Everybody Writes, 2nd Edition



87Writing About Hard Stuff

How do you write about Difficult Topics?

How do you message to an audience about the Hard Stuff? At a time everything is wildly in flux for everyone literally everywhere?

If there were an awards show for Top Issues that have challenged all of us in Marketing and Communications these past few years, I'd nominate “How to Message Hard Stuff When We Haven't the Foggiest Idea What to Say” to take home the Golden Globe.

There is no one perfect way to message the Hard Stuff.

But I liked an approach I saw recently.

It comes in the form of a 125-word intro to an email from Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, in Minneapolis.

I'm going to share it with you. Then let's together break down what we can learn and lift from it after the dinkus …

(A dinkus is that three-asterisk symbol right below this sentence.)

* * *

First, an important point: Kristina is writing about Confab, her agency's in-person event in May 2022. She's detailing how they will safely hold an event when sweet Cheez-Its who knows what Covid will feel like doing with itself then?

Will Omicron decide to spawn Son of Omicron? Will it decide to stay here permanently? Buy a house in a leafier suburb? Will it start to pay taxes? Who really knows?

But don't read “event” and “Covid.” Instead, look at this message more broadly.

We can sub in almost any topic for “industry event.” We can sub almost any issue in for “Covid.”

Use this as a template for customer-facing ...