Out-bounding is dead. Long-live Personal Content!

When it comes to developing strong relationships in your professional network, "Personal Content" is king. This has has never been more true than in today's quickly evolving business world, where there is an ever increasing torrent of mediocre content. In short, as out-bounding is dying, Personal Content is taking the throne.

Personal Content is something that you write or make that's worth sharing with others, and that in the business world we hope will drive our bottom line. There is a sliding scale that qualifies something as personal content. On one hand, there's the level of personalization: the more personalized you make your content, the better. A customer is much more likely to remember (and open) a handwritten note than an email. On the other hand, there's the quality of the content itself: how impactful is the content you're sharing? Is it something trite that the customer has likely seen before? Or is it unique, helpful, and memorable?

For what it's worth, nothing short of one-on-one conversation can trump sharing personalized content. The personalization helps form a relationship with potential customers by making them feel valued (which they then project back onto you) and by sharing a bit of your outlook (which helps them learn a bit about you). The quality content will stick with them, and they'll be thankful for you having shared it with them.