A couple days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Silver medal: Writing how you speak.” To which a reader named Andrew wrote in.
He said the email had landed in his promo folder, rather than his main inbox. “Maybe it’s the subject line?” Andrew wondered.
Maybe.
But I decided a while ago that I will not write with Google in mind.
You might think this is another one of those, “I’m an edgy marketer and I’m too cool to care about tactics” speeches. But I’m not that cool.
In fact, a few years ago I paid for a training by marketer Ian Stanley. It was all about how to get your emails into your prospect’s primary Gmail inbox.
I experienced first hand the endless and mindless work it takes. I decided very quickly I didn’t want to do it, especially for daily emails like this, and the ones I was writing for my biggest ecommerce clients.
In the time since, I’ve only gotten more fixed in my belief that I cannot win against Google and Apple, any more than I can win against the federal government or the WHO.
It’s like the Terminator movies, with the leftover humans trying to resist the monolithic and mechanical Skynet.
The human beings put all their grit and smarts to defeat the latest killing machine that Skynet sends back in time… and they succeed. For about five minutes. But then it starts all over again in the next round, except this time the robots are faster, smarter, and meaner.
So I don’t feel it makes sense to fight these monstrous entities or their steady flow of new terminators.
Instead, I feel the only way to win is to ignore them as much as possible. And create little communities of real live human beings.
For example, my email newsletter goes out to a small group of people all around the world. Some of these people like to read what I put out. These are the people who might seek out my content even when Google or Apple hides it. Ultimately, that’s who I write for, maybe including you.
The good news is, this is not a futile exercise. Plenty of people have proven you don’t need an audience of millions to succeed today. A few thousand or even a few hundred can be enough. Tiny communities of people… within a much larger indifferent or hostile world.
So maybe the question is which metaphor you prefer to live in.
Maybe you like the constant conflict of the Terminator movies. Maybe you like the idea of being a general in a war… of fighting for a cause… even if the chances of winning are slim.
But maybe you’re more like me. And maybe you prefer the metaphor of another James Cameron world.
Maybe you like to imagine yourself in The Abyss, with its floating and content jellyfish humanoids, living in a harmonious city, hidden deep down at the bottom of an indifferent or hostile ocean.
But enough philosophy. Here’s something more practical:
Last spring, I ran a free email course about writing bullets. It collected some of the best lessons I figured out by looking at the source material that A-list copywriters used to write their bullets… and then looking at the bullets themselves.
I eventually took this free email course, expanded it significantly, made it interactive, and turned it into my Copy Riddles training.
But if you like, you can now get that original free course. You’ll have to sign up for my email newsletter first by this Wednesday. If you do that, then watch out for the next email in my newsletter, and just click the link at the end of it.