How to Clearly Communicate What You Do: An Exercise
Create a clear, concise, repeatable message to share what you do—without creating confusion—with this 3-step process!
Once upon a time, I was reading House of Flame and Shadow. When I got to one part where character A was explaining to character B what a cell phone is & how to use it—something clicked. I remembered feeling like character A back when I was new to the world of SEO and copywriting. I knew something in my messaging just wasn’t quite clicking. I was seeing blank stares & confused facial expressions. Something needed to change.
What happened next is what I’m here to walk you through! It works for everyone from replacement window sales reps to massage therapists to copywriters. This 3-step process enables you to figure out exactly what you need to say in your messaging so your ideal clients perk up & lean in—instead of quirking up an eyebrow in confusion.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
What social proof is & how to gather it
The 3 categories of social proof
How long to spend fleshing out your messaging
The results you should not skip over
How to write the best messaging 1-liners
How to use this messaging to do keyword research
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Mentioned Resources:
Case Study Training Program (starts 4/29)
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Hello and welcome back to the short and sassy, we're gonna do that again.
Brittany Herzberg (00:11.254)
Welcome back to the short and sassy series of the Basic Bee Podcast. As you know, these episodes are generally a little bit shorter. They're actionable and they're about a variety of topics. This episode is going to be super actionable and really helpful if you feel like you struggle to explain what you do effectively. I was inspired, weirdly, to do this episode because of something that I read in Sarah J Maas's new book.
It's her Crescent City Book 3. I'll make sure that's below in case you're like, what is this book? I can't even remember the actual title of it. I think it's maybe like House of Flame and Shadow. Anyway, Crescent City Book 3. What happens is that there's a character who is explaining something and it really made me feel like how in the past I felt about explaining SEO or even how I was explaining some of the massage modalities that I would do, you know.
If I'm talking about SEO copywriting or SEO strategy and the person doesn't work in the online space, it can be a little bit weird. For example, my dad sells replacement windows in North Carolina. He is face-to-face in your home talking with you, salesperson. The language of websites and the internet really isn't his first language. For massage therapists, it's not usually their first language either. They're again, face-to-face with different people. But even with that massage example...
explaining what trigger point therapy or cupping massage or craniosacral therapy was all about and how it works and that kind of thing, you really have to figure out a clear, concise way to explain this to your potential clients because if they don't get it, they're not going to pay for it. So maybe this is how you feel explaining what you do as well, but I really wanted to share that with you. Okay, so let me set up the scene that was in the book. Again, it's going to be linked below in case you're curious about it.
So if you're not familiar with the story, don't worry, there's not going to be any spoilers. I don't believe in sharing spoilers. But this is a fantasy series. It's a fantasy book that has magic and all kinds of fun stuff. And in this series, there's a modern timeline and then a more ancient timeline. And in short, someone from the modern timeline ends up talking to someone from the ancient timeline and explaining to them what a cell phone is. And it's really, really funny. And anyway, that's how Britney ended up.
Brittany Herzberg (02:34.966)
reading about starlight and wolves and someone explaining what a phone is and how we got to this part of, you know, me wanting to record an episode about it. So if you find yourself feeling disorganized, flustered, just really like you can't get a streamlined easy way to explain what you do to someone, stay tuned and walk yourself through this exercise that I'm about to lay out for you. So first thing you want to do is locate your social proof and I'm talking like
Go back through your testimonial forms, your survey forms, any client communication places, your email, DMs, I use Foxer, some people use Slack, anything like that you have where you've actually talked to the client and you can gather their words, that's what I want you to do. And this could be, we're gonna get into a little bit more of this in the next step, but this could be, you know, when they came to find you.
what they were like wrestling with, the support that they really needed. It could be something about like you, a characteristic about you that they really enjoyed while they were working with you. It could have more to do with, hey now that I have worked with you, I have this. So any of those like three kind of types of categories like before, during, after their experience with you, those are going to be the really amazing pieces of social proof and pieces of those testimonials that you want to grab.
So locate your social proof, and then we can move on to step two. Step two, I love recommending this exercise for a lot of different things that I do. And so if you're in my world, if you've gone through any of my trainings or you've just been around or anything at all, you've heard me talk about this before, you're going to free write or brain dump. I want you to set your timer for 15 minutes, and you could set it for 10 if you needed to write a little bit less, but you don't need more than 15 minutes.
and I want you to physically write out with a good old notepad and a pen these things. I'm going to list out some different things. What do you do? Like what do you do? How do you work with someone? When someone is done working with you, what do they have? What can they do? And what do they know after working with you? What results do you get for people?
Brittany Herzberg (04:57.398)
That's kind of another way of phrasing that, like, do have no prompt, but what results? Do you get people? What problems do you help solve? When are people coming to you? What are they asking you? That's where that social proof is going to be really helpful. But really think through all of these details. Even the teeny tiny things that you think don't matter, write it down. Because they matter to other people.
We are so often in the ketchup bottle that we can't see what our special ingredients are. We can't see as easily what... we don't catch it as easily as what someone else is noticing. They're gonna have these quote-unquote small questions or things that we just assume are basic and that everybody knows and they simply don't. So what are those teeny tiny things?
that you don't really think matter, that you know, and you just kind of assume that other people know as well. Spend 15 minutes, jot down all of those things. And then the third part of this practice is to take those longer explanations, use that brain dump, and write a few one-liners. The more succinct that you can be, the better. The more intrigue you can inspire, the better.
And the more you aim to explain something in a way that both a 90 year old and a seven year old can understand it, the better. So an example of this is, frankly, the one line that I use a lot, which is that SEO is how you show up as the answer to a Googled question. Because guess what? We all go to Google to look things up. Even tiny children and older adults. Like we all go to Google to look for stuff. Probably more often than we would like to admit.
But we all go to Google. We all type things in. And that one-liner really helps people to go, oh. Oh, OK. So if I wanted to get a little bit more granular, if someone was intrigued and they wanted to talk with me further, I could then say, yeah, you know how you see that results page and you've got all those websites listed? I help people write these things. I help them make sure that their website shows up on these pages. I show them how to write these articles that then show up on these search pages.
Brittany Herzberg (07:16.402)
I write case studies for them that then show up on these pages. I'm able to get much more specific and give examples at that point. But I have to give them that clear and intriguing one-liner before I can then go in and have enough of their attention to then share more. So once you get some support under your belt, then you can very easily... Wait, what? No, oh yeah, sorry.
Brittany Herzberg (07:45.758)
Again, just running through those steps quickly. You're gonna locate your social proof, any kind of testimonial stuff or client communication things, use their words. Their words are gonna be really helpful. Then you're gonna free write or brain dump with a pen and paper, and you're gonna answer those questions, and you're gonna have the client communication, their words, your client's words, the testimonials in your mind as you're writing these things down. And then you're gonna take that big brain dump that you spent 15 minutes-ish.
writing and you're going to try to take those longer lines and shorten them and create some one-liners that are clear and that are intriguing and that a 90 year old and a seven year old could understand. So once you do that, once you get some messaging under your belt, then you can very easily move into keyword research that is going to support it. And I'll make sure that there's a, I have a keyword research tutorial video that I'll link below. It's like, I think under seven
when if you're ready to move on from that. If this is something that you want to tackle yourself and just learn more about you definitely can just click that video and then if you really want to kick it up a notch and explain what you do in the best way possible you're going to want to share case studies. Case studies are where it's at and stay tuned because doors are opening in April for my case study training program. I'm so excited.
You'll be able to click links and show notes very, very soon, or you can head to my website or just say hi on Instagram if you're like, you said you're going to have this thing. Just come find me. I'm happy to talk about it, share about it. You'll see me posting more about it and just giving a little bit more of what you can expect and what that experience is like. And even some of the episodes that are coming up are going to be with students, with clients, and with other people where I'm able to geek out on case studies that are written with SEO and storytelling.
So I'm really excited about that. But it is so critical to have some kind of easy way to explain what you do to people. It makes you feel more confident. It makes you feel even a little bit more proud about what you do and how you help people. And if nothing else, keep this in mind. You want to focus on the problem that you help solve or the result that you get people. And yes, I'm saying that in a singular sense, but if you have...
Brittany Herzberg (10:04.078)
three core problems that you help someone solve, you could have some messaging around those three. If you have three big results that you help people get, you could focus around those three. But at least getting it down to a manageable group of one-liners that you can say to people to get them, like I said, get them leaning in. You don't want them doing that like quirked eyebrow kind of thing. You want them leaning in. I'm excited for you. Walk through this exercise. Let me know if you have questions.
Let me know if you found this helpful, because I definitely want to make sure that you find these things helpful and worth your time to listen to and to even try. So that's all for today. I will catch you next time.
