Is a CTA necessary?
[Having shared a bed with a cicada in France, we're firmly back in Blighty...]
Now we’re all awake and back in Bromyard. And by ‘all’ I mean me and an uninvited house-guest.
I’m in post-France online catch up and regrouping mode. Unpacking isn’t a priority. Blogging about my adventures IS. Each post is sent out and uploaded every Monday: ‘Marthe Monday’.
Re-reading them, I find the story that prefaces meeting Intrepidina. It’s even more relevant now.
So here it is, slightly shortened and edited to reflect today’s marketing jargon.
23rd SEPTEMBER 2013
‘Chris, often reminds me through his actions of a principle he learned at acting school. It’s one circuses have embraced successfully since they first started: ‘show don’t tell’. Chris, Marthe and a cricket show me the value of this maxim in today’s #marthemonday…
Over-informed by marketing gurus, leadership bloggers and social media experts, I sometimes feel it’s a sin these days not to include a strong ‘sell’ or ‘CTA ‘(call to action) when posting online. We tell stories to illustrate points and get people to DO SOMETHING…
Being a rebel, I’m bucking the trend and releasing myself from that imperative. In doing so, I release you too!
Reading a story – however seductive or moving – isn’t the same as experiencing. How can I begin to predict the value of a story I’m recounting? How arrogant to think I know my story will make your life better, richer etc…
I assume, however, subtly, that you’re needy and somehow incomplete.
The truth is, before sharing, I can’t know if this story has any value except the value it has to me. Awful. Scary. True. And yet also liberating…
So, today I’ll simply present the story. Period. Oddly enough, it might open up more room for you to be touched, inspired and sustained. It was one of the surprising things I discovered at Marthe’s…
THE STORY?
It relates to The Colloquium or Conference-with-an-impossibly-long-name we'd been expected to attend in France. Keen to understand what was at the heart of Marthe’s work, and share it with my online community (a secondary consideration to her) I asked,
‘What’s your CTA – what’s the one thing you want me to DO when I come away?’
Her response was curt and dismissive,
‘That’s not what this is about. I’m not on some kind of mission.‘
A participant simply being there, experiencing and reflecting was enough.
Marthe had no expectation of me or anyone else. She showed us what she believed by living it – little talk, all personal action. Note to self (once again) to ‘say less do more’…
And of course, being free of direction or being asked to believe something made the experience of listening utterly absorbing. I began looking at the natural world in a different way and my encounters with nature did start to change.'
Which is definitely where our cricket enters in.
#callstoaction #insight #communication