How to give value without showing your cards

What was the most spelled word in the last 5 years?

I would go with value.

People are obsessed with it... Especially in the Twitter circles, but it also spread onto email marketing and I think even copywriting. I find it interesting though... Because even though everyone talks about giving value...

Nobody says what kind of value to give.

What people preach is the typical thing you would conceive as value... Tips, tricks, tactics, hacks etc...

And so what happens is that people who are "giving value" are in fact just regurgitating content from a Google search into a new media like Twitter or email. I'm not saying I never did that... There was a time I did it too.

But that doesn't mean others should do it too.

I was dumb dumb.

Now, here's something that changed my perspective a little bit on what "value" really is, because it is more than what the growth gurus on Twitter say it to be.

What I found to be most interesting is that... Helping someone realize what his problem is… Is valuable to that person.

Weird?

Hard to believe?

Let's give you an example:

A while ago I was struggling with some stuff. And I wasn't really aware of what was causing me the problem. I just knew the symptoms not the illness.

As I was listening to a random podcast, I realized that what the host was talking about was my problem.

He was describing my symptoms.

But there was something really important...

He didn't give me the solution. He didn't say a word about how should I go about solving this problem. And most people on social media would just consider this kind of content a time waste...

But you know what?

I was happy as a pig in shit.

I finally knew what the hell was causing me all this trouble - which was actually really simple - and finally, I was able to go on and solve it.

So my point is...

You don't need to give away all your solutions... "Giving value" can be just as simple as raising a person's awareness to a problem they have.

And your problem is...

That you think "giving value" is all that important.

Kristof Nemeth.