Surface Swim or Deep Dive? 🤿

Hello Reader,

Two quick notes before this weeks' newsletter:

👉 I'm hosting a fabulous live workshop on Nov 18 and I'd love for you to join me! Learn more here.

👉 I am considering hosting a winter round of my popular group program, Summer of SEO, with a slightly different spin. If you're interested, let me know here. Right now I haven't received enough interest to merit the marketing and admin that would go into running this in the winter, so do let me know if you're interested!​

When it comes to marketing, especially content marketing, I know that the gurus and noisemakers say to write to a fourth grade level, to avoid words with more than two syllables, and to keep it super short and basic and surface-level.

And there's data that supports this approach. People are reading in general at a lower level, and TikTok (I joke that I blame everything on TikTok) definitely has eroded attention spans. We also know that over-reliance on generative AI software is eroding critical thinking and comprehension​

Yet, despite this popular advice, it's just not my approach. Let me give you a little context as to why.

When people say to "dumb it down" (for the record: I hate that phrase with the power of a thousand fiery suns), they don’t take the following things into consideration:

• Not everyone is speaking to "the average consumer"—my audience tends to be full of readers, research nerds, and people hungry for information, for example.
• Explaining something big picture or providing a real world can be a better solution. Similarly, I often use humor to break down scary concepts.
• "Dumbing it down" can feel condescending to many people (that's me!)—focusing on key takeaways about complex concepts is often more effective than simplifying to the point of being unrecognizable.
• We can risk eroding our authority; for example, I often link to studies in my marketing because I know it's important to cite my sources and that's something "guru" types have told me not to do, but I still do.
• Not everyone is selling to beginners, regardless of the industry—if you're selling services or products to more advanced people or companies, they often don't want to be talked to about the basics.

So, that’s my two cents. I believe we need to give people the opportunity to ask questions and engage with what we present in our marketing.

What do you think? Are you on Team Deep Dive or Team Surface Swim? Am I the weirdo here? Or do your people like to get into the meat of your field of expertise too?

Reply to this email and let me know—I’d love to hear your thoughts either way.

Talk soon,
Sarah