I Nearly Ignored This Awesome Advice…

Last month, I launched a free video e-course called “How to Write Emails that Sell.” Seven videos, delivered by email, one per day, over seven days.

To promote the course, I shared one of the videos in an email I sent to you and on this LinkedIn post.

I got lots of positive feedback for that post…

…and then this not-so-positive comment from Yvonne: “Oh this could use subtitles Tom Ruwitch.”

My initial reaction: I was annoyed. “Thanks for nothing,” I thought. All these positive comments, and then you publicly nitpick about captions, Yvonne!?

But then I breathed deeply, stepped back, and reconsidered.

Yvonne is right, I thought. The video WOULD be better with captions. Many people don’t want to hear audio while browsing social media. If they see a video without captions, they skip it.

Captions allow a viewer to engage with the video — without turning the volume up.

My friend Brian Hahn, a social media marketing expert, confirmed this. He tested videos with and without captions. Social media videos with captions reduced the cost of lead acquisition by 25% versus videos without captions.

So now I’m adding captions to all videos I post on social media. Here’s the one I posted last month. Press the “CC” icon on the bottom right of the player to see the captions. When I post it again on social media, the captions will load automatically.

Adding captions is easier than you might think. I’ll show you how in an email next week.

Before then, I’ll reach out to Yvonne and thank her for the feedback…

…which I nearly dismissed. I nearly let my emotions, my annoyance, my bruised ego drown my better judgement. I nearly took Yvonne’s feedback as a personal affront, rather than constructive advice. I nearly interpreted her (constructive) criticism as tearing me down, rather than building me up.

We humans tend to do that.

But when we breathe deeply, step back, and consider things rationally, we open our minds and hearts to constructive criticism. We benefit from it. We see it not as an attack, but as a gift.

I’m grateful for the gift, Yvonne. I’m grateful for the clear, concise, matter-of-fact feedback. Yvonne didn’t need to sugarcoat it with compliments. She just wanted to get to the point, and her point was correct.