Today I’m giving detailed feedback on a post by Tatiana Vilarea (with her permission). 🙂
This is part of a new series of posts where I’ll be pointing out what people can change about their content to attract more pre-sold leads who are a great fit for their high-ticket offers.
Let’s get to it!
Tatiana’s post is found here.
With this post, I had a hard time identifying Tatiana’s main points.
And by “main points” I mean three things:
1) what problem she is talking about;
2) what she claims causes the problem; and
3) what one thing she says we need to do to solve it.
These are the three things that every post in my framework needs to clearly communicate (and start communicating them quite early on in the post, before the reader spaces out and scrolls to the next thing in their feed).
Sometimes, there is optionally a fourth thing too, which Tatiana hints at in her first paragraph:
4) what DOESN’T cause the problem or what we DON’T need to do to solve it (in other words, how the points you’re making differ from what your reader may have heard, or from what the commonly accepted wisdom is).
So let’s look at what she’s saying and what’s missing.
The “problem” part is definitely there, in the middle of the first sentence:
“fear of public speaking, camera, marketing, selling and other types of self-promotion, and can’t confidently share your message or get to your income goals.”
That is a clear problem for sure – though it actually sounds like it might be several different problems, and might benefit from breaking them up to focus on in several different posts.
I’m not totally sure about that because I’d need to learn more about what point Tatiana is making regarding this cluster of problems – are they really all solved in the same way and by the same solution?
This is one of the things we’d discuss before beginning to write any posts, if she were my client.
And, another subtle point here is that the way this problem is worded sounds to me like Tatiana might be targeting someone who’s quite early in their business journey (“can’t reach income goals, can’t confidently share message”).
But there are plenty of already-established business owners who are able to show up and share their message and earn money – it’s just really painful because it still makes them so nervous.
This type of client might pay more because they can afford it and because now that their “bleeding neck” of not making money is taken care of, their painful feelings of nervousness and fear have moved up to the top of their list of problems that are bothering them the most.
(I’m basing this prediction on myself and the types of help I’ve invested in, plus discussions with other successful entrepreneurs I know)
So if the problem were worded just slightly differently, it might grab the attention of a potentially higher-paying client, if Tatiana in fact wants to work with that type of client.
Now, moving on to the parts about “what causes the problem” and “how to solve it.”
I was actually never quite sure of these two points as I read and re-read this post.
In the beginning paragraph she says if you want to overcome these fears and start growing your business you need to:
“stop doing mindset and motivation type of work and do this instead: 👇👇👇 “
And so I read on to the next paragraph, expecting it to explain what “this” is…
But then it doesn’t.
It goes on for a while talking about other things, and as I read, I’m never able to find the explanation.
What’s the bottom line? What’s “this”? What needs to be done?
And then can it be stated in one concise, precise sentence immediately after that first paragraph?
That would orient the reader well, to know exactly what claim is being made here and what main idea they’ll see unpacked if they keep reading.
I see a few places throughout the post that hint at it…
Like “fear is hard-wired into our BODIES’ cellular memory, neurochemistry and its neurological pathways run by our autonomic nervous system.”
(though that still doesn’t say what to DO)
And “the body holds a state of unsafety and will fight back to preserve itself from perceived danger.”
And then… oh! Finally, almost at the end, she says: “the quickest way to overcome these blocks is by addressing the state of unsafety stored by your body and its memory.”
Finally, I think that’s it, or close to it.
I really had to force myself to read that far though, because the beginning of the post was a bit confusing.
Now, let’s revisit something else about the beginning:
The part where she says “stop doing mindset and motivation type of work.”
I’m actually not sure what she means by mindset and motivation type work.
Again, it’s only clear when I force myself to read much further down. Then I think I get it… she’s saying that reasoning through a problem with words and thoughts isn’t as effective as addressing the problem at the level of the body/biology/nervous system.
She can correct me if I haven’t worded that exactly correctly, of course. 😉
(and that’s exactly the kind of dialogue I have with my clients – I propose wording that sounds clear to me, and then they correct it to make sure it’s accurate from their point of view as an expert – and then we end up with something beautiful that is BOTH clear AND accurate – which neither of us could have achieved on our own)
So, let’s revisit the beginning of the post again:
Maybe she could word it something like this…
“If you have a fear of public speaking, camera, marketing, selling and other types of self-promotion, and can’t confidently share your message or get to your income goals – you need to stop trying to THINK and REASON through the problem and address it at the level of the BODY and NERVOUS SYSTEM – which is where the problem most deeply resides.”
Actually, that sentence is quite a mouthful (for the reader, an eyeful) and might be a bit hard to absorb, so we could break it up more with line breaks and a bit more white space, and maybe state the problem more concisely too:
“If you have a fear of self-promotion or sharing your message, thinking and reasoning through that fear isn’t likely to make it go away permanently.
“The fear resides in your body and nervous system and that’s where it needs to be addressed.
“Let me explain…”
YES! That’s it and now I’m hooked. I know what claim she’s making and I want to hear the explanation.
And the rest of the post would give the explanation, in about 1,000 words total.
I think she could keep some of the explanation as is, but it might need to go in a different order and some parts could be removed.
I think once the beginning is fixed, she’ll know exactly how to re-do the rest of the post. 😉
Now, for the call-to-action…
Her call-to-action does include some important information but is missing some other stuff.
She talks about a “4-month Inner Success Activation program for entrepreneurs” – which is good – we like to see the length of the program in the call-to action.
Although I don’t see what type of program it is – 1-on-1, group, something else?
And the Point A and Point B of this program don’t look super clear to me either.
She does say “overcome your visibility fear and sabotage” and “ready to create their impact in this world”… which some might argue are the Point B (or outcome) of this program.
However, I’m yearning to know more specifically what the Point A and Point B are for the ideal client of this program.
Like, if I joined this program, would it be filled with people who are just starting their businesses and have never had a client in their life? (That’s not me and I might feel out of place)
Or would it be people who have earned nearly $1 million as self-employed consultants through more “introverted” strategies like FB posting and referrals, and are now wanting to become public speakers to make more of a “movement” out of their business with a bigger message?
(That’s actually not me either because I don’t have a fear of public speaking but I know people who would fit that scenario!)
Those are two very different Point As (or starting points).
Ideally the call-to-action would make the Point A and B clearer.
Tatiana also says in her call-to-action, “Helping you permanently release fear of visibility is ONE of the things we do in the program to move you towards success.”
But then she doesn’t say what else she does in the program besides that.
In my framework we’d include that information, so that the reader has the full picture of what our program is about – even though they only read about one isolated part of it in this particular post.
The final directive as to what the reader should do if they’re interested is also potentially confusing.
“Send me a message or book your initial hypnotherapy and coaching session”
What does that last bit mean? Is the initial session the first part of the 4-month program and this is just breaking it off to be its own separate thing without committing to the whole 4 months?
It would be nice to know more specifically how these two offers relate (or if they even do).
In my framework (with some limited exceptions) we typically only promote ONE offer in each post so that people aren’t confused about which one they want/need.
Although, in the limited exceptions, we are very very clear about how/if the two offers relate to each other and what the differences are.
…
So those are my thoughts on Tatiana’s post. Tatiana, thank you so much for allowing me to review it. I would love to know more about the difference between “thinking” solutions and “body” solutions to our fears. Hope to see future posts from you that go deeper on these topics. 🙂
For the rest of you, if you’ve read this far, I hope you learned a lot from this review.
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