Communication

Using The Force And Letting The Force Use You

Garth Beyer

You need to force yourself to find something your passionate about, choose not to have a choice, and move forward.

In doing so, you’ll quickly find that the force you used to become passionate about something is then relayed back to you in the form of focus, more passion, understanding, and growth. In other words, the force uses you.

The force is a cycle which is continuous … so long as you add to it.

I’ve forced myself to be passionate about all forms of communication, specifically in the fields of media, journalism, and PR. (It’s been so long, and I believe that I’ve brainwashed myself, but I’m sure there was a point when I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, what I wanted to major in, or where I wanted to be in 20 years. But, by using the force, I’ve come to find my niche.) In doing so, in brainwashing myself, in using the force, I’ve become fascinated with absolutely anything related to communication. Find a way to turn me off, I dare you. Anyway…

This has benefited me immensely and never crippled me in any way. Using the force is like putting on a special pair of glasses. Now, all that you see is filtered through the force. I relate everything; whether it is history, art, politics, finances, or whatever, to communication. I’ve found a way to enjoy anything and everything because I view it in relation to communications. By forcing yourself to have appreciate and a passion for one field, it allows you to be passionate about anything in regards to it when it comes your way.

If it doesn’t make sense to you yet, let’s apply it to the workplace.

We have our jobs that we may or may not love to do (note to self: if not, go get it). In our jobs, there are dozens of tasks each month or each week that we don’t really enjoy doing. But, you will easily find, so long as you are forcing your passion for all areas of your job (the good and the bad) doing those tasks which normally you wouldn’t like to do can become enjoyable. In fact, once you force yourself, you’ll find that it will require less and less force as time goes on.

It’s not about biting the bullet, it’s about being able to enjoy its flavor.

Which sometimes requires force.

 

Stay Positive & I Have To Say It: May The Force Be With You

Garth E. Beyer

Meet By Chance

Garth Beyer

We meet few people by chance.

Every year we meet hundreds – and for some, thousands – of people willing to be a part of our lives, to benefit us in some way.

Pause and think of all the people who you considered as truly meeting last year. Was there something special attached to meeting that person? Did you help them? Did they assist you? Did one or both of you leave learning something? Are you still communicating and benefiting off each other’s energy?

You never meet anyone without something special transpiring from it. Every meet, all are opportunities in one experience or another. We are due them certain considerations as much as they are due us.

The people who get the most out of meeting someone are the ones who know there’s a reason for them meeting this person, and they are going to make sure they find it.

It’s not coincidence that the most successful people in the world have the most connections with other people, the most communications, the most meet-ups.

 

Stay Positive & Make This Year One Of Connectivity

Garth E. Beyer

Beginners In PR Trailblaze Their Way To Becoming True Specialists

Garth Beyer

You may be the Public Relations Specialist but, someone is almost always monitoring the direction you are going.

When you set out on a mission, when you formulate your tactics; where you will send your platoons of effort, you have a commander-in-chief approving it all.

Lucky for you, when you are just starting to become the professional PR Specialist you have dreamed about, you have a lot more freedom than you will once you become that professional. Unless of course, you take advantage of this initial freedom.

When you are starting up your PR career, you will be involved in mediums that may not matter too much to the world. Take for instance nearly any internship. You will typically be part of a group that gets told, “here are some ideas we have for you to work on, if you have any you would like to pitch, let’s hear it.”

The majority go off the ideas that are presented, a few build off them, and a rare couple actually pitch their own ideas.

(As a side note suggestion, pitch your idea on the spot, don’t wait. You will likely have a second idea once you acknowledge your freedom, so save that email asking to work on an idea you came up with for your second idea. Pitching your idea on the spot offers instant feedback, further awareness, additional respect, and special attention which is necessary for progression in the industry. Pitch on the spot, you won’t regret it.)

Those who pitch their own ideas and run with them – well, to put it blatantly – it doesn’t matter whether they turn out good or not. The point is that you are taking advantage of your freedom now in hopes that you will build your repertoire, your voice, your personal technique which will be so strong that when you enter PR professionally, you will be able to continue your work.

When starting up, you don’t get just one shot to enter PR professionally, you get one shot to trailblaze your way into it.

Progress While You Wait

Progress While You Wait

Garth Beyer

As much as we Public Relations Specialists pride ourselves with always being busy, there is a fair amount of waiting involved in every project.

It may be waiting for your source to tell you to come into her office, it may be waiting for the elevator to open for you (or the ride on the elevator), it may be a phone call that you absolutely can not miss, so you wait right next to it. The moments of waiting come in all sorts of variations of time, place, circumstance, and so on.

These moments of waiting are vital to your firm, agency, company, or organization you are representing. It’s in these moments of waiting that you are stripped of your title, any recognition people may have of you, and authority. To everyone passing by you, riding in that elevator, or wondering why you are hovering over your phone, you are just another normal blob in their world. You’re just another human being with nothing special to offer them. Or are you?

I just got home from the coffee shop. Waiting at the door of the apartment complex was a delivery person from a restaurant called Burrito (how original, but that’s not the point). We exchanged only a few sentences, but in those sentences, I could tell he made the most of his job, that he remained positive, that he was grateful for me even noticing him. He was sociable and wished me a great night.

You may be reading this and think that it’s normal. Is it though? When was the last time you actually talked to someone else’s delivery boy and left with a smile? It’s not normal, but it’s memorable.

Let’s jump back. What was the delivery boy doing again? Waiting. And no, I’m not going to order from the restaurant, simply because of the fact that I’m not fond of burritos, but what I will do (am doing) is talk about this experience.

Ask anyone in business which profits them more, one person buying a burrito, or one person writing and speaking to a thousand people about someone who works at the restaurant, basically promoting it? You obviously already know the answer, word of mouth is what makes businesses the most successful.

The delivery persons success could possibly be the same as anyone’s in PR. We all have to wait, but in that waiting, we can make a hundred little ruckus’, we can get people to talk about who we represent, we can very simply, provide an experience for them to remember – and of course the name of the company we are representing.

Next time when you tell someone you are waiting, don’t feel bad. Don’t feel that you’re not making any progress because you’re not working. Clearly, sometimes profits come more from waiting than they do working. It’s all a matter of you making it so.

“All The President’s Men”: A Journalist’s Review

Garth Beyer

The question was brought up whether anyone in class had any previous knowledge about the Watergate scandal. I’ve heard about it, in middle school we glided over it in history class, it gets referenced from time to time, but I couldn’t give you an actual summary about it.

I thought I would gain further background knowledge on the subject by watching the film “All the President’s Men” (1976), but, being blunt, I was disappointed. I thought that watching this movie would lead to a better understanding of what actually happened with the Watergate scandal, thus instilling me with an emotional reaction that I could use next time the scandal was referenced or brought up in conversation. In turn, and in playing increasingly close attention to the movie, I learned more about journalism than I did about the actual scandal.

To ease into what I learned, take for instance the immediacy that the reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward took in writing notes as soon as a conversation with someone ended. In fact, and if they could, they did their best to pull out notebooks during a conversation. While it’s not unexpected, I do recall reading a passage in our text “Telling True Stories” which hinted at being careful as to when you pull the notebook out and how you want to make the person you are interviewing think that it is not even there. As a side note of my journalism geekyness, I mimicked the reporter’s immediacy to writing the story after getting their notes, in writing this paper.

On a similar note (pun intended), there were a few interesting tactics which I noticed that Bernstein and Woodward used to acquire information. After all, there is no note taking if there is no information to write down. The first technique was quite obviously; get the person to like you. In one scene Bernstein had complimented and connected with a girl who in turn gave him some leads to follow. A second strategy was patience. During one phone conversation Woodward simply remained silent while the person on the other end would continuously add on to her story after a few moments of hearing no response from Woodward. She had felt obligated to continue talking. The last tactic I noticed was the infamous guilt trip. In a couple of scenes you found Woodward saying something similar to “we don’t want you to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable.” As a result, the person does what she was asked.

While on the subject of communication, there was a scene in which Woodward was speaking to someone who only knew Spanish. I feel there is an even greater need to know multiple languages in journalism. While there are plenty more translators, it’s a common understanding that people are more friendly and open to you when you attempt to speak to them in their language, when they feel that you are part of their culture and not an outsider.

Something that I feel that the majority of people underestimate about those in journalism is the level of critical thinking, philosophy, and reason in communication that the vocation requires. Woodward and Bernstein took an entirely different execution of good cop, bad cop in their interrogations. They had played off of each other to get the information they required to get answers or confirmations. As you likely noticed, there is an incredible amount of guess-work in reporting, but guesswork is perfectly fine when you can get confirmations. In order to get those confirmations, what do you have to do? Yes, you have to be persistent, but you must have an in-depth knowledge of how a person’s brain works.

All in all, the movie “All the President’s Men” clearly had the intention to divulge the lifestyle of a Journalist at the time, much more than communicating information of the Watergate scandal. The movie felt nothing like a documentary. To top this response off, here are a couple of my favorite lines.

“If you got’m by their balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

“How do you keep going with something you don’t believe in?

You just have to start over again.”

Persuasive Communication: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

Garth Beyer

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.

Overcoming Communication Palisades: Part One

Garth Beyer

Yesterday I posted a laundry list of various Communication Palisades.

Obviously there are hundreds of ways you can go and tweak each individual one. For the sake of this post, I will share with you the four step process to overcoming any and all of the communication palisades.

Step one: Whether it is before the communication takes place or after, to overcome the obstacles of communication, you must begin (or re-start) by focusing on preparedness and design. This involves returning to the source and encoding steps of the Shannon-Weaver Model. Is your message as specific as possible? Have you chosen the medium of encoding and the channel with the least amount of noise?

Step two: This step is about running ladders in conversation. At every distance, implement a reminder of the source of where the communication originated as well as the reason for communication. This frequent return not only strengthens the connection of communication, but it allows you to maintain the focus as much as it communicates it to the receiver.

Step three: Communication has to have a certain vivacity to it. Communication isn’t effective if it does not get others enthused, excited, interested, and maybe even a little bit turned on… at your ideas. This third step is vital for those who are communicating something bland, something generic that it’s even hard for you to be interested in. As a PR Specialist, there will be times that you have to swing something, but in a positive sense. What makes the swing negative is when you fake your enthusiasm, when you channel deceitful excitement. A true PR professional will work on convincing themselves of the subjects animation before expressing it to another.

Once you convince yourself, it’s much easier to convince others.

Step four: Flirt with benefits. Communication is a transaction and as you can imagine, the only transactions that seem to “work themselves out” are the ones where the other person feels they are getting a huge benefit out of it. Ask yourself, how can you benefit them? But don’t just answer it yourself, tell them!

Whether you are analyzing your communication strategy before it takes place or revisiting ways to strengthen a communication attempt you have already made, following these four steps will get you past almost every barrier.

The most important variable to consider while taking these steps is to be human. Be real. Be honest. Be caring. But above all, just be human.