Creating Human Presence in Your Media Message

Last week I wrote about what I learned in my post interview session with Michael Ray Dresser after he interviewed me on his show, Dresser After Dark. One of the main points he drove home to me was that I failed to offer even one example of how any of my workshop attendees, coaching clients or readers had used the principles I teach, use in coaching or include in my booklet, The Kabbalah of Conscious Creation, during our “conversation.”

In fact, when I asked him what I needed to do to improve my on-air presence or interviewing ability, the only thing he suggested was to “stop lecturing.” The explanation that went with that piece of advice can be found in the following guest blog post from Michael Ray. In it he explains the need to get people emotionally and personally involved in your media message.

If you think this has nothing to do with writing, think again. This is how you sell books. This is how you gain blog readers. This is how you write great articles. This is how you build your mailing list. This is how you become a sought after speaker and radio and television guest, which leads to becoming a best-selling author.

So, read on.

Creating Human Presence in Your Media Message
By Michael Ray Dresser

A brilliantly orchestrated interview or a presentation, whether you are speaking to the public through the media or in your office promoting your business services, is an acquired skill. It doesn’t just happen. It is learned. It is a process with a strategy, utilizing precise tactics and working toward a specific end result that has impact and influence. Everything you say and the way that you say it is planned, it is on purpose and deliberate. This allows your results to be intentional as opposed to accidental. This also represents the difference between luck and skill.

It starts by creating, then shaping, and finally delivering your message in a way that is engaging and, most importantly, personal for your audience. They have to see it, feel it and experience themselves as part of what you are saying, because if they do not perceive personal involvement, if it is not about them, you will lose them. Persuasion, a call to action of any kind, can not be stimulated without perceived personal involvement. The poet Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Being creative and resourceful are great traits, but without that “elusive something” that your audience needs to hear in your communication you can easily fall short of your desired goals. What they need to hear is that “something” that personally relates to them in their life.

The one reality of effective communication is the critical shift from you to them. The first step to making that shift involves developing a sense of human presence in what you communicate.  Your message has got to be about someone using the information, as opposed to just offering data or statistics. Your audience has to see themselves, they have to feel themselves, in what you’re saying, and they have to actually live your presentation.

You can relate to someone’s experience of something but not to just information and figures.  You can’t influence or persuade anyone to do anything without some them feeling some sense of personal involvement, some kind of recognition of them in what you’re saying.

About the Author

Radio show host and author of the forthcoming book “The Link to Connection: Techniques For Getting What You Want Out of Any Media Interview On or Off the Air” Michael Ray Dresser was born in Chicago, IL, but raised in the Los Angeles, CA, area. He came to Fairbanks, AK, in January 1983, for a short visit and made it his home for 20 years. Michael Ray sat down behind a microphone that summer for the first time and went on to become a pioneer in the development of talk radio in Fairbanks.

Today Michael Ray Dresser’s show, Dresser after Dark, features authors, experts and trainers from all over the country who offer diverse solutions to the listening audience on all types of lifestyle matters as well as business, political and financial areas of interest. He is well known for getting to the heart of the issue at hand.

Michael Ray returned the Midwest and now hosts his show from the Milwaukee area. The former owner of many successful businesses, Michael Ray currently devotes his time to his 27 year career as a thought-provoking radio talk show host as well as being sought after internationally for his unique media training skills.

www.dresserafterdark.com