🪤 One trap that keeps techies from connecting with their audience

2-minute read

Have you ever felt excited to share something? A blogpost, a sales pitch, or presentation? And have you felt sad or frustrated when you didn’t get the positive response you were looking for?

Did you think to yourself: but I really have a great solution!?

Then I know your pain. And there is one trap I keep falling into and see others fall in all the time as well. I see it most often when techies try to pitch a technical solution. Here’s the mistake:

Your audience’s problem is NOT the absence of your solution

Some examples:

If you want to share a neat documentation framework. The lack of structure isn’t your readers problem. But potential users getting frustrated and giving up on your product is.

If you want to explain a neat mathematical concept, e..g, a graph. Missing knowledge isn’t your readers problem. But curiousity about how to connect users in a social network with new friend recommendations is.

If you want to pitch a new ride hailing service. Not having a taxi at your door within 10min isn’t your audience’s problem. Getting soaked and catching a cold in the storming rains while trying to hail a ride is.

Here’s my tip on how to avoid it:

Whenever you’re excited about something and want to share it with the world. Take a step back and identify the feelings and unmet needs of your audience and disconnect them from your solution. Dig deep. And then…

Connect with your audience on those unmet feelings and needs BEFORE you share your solution.

It works for me…whenever I actually remember to apply it.

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