| Meaningful Influence | |
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Influential Communications, Inc. |
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What is Meaningful Influence?Meaningful influence means appealling to what really matters. People have always acted on what is most meaningful to them. Meaning drives religions, nations, families and every passionate endeavor. We only have emotions when something means something to us. We take action on what matters most. Today, we are saturated with sales offers and bids for our attention. We are inundated by information overload. We are tired of being manipulated. We want to be acknowledged for who we are or who we want to be. Once beyond survival and utility, everyone desires to express more of who they are. They do this by how they speak and how they act. And they can also do this by what they own and what they use. Go to any superstore and you can see this in action. Once a product becomes a commodity, the differences between them are all about identity. Take a simple CD player as an example. Every consumer electronics maker produces them. And what are the different models? Sports, High Tech, Designer, Slimline, Multi-purpose - the names are practically identity niche markets as the individual buyers express themselves with their purchases. The CD player, their CD player, becomes a symbol of their lifestyle, an expression of their metaphor of identity. And it's that way with everything! A car is not just car, or a house just a house, or clothes just clothes. We are, all of us, living as much in our imaginations as in the real world. People have been influenced by appealing to who they are or who they want to be for as long a people have been around. In a real sense, meaning is the oldest form of influence. What makes it new now is that more than any other time in history, people want to be somebody. The more you can help bring that somebody into focus for someone, the more influential you will be. This approach does not contradict other forms of influence. For example, social influence, made famous by Robert Cialdini, works because we are social creatures. We respond to authority, notice friendliness, try to reciprocate, and keep our commitments. And before any one of those things can happen, meaning must have been made. After all, who's the authority here? What's friendliness where you come from? Which commitments do you keep? This sets social influence on a new and personal level. By learning what matters most to individuals, you can learn to make your communications a more natural "fit" for the individual, and expand and increase your capacity for influence. |
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