If you’d like to convince your readers to agree with your viewpoint or do something, persuasion is the best way to present your case that others find useful to agree with. You just provide them with an offer they cannot refuse, but make sure you’re not manipulative. Luckily, there are many techniques that can ease your life and they actually work!
You should know that the word “because” has a huge power. The point is that your reader will easily agree with you if you simply provide him with a reason WHY…even if it makes no sense. The thing is that we do not like to be asked to take some action without logical and reasonable explanation. When you need people around you to become receptive to your way of thinking, always provide the reasons why!
Consistency in our actions and thoughts is a valued social feature. We do not like to be seen inconsistent, while, whether reasonable or not, that feature is linked with flightiness and instability, while consistency is usually associated with behaviour based on reason.
Make use of this in the writing process by getting your audience agree with something that the majority of people would have tough times disagreeing with. Then you have to thoroughly make your case, using loads of supporting evidence, all while linking your crucial point back to the opening state that has been already accepted.
While working on your project, remember, your best friend is analogies, similes and metaphors. When you have an opportunity to link your scenario to something that your audience has already accepted as a true life fact, you’re definitely on your way to successfully persuading someone to see the things the way you see.
This is the persuasion method that serves as an overall approach to dealing with your case. The first step is to identify the quality of your audience and the problem. Next step – your reader’s pain agitation before providing your solution as the answer that can make everything better.
Remember, the agitation phase doesn’t mean you should be sadistic – your task is about being empathetic. You’d like your readers to know clearly that you realize what kind of problem he has because you’ve already faced it. The credibility of the solution provided by you will go way up if you show you really go through the prospect’s pain.
Demonstrate for your reader a short glimpse into the future. If you feel like you’re able to present the extrapolation of current events into the most possible outcomes in a convincing manner, then you must have a money print licence.
The whole strategy is based on credibility. If you do not really understand what you’re talking about, at the end you’ll definitely look like a fool. But in case you’re able to back up all your sayings with credentials of your subject matter obvious grasp, this is a tremendously persuasive technique.
If you provide all your cases and there’s someone left thinking something like “well, yeah, but…” your game is over. That is the reason why the majority of direct marketers make use of long copy – of course, you won’t read it till the very end, but you’ve a chance to read enough till the moment you make a decision to make a purchase.
If you address all the potential objections of the majority of your readers (as a minimum) this will be enough, but if you’re 100% aware of your subject all the arguments against the one you have should be quite obvious. If you believe that there are no logical objections to the position you take, you are about to get a real shock of you don’t have any comments enabled.
This is actually a catch-all method – you have to make use of it together with all the tips provided above. But the key reason why storytelling is so successful is in the core of what persuasion really is.
By means of storytelling you can persuade yourself, and that is what it all is really about. Do your best to tell better stories to finally make sure you’re quite persuasive.
