How is persuasion different from informing? In a sense, it's just
a change in emphasis.
Rather than trying to inform first, you, well, try to move beyond
information about and move
into information why.
You're moving from relatively objective to self-admittedly subjective.
Important Concept: polysemy:
When a statement can have multiple meanings. "Picture a bee
resting on a flower..."
Step 1: Determine your purpose.
Strengthen Commitment
Lessen Commitment
Convert
Induce Action (Call to Action speech is this one)
Step 2: Describe and anticipate your audience
What do they already know? How
are the predisposed to react to your topic?
Step 3: Plan your strategy
When strengthening commitment, you want to emphasize the
seriousness (importance) of your issues and its urgency (timeliness).
For weakening commitment and converting, you're going to refute a
belief or set of beliefs. Ensure that you're not oversimplifying
what you're attacking (no straw arguments). And make sure that
you attack weak areas first to build doubt. If you immediately
attack the core of an issue, you're likely to fail. If you find
weaknesses at the edges, you can slowly win over your audience.
Motivational Sequence:
Introduction -- attention step.
Body -- need, satisfaction, and visualization [of satisfaction] steps.
Conclusion -- action step.
Find the needs, satisfaction, visualization, and action steps in the
following commercial.
Inducing Specific Action
Identify the Desired Action Precisely -- be specific. General calls to action are not, as a rule, especially helpful.
Make the Action as Easy to Perform as Possible -- You want to
both avoid the "boomerang
effect" (okay, honestly that's the worst Wikipedia
page I believe I've ever seen. We should fix it. For now, try
this,
which is similar yet very different from what's in the book)
and actually get something done..