Last week I moderated a panel about Empathy and Marketing at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

“Empathy” is one of those words that feels impossibly squishy and subjective in a business context: It’s scrubbed clean and sitting in the front row along with “authentic” and “engagement” and “best practices.”

But in marketing, I think of empathy as feeling with people—signaling through our actions, words, and tone that We get you. You belong here. And it helps marketers articulate how our products or services fit into the context of people's lives and can make their lives better.

Too high-minded? I don’t think so. Neither did the SXSW panelists (from Plum Organics, Seventh Generation, and the LA-based agency Something Massive). We talked about how to keep things real vs. contrived.

We talked about other ideas: humor and empathy, and how empathy can signal understanding and acceptance of things we often don’t talk about.

And right there on the SXSW stage, I thought of Fred Rogers.

Suddenly, I was transported to my parent’s rec room, watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood while sprawled out on the wall-to-wall in front of a television set the size of a Chevette.

Fred moved seamlessly between his actual neighborhood—someplace vaguely on the East Coast—and a fictional place, inhabited by puppets and royalty, called the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

I thought the Neighborhood of Make-Believe was an actual neighborhood—although the words “make” and “believe” clearly labeled it otherwise. (As a child, I was sometimes not on the ball.)

His world inside the television set sometimes felt more real than my own life because Fred Rogers talked about things—war, anger, sadness—that the grownups in my life didn’t quite have words for.

He shored us up. But he also offered perspective: He encouraged us to consider what others might be feeling.

I couldn’t have articulated it at the time—because it would be decades before I learned the word—but Fred Rogers taught empathy.

Fred Rogers died in 2003.

His show turns 50 this year, prompting CNN to recall some of his memorable lessons, including slow down and chill the eff out. Although—re. that last one—Fred Rogers said simply, “Be patient.”

He wrote: "Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain."

That’s a perspective we need to hear in 2018, don’t we? At SXSW. In marketing. In life.

That day last week, on the SXSW stage, I wanted to ask the panelists about Fred Rogers. I briefly thought about bringing him into the conversation.

But I didn't. Because, honestly, it felt like any question in that direction would seem out of left field.

Some things make sense in your head. But when they come out into the world too soon, they're just jumbled and weird.

P.S. Morgan Neville's new movie, Won't You Be My Neighbor? looks incredible. How fantastic was this guy?

P.P.S. What kinds of monsters give Mr. Rogers down-thumbs? 2,000 down-thumbs? Really? Who hurt you?

In Austin, I was scheduled to do a book signing. I didn’t. Because they sold out of copies of Everybody Writes.

First thought: Sold out? Ugh. bummer.

Second thought: Wait. Sold out? That’s great!

Third thought: Wait. How many copies did SXSW buy? Was it more than five?

But a deal was a deal. So I stood dutifully at the empty signing table.

No books meant no one was in my line, of course. So I stood alone. Wooden. Making clumsy jokes with the author next to me: He had a huge line of people queued up for him well la-di-dah. Hey, want me to sign some for you? Heh-heh. (Internal-me to me: OMG just stop. You sound like an idiot.)

Then I ran into my publisher, who told me that we are within a few hundred copies of selling 100,000 copies of Everybody Writes!

First thought: WHOA. Second thought: Why aren’t those few hundred copies here in Austin, Texas, with us?

Hitting 100,000 copies is a special milestone. Will you be part of it?

If you enjoyed Everybody Writes, can you please tell others how much you loved it so they’ll buy it, too? Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Instagram. Snapchat. FAX. I have zero preference on this point. Please tag me so I can thank you publicly.

THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, lungs, and soul.

“Guys: Just me?” I asked on Twitter this week.

“Nope!” Twitter responded. Resoundingly.

Why is that? It turns out there are a few reasons why we can’t see our own typos.The bottom line is this: We’re too close.

We wrote it. We know what we’re trying to say. We're blind to typos because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads.

Readers, on the other hand, pick up on the errors (sometimes delightedly so!) because they are frolicking through your words for the first time, with no expectations about meaning, zero baggage, and not a care in the world. (Thanks to Maritta Katerelou for the link!)

The key to proofreading, then, is to trick your brain into thinking that it’s reading the thing for the first time. How? Make your work as unfamiliar as possible. So:

And, finally, the classic read it backwards: Now right backwards this reading am I.

This week I demoed Airstory, new-ish writing software from my friend Joanne Wiebe at Copyhackers.

Does the world need another writing tool? Normally, I’d say no, thanks: I’m stuffed. I couldn’t eat another bite. But so far I like Airstory.

Why: The Airstory Researcher Chrome extension is super-handy. It allows me to hoard all the things inside the writing platform itself. There I can stash ideas, graphics, photos, Instagram images, text snippets, URLs, research, or any kind of research note... and there they’ll stay, patiently waiting for me to show up again.

Then when I’m ready to write—voila! They’re all there, fresh and rested and ready for action. Oh hey, beautiful.

P.S. It’s 1000% free.

Steven Pressfield has a free mini-course based on his book, The War of Art, to help you overcome the evil forces that Steven collectively calls "the Resistance": self-sabotage, procrastination, fear, arrogance, and self-doubt. (I recommended his book as one of the best I read in 2017.)

I’m usually reluctant to recommend anything that allegedly helps you overcome procrastination by giving you yet another opportunity to procrastinate. But Steven’s course is only 27 minutes—about the length of your commute. Or a dog-walk.

Steven speaks mostly to writers, but his advice applies equally well to entrepreneurs, artists, or anyone who feels a little unfulfilled because they’re sitting on the couch eating Popchips instead of doing what they are set on this earth to do.

The five audio lessons are free, but you gotta trade your email address for it.

Thanks to the beautiful Chris Marr who sent this to me so I could download the course, love it, and then decide to share it with you.

I prefer taking notes with a felt-tip marker, writing with my actual hand in an actual notebook. (More on this next week.) But sometimes a more comprehensive record is necessary: In this Era of Fake News, striving for the fullest account of a conversation is not the worst idea.

A freelance writer friend suggested a tool called Tetra: She calls an interview subject from within the app, and Tetra creates a transcript of their conversation in just a few minutes. OK, I’ll try it.

Boston-born Sylvia Plath’s mint green Hermes 3000 typewriter—she reportedly wrote The Bell Jar on it—sold at auction this past week for £32,500 (or $45,969).

I collect vintage typewriters, but not those that cost as much as a new car.

One fun fact from the auction notes is that Sylvia wrote the serial number for the typewriter—a gift from her mother—in her address book from her time at Smith College. I love that little detail. It’s so completely nerdy in a writerly way.

Marketing as a function can seem vague and amorphous. And, sometimes, we don’t help our own cause: My daughter showed me her book from a marketing course she took last semester. It was depressingly tedious and pedantic; she finished the class wholly uninspired. (¬╭╮¬)

This "road map" by Tom Tunguz is the clearest and simplest articulation of marketing’s work I’ve seen in a while. And the shortest, too: Just nine powerful paragraphs. I might use slightly different words to describe some things, but now who’s being pedantic.

I like it because it maps into how I think about marketing: At the highest level, marketing articulates a compelling narrative of what could be.

In the beginning, your god created kick-ass content. And everything that’s good stems from there.

Or so say my friends at Optimist. They created the No B.S. Guide to SEO Flowchart to help simplify search optimization—because optimizing your content so that people find it should not require a PhD in Algorithmics. (Is that a thing? Or is it a band name? Both?)

Bonus points from me for two things:

(1) The irreverence of this flowchart, which makes it actually fun to read about SEO.

And (2) the refreshingly positive domain of the agency that produced it. “YesOptimist.com” might simply be the company’s URL but it also feels like a perspective we need more of in these turbulent times.

Seth Godin defines artificial intelligence (AI) as “everything a computer can’t do yet.” (But will eventually.)

Here Seth speaks to IBM about the future of AI—ostensibly, he focuses on AI in customer service, but the 30-minute talk has implications for anyone in marketing, too.

Or anyone in business, period, now that I think of it.

Or any human at all, now that I think of it more.

Even if you don’t give a robot’s bottom about AI, watch this as a study in putting an argument together: No one does historical context quite like Seth Godin.

I have always loved Christmas Eve way more than Christmas Day. And I loved the days before watching Hamilton on Broadway almost more than I loved actually watching Hamilton on Broadway.

Am I weird?

My friend Andrew Davis assures me I’m not (at least, not about that). He explains why anticipating a thing is often far more satisfying than the thing itself—whether that thing is a holiday, a New York musical, or something like a vacation or any new purchase. (Right now, I’m anticipating a new roller bag that will fit in the overhead bin space.)

This year Andrew launched a video series exploring these ideas in the context of the customer loyalty loop. His latest video is particularly useful.

I love Andrew’s animated, high-energy delivery, and I appreciate how he breaks down complex ideas into digestible components.

Also at South by Southwest, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One—out in theaters this week—created buzz with an immersive experience that took over an entire Austin city block.

The movie is reportedly good. (Spielberg attended a surprise screening of it at SXSW. Because that’s the kind of thing that happens at SXSW.) It’s also reportedly a superior take on its source material, the already popular 2011 Ernest Cline book of the same name.

What other great movies turned out better than the book? Here are 12.

Conversely, often the book really is better.

The grocery store checkout line was eight deep. The guy at the register up ahead of me appeared to be having some sort of debate with the cashier over the price per pound of the white asparagus. The cashier’s face was fixed with a rictus grin that could be interpreted as either the-customer-is-always-right consideration or I hate people. It was hard to tell.

Anyway, this was going to take a while. So, standing there in the checkout aisle behind the Great Asparagus Pricing Debate, I wrote "30 Things I’ve Learned so Far: Career Advice to Young Women from the Supermarket Checkout Line."

“If Facebook really manipulates our thoughts, they must want us to be really pissed at Facebook.”

This journalist’s daughter is the best contextual marketer I’ve ever seen.

Happy side note: She got the puppy.

And—happy side note II—the family used the social media attention to solicit donations for dog rescue groups.

April 30-May 2: Marketing Nation (Marketo), San Francisco

May 3, 4: Content Marketing Conference (WriterAccess), Boston (use code CMC18HANDLEY to save 20%)

May 9: Next10x Conference, Boston (use code AnnNext10x for $100 off)

June 20, 22: Unleash, Boston

June 25, 26: Activate, Chicago

Nov 13-16: MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. And because friends don’t let friends pay full price, code ANNLOVESME gets you $200 off.