About a week ago, I sent out an email about a budding email copywriter who made me an offer I could refuse. I got the following reply to that email:
Honest feedback.
This email does not sound like your personal voice.
There’s a uniqueness in the way you phrase things and keeps me reading. I sense a difference in this email. I don’t know if this an earlier version of you.
I sat there for a moment, staring at this reply, tilting my head from side to side like a confused beagle.
What exactly was the intent behind this reply? What was I to do with this honest feedback?
I never did figure it out.
But I’ll tell you what I will not do.
I won’t go through my “budding email copywriter” email, figuring out where my tone of voice went wrong. I also won’t go through other emails, reverse-engineering what a proper Bejako email sounds like. And I certainly won’t poll my readers and say, “Please tell me what you like about my online persona, so I can give you more of what you like, and less of what you dislike.”
I recently discovered the term flanderization.
On The Simpsons, the character of Ned Flanders went from being a good neighbor, who served as a foil to Homer Simpson, to being an annoying religious fundamentalist.
In other words, Flanders became more and more of a one-dimensional caricature of himself over the course of the many seasons of The Simpsons.
It’s not just The Simpsons. The same thing happens with other shows and other characters, including those that people play in email newsletters like this one.
I’ve often written that I’m in it for the long game with this newsletter.
That’s why my prime directive is to make writing these emails fun and interesting for me personally.
But painting myself into a corner of what I can and cannot say — because not it wouldn’t be in line my tone of voice or online persona — well, that’s neither fun nor interesting for me. I’d rather be free to say what I want to say, when I want to say it, even if it makes me sound off-brand on certain days, and like a clown on others.
Anyways, this probably doesn’t benefit you in any way. Not unless have an online presence, or are planning to start one.
But if you are putting some aspect of yourself out there regularly, maybe my perspective on it can be helpful to you somehow.