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Successful communication by definition is where information is taken in and understood by the recipient. So in order to get your message across in a way that is readily understood, it is useful to have an understanding of thinking patterns.

The connections that a person makes when they receive information, and the way they represent ideas, memories and information is unique to each individual.  It is important to remember this in our communication.  We take in information through all our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell and this is represented in our minds as a combination of sensory systems.  These thinking patterns are how we ‘code’ our experiences.

The three predominant thinking patterns are:

• Visual – these people think in pictures. They represent ideas and information as mental images.
• Auditory – these people think in sounds.  They hear sounds, voices or noises.
• Feelings – these people represent thoughts and ideas as feelings, either internal emotions or the thought of touch.

We generally have a preference for some systems over others, both in the way we think and in the way we communicate.  In order to engage all of the thinking systems of our diverse audiences, to become powerful communicators we need to use tools that engage all of the senses. This not only ensures that your message gets heard loud and clear but your audience will be keen to hear more from you.

So how do we do this? Here are some of the things that we do at Changeworks Communications to engage and excite our audiences:

• Print – use language that is purposefully rich in all of the senses.  Capture and hold the audience’s attention by using language that taps into visual, auditory and feeling representational systems.
• Press releases - use html so that editors can read your sensory rich language in their web browser and then you can link to other integrated channels to help bring the story to life for them.  We use podcasts and videocasts as well as photography in tandem with the written word.  This ensures that all thinking systems are engaged and the editors love it because they can bring the story to life in their own thinking system.
• Internal communications – the use of web 2.0 tools and social media is fantastic to engage all senses.  The feeling based thinking styles love to interact and click and collaborate – blogs, networking sites, twitter based short messaging services, video and podcasting channels are fantastic tools, and very cost effective.  Get your people to engage with them directly and you have a powerful collaboration platform that brings everyone along with it.
• Telling stories – this is something that we love to use because it engages the auditory (sharing and passing on stories), the visual (good stories paint pictures in people’s minds), and the feeling mind (metaphor and emotion are interlinked – stories engage the heart as well as the mind).  Build storytelling into your communication and you cannot fail to engage.

We hope you enjoyed reading just some of the many ways to engage the full representational systems of the senses in your communication.  This is a powerful way to increase the effectiveness of your communications.  Contact Sue Tupling at Changeworks Communications to discuss more ideas for your organisation: sue@changeworkscom.co.uk.

Web 2.0 encourages us to embrace the chaos.  It takes us outside of our social circles and opens us to experience relationships and connections that choose us. We gain credits through ‘wuffie’,  or social capital, a term used to describe that the more we give away the more we gain.  For this is what social marketing is all about  – collaboration.  From what I can see, the new rules of business are being driven by web 2.0.  Openess, transparency and trust are needed in huge doses but the rewards are inspiring.

Where do you start though? MySpace, Facebook, ecademy, LinkedIn …. the list goes on. Even David Hasslehoff has launched a social site.  Here is a funny YouTube MySpace vs Facebook video that explores the differences! 

Facebook has come into its own for businesses to use to reach consumers, with great applications that users can add.  Innocent drinks uses it to generate buzz for its brand: it has nearly 8,000 fans for its Village Fete!  Heartmath use Facebook to builds its global business – CEO Bruce Cryer is always updating his network. With over 350 ‘friends’ (the average Facebooker has 100), Bruce is an inspiring example of an open and transparent CEO. As a business on Facebook you can add a page for your business, advertise this and build community around your brand with forums, groups and multimedia.  Facebook can store photos (not as comprehensive as Flickr) and videos through YouTube (but try Vimeo and Viddler too).  I think MySpace has been left behind.

However, for boosting your search engine rankings, I have found that LinkedIn and ecademy are great.  LinkedIn feels a bit stodgy and serious sometimes - but perhaps that is part of its appeal.  And it is worth the effort for SEO. 

ecademy is buzzing with life.  I love its ’50 words’ facility which not only helps with your business’s SEO rankings but helps you find ‘people like me’.  And its google SEO keyworks and description, coupled with carefully placed hyperlinks, do wonders too.  It also allows you to combine all your RSS feeds in one place (again great for universal search and SEO). But far beyond that is its potential for engaging you with associates, new and old friends and colleagues and expanding your business horizons.  It is so full of life that it can be overwhelming.

Happy social networking!  But remember to get some work done!

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We attended the Fuel conference in London on 13 June.  Transparency, integrity and interaction with customers was high on the agenda.  In this podcast we talk to Keir Whittaker from Carsonified, the organiser of the Fuel conference, about how Web 2.0 tools can help a business fuel its communication.

RSS is the most unassuming yet potentially the most powerful of the Web 2.0 tools. How about if you had a way of receiving news and information, in easy to read bite size snippets every hour, from sources that you trusted? And how about if you could scan your favourite 10 or 15 favourite websites on a daily basis for latest updates in less than a few minutes, so that you are ahead of the pace, hourly?  What about if these updates are fed to you when you want them. 

Think about how this will help you reduce information overload and keep you abreast of what is happening and keep you informed in your business and in your life.  Consider also how you can use a service to push information out from your blog and your website to people who are interested in what you have to say, delivered in a way that is personal and relevent to them and helps them reduce overload.

Really simple syndication (RSS) achieves this.  RSS allows aggregation of web content from multiple sources into one place. RSS content, from sources of your choice, is read by a feed reader.  It can work for podcasts, web sites, blogs. People can subscribe to your RSS feeds so that they get regular updates from your blog or website posted into their inbox or through their browser or feed reader. You can also have them subscribe to your blog updates via email so that they have blog updates posted to inbox.  RSS is the engine behind all this.

At Changeworks we believe that one of the most powerful uses of RSS is for internal communication, this tool is still in its infancy so watch this space!

Listen the second part of our podcast about the Logical Levels where Sue discusses some of the tools we use to effect behavioural change: 

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Go to Changeworks website to find out more about what we do, or contact us by phone (07703 023026) or email (info@changeworkscomms.co.uk)