a passing glance. And while it is used often in schools as an SEL title (social and emotional learning) – it’s likely you dismissed this book as something for kids and not anything of real value to adults.
Read on to find out why it’s good to read this book and refer to it often.
Why A Book Like This One (aka a Children’s Book) Can Help You
It’s true that Say Something! is a children’s book. Most of us are usually reading books for grownups. Books that consist only of text.
If we have kids in our lives, we probably read children’s books to them. Various picture books appropriate to their interests and reading level.
Chances are we may enjoy these “kid lit” books. But you might not realize how helpful children’s books can be to us – as adults – when we want to learn things.
Years ago my mother, who has been teaching for 40+ years, told me something very valuable.
She said, “The very best way to learn something new is to start with the children’s books on the topic.”
Take that to heart because she’s right, and for many reasons. Some of the ones that apply to us when we create content marketing are:
- Pictures. All those pictures help solidify the information into our brains.
- Pictures are a big bonus for highly visual learners. And a lot of people are visual learners. If you love film and magazines and photos … that’s you!
- Children’s books distill a concept into extremely succinct and easy-to-read words. Which makes these books very easy to read and understand. An excellent way to learn the basics on a topic. The truth is that big fancy words are great and they have their place. But when we’re learning something it’s better to have simple, easy-to-understand language. Because the goal is learning, not increasing your college-level vocabulary.
- Children’s books are short. Which means you can read them again and again. Rereading is important. It helps us retain and master information.
Why This Book in Particular?
Say Something! goes a long way to empowering every one to celebrate the unique voice they bring to the world.
Celebrate your unique voice
That unique voice is what helps you define your niche in the business world.
In my course The Art of Content Marketing we spend a complete module on finding your unique voice. Finding your voice helps you stand out from all the others when marketing your business. It represents and communicates everything that is unique about your product or service.
It can be tricky for people to find and embrace their unique voice. Partly because we are surrounded by so much comparison.
As a result I work with women during my full course to help them uncover the type of content marketing that they are comfortable with creating.
When people come to me for help they almost always say “I know I should be blogging.” And they are pretty surprised when I say “Well, probably not.” It sounds like heresy in the content marketing space … but if your personal style is to take photos then we’re going to look at ways for you to follow that natural tendency and create images for your content marketing. Finding the type of marketing you like to create is a key part of the process of finding your voice … and I want you to keep it in mind as you consider this marketing method.
Once we find the ideal type of content for you … then we can work on finding your voice and letting it shine.
If you are working on your own to learn and looking to use more content marketing for your business, I highly recommend you get a copy of this book. Keep it at your work desk. Schedule a time every month to read through the book.
If you’re considering my course, The Art of Content Marketing, schedule an Intro Call so we can talk more about you, your business and your goals.
Before you go, enjoy a few snapshots from the inside of the book. They’re just the tip of the iceberg. Go grab a copy for your book shelf!
