Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Oh heavens above does this feel good. I’ve been writing or researching for my writings for nearly 10 hours now. It’s three hours from midnight and I am still going. This feeling of being what I have always wanted to be excites my emotions and makes me want to assist others in feeling the same. You ask what it takes, I say it takes time (clearly) and effort (even more clearly). You ask how? Well that is what I want to work with you on. Email me: thegarthbox@gmail.com
Today I simply want to share with you my favorite website. I incredibly admire InkHouse and dream about one day visiting their home base. (My aunt lives a little more than an hour away from it. Hopefully next time I visit I will also take a trip to InkHouse headquarters crosses fingers.)
Here is the site: Inkhouse
Enjoy
We’re emotional human beings, we feel disappointment, sorrow, sympathy, false hope, regret, and a bit of anger.
However, for the sake of what I am about to share with you, let’s be on the same page. Sure, we as teenagers are emotional, but in an extremely different way from the average person. We teenagers are emotional in the sense that we are meant for more than what we are currently doing. We aren’t feeling challenged and it sucks. It hits us emotionally. School is easy and homework is even easier. Making friends is easy and connecting with strangers is even easier. Chores are easy and making money is even easier … the list goes on. Things just come easy to us, likely because we work for it, but that is only part of the point. Being blatant, we are gifted individuals.
I’m turning 20 in November and I’ve recently come across an opportunity so-very-close to perfect for teenagers who have fire in their belly, a passion for improvement, and a motivation to be successful. You have probably not heard of the Thiel Fellowship and like I said, I had just found out about it the the other day. Greatly interested, I submitted my email address to be notified when the next application process for the Fellowship would begin (sometime this fall).
The Fellowship: When you apply for the Thiel Fellowship, you are applying to be part of a handpicked group of teenagers who will be given $100,000 NOT TO GO TO SCHOOL for two years and to work on turning their ideas (business’s, inventions, software, etc.,) into reality.
Now here is the kicker. Only people age 19 and under can enter the Fellowship. I would just be turning 20 when the application process opens so I am SOL. Why is this so important for you? If you haven’t already Googled it, let me tell you in the shortest version.
This is your chance to live your dreams of “If only I had the money.” The Thiel Fellowship says, “here, let me give you all the resources you need: money, mentors, like-minded people, tools, resources, everything.” They take away the excuses that prevent you from doing the emotional labor of creating something you believe in. This is your opportunity to quit being emotionally frustrated with your life and be emotionally passionate about it instead… all before the age of 20.
So you may be wondering if you should apply or not. I have a simple solution for you. Answer this question: Do you have a passionate drive to make the world a better place? If yes, then apply.
I don’t blame my parents for not showing me an opportunity like this while I was still able to apply, but I would blame myself if I didn’t compensate for it by not showing you.
For information and the application, visit the Thiel Fellowship.
If you decide to apply, send me an email, let me know your thoughts. I would be more than happy to dedicate time, resources, and an extra bit of passion to your work.
Stay Positive & Go After It
Garth E. Beyer ( thegarthbox@gmail.com )
What is the most important part of a persuasive essay or speech?
The call to action, of course.
There is no better proven step to a successful call to action process than Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. Developed in the mid-1930s by Alan Monroe at Purdue University, this communication sequence, or checklist if you will, is the most used and method for persuasive presentational organization.
By arranging the components of your message to fit Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, you present the maximum chance of your message making an impact and more importantly, creating a successful call to action.
1. The Attention Step: While there is a level of sophistication you must approach this step with, this is also the step in which you can be most creative. You’re well aware of an attention getter; sometimes it’s a question, a statistic, or an outburst. In the Public Relations world, that is childs play.
The best attention getter is a form of interaction: physical, metaphorical, or simply just an interaction you begin to describe. Getting someone’s attention isn’t about getting their eyes to be set on you, it’s about connecting with them.
2. The Need Step: “Everybody needs somebody.” But why do they need you communicating to them? Because you wouldn’t be communicating them if there wasn’t a problem. Step two is about making your audience feel uncomfortable with the fact that there is a problem. You have to create a desire, a need for them that will not go away by itself.
3. The Satisfaction Step: The problem most have with the satisfaction step is that they provide three to three hundred different solutions. Stick with one. Just one solution that your audience can perform to satisfy their need.
An aside: While researching this, I came across an article on Pro Blogger by Sean Davis which uses monetizing a blog as a vehicle for explaining Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. The vitally important part of the article is his explanation of advocating your audience to take one action, not any more than. You can view the post here.
4. The Visualization Step: What encourages a person to take action more than anything? If they know it benefits them. This is the step in which you show them they can profit from your idea. The common trap is that people focus so much on how the world will benefit, how this industry will benefit, or how the economy will benefit. No. While that can all be added as support, be direct and show how your specific audience can benefit.
While my personal preference is to always create positive visualizations. You can also use negative and contrast methods of visualization. These angles are representative of how you describe the situation if your ideas are adopted, rejected, or both.
5. The Action Step: This is two-fold if you are looking to truly make an impact. First, your audience – if they don’t already – need to be told what you are doing to solve the problem. This plays on so many strings of human psychology. Secondly, this step is when you tell the audience what they can do. Simple as that.
Careful about repetition in your points, but some thing are meant to be repeated to add emphasis. Build the need. Use the 7 C’s of communication. Make sure your proposal is workable. Can they afford it, do they have time, are they able to do it, and most importantly (and why I added the part in the action step about you telling what you are already doing about the problem), are you credible?
The more questions you answer for yourself, the more action you create in others.
To evaluate a public relations project or campaign, you can use the SWOT analysis, a strategic planning method that allows you to get a better understanding of the situation so you can make justified and positive adjustments.
This tool, credited to Albert Humphrey, is one that, if done at the beginning of a project or start of a decision-making process, can certainly be returned to at any point of the projects implementation. This SWOT analysis is the core of your project, its foundation, that if you are ever lost while on the path to making a decision, you can simply refer back to your SWOT analysis to redirect yourself on a profitable course.
Strengths: Attributes of the organization that are helpful to achieving the objective.
Weaknesses: Attributes of the organization that are harmful to achieving the objective.
Opportunities: External conditions that are helpful to achieving the objective.
Threats: External conditions that are harmful to achieving the objective.
What you may have noticed is that this analysis focuses both on internal affairs as well as external. Strengths and Weaknesses are regarded distinctly as internal factors, whereas Opportunities and Threats are regarded distinctly as external factors.
It is extremely important to label the conditions and attributes correctly in relation to whether they are internal or eternal as it is this sort of labeling that assists you in prioritizing, classifying your actions in order of importance.
For a visual examples and more information on the SWOT analysis, I suggest visiting this site.
Go ahead. Do it. Jump.
But let me talk to you on your way down, let me connect with you, and share with you what you need to hear. My methods are like giving you doses of Redbull. However, I don’t give you wings. I show you that you already have them.
Stay Positive & Always Here To Help
Garth E. Beyer
Mr. Grunig and I have something in common. Other than the fact we (you included) are all fascinated with studying Public Relations, Grunig and I share a relationship with UW-Madison. Grunig received his Ph.D at UW-Madison and knowing this made writing this topic for you ever more interesting.
If you’re not yet aware, James E. Grunig is a Public Relations theorist and guru. He is well-known for creating the four models of Public Relations. Before I elaborate on those four models, you must understand a little about your public. After all, the public must be important since it is in the career Public Relations.
You probably haven’t had any experience running a Public Relations campaign. So what? Whether you are researching how to identify your public for your first campaign or hundredth, it’s always positive to review the basics.
We may define public, in simple terms to mean a group of people who having something in common. According to Broom, author of Cutlip and Center’s Effective Public Relations, public is defined as “people who are somehow mutually involved or interdependent with particular organizations.”
Let’s identify a public by looking at the public of whose in charge in the restaurant industry. You have a broad categorical in-charge public of Employer. Within that public there are Managers, the CEO, Stockholders, and other decision makers. Inside that public, there are more in depth ones. Managers for example is a public made up of Regional Managers, Assistant Managers, Store Managers, and so on. Categorically defining people is what it means to identify your public.
However, it goes much further than simply sorting skittles by color. This is where Grunig steps in and begins to build his four models of public relations.
Grunig had examined how specific publics behave toward issues and the messages that communicate them. In doing so, he identified four types.
All-issue publics are active on all issues.
Apathetic publics are absentminded and abeyant on all issues.
Single-issue publics are active on a rationed number of issues.
Hot-issue publics are responsive and participative on an issue after being exposed.
Believe it or not, Grunig goes even further to define publics. (Hey, he got famous because he kept defining publics after people were satisfied.)
Latent publics are flatly unaware of their relationship with a situation.
Aware publics understand the importance of an issue and how it relates to them, but have not produced any action.
Active publics are taking action on a particular issue.
Once you can define your public or in other words, your audience, to this level of depth, you are ready to decide which of Grunig’s four models of public relations you are to implement. Here they are.
I could go on to explain each model thoroughly but I have found this resource to help with that. You know it’s an extremely helpful source since he uses Seth Godin as an example.
Cheers.
Broom, G. M. (2009). Cutlip and Center’s effective public relations (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
