Inception Content: How to Seed Your Ideas in Social Content

Have you ever seen Inception?

It’s a mind-bending film about dreams, ideas, and the subconscious mind.

If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.

I’ll give you a quick overview of the premise, so you can follow along and see how this applies to social content and seeding your idea.

Inception revolves around the concept of planting an idea in someone else’s mind. The protagonist of the story (Leo) is tasked with planting an idea in a business leaders mind, so in the real world they make different choices.

Inception is a mission to plant an idea without the person realising it was deliberately planted there.

Sounds sinister right?

Well, it turns out, every business is trying to do this… every day.

We are trying to turn a crowd of people into believers.

We want people to believe in our way, our service, our method.

When people believe in your service, believe it is a fit for them, believe it will help them – they buy it.

Many people miss the significant part belief has in the marketing and sales process.

I’m not talking about trust or confidence – belief is something more emotive.

Belief can be a strong driver.

You can present data to future clients all day long. You can show them case studies of how you’ve helped others – does that mean they will buy from you? No.

Your future clients need to believe your solution will work for them.

It comes down to belief.

If you want to reduce the friction in your sales process, whether you are a large enterprise or a solopreneur – you must build belief.

Many won’t like this, but any organisation trying to get human beings to ‘buy’ or ‘vote’ have used the same principles.

Having run for political office once and working in marketing and sales for 20 years, I can tell you that all the jargon, you don’t need to know it.

We are all trying to convince human beings, we are the best choice.

I’m going to walk you through the key components of building belief on social media, you can apply them in any business.

Principle 1: A Clear Message

You need a focused and clear message which means something to your audience. Simple messages sell, yet we all try to overcomplicate it. Simple messages make the biggest impact. If you can land a simple message that sticks and resonates with your audience, you will get a lot of traction.

If you cannot deliver your message clearly in one sentence, you will struggle to sell anything.

Why?

Because a tell-tale sign you don’t understand your audience and message is that you cannot construct a sentence that sums it up.

Look at mine…

I’m launching a new programme to help people elevate themselves and be seen as experts by their target audience.

Elevate your Authority and Attract clients that will pay more for your expertise

I’m targeting anyone who sells their time or services as consultant, coach, or service provider.

What did I give people in one sentence…?

A promise of building their authority, attracting clients, and making more money.

Everyone needs a clear message to the market.

The money is in the message.

Principle 2: Repetition

Many people shy away from this one, because they are fearful of putting people off. Repetition is your best friend. It takes 8-10 times of hearing, seeing, or reading something for us to remember it. Repeating messages in different formats is a powerful tool to land a message with an audience and make it stick.

Where people come unstuck is wondering how they say the same thing in diverse ways. This is where themes can help you.

Visual imagery and themes can help you land that message consistently whilst not being on repeat.

So, for example, I could use talk about magnetic content, which attracts your audience, which supports my ‘attract’ theme.

I could use share about the 5 levels of authority and how to use them to sell.

I could share my video about why clients will pay more.

All these themes support my primary message to the world.

In social posts, I’ll use 50% of my content to land my message through repetition. This means there is space for different things, but the clear message which comes through the loudest is my core message…

Elevate your Authority and Attract clients that will pay more for your expertise.

You may not like this example, but politicians have leveraged the power of repetition for centuries. They have used the repetition of slogans to secure millions of votes from the public. It still happens today. I know of two politicians, who were light on detail, that successfully defeated people of substance with simple slogans.

You can even do this to yourself. You believe things which are said to you over and over. For example, when you wake up tomorrow, do this exercise…

Look in the mirror, look in your own eyes and say to your reflection…. “I like myself”

The first time you do this, you will feel stupid.

Now do that for 10 days – you’ll notice, your confidence and mood improve.

Is it silly, yes, does it work, yes!

Repetition can be powerful.

Principle 3: Embedding

Embedding is where things get interesting.

Embedding is where, instead of promoting your services, you take a different approach. Instead, you tell a story. You tell a story where your promotion is explained as part of the story.

For this part, let me tell you about Jim. Jim was a business coach. He advised people in marketing and growing businesses. Jim had been in the corporate world for 20 years and went out on his own. He had a great black book of contacts and for the last 5 years, he’d relied on referrals.

Now, Jim’s book is a bit thin, and he’s lost touch with a lot of his network. Whilst he knows what he is doing and can add a lot of value, he is starting from nothing.

Jim setup a discovery session with me in 2018. He explained he was struggling with growing his client base and how he had relied so heavily on referrals. Jim decided to book a 1:1 strategy session with me and we unpacked his challenges, and, in a day, we shifted his business and built his message.

Jim had been working with his network of contacts so long, they did most of the marketing for him. Jim didn’t really understand his message. His clients were passing him business telling their contacts, their experience of working with Jim.

Jim’s clients knew the message

better than he did.

We went to social media with the ‘new Jim’ – 2 months in, actively posting content on social and growing his new network. He secured 3 new clients by month 3. The best bit is, they are paying more than his old rate.

Jim learned a few things…

• Socialite Sellers (see my 5 levels video) cannot scale beyond their relationship capacity.
• He had to speak to his audience where they were.
• People pay more when they believe in you.
• Part of the job on social is to build that belief as widely as you can (so you don’t have to hard sell)
• ?The power of elevated authority and a clear message.

I just shared with you a story of one of my clients and told you everything about how I work, without making it look like a sales pitch.

I told you how to learn more (Discovery Call)

How you work with me (Strategy Session)

The outcomes you can expect (Jim’s results)

This was more overt than I would normally do, but it helps you see how you can insert stories into your content to help people understand how to work with you, without throwing it in their faces.

Principle 4: Be Yourself

There is something oddly attractive about being yourself. We can smell authenticity and it is very appealing. We can also smell BS too. Being yourself on social media is difficult. When you put yourself out there with your ideas, it makes you vulnerable to attack and it amplifies your insecurities.

You see things you don’t like. You also worry about offending someone in error. The problem is, as we see on social media, there is a huge amount of fakery and facades. Being yourself, sharing your ideas and your convictions about the way you see the world will draw a crowd.

Your services fix problems. You have opinions on those problems. You have convictions about the solutions. Share those ideas.

Avoid attacking people, but challenge and advocate for you way of thinking. Let your passion come through.

Don’t be afraid of your vulnerabilities. Be you and let the crowd draw to you.

That is how you build a loyal following. Every business needs a fanbase. You don't make a fanbase without a personality - either as brand or person. Vanilla doesn't draw die hard fans.

Every business needs a fanbase... even if it's just a few hundred people.

Principle 5: Diagnosis

This is one thing it feels like the entire world is missing. Helping people understand their world where they are right now is powerful. Your future clients are currently dealing with issues and challenges, they have goals and dreams.

Speak to their world as it is and show them how it could be.

Think of yourself as a doctor and your future clients are patients.

What are the early symptoms of needing your services?

You heard me.

What are the tell-tale signs they have an issue with which you can help?

Diagnosis means…

the identification of the nature of an illness or other problem by examination of the symptoms.

Patients don’t know the illness; they just know the symptoms.

Speak to the symptoms.

Why does this matter?

When you speak to diagnosed patients, you can talk to them about their illness. But at any given time less than 10% of your addressable market are ‘diagnosed’ most are walking around worried about the symptoms.

What makes people act?

Painful symptoms and consequences

Think about this in your own life, how often do you put things off until they become painful if you don’t act?

How often have you avoided something only for it to come back and bite you?

People who are diagnosed and not getting treatment are happy to live with it bit longer.

When you speak to the symptoms you speak to people acutely aware of their symptoms.

In other words, the pain is present.

I have an entire process I take people through to uncover this, but it is simple.

Principle 6: Real World Impact

People want to know the difference your treatment plan (service / expertise) will make. By making cleat the outcomes you can deliver you help people see the result. You need to be careful though… too much emphasis on outcome and people will not believe you.

Real World Impact isn’t about money and success, it’s about the change from where they were to where they are now because of your help.

Just like the medical analogy previously, this means that the real-world impact could be a simply the pain is gone, but it could also be some form of benefit like added mobility or extended life expectancy.

Sometimes the real-world impact is that something has gone. Sometimes it is something that has been gained. Keeping your RWI in balance with your pain and symptoms is important.

Imbalance can lead to unbelievable claims or a very depressing and gloomy content piece.

People want to understand what the difference is, how will their life be different because of working with you.

When Tony Blair came into office in 1997, he had a 200+ manifesto and he had a pledge card. Millions of those cards were distributed. They gave 5 simple clear changes that would happen if elected. 5 real world results that Tony Blair promised to the public.

He won that election by a landslide.

Why?

People were fed up with Conservative governments and wanted something different. He gave them a clear message with clear changes. The public believed the promises of a better future and the pains of the status quo had to go.

Real World Impact must be balanced with Symptoms. If there are no current issues, people will stick with the status quo…. People won’t choose to change unless they are fed up with the current reality. Be careful with real world impact. Keep it balanced with the symptoms.

So, these are some of the tips to seed your ideas in social content. You don’t have to promote aggressively or push your message on people when you realised that these 6 principles can be used to help people see why they need you.

Simple things like explaining symptoms, sharing how-to’s and leveraging the power of embedding can create a win-win. Your audience who resonates with you understand their situation better and you seed your service and message into their world.

Humans are strange creatures. We want to be different, but also want to blend in. We are vulnerable and we are strong. We are simple and we are smart.

Our goal is to help human beings see why they need us and our services. We have seconds to achieve this on social media, that’s why these principles matter.

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