The pandemic has caught everyone off guard, especially with the sudden need to shift to digital communication. A lot of us haven't necessarily been used to this, but what if we could close the gap between online communication and in-person interaction using a simple method? Digital Persuasion by Erin King is the ultimate guide for breaking through the restrictions of digital communication by learning a more effective communication style.
Many people already struggled with communication pre-pandemic, and those difficulties have been highlighted even more since the move to digital communication. The world has changed, and it likely won't be returning to the way it was. We then need to learn how to bridge the gap between being our in-person self and our digital self. In this video, we tackle how we can address this with Erin King.
Erin has been running 2 eCommerce companies and 1 social media agency. She's spent a lot of time working with sales and marketing organizations, helping them figure out how to level up their behind-the-screen communication. She has tested hundreds of strategies and campaigns, which taught her what communication styles work and what doesn’t.
Depending on where you are in the world, you may find that most of your communication has gone online. And you'll find that people simply don’t type like they talk. A 2019 study actually found that people are 34 times more persuasive in person than they are on screen.
A lot of our communication has become asynchronous - from emails that are read hours after they're sent, to comments that are replied to days after posting - save for video calls, digital communication has definitely been different from the face-to-face and real-time conversations that we're used to.
Online communication has paved the way for us to lower our inhibitions. We tend to lack restraint and show up online in ways that we wouldn't be bold enough to in real life. While it can be positive in some aspects, we can end up talking about OURSELVES, OUR agenda, and what WE want a little too much - and the word “I” is the least persuasive word in communication, not to mention how the intention behind it can also be misinterpreted.
If your audience can’t see facial expressions or gestures, getting your intentions and meaning across can be very difficult. They're probably also loaded with messages in their inbox which means you have to make sure that your message and communi
-------------------- ABOUT PETER BOOLKAH --------------------
Peter Boolkah (AKA The Transition Guy) is the World’s #1 Business Transition Coach whose main passion in life is to work with talented and high performing business owners who are in the process of creating exciting, high growth businesses.
Peter helps you to navigate and transition through the crucial growth pains that all growing businesses experience making it as painless and exciting as possible.
It is important to remember that businesses do not just grow and develop on their own, it is up to us and our teams to make this happen by making every day purposeful.
As businesses grow some parts of the journey will be easier than others and most owners do not have all the answers. Starting a business is one of the most exciting things we get to do and we all have aspirations of achieving great things. In fact Peter is yet to meet someone who started a business with the intention of failing.
Peter’s ultimate life goal is to inspire and empower over 100,000 Entrepreneurs to create long term thriving businesses resulting in the creation of 1,000,000 jobs.
So if you are scaling up your business, you’re in a bu...
(upbeat music)- Hi, Peter Boolkah here and welcome to today's edition of The Transition Guy. Now joining me today in the studio, Erin King, 3X entrepreneur and author of "Digital Persuasion". Hello, Erin.- Hi, Peter. How are you?- I'm absolutely fine. How you doing?- I'm doing great. Great to meet you and be with you here today with your crew.- Thank you, and one of the reasons why we got you onto today's episode was you've actually covered a topic quite well in terms of how to communicate digitally. And I find that we're now in a situation where the world has totally changed. I very much that it's ever gonna go back to the way it was and we have to learn how to bridge the gap between being in our person self and our digital self. And the challenge that I've noticed that previously, a lot of people, their communication totally sucks prior to the pandemic. And since we've been so online where people haven't been strong, it's just been totally magnified and we need to address this issue and I thought who better to come and help us with that than you?- Well, thank you, and I'm honored to be invited and to show up and serve your tribe. We're all just experts of our experiences. And from my experiences, running three organizations, two e-commerce companies, and one social media agency, I've just spent a lot of time working with sales and marketing organizations to help them figure out how they can level up, how they show up from behind the screen. So the only thing that makes me any more of an expert than anyone else is we've just tried hundreds of strategies and campaigns, learned a lot about what definitely does not work at all, and a little bit about what does, which I can share with you today on this podcast. So let's start with sort of the problem. I mean, you outlined it beautifully in that introduction. The problem is that we weren't great at this before the pandemic and then being on lockdown, whether you're in Canada and you're on full lockdown or you're in the UK and you're coming out of the five months or you're in the United States, where everyone's like, "What pandemic? Depending on where you are in the world, you may have noticed that you are still gonna be spending quite a bit of time behind a screen doing business, running your company, and people are not rushing it to return to in-person as fast as maybe some of the more legacy industry CEOs would like. And so the problem that we face is that we really don't type like we talk. We really, really don't type like we talk. And although we spend more time on Zooms and our "Brady Bunch" boxes at our FaceTimes, we still send a fair amount of email. We still send a fair amount of texts. On social, a lot of is still captions and comments and DMs. So we're still in this world of writing. Well, the challenge that we find and the reason that, to you use your word,"People suck at it so badly," is for a couple of reasons. So first of all, there was a study that came out in 2019, right before the pandemic actually, and the study found that not only are we more persuasive face-to-face in-person, which of course, Peter, you know, but it turns out we are 34 times more persuasive face-to-face than we are behind screens. So this was published in the "Journal of Experimental Psychology", and they found that like, let's say, for example, you send 200 digital messages to ask someone,"Will you meet with me? Will you give me a chance? Will you look at this proposal or look at this presentation?" It takes 200 digital requests to equal the same number of yeses as just six in-person asks. So 34 times more persuasive offline versus online is not like a little bit. That's a Grand Canyon-sized gap between who you are in person and who you are in the digital world. And so why you're seeing people suck is that when you look at how we communicate behind screens, because we can't see people nodding their head, like I can see you right now nodding your head, right? So we have the non-verbal, but oftentimes, we can't see someone like rolling their eyes or crossing their arms, we can't see all that body language. There's a physical distance, like you're in the UK, I'm in California. And then the third thing is oftentimes, a lot of our digital communication is asynchronistic. So there's a delay between the message that you send out and the response that you received, the little bubbles in a text message or you posting on social media, someone comments three days later. So there's all these factors coming together and they lower our inhibitions, psychologists call it the online disinhibition effect. Our inhibitions are lowered, and because of all these factors, we show up online in ways we wouldn't be bold or rude or dumb enough to in real life. So this is what's happening, right? So when you look at the amount of time when you are texting, typing, tweeting, using all these digital communication techniques, you talk about yourself about 80% of the time because of all these reasons we just talked about. Offline, if you're in a normal conversation like a Zoom, where you can see each other or you're getting together having a coffee or you're having a meeting in a boardroom, you only talk about you and your wants and your needs about 40% of the time, half the time. So the reason that we suck at digital communication is because we talk about ourselves, our mission, what we want, and the word "I" is the least persuasive word in language. So persuasion is personal, that's the truth we can all agree on. And so if you think about persuasion being personal, and yet all these factors setting us up to not be our most persuasive selves online, it forces us to re-examine and be more intentional about how we just fire off an email or shoot that text or post that post.- The obvious question's gonna be,"Well, what can I do better?"- Yeah. I got you on that one, Peter. So in my book, "Digital Persuasion", I share a method that I've developed over the last 10 years in working with organizations, Visa, Siemens, Hitachi, Johnson & Johnson, you name it. And the method is called the PUB method. And this method was developed by, we created an algorithm and we ran all of our sales and marketing and leadership messages through this algorithm to uncover patterns between what types of language you can type that affect the most action, that affects the most influence, that drive people to actually make change. And what we found was there are three elements to a message that will increase your influence, that will attract more attention, and that will enable you to show up more persuasively from behind the screen. And the three elements are this, it's PUB, right? So it's personal, useful, brief. So in the first 10 words of an email, when you look at your email, for example, I don't know about you, but I'm always scrolling through, and like my LinkedIn inbox, for example, it's just a jungle of people trying to sell me crap, right? Everyone's like, "I'm Peter, and I work for this and I want this and I wanted to reach out," and all this generic stuff. And the problem is you and I are getting like 500 messages a day at least and when you're going through your inbox in about one second, you don't even know why, right? Your brain's like, "I care. I don't care. Important, not important. Delete or open," right?- I deal with the emails all the time.- Yeah, and you probably don't even know why you do it. You're just like this matters, this doesn't matter. I'm just trying to like tread water out of his inbox nightmare, this jungle, right? Like hack your way with a machete through the digital jungle of this inbox. And so what it is is that in about 10 words in about 2.5 seconds, your brain is reading that little snippet, that little preview of an email or a text or whatever. In the first 10 words, your brain is deciding,"This matters to me or it doesn't." And so the power of the preview, those first 10 words cannot be underestimated. So for example, most people just literate with "I" bombs and "My" bombs, and immediately when you see someone saying, "I, I, I, I, I," which everyone does."My name is, I wanted to reach out," exactly, you're like, "I don't see myself in focus. This doesn't matter to me. It's not about me. It's not gonna help me." So you move on. So the very simple switch that I teach these different organizations that I work with is to be super intentional about flipping the focus of those first 10 words. So we've all these magic phrases in the book that we talk about, the most effective one from a results, like KPI data standpoint that we've tested over the last 10 years is this, this is the magic phrase,"Peter," let's say, I wanna get on your podcast or I want you to come in and do something and don't know me, right? I'm just a total stranger off the streets. Most people would say, "Hi, Peter, I wanted to reach out." Instead, what I would say was,"Peter, it looks like you.""It looks like you" is the most magical phrase because if you see "It looks like you," you immediately stop your scroll, you lean forward and you're like, "Go on about me," right? What were gonna say about me?" So we have used this technique to double our open rates of reaching out cold to prospects and different leaders. And so what you wanna do is you want to say,"It looks like you," and then follow it up with someone, something or somewhere that you either have in common or can comment on. It's such a simple thing. So for example, I looked you up before we got in this podcast, okay? Now, I don't know you, we're not best friends, but if I sent you a message and I said,"Hi, Peter, it looks like you're The Transition Guy and that you help entrepreneurs," and I repeat sort of like what you're doing. It's not going to make us best friends, your guard's still gonna be up, but at least you're gonna open it. You're at least gonna give me a shot at bat versus immediately just discounting me.- Yeah, it doesn't come under digital vomit, does it?- Exactly. So that's one, like very simple, simple step, is to open something personal. Then you wanna make sure you're offering something useful. So P-U-B, PUB before you publish. Personal is the first thing. Offering useful. Offering something useful is not just telling them more about you, but it's offering something of value to them. So if I'm reaching out, let's say like,"I wanted to be on your podcast and I want to stand out from the 50 million entrepreneurs that I'm sure are always like, "Peter, get me on your podcast, I wanna get in front of your audience." And you're like, "Cool, you're one of 100 people that want to talk to me." Delete, delete, delete. So what I would say to be useful is I would say,"Peter, here's an idea for your podcast because the pandemic has everyone super confused about how we level up, how we show up behind the screen, what if we could show your audience a way to close that gap using a simple method? That's all I would say, then you're like,"Well, that would be of value, that's useful to my audience, right?" And then the last step, and this is the most important step that everyone screws up, is brief. Keep it brilliantly, blessedly brief. Do not say, "Let me know." Do you not say, repeat yourself, the multi-scroller, great wall of text were just like,"All this reading." People know how it works. They know that if they're interested, they respond, you don't have to coach them, you don't have to tell them. And again, you wanna differentiate yourself from every other, to use your word,"Digital vomit" in our inbox. So you open with personally, you offer something very useful, and you keep it brief. This goes for leadership, talking to your team to get them on board. This goes form coworkers, peers, people you're managing. This goes for sales marketing. This method is so simple, but what it does is it just allows you to break through that scientific fact that we are scientifically set up, 34 times less persuasive. We are not supposed to be good at this. Screens are not our inherent natural environment. So this little method, it just reminds you to behave more like you already do in real life. It triggers you to remember, to act more like an empathetic, persuasive, powerful human being from behind the screen.- And I think that's a really important point because a lot of people tend to forget that. And you're pointed back 200 messages before you get a response. I mean, that's huge. And a lot of people have thought,"Yeah, being in lockdown, not having to do the traveling, and think,"I will get my time back." A lot of people have found that they're peddling faster and harder now than ever before. And they're blaming it on the pandemic when actually, although the pandemic itself might play a part, it may not necessarily be the pandemic only. It could be the fact that they're actually ineffective communicating from behind the screen.- Yup. And to your point, it's not going away, right? This is not something, I mean, my brother works for Google and they are currently having conversations what's it gonna look like? Is it one day a week? Is it two days a week in the office? You have the CEO of WeWork. Obviously, he was just at a summit last week talking about how, I'm sure you probably saw this, he's like,"Everybody needs to get back in the office." Well, I wonder why he thinks that's important, right? The guy owns all the commercial real estate.- Exactly.- I mean, there's definitely a shift that we know, we're in the midst of. We don't know how it's gonna impact business and how we do business long-term, but we know for certain is that it will never go back to the way it was.- And if anything, as technology progresses, as people have more access to technology, the reality is behind the screen is going to play a bigger and bigger part of our lives. I would even say that this is just the beginning. Maybe this is the kind of stuff they need to be teaching at school so when people come out of school, they're well prepared for the road ahead of them.- Yup, and it's interesting'cause once you start to become aware of how you're typing and not just sending off messages, like firing off emails, firing off texts, once you realize that messages in today's business world are moment makers, you will start to treat them differently. Once you realize that what used to be something that came so naturally to you, the elevator pitch, running into someone at the water cooler, walking into the boardroom and using your charisma and your charm or your natural vibe to get people on board with you, all these things had been taken away. And so the messages that you are sending, whether it's sales, marketing, leadership, whatever, internal communication, to get people rowing in the same direction as you, you have to think about how you can elevate that and not just fire it off like how you normally would. But when you add that intentionality, when you flip the focus, when you even on social media, for example. A lot of people are using social media a lot more to have their viewpoint heard, to broaden their footprint as an organization. Well, the same principle applies. When you are posting a photo of your CEO and you're posting a photo of the product or the service or whatever, and then you just shout about yourself, yes, fans who love Peter and they love The Transition Guy and they love your brand, they're gonna be like, "Yay, Peter." But if you want to get out beyond your existing sphere of influence, your existing X amount of people that already love you, you wanna broaden that footprint.- There is no, "Yay, Peter," to the outside world. To the tribe, there'll be, "Yay, Peter." I can tell you there'll be some other terms coming out because they don't wanna know about me, they wanna know about them, don't they?- Yeah, and so what you can do is because it's your social media, obviously, it's Peter. This is Peter's podcast, Peter's photo, so show about you, but type about them. Show about you visually, but type about them verbally. And the fastest way to, it sounds easy, like sweat and eat vegetables and you lose 10 pounds, we know it's harder to do that, easier said than done. So what you can do is a very simple indicator to know if you are typing persuasively and you are being intentional about how you're showing up from behind the screen, is be really, really aware of your I to you ratio. If you come through your posts and you come through your emails and you come through your texts, how often are you using the word, "I, we, our, my," how often are you using the word "You?" And by that simple, by cutting your Is in half and bumping up your yous, it forces your brain, it forces your communication style to flip the focus and come from a place of service and hit the pain points of your recipient and present what matters to the people that you're trying to get on board with you. And this very, very super, I mean, I've been teaching this for five years, and this morning I wrote an email to someone on my team and I almost hit Send, and then I realized it was all about what I needed to have happen, what I wanted,"I, I, I," and I was like, "Goddamn it." And I was like, (Erin growls). So I went back and I re-read it and I flipped the focus and I was like, "If you want to," and I looked at the before and after I'm like,"Man, this thing works. It's a good method. I'm glad I teach this." But we preach it, we have to know the most, right? So sent it and sure enough, she came back, she's like,"Okay, we got you boss, we're onboard." But had I sent the I bomb,"What I need, me, me, me?" She'd been like, eye roll,"We'll get to it when we get to it," right? So it really is important to think about.- Yeah, and at the end of the day, like you said, in-person charisma, I do believe that you can have charisma from behind the screen, you just gotta learn to craft it as you said because words really can emphasize charisma just how you are, you just gotta learn the new skill.- Yep.- So I have people sort of tuning into today's episode. What do they need to do first because they'll then go say, "Okay, yep, what you're saying is great, what's my first step?"- Well, obviously, to read "Digital Persuasion" is the first step.- Of course.- It's an easy read, lots of pictures, big fonts. I made it so that you can read it on a plane from LA to New York with time for a cocktail. It is like a three-and-a-half hour read, but it really is a game changer. It has a lot of scripts and examples. But if you don't wanna read the book, what you could do today is just from your very next message when you start writing an email or social media posts, just look at those first 10 words and say,"Am I maximizing the power of the preview? Is it laced with I bombs?" Or can I flip the focus and say, "It looks like you, have you ever, imagine that you, so there you are." Anything that forces your brain to get a little more creative and ensure that your recipient is the one in focus to amp up that persuasion power and increase the chances of them leaning forward, stopping their scroll, and saying, "Tell me more, versus just deleting you, ignoring you, or giving you a perfunctory response like, "We'll let you know."- Brilliant, thank you. And if people wanna know more about you, where do they go?- They can go to erinking.com.- That simple. Well, I think there's some really great nuggets of information and actually a good practical tips that people can employ straight away to make a big change. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today's episode, Erin. It's been an amazing set of learning. So thank you very much for sharing. If anything has resonated with you today, and you want more information, head over to boolkah.com and get in touch. And if you love today's episode, please like it, share it, and make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Erin, once again, thank you so much for coming in and sharing your tips and practical advice. And most importantly, everyone, remember,"Failing to learn is learning to fail." Please stay safe and take care.(upbeat music)