Why you need to offend people more often

Ok, so I don’t mean “christ your bum looks massive in that dress” or “god you’re ugly” type of offensive. That would just be plain rude.

Someone in one of the Facebook groups I’m in, posted an apology for a comment they’d made. I didn’t actually see the comment, nor did I mind or indeed care if she’d actually offended anyone, but it did get me thinking.

I love this quote from Dan Kennedy; another digital marketing, all time legend (note: don’t try to shorten the word legend unless you insert a d and e on the end or it just becomes leg!)

“If you haven’t offended someone by noon each day, then you aren’t marketing hard enough” ~ Dan Kennedy.

I see so many people online apologising for something offensive they’ve supposedly said and in the next breath, trying to promote something or other and moaning that nobody is following them (maybe what they’re saying, just ain’t that interesting).

Surely though that is the point here.

Dan Kennedy is so right. People don’t want to read, boring, vanilla, tripe about nothing in particular (I realise, I’m now opening the floodgates. I should be so lucky to have enough readers)

There’s a reason people either love or Hate Donald Trump (Love the hair, hate the message), or love or hate big bottoms (Clearly today is a bottom day!). It’s called “The power of polarity”, which I first read about in Russell Brunson’s book, Dotcom Secrets (I know, I know, I just luuuuuv him). Actually coincidentally, Dan Kennedy wrote the foreword for it!

In the book Russell (of course, we’re on first name terms) introduces the concept of “The Attractive Character”, which is something you need to become if you want to grow your movement online and have people following you.

He goes on to say, that, something people, very often struggle with when communicating with an audience, is trying not to offend anyone.

The trouble with this approach though, is that you then become bland. Instead of voicing your real opinion and risk offending someone, you start to become a watered down version of yourself by only sharing safe stuff that everyone will enjoy.

The big problem with this approach is that being neutral IS BORING (hello is anyone there!?)

The lesson here is, when you try to reach everyone, you will end up reaching no one.

Instead, to become an “Attractive Character” you need to share who you really are with your audience. This is something that will become easier as you start to publish more often. null

When I first started out I would spend way too much time thinking things through, worrying about what people would think. I remember the first blog post I wrote, which was very short and well, nice. I worried so much about publishing it, putting myself out there, would people like it?

Now I don’t think about writing for other people. Sure I want people to read it, but I write for myself first and then if people find it and enjoy it, then that’s a great bonus.

If you are neural, no one will hate you, but no one will know who you are either.

You will never be able to please everyone, but you’ll be able to delight some people and it’s far more interesting and appealing to read an actual opinion on something, even if I don’t agree with it.

Being polarizing can be a scary prospect. Nobody really wants to be unpopular, but simply being yourself will inevitably mean that some people will not like you, and will disagree with your views. Once you put yourself and your views out there, people will start to comment and disagree with you. There is a great book called “The courage to be disliked“. The Japanese phenomenon that shows you how to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness.

If you’re trying to please everyone, it’s time to step outside what’s comfortable and start sharing what you really think. It’s time to start offending people a bit more.

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect”. – Mark Twain

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