Add an Ask * CONNECTED newsletter issue #7

The main ideas from this information are: - You have a lot to offer others in your business, even if you don't have everything figured out. - Practicing the heart math technique of gratitude and compassion can increase your effectiveness. - Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps with memory, motivation, and well-being. - Using words intentionally in your marketing can trigger dopamine in others and make them want to interact with you more. - There are benefits to offering both un-gated and gated content in your marketing strategy. - Gated content can be valuable in growing your list of prospective customers. - There are various types of gated content that can be offered, such as ebooks, quizzes, webinars, and challenges. - It's important to offer valuable and unique content behind a lead capture form. - Marketing strategies should be adaptable and playful, and it's important to continuously evaluate and adjust them. - Adding a dopamine boost to gated content can make it even more co Hello, everyone. Narnia Dawn here, and you're listening to Connected, the biweekly newsletter for guidance on growing your business in coherence. This is issue number seven, and it's called add and ask. You have so much to offer. Take a moment to let that sink in. No matter where you are in your journey, you have so much to offer others. I love the sentiment that oftentimes the person who just got out of the ditch is the best one to turn around and help the next person out, not the person that's already way up the hill. You don't have to have it all figured out to offer something of true value. In order to start sharing, it helps to take ownership of what you do know, and getting into coherence is always beneficial, so let's add some heart to our brainpower with this heart math technique. First, just take a moment to notice your breath and start to slow it down a bit, allowing yourself to relax into this moment. Bring your attention to the area of your heart. You may find it helpful to place a hand over your heart, and imagine that you are breathing in and out of your heart area. A calm breath in, a calm breath out. Keeping your attention there, choose something or someone that you appreciate, and notice that feeling growing in your heart area. Now radiate the feeling of appreciation out, directing it to that something or someone that you chose. This helps open the heart more and increases your effectiveness. It's like priming the pump. Now evoke a genuine feeling of compassion for yourself in the journey that you've been on so far. Compassion for all the lessons you have learned. Allow yourself to acknowledge the specific wisdom and skills you have gained that you now offer to others through your business. Start to generate some gratitude for what you have to share. Feel that gratitude growing in your heart. What does it feel like? Now notice where you are already being generous in the world with your knowledge and skills. Start to generate some gratitude for your natural generosity. Allow that gratitude to increase in your heart area. What sensations do you notice? With intention, increase those sensations of gratitude. Now focus that gratitude out into the world around you, allowing it to radiate out. Gratitude and compassion for all of our journeys. Gratitude for all the generosity in the world. Imagine your powerful heart energy rippling out and uplifting the entire planet. And you can allow this coherence to continue to have a positive flowing effect throughout your day. Anchored in science. Not that we need a reason to be more uplifting and loving, but I thought that this was interesting. Our brains are wired to remember things that have emotional significance for us. So these could even be things that surprise us, take us out of autopilot, or things that awaken passion in us or get us excited about future possibilities. All of these trigger dopamine, the happy hormone. Dopamine is a chemical messenger, also known as a neurotransmitter, that works in the brain to help nerve cells send messages to each other. Dopamine acts on areas of the brain to give you feelings of well-being, pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation. Dopamine also helps control memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, and movement. So then one of its functions is to create a good feeling after you do something enjoyable, which makes you want to do it again. As researcher Dr. John Medina explains in his book, Brain Rules, the amygdala is chock full of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and it uses dopamine the way an office assistant uses post-it notes. When the brain detects an emotionally charged event, the amygdala releases dopamine into the system. Because dopamine greatly aids memory and information processing, you could say the post-it note reads, remember this. If you trigger dopamine in your interactions, even through text or video, it stimulates the other person's brain to think, hey, they just made me feel good, causing them to want to spend even more time interacting with you. In addition to adding an element of surprise, delight, and interactivity to your marketing and business messaging, we can help spark more dopamine in others by being intentional with the words we use. As Vanessa Van Edwards discusses in her Mindvalley Quest, Magnetic Charisma, science has found the kinds of words we use affect how people feel and therefore act. When people read words like fast, speedy, and young, they walk more quickly. When people read words like polite, kind, and easy, they interrupt people less. When we hear words like excited, we are more likely to get excited. If we want to spark more engagement, motivation, satisfaction, and excitement, we need to say that we want to. Take a moment to think about how you want people to feel before, during, and after interacting with you. How can you fit those words into your marketing and other communications in authentic ways? How can you wake people out of autopilot and help trigger dopamine as you're building your business? How can you make your marketing and really any communication more interactive, positive, and memorable for all involved? How can you give them the gift of a pleasurable dopamine boost? In the market, heart-centered entrepreneurs are typically naturally generous, dare I say too generous. We can talk about how and why you need to raise your rates later. But there are benefits to asking for something in return before you give away all the goods. When you are sharing beneficial information for your audience, it's okay to have content that is unrestricted or un-gated and content that is restricted or gated. Could you just see me doing the air quotes there? First, let's talk about un-gated content. In this category is any information you are posting online that's accessible to anyone without restriction. So most website pages, blogs, social media posts, and video posts fall into this category. Un-gated content can be a powerful tool for increasing brand awareness and building trust with your prospective clients because you've removed any roadblocks to your valuable information. Also, because there are no barriers to accessing it, the words on these pages can be indexed by search engines and you can increase your visibility through search engine optimization, also sometimes just written as SEO. Gated content, on the other hand, is any type of content that people can only access after they've shared their contact information through a lead capture form. This type of content is also referred to as a lead magnet as it helps you grow your list of prospective customers. When they opt into your list this way, they will now be somewhat familiar with you and what you are offering and they are asking for you to keep them in the loop. These are considered warm leads. This also starts to generate metrics for your marketing that you can measure, adjust, and set goals around. Almost anything can be gated content if it sits behind a lead capture form, but some types perform better than others. It's important that what you are offering is genuinely insightful information that users can't find anywhere else or that you're adding your authentic personality to make it unique. That is what makes the content valuable enough to persuade people to share their personal contact information with you. Gated content can include downloadable e-books or reports, quizzes with informative, personalized results, audios or videos like guided meditations or processes, tools, templates, scripts, or anything that saves them time and money, webinars they can watch live or replay later, group challenges, and I've seen these done successfully through drip emails and live video or email newsletters, which keeps you top of mind on a regular basis. So, reading through or listening through this list, did any pop out at you? Think for a moment about the value that you can generously offer. What would be the best format for that content? If hosting a five-day challenge sounds daunting, start with a free downloadable template. You can always have more than one lead magnet, or poll your existing audience. What would they find most helpful? Content marketing is your sandbox, so don't forget to keep it playful and have fun. None of this is ever set in stone. Marketing is constantly evolving, and so is your business. Put something out there behind a gate, and if you're not getting enough people to opt in, then tweak it. To wrap this all up in a shiny, feel-good bow, how can you add a dopamine boost to your gated content so that you are offering even more in exchange for your ask? How can you spark that happy hormone so that they not only feel more uplifted in the moment, but also remember you and are compelled to interact with you again? Pick one thing from the list above and start working on your gated content. In the next issue, we'll talk about successfully setting up the gate for your gated content, so stay tuned. And if you know anyone who could benefit from this newsletter, please forward this issue and encourage them to subscribe. And I'd love to hear from you. What is your lead magnet? And did this issue boost your dopamine? Click that link to comment and see what others are saying. I'm so grateful I am here with you, connected. Thanks for listening.