Mind Readings: Heartbeats

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Mind Readings: Heartbeats

When you feel disconnected, it’s time to find a heartbeat. Here’s how.

Mind Readings: Heartbeats

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Christopher Penn 0:15

In this episode of Mind readings, let’s talk about heartbeats.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a friend who was saying that they felt disconnected from their community, they felt like they weren’t alone, that they didn’t have that sense of connection that they used to.

And they were concerned that maybe their community had forgotten about them.

Maybe they, maybe their friends were forgetting about them.

And this is a fear that, obviously has become a lot more prominent in the last couple of years.

Especially in 2021, a lot of folks were in lockdown and stuff, and you lacked the normal social conventions that you used to have access accessible to, even today, for a lot of us who are used to going to things like conferences and events, there are fewer of them, and there are fewer of them in person.

And you know, there’s still no shortage of zoom in webinar events.

But the in person events are fewer, and they’re smaller.

And so the question is, how do you mitigate that feeling of being disconnected? And this applies to us personally, as people, it also applies to our companies.

And I know marketing as well.

The answer is a heartbeat.

A heartbeat is nothing more than something that occurs regularly and frequently.

That reminds people that you’re still there, in a good way, in a positive way.

We do this all the time.

There’s no shortage of examples of this when you you leave on a trip, or maybe you’re just leave for work you your kiss your significant other goodbye, tell them that you love them.

Right? When you tuck your kids in at night, maybe there’s a tradition of some kind of that is the tradition where you give them a hug or whatever.

And it’s just a regular frequent thing.

Maybe, you know, you, you bring coffee and doughnuts to the office for for your co workers.

Every now and again, maybe it’s a weekly thing that you do with.

But all these things are rhythms, their rhythms, like a heartbeat that remind people, you still exist.

And in a way that is not demanding anything of them.

Right? You when you bring coffee for your friend, or when you text your significant other good night, or anything like that.

You’re creating that heartbeat.

And that a heartbeat is so important because we are creatures of habit.

We are creatures of routine we like routine, we like stability, we like predictability, as much as some folks may thrive on uncertainty, there’s still rhythms of certainty in their overall uncertain lives, right, they still do things a certain way.

And if you can introduce that sort of heartbeat into your friendships, your relationships, your professional connections, whatever, it’s easier for people to remember you, it’s easier for people to look forward to hearing from you.

One of the reasons why in email marketing, I tell people, if you can swing it, do a weekly newsletter instead of a monthly one.

Because it’s a more consistent Artbeat boom, boom, every week, every Sunday or every Wednesday, wherever you whenever, whatever day of the week it is it gives you a chance to get back in front of people in a way that provides value.

If you feel like you’re disconnected from your your social community, whether it’s online or in person, say hello to them.

Say hello to them every day.

Just open up Twitter or Facebook or slack or discord or Tiktok or whatever.

Just say hi, every day and see who responds.

Maybe for a while no one will respond.

But as time goes on as your audience grows, as people who need to hear that heartbeat, find their way to you.

You’ll establish those connections.

You will you will be as important to them as they are to you at that heartbeat is so essential.

And it’s bidirectional.

People like to feel recognized.

People like to feel remembered people like to feel cared about, you know, when you read a story.

There was a story in the BBC not too long ago about the police finding a woman who had died in her apartment and was laying dead in her car.

For three years, right? And finally, somebody actually checked in like, Oh, she’s really dead.

Christopher Penn 5:09

And you read the comments on stories like that.

And everybody’s saying, that’s my worst nightmare, that I will just die alone.

And no one remember me is comment after comment after karma.

That’s a huge fear that people have that they will be forgotten.

So if you can be the one to establish that heartbeat, that rhythm, you will be the one to provide that for people and help them feel like they matter.

Right that you’re connected to them.

What’s one of the tips I picked up in community management from a number of discord servers that I’m a part of? Question of the day, just get it doing something every single day to get your community engaged, make it a heartbeat that people can look forward to same time of the day.

You know, when we think back, for those of us who have more gray hair than others, when was Seinfeld on and to remember, what day of the week and what time? A lot of folks said Thursdays at nine on NBC.

Why do we remember this? 25 years later, a quarter of a century leader? Why do we remember this? Because it was good content? Yes.

But it was a heartbeat.

It was consistent.

We knew exactly where and when it would show up and it was there almost without fail.

It was a heartbeat.

It was it was that rhythm.

Think about your own marketing.

How much rhythm do you have in it? Think about your personal relationships.

How much rhythm do you have in them? If you don’t have enough if you end up feeling disconnected, build in that heartbeat.

Say hi to people, if it’s appropriate to do so in your friendship say goodnight to people, let them know that, you know those people are the last thing you think of before you go to bed and maybe the first people you think of when you wake up that matters.

So when you feel disconnected, find a heartbeat.

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Machine-Generated Transcript

Christopher Penn 0:15

Christopher Penn 5:09

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