Ignite Your Marketing with Curiosity with Emily Aborn

Andréa Jones (00:00):
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(00:43):
Oh, they say curiosity killed the cat. But in this episode, we're diving into how curiosity can spark your content and your marketing conversations. I have the amazing Emily Aborn on the show to dive into all things curiosity. Stay tuned because we're going to go deep. You're listening to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm Andréa Jones.

(01:13):
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Emily Aborn (02:23):
Thank you for having me. If there's an adjective beyond excited, that's why I'm,

Andréa Jones (02:29):
I love it. Emily, I'm so excited to chat with you today because obviously I was on your podcast and when we had our conversation and we talked about you coming on my podcast and then I saw your writeup about curiosity and I was like, oh, we've never gone here on the show. So I'm excited to just go deep with you. But let's just start at the beginning. How did you get into this marketing world? What's your origin story?

Emily Aborn (02:56):
Okay, I will keep this very brief and concise, but in a nutshell, I feel like I've kind of been doing this my whole life really, really my whole life. So the way that I officially got into marketing is that I had a retail shop locally with my husband, and we sold all natural bedding and organic mattresses and non-toxic home products basically. And I quickly learned that the retail situation was not for me, but I loved doing all of the elements of my business that were related to marketing. Loved it so much so that other people would comment on my marketing and ask me to do their marketing for them. So I kind of built my business as I was transitioning out of my other business. I literally was running two things at the same time, and then it was just kind of a slow process of niching down, niching down, and discovering what I really wanted to be doing was not scheduling people's social media posts.

(03:57):
It was really the writing piece. So now I'm fortunate, and that was a big scary way to kind of niche my business down. I was like, well, is anybody going to want just the writing piece? And so it took me, honestly, four years to get to that point. And when I made that shift and that transition, my business blew up more than ever. So now I focus specifically on copywriting and content marketing, and it's just always been a part of me. I think marketing is really how to have a conversation with somebody. And so I've always loved, I was the kid that walked around with a tape recorder recording people's stories on my tape recorder and writing their stories and publishing then my own little newspaper. So it's really just been something I've done and I fall into it at every single job I've ever worked. And then finally one day the writing, I was like, oh, the writing's been on the wall the whole time.

Andréa Jones (04:55):
You just unlocked a memory for me. I remember my siblings and I recording ourselves on a tape recorder and then playing it back and then redoing our stories to make them more interesting. And it's so funny how I totally forgot how that was a thing and then you brought it up, but that's where the creativity comes from, right? It's like marketing is relationships, I think is what you said, and I totally agree with this piece. It's not about trying to push something on someone, it's about having a conversation and helping them in some way. And it sounds like that's what you started off doing. You just wanted to help the community around you, which is such a beautiful thing. I love it. I

Emily Aborn (05:33):
Love it. Well, thank you. And yeah, I agree it's a hundred percent or not a hundred percent, but it is so much just relationship building and not what we've made it to be, which is just we think of marketing as digital marketing, but it's so much bigger than that. Yeah.

Andréa Jones (05:48):
Okay, so why curiosity marketing? What is that? Define it for us.

Emily Aborn (05:53):
Okay, so the way I got into it was I was focusing on a specific SEO topic every single month for nine months. And I think my friend Erin Ollila, she's of the talk copy to me podcast. She's lovely, love Erin. So I was taking an SEO course with her, and one of the assignments was we had to focus on particular keywords each month. So one of the ones I chose, and I don't even really know why, was Curiosity Marketing. And once I started learning about curiosity and the role that it plays in our marketing, I was just more and more and more curious. So I kept sort of following that, having different conversations around it, and I realized that there's so much we can be doing in our marketing that curiosity is a force within us. It is what pulled the cat probably into the road, but it's basically this force within us that leads us to either learn about somebody else or to solve a problem that we might be having, or maybe to just learn something entirely new. It is kind of like this tug. And so we as marketers, as business owners, we can kind of create that tug for people. It's like an invitation, is this interesting to you? And then bringing them into whatever we're doing. So that's sort of how I came across it. It was by accident and I just became very, very curious in it. And I had months of content just focused on curiosity because of how big of a topic it really, really is and how valuable it is for us as business owners.

Andréa Jones (07:34):
There's something so meta about the curiosity of curiosity, marketing. I love it. I think that leaning into curiosity is such a powerful marketing strategy anyways, and then learning more about it in the work that you do, I am excited to dive on in. So I know that there are four types of curious people. Tell us about the four types.

Emily Aborn (07:59):
So you're going to love this and you can use this as a marketer to think also about what type of curious people are usually the ones following you or usually the ones working with you. Okay, so I did not make these up by the way. They come from a quiz that ranks you on different things. So the first one is the fascinated, and this is the person that they really are interested in a wide array of topics. It's like the person that loves birdwatching but also loves Greek mythology, but also loves learning about World War ii. It's just a huge, huge array of topics that capture their interest and they want to learn about everything that they possibly can. And it's also kind of just like a joy in learning. It might not actually have any sort of point other than just to learn. Then there's the empathizer, and this is the very socially curious person.

(08:54):
This is the person that wants to know what makes other people tick and why did you say something the way that you said something? And what do you mean when you like to lose at Wordle? What does it mean when you say that you enjoy losing in that game? What is behind that? So this is just a person that loves to learn about people, and specifically I would say the people around them, but just people in general and personalities and such. And then there is the problem solver, and this is when you're like, I mean it speaks for itself, but it's like you're pondering, you're trying to find solutions to problems. Maybe you love turning things over and finding ways around that nobody else did. So you are more curious on specific things. How do I get from A to Z? And then this is technically not a form of curiosity, but it's the avoider.

(09:49):
And likely, I always say, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably not an avoider. They're just not really that curious. We all know people like this in our life. The people that just like they don't ask you questions, they don't really care about other ways to solve their problems. They're not really interested in what kind of woodpecker you just saw outside. They're just low curiosity overall. So those are the four types, and it's helpful for you as a content creator to think about, ooh, what type do I like to speak? Which language do I like to speak? And also what type of people are paying attention to what I'm sharing?

Andréa Jones (10:28):
Fascinating. I'm already categorizing myself and my husband and my brain. I think I'm a problem solver. My Google search is always very specific. I have such a specific problem and I need a specific answer. And I think my husband is more of the fascinator. I think that's the fascination, the first one where he just likes to know, but he doesn't necessarily go on a hunt to know things. He just, whatever's around him, he just wants to know about it. Anyways, I am fascinated by these four types of curious people. I'll have to think more about who I'm attracted to, but this has definitely got my wheels turning on how to use more curiosity marketing. But when we think about curiosity, how do we get people from like, oh, this is interesting information to where I want to give you money for the thing that you're selling.

Emily Aborn (11:18):
Yeah, that's what we all want. We want to stand out from all of this noise and get the two seconds that it takes to capture their attention or I think it's one second now. So the first one is something I know that I've heard you say too, and it's just know who you're talking to, get really clear on what you're saying and also who you're saying it to, because the more specific we can be, the more eerily specific you can be with things, the more it tends to land and get people to say like, oh my gosh, they're talking about me. And then they have to lean in and take that next step. So that's the first one. It is just ask yourself who you're talking to. And I mean, that goes for any marketing. That's just good solid marketing advice. The second one, and this is a little harder, and you might actually need to pull in a business bestie or someone who can be really, really honest and straightforward with you, but it's asking yourself, would I follow me?

(12:20):
So as a podcaster, and I think I'm weird in this, but I will often go back and listen to my interviews with people or I'll listen to specific episodes because I want to make sure that I'm not just all over the place rambly road. It has to be interesting, and you do sometimes have to be really, really honest with yourself or ask for feedback from somebody, but asking you can do a little monthly audit of yourself. Am I interesting? Would I want to follow me? So those are two starting points. And then let's talk about some actual tangible once we have the answers to those questions. So one I love is just like, I'm going to call them well hooks for lack of a better word, but it could be anything that just kind of pulls people in. So starting with a question, you see some people do unpopular opinions, but sharing your opinion, I would say in general, and then including elements of surprise.

(13:22):
I love surprising people. They have this image of me in their head of what kind of person I am and what kind of things I do and don't do. And so if I can disrupt that and catch them by surprise, that's a good way to also create curiosity. So you're kind of like, oh my gosh, what is she doing now that does not like Emily? The other one I love is in this vein is using puns or humor, whatever's unique to your personality. So just keeping it content creation can actually be fun and light, and that's a great way to create curiosity because people are, they're naturally interested in things that make them feel good. So those are the ways to use hooks. I would also say keeping things really concise and not overly detailed. So I work with a lot of interior designers. I have this interesting niche in the interior design and home trades world, and they want to tell you every detail about their process.

(14:25):
They want to tell you every single piece of the process from onboarding to curation of the marble, to install of the marble. And we just cannot get that in the weeds for people at the point that we're trying to capture their attention, right? Once they're already our clients. Trust me, I love some details, but at the beginning, I don't need to tell them every single step that is going to happen. I want to be more concise and focus on what they're going to feel on the other side. So why does this even matter to them? What's the benefit to them? Not here's every single feature of what I'm offering or what I'm doing. So I think those are some good initial ones, and I always say all caps does not equal curiosity. All emojis is not curiosity. Let's be more creative than that. I think maybe writing things ourselves and creating things ourselves rather than having ChatGPT, write all of our content ChatGPT isn't a human, so it doesn't have that natural pull, that natural drive, so it doesn't actually really even know what makes people curious and what doesn't.

(15:35):
And then this is just where I would always come back to is keeping the focus on the person that you're speaking to. So whether that be a specific niche, whether that be a specific problem that they're facing, ask yourself why it matters to them and focus on that. And I love speaking or writing. I'm talking to just one person on the other side because that's how people feel most seen in our content when we are speaking to them directly. So I have some don'ts, but I'm going to pause there and let you, because I'm like, I can tell you're excited and have ideas.

Andréa Jones (16:13):
I know I have so many follow up questions. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, I have all the questions when we get back.

(16:22):
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(17:04):
And we are back. So Emily, follow up question, because you just gave us so much good information, and I'm loving every piece of it, but one of the things that comes up in my mind is for those people who are just starting out, how do we know what's going to spark curiosity? How do we know where to start when it comes to curiosity marketing? I know probably a lot of it is testing, but sometimes that very first kind of foyer into curiosity marketing. If we've been over-delivering with all of these ideas and content before, how do we narrow it down into something so specific that the other person's like, oh, you know exactly what I'm thinking? You're inside my brain. Okay.

Emily Aborn (17:45):
You said something at the beginning actually that I think fits really perfectly here, and that is following your own curiosity as a content creator. When we infuse our own excitement for what we're talking about, you can't help and make other people around you excited. I mean, that is why when I started following that vein of curiosity marketing at the beginning, that was just me being curious. And I cannot tell you how many people hear about that topic and they're like, oh my gosh, what is that? Then they want to know about it. So I think that's what I would say is be curious as a content creator. Try different things. See who, I mean, when I was niching my business down, I definitely had to go through a lot of painful experiences of figuring out what I like and what I don't like, who I like working with, and who I don't like working with and why, what I like doing and not.

(18:40):
So I think the same relates to creating content, and I do think as much as it's painful, I think we throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall at first to find out what sticks. But I would say on that is make sure you're also giving something enough time to see if it sticks. So don't just try it once. Oh, that didn't work. Try it another time. Oh, that didn't work. Try something else that didn't work. Give it enough time and consistency to really test something and see, and I know you love that, you love testing and metrics, so giving something really the breathing room to see if it's a good fit.

Andréa Jones (19:14):
Yeah. Now, how do you see curiosity marketing applying outside of social media? I know that a lot of people listening, there's this really negative sentiment around social media. I feel it too. And so if we want to bring curiosity to marketing to other areas, say our podcast and our websites, how do we do that in other areas as well outside of social? I

Emily Aborn (19:38):
Love this question so much. So my number one, I think especially if you're a podcaster or a speaker, telling stories is such a beautiful way to build curiosity, both in who you are as a person, think about those empathizers, but also maybe a different way that you went about solving a problem or what you are finding interesting in life right now. All of those little pieces are great ways to create curiosity in your audience. And starting, I'll share this as a speaker. I don't tend to start my conversation or my presentation with, hello, I'm Emily, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I start with a story. I just jump right in. I take them right into the middle of the story and start my conversation that way. And then once I'm done telling my story and kind of setting up what we're going to be talking about, then I introduce myself and share why that's relevant to the conversation we're having today.

(20:39):
So it's things like that thinking about how can I just drop them in my podcast, in my speaking engagements, in networking conversations, how can I introduce myself in a new way that maybe isn't like I'm a realtor, everybody knows what that is, and then they're like, okay, nice. Next, when I introduce myself in a networking setting, I like to be, I'm not intentionally being elusive. I just realized that this is a great way to get people to ask another question. So instead of saying, I'm a copywriter, which actually a lot of people, a lot of small local businesses don't even know what that means, but instead of saying that, I just now say I'm a writer, and then people always ask me what I write, and it's just a good way to open up the conversation, and I'm not being deceitful or shy or any of that. It's just like I'm leaving it more vague so that I can invite another question, oh,

Andréa Jones (21:35):
I'm not sure how I would do that for myself, but I am so curious about this, right? There's the introduction where we try to get it over as quickly as possible. I'm a copywriter, and then there's sometimes where we try to overexplain it. That's where I am. I'll say that I try to overexplain it because people don't know, and I'm like, I'm working marketing, I work on social media, I play around on TikTok. What is my job? So I, I'm going to think of a way to do this. If I do, I'm going to have to tribute to you, Emily, and be like, this is because of Emily. Because you're right, there's the same old, same old way of doing it, and then there's the way that we'll actually connect with people, and sometimes it is that bit of unexpectedness. Okay. Okay, you got me thinking. So now that we've kind of looked at curiosity marketing, we define what it is, what are some of the things we should avoid when we're trying to do curiosity content in our marketing?

Emily Aborn (22:30):
So I have just three. That way it's not overwhelming. And the first is, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but not using complex or jargony language. So to your point, let's use a marketer as an example. If we get into the weeds and start describing SEO and all of this, talking over people's head and how we're going to help them get ranked on Google, that's industry jargon. I mean, that's like shop talk, right? So just using plain speech and plain English, whatever language you speak whenever possible. That way you're not kind of talking over people's heads because when we do, they check out. I don't know if you've ever had anything explained to you around the house that is just like, I don't know. I don't care

Andréa Jones (23:18):
Anything to do with my car. I have no idea what is the make and model. You already lost me.

Emily Aborn (23:24):
Exactly. Exactly. Or for me, it's sports too. I'm like, I don't know. So just speaking really without complex language and your industry jargon and being aware of what those things are along this, also, there's a lot of overused words, some that just pop to mind are authentic or alignment, just overused words that don't capture people's attention anymore because they're so overused and they kind of sad. Some of them are such fantastic words, but they've started to lose their meaning a little. So thinking about what those are, is there something else you could say instead of transformational life coach, is there something else you could say? Instead of alignment? Is there something else you could say? So thinking of those kinds of things too. The next one we did address briefly, but not giving too many details. And I want to bring this into picture, like an email newsletter where somebody has shared 20 things in their email newsletter.

(24:26):
It's not just one thing, it's 20 different events, and they also want you to go to their website and also if you're interested in listening to their podcast, it's just jam packed with things to do and things that could take you down any one rabbit hole. Most people don't go down any of 'em. So giving people just one thing to do on this page, my goal is to get people to my about page in this newsletter. My goal is to get people to listen to my podcast. So giving them one call to action, one really clear action step forward. That is one I definitely used to make the mistake of my newsletter was just like, here's everything that's gone on in the past week. Do you want to know more? I could tell you more, but now I just am very, very focused. I always just share something relevant to my podcast episode and then the podcast episode, and then the last one.

(25:18):
I think you're going to love this, especially as a podcaster, it's not leading the witness. And what I mean by that is not telling people what we want them to think. So it's so much more engaging for our brain as a human being to kind of leave something as an open question for me to think about, Ooh, how might this apply to me? Or what am I going to do about this? Leaving them with something to chew on later. So not closing a loop necessarily can also help lead them to the next step. Here's how I do this in my podcast. Well, first of all, I don't like to tell people I don't like to prescribe, so be like, okay, you should do this, this, this, and this and this. But at the end of every episode, I'll queue up next week's episode and be like, okay, next week if you liked this, next week, we're going to be taking this a level deeper and getting into X, Y, z. And it's just a little way to keep the loop open and not tell them there's no period at the end of the sentence. It's kind of like the three ellipses. So just little tiny things like that to avoid and be careful of in your content can make a huge, huge difference.

Andréa Jones (26:35):
Yeah. Oh, I am thinking about ways I can do this already because I do think a lot of the work that we do, especially as so this is to my marketers out there who are listening, we know too much. We know too much, and so we want to go, here's everything neatly packaged up. This is it. This is the end. It's everything you could possibly need to know about this topic, and we're going to do it all right here in this little social media poster in this one email. And as humans, we don't want that much information, especially not all at once. It's just too much. And it reminds me of that. You mentioned networking earlier. It reminds me going to the networking event and sitting next to the person who tells you their entire life story, and you're like, I didn't ask for any of this, and I can't ask a follow-up question. There's no space here, and we don't want to be that person. And so basically what you said is allow curiosity. And I do think this is powerful, and I also want to say some people may not be curious, and I feel like that's okay, right? Do you agree with that?

Emily Aborn (27:42):
Totally. I mean, we have the avoiders, and I think that's actually like 25% of the population are avoiders. So there's literally 25% of people walking around out there, which I'm like, how is this possible? They're just not curious. They don't have a question. They're not looking to solve a problem. So yeah, there are those people too, and that's okay.

Andréa Jones (28:02):
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so as we wrap up the conversation, I want to know what's the number way you're using Curiosity Marketing? Like Emily, how are you using Curiosity Marketing in your marketing?

Emily Aborn (28:14):
I think the number one way is through my podcast. I definitely tell a lot of stories in my podcast and show my personality a lot on my podcast. I think personality is such a great way to create curiosity, and that's where I get to practice also with that previewing where it's like, here's coming or teasing people along and just seeing that's my testing ground, if I'm honest. That's where I get to test what piques people's curiosity. Buzzsprout just added this great new feature if you're hosting on Buzzsprout, where you can text message the host, what, and so

Andréa Jones (28:50):
That's amazing.

Emily Aborn (28:51):
So that's another little thing that I'm just like, Ooh, let's test this and see if people are curious what questions people have. So my podcast is my number one way of using Curiosity Marketing, and it's my Curiosity playground, if you will.

Andréa Jones (29:05):
I love it. That's a good name for a podcast too. The Curiosity Playground, putting it out there, putting it out there. I love it. Okay, cool. No, I like Curiosity Marketing. I think one of, oh, I have one. I'll save it for the end. I'll save my one for the end before I share my weight that I'm using Curiosity Marketing, I'd love to know more about the bio builder, which for those of you listening, this is a great place to start. If you're like, where do I put my curiosity to marketing? It's in your bio. Tell us about it.

Emily Aborn (29:34):
Okay, so the bio builder is exactly that. It's how to put curiosity into how you talk about yourself, and people love this. This goes to show how interested we are in ourselves. This is my number one most listened to episode and my number one ever most downloaded anything. So my bio builder, it will help you to ask yourself the questions that are going to create a little spark of interest when you're talking about yourself, whether it be on your LinkedIn, on your website, in person. So it is just kind of a starting place for you to rewrite, revise, add in, thanks to your bio.

Andréa Jones (30:11):
Love it. Okay. I'm going to put this link in the show notes. Y'all can find it at onlinedrea.com/ 3 1 7, and also connect with Emily there. What's the best place they can connect with you on social email? Podcast? I'm guessing it's the podcast.

Emily Aborn (30:24):
Yes, the podcast. You're already listening to a podcast, so it's an easy jump over to the content with character podcast. And we have a lot of, I would say I'm an empathizer, so I'm really interested in us as human beings and how we show up in our content in different ways. So you're going to get a lot of that, but now I want to hear how you are implementing Curiosity Marketing.

Andréa Jones (30:45):
Yes. So I did a little bit there where I was like, Ooh, I'm going to say this later. That was awesome. And also I can do it now because one of my favorite ways to do curiosity marketing is through Instagram threads or just threads now, I guess it's called. I like to post questions on threads that are conversations that I may want to have on the podcast or via email or with my community. And so I asked these questions in a public way, and then they lead to other things. I did this recently for our social media day summit where I was like, Hey, I'm thinking about this thing. What do you think? Now I'm thinking about speakers, who should be a speaker? Now I'm thinking about sponsors who should be a sponsor? And it kind of led to the event. And so I love that. And next episode, I'm talking about Threads as well, curiosity in action.

Emily Aborn (31:32):
Stay tuned.

Andréa Jones (31:34):
I love that. Emily, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Emily Aborn (31:38):
Thanks for having me. This was so much fun. It was fun.

Andréa Jones (31:40):
And thank you, dear listener for tuning into another episode. Make sure you leave a five star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. It's all because of your support. And truly stay tuned. Next week we're talking about Threads, so we'll do that next week. That's all for now. Bye.