September 2023 Vol 5 Issue 9
Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN):
Specializing in Linguistic and Entrepreneurial Communication
Let me teach you to tell your story!
Welcome Mid-September 2023!
As I prepare this issue of “Tell Your Story Newsletter,” the heat waves of July and August have passed, and more of the brisk autumnal air we associate with September has come!
I hope that the new program and academic year has begun well for you, good readers.
Last night, entrepreneurs, including proteges and mentors, gathered to celebrate the 27th Annual Raj Manek Memorial Banquet at Prairieland Park. Some details follow in “Shop News” and in future blog postings!
In “Article One” of this issue, I share from Montreal copywriter (and blogger) Nick Usborne five reasons that we must balance our use of AI (e.g. ChatGPT) with Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Whatever tech developments arise, EQ remains indispensable to our work as communicators.
In “Storytellers’ Corner,” I forward Penny McKinlay’s recommendation on the importance of reading from contemporary Italian poet, Alba Donati.
And in “Shop News,” I feature “Entrepreneur of the Month,” Barry Frain, who specializes in customs consulting and education resource development for highway carriers (to meet the reporting obligations of US Customs and Border Protection; and of Canadian Border Services Agency). I also thank fellow entrepreneurs and service providers for sharing their time and resources with me.
May the best of autumn–the crisp fall air, crimson leaves, compelling new books, programs and more–be with you, good readers, as we complete the final third of our revolution around the sun. (Where did 2023 go?)
And may each of us feel gratitude for the blessings that we sometimes fail to notice, but which continue to grace our lives, even (or especially) in challenging times.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth
Principal,
Storytelling Communications
www.elizabethshih.com
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IN THIS ISSUE:
ARTICLE 1:Why does AI need Emotional Intelligence? Five reasons that creatives should know, from Nick Usborne
STORYTELLERS’ CORNER:
Why bother reading? A response from Italian poet, Alba Donati
SHOP NEWS
ABOUT US
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Article One: “Why does AI need Emotional Intelligence? Five reasons that creatives should know, from Nick Usborne”
Back in the years 2010 and 2011, I trained as a copywriter through online programming of the American Writers and Artists’ Institute (AWAI), based in Florida.
One of AWAI’s chief training copywriters (and program developers) at the time was Montreal-based Nick Usborne.
Fast-forward about 13 years and Usborne continues to share his ever-current insights on marketing copy for our digital world.
In several of his recent blog postings, he has argued that we cannot afford to ignore Artificial Intelligence (AI). Its influence on communications, marketing (and pretty much everything) is huge.
But Usborne equally insists that we must add Emotional Intelligence (EQ) when we use AI:
While tools like ChatGPT can provide us with great and creative ideas, Usborne contends that “there’s one thing [AI is] really, really bad at: Emotion.”
The “bots” simply don’t handle emotion. So they don’t know how to write with “Emotional Intelligence” (EQ).
Usborne says that AI has “no first-hand experience of emotions. Lines of code can’t fall in love or laugh.”
So they can’t feel empathy for others: “Lines of code don’t care about people, and how they feel.” In theory, then, AI code could remind you of media reports on the hollowed-out personalities of psychopaths.
We really can’t rely heavily on ChatGPT or other sources of AI as they stand, because content that does not emotionally connect with readers has little use to us.
But Usborne says the antidote to soulless bot-generated, unmodified (AI) copy is “Emotionally Intelligent writing.”
He shares five (5) ways in which Emotional Intelligence can “raise the bar way above what AI alone can achieve.”
I highlight and amplify his points with examples from my reading and copywriting:
#1 – Emotionally Intelligent writing empathizes with its readers.
Empathy rather than AI is magical, Usborne contends. When you recognize how your audience feels, you can show that you hear and understand them. You can write in ways that respect and mirror those feelings. That empathy sells. And it can’t be displaced. Usborne calls it “future-proofing” marketing.
Remember Maya Angelou’s statement on the power of emotion: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
When you acknowledge readers’ feelings, Usborne writes, you “validate” their experience, and from there, you’ll have them eating out of your proverbial hand.
Writing with EQ (emotional intelligence) allows you to secure readers’ engagement, attention and memory.
#2 – Emotionally Intelligent writing stimulates readers’ trust.
When people feel heard and understood, they trust you more deeply than they did before.
Building trust (recall Cialdini’s writing on persuasion) is essential to the processes of marketing. Even if you have a great service and amazing ideas for marketing it, if your reader doesn’t trust you, you’ll flounder. Prospects will only buy when they know, like and TRUST you.
As Usborne writes, “Emotional Intelligence comes to the rescue. Emotionally intelligent writing connects with readers at a deep level and fosters and communicates a sense of authenticity and sincerity. It builds trust.”
#3 – Emotionally Intelligent writing is more easily remembered.
Usborne reminds us that emotions play a large role in how human memory is formed and then repeat in our minds, often for many years.
So when we read slick direct marketing promotions, our memory of that material “disappears within minutes, if not seconds.”
But when marketing captures a prospect’s emotions, it lodges in their memories in more lasting ways. If we remember commercials from our childhood or youth, Usborne observes, we know they were emotionally intensive to us.
Remember some of the favourites (such as those featured by Terry O’Reilly’s program, “Under the Influence?”)?
Such as “Mikey” who liked “Life” cereal? (“He likes it! Mikey likes it!” circa 1971-1984).
Or Michelin tires, “Because so much is riding on your tires” (circa 1987).
Life cereal’s ad powerfully connects a pleasant taste with habit formation for children; and the Michelin tagline connects tires with the safe travel of children, for anxious parents. In both cases, the marketing plucks on our heartstrings. We remember those advertisements, 20+ years later.
Now think about the lack of emotional connection we feel when skim-reading a Readers’ Digest sweepstakes’ direct mail letter (sent via email)—we forget such promotions, a mere 10 seconds later.
#4 – Emotionally Intelligent writing builds a reader’s sense of community.
Usborne says that when we share feelings with others, we connect with them, and feel we belong to a family or group with them. Why else are there book clubs and online dating websites, and social media like TikTok and texting services like WeChat and What’sApp?
Why is it that most online English as a Second Language (ESL) classes are based on conversation, instead of traditional instruction of grammar or writing?
Why do we labour so hard to develop (and maintain) a prospect list for our marketing messages? When we feel empathy for our prospects, we share community with them.
This is why emotionally intelligent writing is so powerful when you’re trying to build community.
And when people feel they are part of a community, they allow that belonging to influence their purchasing decisions. We all know that we’re more likely to buy products and services recommended by our colleagues.
In 2019 When Jenn Sharp launched her book Taste of Saskatchewan partly online (due to Covid), we found our wish for belonging fulfilled by the heartwarming stories she tells of Saskatchewan farmers and foodies. After listening to Sharp read some of her profiles, I remember calling the book “a love letter” to the SK food industry–and the tagline stuck! The book is all about emotions and community.
#5 – Emotionally intelligent writing better persuades your readers.
Copywriting 101 tells us that we best persuade others to buy our products or services by appealing to their feelings.
“At its most basic level,” Usborne says, “we buy something because it makes us feel good.” The marketing of products and services must convince us that we should buy these things because they’ll make us look better and be healthier and happier.
So we pay extra for that salon shampoo or the name-brand anti-sensitivity toothpaste.
Writing with emotional intelligence intensifies the emotional lure of our marketing. Writing with EQ “increases conversation rates ” beyond what AI can do, Usborne says.
“AI writing alone can achieve NONE of this,” he says. Tools like ChatGPT are now a daily reality for copywriters and content writers.
He concludes: “And that’s fine… just so long as we understand that relying exclusively on AI isn’t the answer. . . . . AI has zero Emotional Intelligence.
That’s why the future lies with writers who combine the efficiencies and other benefits of AI with the emotional power of Emotional Intelligence.
To master this winning combination, you need to learn how to fuse AI with EQ.”
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If the development of AI has you feeling queasy about the future marketing of your product or service, please consider picking up Usborne’s new course, Futureproof Copywriting. (Please note: Although I’ve met Usborne and studied his “Web Copywriting” program, I am not affiliated with him and do not benefit from the sales of his training materials or coaching.)
You’ll want to avoid relying on lists of “Killer Prompts” (reminiscent of keyword stuffing for SEO).
Instead, we all need to develop a “writing process” and practice that includes both ChatGPT and Emotional Intelligence (EQ).
Otherwise, our copy will be predictable, bland and will discourage customers from engaging. Your features and benefits won’t be remembered, discussed or shared—at the cost of engagement, trust and community.
The answer to “future-proof” your copywriting, Usborne concludes, is to infuse AI with EQ… Emotional Intelligence.
He testifies that he uses “ChatGPT and GPT-4 to help with research and audience analysis. I use [AI] to outline articles, presentations, and reports. I even use it – sometimes – to write and rewrite early drafts.
But I NEVER use ChatGPT to write a final draft.”
We know that computers can recognize and respond to consumers’ emotions by gathering and evaluating data like facial expressions, gestures, tones of voice, the force of one’s keyboarding and so on.
But AI cannot itself create those emotions.
So whatever anxiety AI brings us as creatives, not to mention those of us familiar with publishing both business and academic articles or books, Usborne insists that we can (and must) learn how to tap into AI without it replacing us, “today or in the future.”
And now it’s your turn: Have you noticed the emotionless quality of AI-generated writing?
Do you agree with Usborne that we must change it, if we want to appeal to our readers and create work that matters?
What strategies have you used to infuse AI with EQ?
Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear from you.
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STORYTELLER’s CORNER . . . .
STORYTELLER’S CORNER: Words, Stories, Riddles and Jokes on Writing, Reading and Editing . . .
This month: Why bother reading? A response from contemporary Italian poet, Alba Donati
With the new program (and academic) year just begun, many of us (not only students) are delving into libraries and bookstores to fuel our reading habits!
Reader, blogger and European house-sitter, Penny McKinlay, recently recommended a memoir by Italian poet, Alba Donati, who opened a bookstore in a small Italian village on the cusp of the Covid Pandemic. Facing that challenge, the store only “stayed open thanks to booklovers and local residents” (writes McKinlay).
Donati’s book, Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop: A Memoir, collects her “thoughts about books, community and family” that help us to renew our love of books (McKinlay). Donati takes “an inward look at what we value most in life.”
What better pursuit could any art form prompt?
While I haven’t yet read Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop, you can be sure it’s on my “to do” reading list for this fall! I will pair Donati with Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel, The Bookshop, which was made into an exquisite film (one of my favourite adaptations of all time!) starring Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy.
McKinlay’s posting about Donati’s memoir caught my attention, since she cites Donati for saying that a good bookshop matters, because it promotes thoughtful reading:
“A bookshop is a school—a window looking out on a world that we only think we know. But to really understand the world we have to read, because those who write are always inspired by something that doesn’t quite fit the mold. And when things don’t add up, authors must face the paradox of life and venture into the darkness of the human mind—become at one with that darkness, even—there is no other way” (Donati).
Donati could be thinking of some of the novels of British Modernism, including those of Virginia Woolf, who wrote that her focus was on “the dark places of psychology.”
An individual book and an individual bookshop may not seem like much in the larger scale of human life, especially in these tech-intense days. But in reality, both are essential to our understanding of the world and the places we hold in it.
We’d be hard-pressed to get more relevant than that.
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SHOP NEWS:
“Entrepreneur of the Month” for mid-September is Saskatoon’s founder and managing director of “eManifest Express,” Barry Frain . . . .
Barry Frain brings more than 30 years of customs and transportation experience in the highway carrier, customs broker and importer and exporter sides of the shipping world.
He worked for more than 10 years for Expert Customs Brokers, George H. Young and Monarch Industries; and then for 17 additional years for TransX Ltd. and N Yanke Transfer—all before launching his own company, “eManifest Express,” in 2016.
He launched his company through the “startSMART” training program of the Praxis School of Entrepreneurship (Nepotism alert–haha!—I facilitated writing workshops for the cohort that included Barry in 2017).
So what is “eManifest”? It is a mandatory screening tool used by customs to assess the risk of shipments, conveyances (i.e. means of transportation or carrying goods), drivers & passengers that enter into the U.S. or Canada.
“eManifest Express” provides a powerful web-based software as a service (SaaS), customs consulting and education resources that highway carriers use to meet both their US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) reporting obligations.
Developing educational resources requires a “measured approach,” Barry says, since carrier regulations have moving parts, and in some cases, knowledge can be elusive. He suggests a course developer should consider the laws and regulations; directives; specific procedures and timelines; port policies and potential customs penalties when creating a course.
On the other hand, Barry has developed one module in an area that helps carriers meet customs requirements: His “Improve Your Customs Declaration” course provides course participants with a background on the declaration requirements and strategies which can help them meet their obligations.
Of this challenging field of carrier and cross-border transportation and customs, Barry says it’s for “the health, safety and security of Canadian and U.S. citizens that these processes are in place.”
Known for the precision of his technical knowledge, as well as his sense of humour and penchant for satire (e.g. “The Beaverton”), Barry is a family man who recently spent summer holidays among adult kids and grandkids in Northern Saskatchewan.
His only regret, as summer ends, is that he “didn’t have an opportunity to get on the wave runner!”
For more information about Barry’s online courses, please visit: https://customsforcarriers.ca/
Or reach Barry directly at barry.frain@emanifest.express .
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In other news this month, I also benefited from (and greatly enjoyed) sharing conversation with Angela Jamieson and her mother, Mrs. Yen Fung (a leader in our province’s Chinese community and former long-time owner of Saskatoon’s “Genesis” restaurant).
Both friends discussed entrepreneurial ventures and family developments with me, over coffee on a busy afternoon in early September.
Of particular interest was Angela’s commitment to memoir writing (spawned by years of travelling the world as an engineer with her young family); her “Transformational” consulting program; and other publishing ventures.
I was also delighted to have Angela join me last night at the 27th Annual Raj Manek Memorial Banquet (September 14th)! It’s hard to imagine that we have been (long distance) friends since we met as 14 year-olds at Aden Bowman Collegiate!
And we resumed our friendship six or seven years ago, after connecting at a prior Raj Manek Memorial Banquet, when Angela’s husband, Pat Jamieson, was in the program. (Small world!)
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Special thanks this month to Kanchan Manek, and the Manek family (including Raj, Sona and Kinjal) for organizing and hosting the 27th annual Raj Manek Memorial Banquet last night (at Prairieland Park). The keynote speaker, Sam Kolias, CEO of Boardwalk REIT, said that entrepreneurs should never focus on the “bottom line,” because “if you focus on profit, you’ll fail.”
Kolias spoke of the “Four Ps” as essential to all entrepreneurs: (i) Purpose (being motivated by love for all); (ii) People (caring for and serving others, including the homeless and those without health); (iii) Our Planet (caring for our environment); and (iv) Place (valuing our communities and understanding and accepting others, instead of judging them).
One year, many of us proteges would delight in hearing Kent Smith-Windsor give the keynote address, and ditto for Monica Kreuger and Silvia Martini!
At the banquet, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with mentors and proteges, past and present—including Monica Kreuger (as always), Deanna Litz and Rick Cumbers, Kirk Backstrom and Bing Yan, Lauren Penner, Gabriela Leal, Jolene Watson, Karla Combres and Mario Dima.
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I’m happy these days to be teaching ESL students from various parts of Africa and Asia. In that context, I’m especially grateful to the IT support staff at the Saskatoon Public Library, who actively support newcomers in using the library’s digital resources.
These include showing and helping them download apps to improve newcomers’ English skills (e.g. “Hoopla,” “Libby” and “Mango Languages”).
And various branches of our public library also provide common meeting space for language classes, with great Wi-Fi and welcoming staff.
Under the organization of Saskatoon Open Door Society’s Lisa Focardi, the J.S. Wood branch, for instance, has hosted one of the organization’s most popular “Conversation Circles.”
Thank you to the staff of Saskatoon’s Public Libraries, who strive to accomplish much in our communities, including for newcomers.
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There are always new entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial success stories to celebrate. Please send me yours to share in future issues!
But for now, this is a wrap for mid-September!
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| ABOUT US:
Between 2011 and December 2018, Elizabeth Shih Communications chronicled the stories of B2B marketing and communications on the Prairies and across the country.
Effective January 1, 2019, I rebranded as “Storytelling Communications.” I now help new and economic immigrants to secure better jobs by improving their language skills: I assist SMEs in closing more sales by communicating more effectively; and I help major companies write their legacy stories.
Interested in learning more? Please contact me through my CASL-compliant website (www.elizabethshih.com).
After I receive your message, I’ll be pleased to discuss projects with you!
Please visit my website for more information (www.storytellingcommunications.ca).
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