Until you drive off, that is. The moment you leave the lot, you see nothing but sky blue Toyota Priiiiiiiiiiii everywhere you go.

This phenomenon is brought to you by a little circuit in your brain we call the reticular activating system. Your reticular activating system is a personal relevance detector: when something becomes highly relevant (connected, related) to you, your reticular activating system alerts to it, and that thing becomes highly salient (noticeable, important) to you, too.

I’m certain that I have an RAS circuit for pug puppies. I can spot them from miles away.

The principle is this: what you focus on grows. And it grows in two ways. First, it grows in noticeability. You get more evidence of the thing that you are noticing, that it exists all around you. But then, once you notice it, you are likely to act, subconsciously and consciously, in ways that expand that thing, create more of that thing, multiply that thing, or bring more of that thing into your experience, in a very tangible way.

You start looking at pug puppies on rescue sites online. Then you see pug puppies everywhere you go, on the streets. Then you adopt pug puppies.

You start reading the reviews about Priuses. Then you buy a Prius, triggering your RAS. Then you see Priuses everywhere you go. And then you may, if you’re happy with the car, join an online discussion board of Prius owners, or even choose another Prius when your mate is ready for a new vehicle.

Here’s the fun part: this post is not about cars. It’s about energy, joy, enthusiasm, boldness, confidence, healing, miracles, love and every other thing you want in your life.

Here’s what I mean. Do me a quick favor. Take 73 seconds and watch what is, to my mind, one of the most life- and love-affirming minutes in film:

Repeat after me:

Love actually is all around

Love actually is all around

Love actually is all around

I know it doesn’t always feel like it, and I know right this moment, it really may not feel like it. But love actually is all around. It’s all around you. Right now. And if you look for it and focus on it, you’ll experience even more and more of it.

Let’s break it down: Love. Actually is. All around.

Love. Real love is what David Richo, in How to be An Adult in Relationships, calls the five A’s: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection and Allowing. It’s warmth and caring. Even if you feel unloved and aggrieved, or you crave a certain type of love, you are remiss to not look for the places in your life where people you know already show you these 5 As.

We all have our moments. When I have moments where I’m not feeling the love, I do a mental inventory of my life. I look for warmth, for caring, for little love evidence and big love proof points. Who are the people (or animals) in your world, past or present, that give you attention, accept you, appreciate you, show you affection and allow you to be who you are? Most of us can honestly say they are all around us.

Are things other than love around, too? Of course. In fact, part of how we know love is actually all around us is by the occasional contrasting experience. Think about the example Hugh uses in the voiceover: a most hateful event, 9/11, sparked a bunch of love calls, not hate calls.

It’s excruciatingly easy right now to get pulled into the spiral of fear and anxiety about the hate that we’ve seen rear and raise its ugly head here lately. This post is me urging you, begging you, to guard your heart against that. Deal with the issues before us and do the actions before you, certainly. But whatever you do, do not spend your days, your energy, focused on hate. It’s a hard spiral to pull out of.

Actually is. When you are looking for it, you will find it. You will see it and you will grow it. You will notice and feel it in places it already exists in your life, more than you do now. And then you will also behave in ways, subconsciously and overtly, that attract in more love, from the people you meet on the street, from people with whom you have difficult relationships and even from people who

All Around. You might feel like you get love from your kids or your mate, and that the rest of the world is insane.But here’s the thing, love is actually everywhere around you, and it’s for you. In small ways and large. The people in your life who give you the 5 A’s, definitely. But also the friend who picks your kid up when you’re sick. The women I passed on my dog walk today who were so excited to finally meet the girls, and had even given them nicknames. Think about the divine, big picture love that allows your cells to function, the trees to grow and your cell phone to charge up when you plug it into the wall. And look for the smallest little loves, too, because they’re all the same energy: your neighbor who jumps your car when you let it sit too long, and the barista who makes your daughter a sweet little new milk cartoon in her hot chocolate every morning.

Truth part B is this: you have to be on the lookout for it. Like Hugh was, at the airport. In fact, if you struggle to get the momentum of love flowing in your energy on a daily basis, I invite you to use the idea of the airport arrival as a go-to image that can bring you back. Or use the visual of your dogs when you get home. Or use the visual of your grandmother or your garden or your husband or your favorite teacher. Whatever works.

To set your reticular activating system for love, you might also need to starve all of love’s opposites of your energy. Refuse to give them your precious, precious bandwidth. Do not spend your time fixated and focused on hate, on disgust, on criticism, on things that make you feel bad or things that are the opposites of the 5 As. This will be difficult, in our culture. This will be especially difficult if you spend a lot of time on Facebook.

But it’s not impossible. Focus on the baby photos and puppies that come up in your feed. Opt-out of push notifications for pressing world news. It’ll still be there when you get there. You know those friends who are always sharing the tragic, the worst of humanity and the travesties of justics? You don’t have to unfriend them. But you can unfollow them. And you can follow a bunch of pages like Upworthy and A Mighty Girl, Brain Pickings and other pages that are much less likely to be broadcasting the opposite of love. Then click to make sure you see all their posts. In no time, you’ll have rehabilitated your Facebook feed in the direction of love.

You can actually decide to give less and less and eventually no airtime to anything but love. Does it mean other things won’t come up? No, of course not. But when they do, you’ll even see the hateful people as wounded children of God, and you’ll respond to that stuff very differently: without rumination, without depression, you’ll treat their actions as the sport of the day, and you’ll be able to see all the love all around you on that same day.

Many people have told me about the days or weeks of their lives they’ve lost to depression and fear since the election. Worrying can make you feel like you’re doing something in a world where you otherwise feel out of control. It can also be a way we bond with people, and it can feel comfortable. It can also feel like to do anything but fixate and stress means you don’t take the problems seriously. I get it.

But it’s not the most powerful way to be. And you know what else? It feels terrible. Terrible. It does nothing to diminish real concerns to choose not to fixate on hate and all the things that are wrong with the world. The most powerful way you can be is to click into the way of love. That is your nature. Let that drive your identity and your actions. It’s literally everywhere around you. Just look.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. I wrote this post on Day 28 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

I speak a lot about the epidemic of disengagement, and try to share some of what I know about how to create products and content people care about

But there’s never enough time. I always have to leave a lot out. THIS IS UNFORTUNATE. I’ve got a lot to say.

What often gets left out are the references to books that have been so formative to my approach (now the TCI approach) to research and strategy. These books have been foundational to the we go about helping our clients ENGAGE customers, drive loyalty, capture hearts and minds. They were my early textbooks and more recent inspiration for creating high-value content and products that transforms people’s lives. They will help you engage in lifelong love affairs with your customers, too.

So, here they are. I suspect you’ll learn as much from them as I have.

Enjoy,

T

#1: Lovemarks: A future beyond brands

Author: Kevin Roberts

Why You Should Read It:  Blew my mind when I first read it, as a young marketer – a vision for brand love that, while very emotional and not so quantifiable, laid a foundational belief system for how we could and should be trying to connect with our customers.

#2: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Change

Author: Simon Sinek

Why You Should Read It:  Straight-up inspiration on how to create change in your company and in your customers’ lives, largely through content. Big thought shifts. My favorite bit: “Dr. King gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.

See also: Sinek’s TED Talk: How Great Leaders Inspire Change

#3: Coaching: Evoking Excellence In Others

Author: James Flaherty

Why You Should Read It:  Beautiful methodology and systems for using narrative to help surface new possibilities to people and create behavior change, something all great transformational content does.

#4: A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

Author: Warren Berger

Why You Should Read It:  Most ineffective customer research, design and even marketing strategies fail in that they start with the wrong question, asked at the wrong level. Berger is a master at showcasing just how unlimiting asking the right question can be. Can be a power tweak to almost any part of your business or work: vision, product design, strategy, customer research, marketing, etc.

#5: If the Buddha Got Stuck

Author: Charlotte Kasl

Why You Should Read It:  Modules of wisdom on how to get unstuck, including compassionate healing from past stuckness, traumas – can use in your content or to shift your own stuck programs, thinking, teams

#6: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness

Authors: Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Why You Should Read It: Too often, we build products and content to solve a customer problem with logic. News flash: humans aren’t always logical. This book is a perfect primer on behavioral economics: the biases and decision shortcuts common amoung we perfectly illogical humans, and how different institutions can help people make better decisions.

#7: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do

Author: BJ Fogg

Why You Should Read It: Fogg’s models for how computers can drive behavior change apply (IMO) to all products and marketing. He also originated the most elegant, useful model of behavior change for businesses/products that I’ve ever come across. This cuts through decades and decades of research and distills human behavior change down into models we use literally daily at TCI, and most effective behavior changing products I’ve ever seen use, as well.

See also: BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model

#8: Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence

Author: Rick Hanson

Why You Should Read It: All about the evolution of the brain and self-directed neuroplasticity. This provides the basis for content that helps customers feel better, more grounded, less distressed and more able to make change.

#9: Mental Models
Author: Indi Young

Why You Should Read It: My number 1 rule of customer research is this: DO IT. This is the actual primer on building research-based customer journey models from a design thinking perspective. (Side note: At TCI, we take a pretty different approach to the initial question, the integration of quantitative data, who we define as “customer” in customer research, etc. from what you’ll see in this book. But I’ve never seen a better resource for actual model-building.)

#10: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Author: Eric Ries

Why You Should Read It: Most product and R+D folks have probably already read this. Because of the challenges marketers face in getting budgets for content programs, I urge every single marketer to learn Lean Methodology and apply it to content programs. Launch an MVP, get feedback, optimize and iterate from there.

Most business leaders and marketers believe that this epidemic of disengagement is a digital era problem. People are overloaded. Overwhelmed. They’re taking de-friending sprees and digital Sabbaths. All of God’s children have Facebook fatigue. I was out with friends the other night, and we realized that 3 of the 4 tech and marketing leaders at the table have uninstalled Facebook from their phones.

The struggle of digital overwhelm is real. But the issue of people being disengaged with content created by brands is not a digital problem.

Exhibit A is this quote:

“Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.”

You can probably tell that this was not written last week, just from the archaic language.

Here’s another clue, though: this is the guy who wrote it.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

His name was Samuel Johnson, and he created the term “advertisement”. He published this quote in his weekly magazine, The Idler.

On January 20, 1759.

1759, folks.

I repeat: disengagement is not a digital issue. It is a human issue. And the solution will also be human. Experience has taught me that the solution is to understand humanity better, more deeply, with more insight. To understand why people do the things they do, what they care about, and what motivates them, at a primal level. Then to serve those motivations, unlock the changes they want to make, solve their problems and serve their dreams, at a human scale.

And digital can help with that. Data, wielded wisely, can help with that.

But it’s not enough.

Start with humanity. Commit to being a lifelong student of people. Driving engagement—creating products and marketing messages that people care about—follows from there.

Appendix: Full text of Samuel Johnson’s 1759 commentary On Advertising

The practice of appending to the narratives of public transactions, more minute and domestic intelligence, and filling the Newspapers with advertisements, has grown up by slow degrees to its present state.

Genius is shown only by Invention. The man who first took advantage of the general curiosity that was excited by a siege or battle, to betray the Readers of News into the knowledge of the shop where the best Puffs and Powder were to be sold, was undoubtedly a man of great sagacity, and profound skill in the nature of Man. But when he had once shown the way, it was easy to follow him; and every man now knows a ready method of informing the Publick of all that he desires to buy or sell, whether his wares be material or intellectual; whether he makes Cloaths, or teaches the Mathematics; whether he be a Tutor that wants a Pupil, or a Pupil that wants a Tutor.

Whatever is common is despised. Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.

Promise, large Promise, is the soul of an Advertisement. I remember aWash-ball that had a quality truly wonderful, it gave an exquisite edge to the razor. And there are now to be sold, for ready money only, some Duvets for bed-coverings, of down, beyond comparison superior to what is called Otter Down, and indeed such, that its many excellencies cannot be here set forth. With one excellence we are made acquainted, it is warmer than four or five blankets, and lighter than one.

There are some, however, that know the prejudice of mankind in favour of modest sincerity. The Vender of the Beautifying Fluid sells a Lotion that repels pimples, washes away freckles, smooths the skin, and plumps the flesh; and yet, with a generous abhorrence of ostentation, confesses, that it will not restore the bloom of fifteen to a Lady of fifty.

The true pathos of Advertisements must have sunk deep into the heart of every man that remembers the zeal shown by the Seller of the Anodyne Necklace, for the ease and safety of poor teething infants, and the affection with which he warned every mother, that she would never forgive herself if her infant should perish without a Necklace.

I cannot but remark to the celebrated Author who gave, in his notifications of the Camel and Dromedary, so many specimens of the genuine sublime, that there is now arrived another subject yet more worthy of his pen. A famous Mohawk Indian Warrior, who took Dieskaw the French General prisoner, dressed in the same manner with the native Indians when they go to war, with his face and body painted, with his scalping knife, Tom-ax, and all other implements of war: A sight worth the curiosity of every true Briton! This is a very powerful description, but a Critic of great refinement would say that it conveys rather horror than terror. An Indian, dressed as he goes to war, may bring company together; but if he carries the scalping knife and tom ax, there are many true Britons that will never be persuaded to see him but through a grate.

It has been remarked by the severer judges, that the salutary sorrow of tragic scenes is too soon effaced by the merriment of the Epilogue; the same inconvenience arises from the improper disposition of Advertisements. The noblest objects may be so associated as to be made ridiculous. The Camel and the Dromedary themselves might have lost much of their dignity between The true Flower of Mustard and The Original Daffy’s Elixir; and I could not but feel some indignation when I found this illustrious Indian Warrior immediately succeeded by A fresh Parcel of Dublin Butter.

The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection, that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the publick good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the publick ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions, as when the Register of Lottery Tickets invites us to his shop by an account of the prize which he sold last year; and whether the advertising Controvertists do not indulge asperity of language without any adequate provocation; as in the dispute about Straps for Razors, now happily subsided, and in the altercation which at present subsists concerning Eau de Luce.

In an Advertisement, it is allowed to every man to speak well of himself, but I know not why he should assume the privilege of censuring his neighbour. He may proclaim his own virtue or skill, but ought not to exclude others from the same pretensions.

Every man that advertises his own excellence, should write with some consciousness of a character which dares to call the attention of the Publick. He should remember that his name is to stand in the same Paper with those of the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of Germany, and endeavour to make himself worthy of such association.

Some regard is likewise to be paid to posterity. There are men of diligence and curiosity who treasure up the Papers of the Day merely because others neglect them, and in time they will be scarce. When these collections shall be read in another century, how will numberless contradictions be reconciled, and how shall Fame be possibly distributed among the Tailors and Boddice-makers of the present age?

Surely these things deserve consideration. It is enough for me to have hinted my desire that these abuses may be rectified; but such is the state of nature, that what all have the right of doing, many will attempt without sufficient care or due qualifications.

Truth is, I was not then and am not now in the market for a new job. But I wasn’t in the market for a job when I took the role of VP of Marketing for MyFitnessPal, either. I somehow ended up with the Actual Best Job in the World anyway.

And last week was my last week in it.

About two weeks ago, I sent out a note to all hands announcing that I had decided to leave my job as the VP of Marketing for MyFitnessPal and Under Armour Connected Fitness. I’ve spent most of the time since processing the event with people, sharing some insights into my decision process when asked. Many were fascinated by my decision. I, in turn, was fascinated by the recurring themes I spotted in their reactions.

Early on, it became clear that these conversations would be a Rorschach test of sorts, surfacing how the other party thinks and feels about work and career. One person began celebrating what he called my “retirement.” Another said, “I was able to quit a job I hated once, and it was awesome.” (Fantastic, I said, but that wasn’t my situation.) Yet another person clapped me on the back and proclaimed my “freedom” from a bondage which was a part of her conception of work, but not mine.

The conception of work as bondage actually came up a lot Some of the wealthiest people I know, people who can never even spend all the money they have, confessed to being desperately jealous of my move and “wishing” they could do the same. They shared how trapped they felt by what it would look like if they made a move, or by old, outdated pinkie swears to stay in situations that no longer serve them. It was a little tragic.

But that was their story. Not mine.

The Actual Best Job Ever. My job was delightful and liberating, the vast majority of the time. I was able to build a marketing team and programs from scratch where none had existed before, hiring some of my best friends to create what I believe is one of the smartest, leanest, most creative and most productive marketing teams in tech. We were able to collaborate deeply across the company, with Product, Engineering, Biz Dev, International, even Operations, to do amazing feats like:

• growing from 45 million users to over 100 million in 18 months
• growing a blog from launch to over 10 million uniques a month, and
• driving a 22% increase in user engagement just from content marketing (with a heavy dollop of product and engineering).

In less than two years, we went from an $18 million first round of funding to being acquired for a smidge under half a billion dollars. Bringing 100% of myself to work was valued, requested and honored, from both above and below on the org chart. I evolved as a leader, as an executive, as a marketer and as a thinker. My job sent me to beautiful places to learn and contribute to deeply engaging projects: New York, Copenhagen, and the South of France – twice. We had a deep allowance for monthly fitness classes, which I still somehow exceeded every month. We had beautiful, beautiful catered lunches every day in a lovely San Francisco office nine miles from my home.

My team sent me pug gifs regularly. Pug gifs, ya’ll.

Exhibit A.

Post-MyFitnessPal, my belief in the goodness of people is deeper and more unshakable than before. I witnessed  an amazing team of people who could work anywhere in Silicon Valley coalesce around a singular mission to make it easier to live a healthy life. And I was able to participate at the earliest stages of forming executive team, designing a company culture, and scaling a business strategy that is both successful and transformational in its beneficial impact on humanity.

So what happened?

What happened was exactly what was supposed to happen. Seasons change. Startups exit. (If they’re doing it right.) The organization and its culture have continued to evolve. The brief – the problems the business exists to solve – is evolving.

As they do. As they should.

The Power of Purpose. When I took this job, I had my own business. I loved my business, and my clients – in fact, MyFitnessPal was one of them. I ultimately made the decision to shutter my business and take this job because I was crystal clear on my purpose in the world, which is to use business a force for healing, expanding and driving transformation in the lives of as many people as possible. This job allowed me to live and work “on purpose” in a big way, for a season, and taking it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

But as formative and definitive a role as this one was in my life, my career, my head and my heart, my career and work identity is tied to my purpose, not to any given job or project or company. Having a clear understanding of my purpose has given me a detection system that alerts me to when a given season of my career is complete, and a divining rod that points with clarity to what steps to take, what opportunities to explore, what projects to work on and what people to work with next. My original plan was to stay at MyFitnessPal until we had an exit – IPO or acquisition – and that has happened. My job here is done, and my purpose detection system is pointing me in a different direction. It might sound reductive, but it’s really as simple as that.

My career-long commitment to staying clear on my purpose and staying committed to doing work that is “on purpose” has helped me navigate with confidence and flow through a series of career moves that seemed bizarre to other people, but felt like the just-right thing to do at the time. And each of the moves I’ve made since getting and staying on purpose has proved to be consistently onward and upward in terms of impact, prosperity and success – by nearly all reasonable objective and personal metrics.

(Don’t take my word for it – take a look at my story in this Huffington Post piece, and see for yourself.)

Making Myself Available for More Miracles. If you clicked through, you know what I know, which is that my career – my whole life, really – has been a series of miracles. I’ve built businesses and brands and teams with and for the best of them. The actual best. For that journey, for those blessed, miraculous opportunities and for the internal and external resources that came together for me to be able to live them out, I am deeply grateful.

But I’m also reminded of the Bible story where Jesus turned water into wine. The very first thing he did was demand that someone bring him empty vessels, because the miraculous can’t be done where there’s no room for it.

My personal career pattern has been to start working to build out my own vision, then  consistently get distracted and derailed by these beautiful, blessed opportunities to work on other people’s dreams. Now that my “brief” at MyFitnessPal is complete, my purpose navigation system has alerted me that it’s time to build out my own vision – my own dream. It’s time to become an available vessel. So that’s what I’m doing.

As always happens, making myself available has already opened up literally dozens of “on purpose” possibilities. I’m writing a book. I’m developing a think tank and consortium of businesses, entrepreneurs and marketers who serve The Transformational Consumer, across verticals and industries, so we can innovate and collaborate more powerfully and more profitably. I’m producing a series of transformational workshops, conferences, retreats and experiences. More to come – on all of that.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the one theme almost every person I discussed this move with brought up: fear. “Aren’t you afraid of – fill in the blank with [leaving money on the table] [missing out on the next phase] [not taking another job while the offers are flooding in], etc. and so forth?” Money is an important instrument for making things happen in this world. But money is one of those things that is a fantastic servant, and a terrible master. It’s dangerous to climb into the bottomless pit of “never enough”. Using money as the primary driver for your career moves, vs. purpose or impact or even team, is a path down which many unfulfilled folks have walked. I reject that path.

There’s always some fear and some nervousness that comes with taking a bold new path or “daring greatly,” as Brene Brown might call it. But I’ve had a lot of experiences, at this point in my life where I stepped out there, took a very well-calculated risk, and it worked out exceedingly beyond what I might ever have imagined.  My experience has been that the more I’ve closed the gap between my work and my purpose, the more successful my endeavors have been – financially and in every other way.

In Liz Gilbert’s latest book, Big Magic, she recalls having the realization that fear and creativity tend to show up hand in hand. Gilbert shares a note she wrote to fear, informing the emotion that it is allowed to come on this adventure of a creative life journey that she’s embarking upon. But then she quickly puts fear on notice that it never gets to read the roadmap, never gets to navigate, never gets to make a decision about where to go or what to do – it just gets to come along for the ride.

For me, purpose is the driving force behind the courage to step out and do what I believe I’m here for, and the force that sweetly, but firmly, sets fear in the way back seat on my life’s adventure. Steven Covey said it well: “You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically—to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.”

NOTE: Want to stay up on what I’m working on? Join my mailing list at www.taranicholle.com – just enter your name and email into the signup form at the top of this page!

NOTE #2: My next adventure is the Strategic Sabbatical, November 3rd through 7th in Napa Valley. I regularly follow this week-long retreat strategy to ground myself and create flow when I’m in transition or kicking off new business or creative projects.

lt will de-chaos your nervous system, induce clarity as as to your purpose and plan, and trigger breakthroughs, action and momentum on the career transitions or business projects you care about the most. Interested? Come with: http://strategicsabbatical.com/

To create products that appeal to them and send them the bat signal that THIS is for THEM <homebuyer/Crossfitter/etc.>, you have to

• listen to them
• think like them and especially
• communicate in their natural language, and be present in their natural habitats, online and off.

One of my first hires to build out the Marketing team at MyFitnessPal was a Market Research and User Insights Manager, whose job is to mine user data, conduct primary research and generally give our audience a direct line of communication to our product and marketing teams. If you don’t have this luxury, here are a few rough/dirty ways you can listen, deeply, to what your Transformational Consumer audience wants, needs and cares about:

1. Comments. These can be blog post comments or Facebook comments – but they don’t even have to be on your blog. Read comments on competitors’ blogs or on media outlet articles related to your subject matter.
2. Reviews. What are they reading and buying? Read the reviews of those books and products. Amazon and Goodreads are your friends. But any ecommerce channel that they frequent – especially your own and your competitors’ – are potentially rich fodder for reviews. Mine them to get at what needs they are not having met, which will in turn surface opportunities for you to serve and engage with them.
3. Ask them. Do a survey. If you have your own user base, awesome. Send ‘em a Survey Monkey poll. Or just ask them a question on Facebook, like we did here. If you don’t have a user base, or your target audience and your current audience are not the same, take a look at Survey Monkey Audience, Google Consumer Surveys and Qualtrics Panels – these companies all will find people to get answers from who meet your specifications, at varying costs.
4. Content performance. What posts perform well on your blog and social media channels? What about on your competitors’ or other outlets’? For example, sites like the New York Times Well blog, PopSugar and MindBodyGreen all show the most popular and most emailed stories or social media share numbers for each post. Use that as directional insight into what your users want to read.
5. Search trends. Learn to love, use and frequent Google Trends. Bruce Clay does a great job of explaining how to use Google Trends to understand your market and audience, here.
6. Your sales team. The way I got into this business was that, as a real estate broker, I kept spotting patterns in the questions, fears and dreams of my customers. Ultimately, paying close attention to these patterns and the content that solved for their issues was the fuel I used to publish the most-read, single-author real estate blog in the world, for years, before I went into the marketing business whole-hog: Ask Tara @ Trulia.Sales people know what customers care about with more intimacy than most other teams in a company. They know what objections they get, they know what concerns they hear over and over again, they know what problems people come to your company to solve, they know the life events that trigger people to need your offerings or stop needing them. SO TAP THEM. If your company doesn’t have sales people, find subject matter experts who deal directly with your target audience around your subject matter for a living, and hire one to consult.
7. Other types of UGC: user questions and discussions. Discussion boards might seem passe, but they are alive and well. Especially when it comes to subject matter around health and career/lifestyle design. Don’t believe me? take a look at the forums on MyFitnessPal, Bodybuilding.com, the Fitness Subreddits. . . the list goes on. Your audience is there, talking to each other. They might even be talking about your product or brand. So listen.

No, seriously. LISTEN.