The “so what…who cares” content test - make what you say matter
The “so what…who cares” approach is key to clarity
So what?!
“I come from a family of 7 children”. You’ve seen garbage information like this in other dating profiles. Information that is irrelevant and doesn’t tell me anything about that person.
If that person applied the “So what…who cares” test to her writing, she would ask herself “So what?!”.
If the information you wrote does not add to describing the essence of who you are, omit it. In this case, it doesn’t tell me anything useful.
Who cares?
If you can come up with an answer to “So what?!”, then it is time to ask yourself honestly if anyone else will care. If the answer is “maybe”, then omit it.
Do I really care how many siblings you have before I’ve even met you? Does it play a role in my decision-making process of whether I should meet you? You are actually introducing risk - not only do I have to wonder about your family, but also about the potential psycho sister who might get jealous.
Grab her attention and hold it!
Your reader’s time is extremely valuable. Any information that you would not use to seduce me really doesn’t belong in your profile. At the very least, not at the top.
I want you to grab my attention and hold it without distracting me with extraneous information. Would you start talking about your brothers and sisters at a first date within the first 5 minutes? Somehow I doubt it.
User’s guide to “So what…who cares”
Write the profile. Read it all at once. Read it one paragraph at a time. At the end of the paragraph, ask yourself “So what?!” about the content of that paragraph. If it’s irrelevant, save that paragraph, but remove it from the published document. You can use it in your e-mail exchanges later on if the question comes up.
Re-read remaining paragraphs, and at the end of each paragraph ask yourself “Who cares?!”. If the answer is no one, treat them the same.
But wait!… It’s not that easy.
Now do the same for each remaining sentence. Your objective is to focus your profile to deliver a clear and effective message with minimum of extraneous information.
It can be hard to realize that all that hard work composing those sentences was ultimately unnecessary, but that’s the reality of content editing. We write a ton of content, and then we reduce it to just a few paragraphs.
Remember, you want to grab his attention and hold it. Adding extra information will only distract her from thinking about you.
A good use of this technique should raise your desirability significantly. Please let me know if this helped you.
