Successful Blog

What IS Most Crucial to Influence? What Moves People to Action?

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Redux: I wrote this post in Dec. 2010. Based on recent conversation, it seems even more relevant now and so I choose to pick it up, add some clarity and publish a newer version this week.

The Outcomes We Achieve

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Every person has influence. What what we say, and how we act has an effect on how others think, feel, and behave. As a writer, an observer, and manager, I’ve watched and studied how people respond to what we do, what we say, and what they see.

As every parent and pet owner knows, sometimes the outcome we’re going for — a change in belief or behavior — isn’t the outcome we achieve. Our intent, our feelings toward an audience are only one side of the equation. How that audience interprets our words and deeds determines the change in belief or behavior that might result.

Our influence is highly affected by context.

  • The world view of the people we might influence. An individual’s emotional associations and beliefs can filter how people interpret our intentions, our words, and actions. A person who believes all learning must be their own experience will ignore a warning to avoid a dangerous part of town. A person who has only had bad experiences with people from our “group” may fight against any message we offer.
  • The value those people put on their relationship with us. Filters such as the halo effect and other cognitive biases, such as wishful thinking, can change how our message is processes and received.

We don’t control how other people think, what they feel, or how they interpret what they hear and see.

Though we may carefully consider and choose the most generous way to communicate and interact within those those contexts, the audience will choose their interpretation of that interaction. The same authentic, highly influential, collaborative message to one audience will be a disingenuous, controversial, alienating rebuff to another audience. We see that all of the time in the world of politics.

The most crucial element of influence is understanding what the audience already knows and already believes. If we want to influence people, to move them to an important action, to change their core beliefs, we need to know the audience, listen to their world view, champion their cause, and honor their reality.

Do likes, follows, impressions, site visits, retweets and the similar quick expressions of attention really qualify as actions. Have they influenced anything?

Don’t fool yourself by the game of numbers — don’t start thinking that 1 in X000 of those likes, follows, impressions, site visits, retweets and the similar quick expressions of attention will buy!!

The kind of influence that gets me to buy a product isn’t a result of a frivolous passing gesture on the Internet. Talk to the people who buy your products and ask …. what moved them to action? what got them to believe?

I know it’s a novel idea, but the people you want to influence know what will get and keep their attention and most of us would be relieved if you’d just ask.

How do you decide what will move people to action?

Be irresistible … and ask them.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

You’re Not Alone …

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about what we think about ourselves.

You’re not alone.
We’re all afraid.
How often I tell people that — wherever I go.
It seems to be my calling.

And our biggest fear, the one we live with daily doesn’t really sound big enough.
It’s not nuclear war, or terrorists, or even being homeless.
… though we have deep and sincere respect for dangers implied by those and more.

But our biggest fear is more dear and much closer.
We’re afraid of the ideas of ourselves we carry in our heads.
We’re afraid of not being seen, not being heard, not being understood.
We’re afraid of being lost without someone to show us how to find our way home again.

It’s not so crazy when the state of the economy has led us to question everything we’ve learned about authority and trust in leadership. It’s not crazy when we’ve learned to follow paved roads to everywhere we go. It’s not so crazy when we’ve learned what behaviors get us the right kind of attention … or they did when companies still cared about employees more than the bottom line.

The skies might be gray and you should know that.
But that’s a fact … not a mood-setting necessity.
Grey doesn’t have to mean bad times or things to fear.
Face the fear. Acknowledge the reality. And move on.

Put a new idea of yourself in your head.
Decide that people will see, hear. and understand — value the people who do and move away from those who don’t.
Move in the direction you would show your best friend or your child to go.

You’re bigger than the biggest fear.
Let yourself know.
Let the fear pass over you.
Move forward.

Be irresistible.

Liz's Signature

Be Still

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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“Still, still, still…one can hear the falling snow…” That’s the opening of my favorite Christmas carol.

It speaks to something buried deep inside us that craves absolute quiet and solitude. Picture a midnight snowfall, before the footprints. Picture being alone on the beach in the early morning. It doesn’t matter what your spiritual beliefs are, or your religious tradition, we all need to withdraw occasionally from the heat of battle and restore ourselves.

How does this relate to our online selves?

Here are some ideas:

  • White space on the website
  • Pause between questions in the conversation
  • Room to breathe
  • Remove one popup window
  • Say no to animated gifs
  • Clear every single thing off your desk
  • Offer a single button
  • Don’t pitch in every communication
  • Stop keyword stuffing
  • Think for a moment before typing a response
  • Don’t hold yourself to a 5 minute turnaround on all emails
  • Turn off the social alerts for part of the day
  • Cut back on the multitasking

And now that you’ve read this, sit up straight in your chair, close your eyes, and breathe in and out slowly five times. Be still for a moment.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Images & Words: Are You Ready to Make Opportunity and Change the World?

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When I started blogging in summer 2005, I wanted to keep the writer’s discipline of writing every day. No one could have predicted, that it would lead me to several blogs, a fabulous business partner, a conference and consulting business, and place in a fabulous community. When I started photographing the sunrise in spring 2011, I wanted to keep a writer’s discipline of remembering to look out my window every day. The photos are starting to write stories with me. Now I’m starting to wonder where that will lead …

How to Make Opportunity and Change the World

Our businesses and our lives are in a constant state of change. We can try to tie things down, keep things where they are. It’s a battle that we’ll never win. On the other hand, they say some things never change. And the more they change the more they stay the same.

Change is like the rain. It’s not good or bad. How we see it is what makes us think that.
Do you see change as a problem or an opportunity?

See the opportunities.

Do you live in the sun or the shadow?

It’s your choice you know.

Do you see the clouds on the horizon …
or the color beyond them?

Maybe it’s time to move your focus.

Sunrise looks empty without the clouds

Notice how everything contributes.

Sunrise – sometimes it’s where you look for it.

Find and define new ways of seeing things.

Carry a sunrise in your heart today!

Shed light on the good things that you can make happen.

Problems and opportunities are the same things seen with a different attitude.
The minute we quit fighting a problem it becomes an opportunity.

To make opportunity, we need to trust enough to see what we’re not yet imagining.
To change the world, we probably should change how we see what’s wrong with it.

Are you ready to make opportunity and change the world?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Beach Notes: Surf carnival

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Surf carnival at Tallebudgera, Queensland, with surfboats ready to race. The surfboat, with a team of rowers and a sweep, used to be part of the basic surf rescue setup on Australian beaches. They were used when individual lifesavers on long reel lines could not get beyond the breakers for a rescue or for mass rescues.

These days they have given way to inflatable rescue craft. Now the surfboats are used for feats of strength and skill and have become the centre of a flourishing sub-culture within the volunteer surf lifesaving movement.

The surfboats were traditionally crewed by males only, when the surf lifesaving clubs were male only. There are now many all women crews, although we have noticed sometimes, when we’ve seen women crews practising locally, that they have a male sweep on board.

Man or woman, a surfboat is no place for the faint-hearted. There is an old joke that when surf clubs were choosing their boat crews they would line up the contenders and throw bricks at them: the ones who didn’t duck got to be on the crew.

How do you choose your crew?

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh