Yeah I know – there’s only one ‘you’ to count, right?
But check the way you write your business communications…
Emails you send to your list, cold outreach, replies on Whatsapp and to LinkedIn DMs… blog posts, your about page:
In the things that you write, how often does the word ‘I’ show up?
Ah… suddenly there’s a lot more of ‘you’ to count…
Look, it’s natural to reference self when writing. After all it’s us, ‘I’, in dialogue with someone else, or it’s ‘I’ delivering discourse.
But most business writing is full of self-reference and the word ‘I’ shows up so much, that the reader can’t help but feel that it’s not about them.
And then they’re lost, they stop reading, they unsubscribe, or don't follow up on your proposal.
So to make your business writing better, remember a few ground rules:
Never start a message with ‘I’. You might be the most loving and compassionate person in the world, but when ‘I’ leads the message, the reader reads ‘self-importance’.
Following on from that: Avoid as much as possible, starting a sentence with ‘I’. Reason: see above, but cumulative.
Ok. So with that, you’ve edited and improved your missive. Well done.
But if you count self, you see there’s still a lot of ‘I’ in there… now what?
Simple:
Replace each instance of ‘I’ with ‘you’, see how it breaks the sentence, and then: rewrite the sentence so that you keep ‘you’ and it all makes sense again.
Do that with each instance of ‘I’, and you’ll be sending messages that instead of driving people away because it feels like it’s all about you, will draw people in to working with you, because the absence of that ‘I’-focus allows them to relate your message to themselves.
Make people feel it’s about them, and they get closer – which is of course required if they’re going to buy from you.