I want you to think of the top three annoyingly cute couples in your social circles.
You know, the ones that are so into each other and never seem to have any issues or fights or trust issues.
The ones who make you want to gag at the mention of their names, but make you secretly wish you had a relationship that easy and trusting.
Got their names down?
Okay, open a new tab and look them up on Facebook.
Choose a picture where you’ve got a good view of both of their faces right next to each other.
A wedding picture, a selfie they took after they climbed to the top of a mountain in matching Chacos and North Face jackets, or even one of those godforsaken lying-on-a-pillow-next-to-each-other selfies.
Get over how obnoxious the picture is and look at their facial features.
Do they look alike?
No?
Look a little deeper:
- Their round cheeks & noses.
- The bone structure around their eyes.
- Their cheek bone to chin bone ratio.
- Their matching wrinkle lines.
- Their smiles.
- The fact that neither of them have any chin to speak of (or too much chin to speak of).
- Their eyebrow shape.
- Their chipmunk teeth-and-lips combos.
For an example, there’s the first three couples from eHarmony’s “Nearly Gave Up” success stories:
Rounder faces, smile lines on the sides of their mouths, chin structure.
Long, thin nose, wide-mouth smile, longer faces if you imagine her without bangs.
Cheek bones, longer upper lip where the lip itself is actually really thin, teeth/smile.
Freaks you out a little bit, doesn’t it?
It might take a few looks to get going, but once you start to see this pattern, you won’t be able to ever un-see it.
Couples at the airport. Your upstairs neighbors. Your best friend and the guy you loathe.
Even couples who make no sense on paper will start to make sense.
Because we inherently trust things that remind us of ourselves.
In this life, we inherently know that we are the only ones we can truly rely on, so when we see things that remind us of ourselves, it’s a sigh of relief.
That similarity can be a physical appearance, an attitude, a political belief, a religion, or even a set of initials.
(Looking back, it might not be a coincidence that I chose a business name with the initials CP. Mine are CB.)
This desire for similarity-for-trust is so strong in our subconscious that it’s a little unreal.
But it’s there and prevalent, nonetheless.
So once you know this, you’d be kind of silly not to use it in your business.
And no, I’m not talking about trying to get everyone to connect their Facebook profiles on your site so you can run a facial recognition software to show images of people on your site that only look like them.
Because that’s a bit atrocious.
But I am talking about using other kinds of similarity factors we latch onto to help you boost your business with your target audience and the people you want to do business with:
- Your decidedly snarky (or non-snarky) attitude.
- Your business mindset and beliefs.
- Stories and frustrations from your day-to-day life.
You know, anything you feel your readers and your fans who would eventually buy from you can see themselves in and will empathize with.
Because if your prospects actually like you, it only makes common, obvious sense that they’ll be more likely to buy from you.
(And getting people to buy from us is kind of what we’re after when we’re in business for ourselves.)
So while you can’t change what your face looks like to match the facial features of most people in your audience (but why would you want to?!?), you can stir up emotions of “Hahaha, I totally know what that feels like.” and “Geez, I feel that.” and “Omg, YES!” and “Shit, that sucks.”
And with those emotions—those moments when people feel you and get you and in turn have the sense that you feel and get them too, you establish trust.
Your audience will believe what you say (within reason, of course), they’ll buy from you, and they’ll feel good telling their network about you.
So the advice in this post isn’t that different than the advice in the post I published last month about why speaking up beats professionalism.
Speak up. Be yourself. Be ballsy.
Be a magnet for the people who are like you… because they will find you and they will like you.
And you can watch your audience come to you like gnats to a camping lantern. (Without the annoying buzzing sounds and the need to swat them away, of course.)