Tag Archive for: opologies

A recent entrepreneurship piece in the Indianapolis Business Journal really caught my eye…”When you take visitors to tour your business, you usually want to show off your crown jewels: your latest product, a humming production line, a fancy new office remodel, etc., ” notes Ilya Rekhter. But at his company, Megawatt, they start by taking guests to their least impressive facility. “Unpolished and rough around the edges, it serves as a living archive of our early lessons and our growth…”, Rekhter explains. In fact, “If you’re not embarrassed by your first product, you’ve already missed the boat… After all, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Sharing stories of past failures and how your business overcame them can demonstrate resilience, growth, and a willingness to learn, Obehi Ewanfoh writes on LinkedIn. Failure stories, in fact, can educate, inspire, and engage your audience. But, while such stories humanize your business, making your brand more relatable, it’s important to tell about the creative solutions you developed and how the team pivoted to overcome obstacles, Ewanfoh cautions. You want to show that you and your employees take ownership of mistakes.

At Say It For You, we agree, having learned early that true stories about mistakes and failures add to the trust readers place in the people behind the business. What tends to happen is the stories create feelings of empathy and admiration for the entrepreneurs or professional practitioners who overcame the effects of their own errors.

A case study is just one way to frame a past failure – you use a post or article to “narrate” the story, providing details of what went wrong and how the situation was turned around to a positive outcome. In an “advice column” format, you might share your analysis of  “what to try when a certain business decision goes wrong”. In a “cautionary” piece, you warn readers about steps or situations to avoid.

In every one of these formats, the more specific and detailed the account, the more valuable the piece is likely to be to the audience.

Actually apologizing for mistakes in content marketing can serve as a damage control mechanism. Blog content writing, we’ve learned, can be a great tool for offering apologies, as compared to, say, email or letters.  Why is that?

• Timeliness: Business blog material can be immediately created, published, and updated

(as compared to the typical corporate website).

• Public acknowledgement: A blog post is “public”, which means the company’s owners are recognizing the customers’ complaint or concern in front of other people, which can give the apology more weight.

• Ego-centricity: Angry customers want to heard and recognized, not just “made whole” financially. 

To take visitors from “mad” to “glad”, try taking them from then to now!