The No.1 filter for increasing connection
Ask yourself this one simple question to enhance the impact of your communication
Firstly, thank you to everyone who took the time to answer the five poll questions in last week’s edition. The survey will remain open so if you missed it, please take a minute (literally only one minute!) to let me know your preferences.
Surprising to me was the preferred day to receive this newsletter – Friday is currently leading the poll! In terms of format, the majority of responses so far indicate a preference for a combination of short, sharp posts and longer form content. With that in mind, today’s piece is super snappy – but I guarantee you, if you really take the time to consider this question, it will transform the impact of your communication.
The most underrated technique for improving the impact of your communication is asking yourself: Why should my audience care about this?
When I work with people on presenting their ideas or developing their communication, this is the question we start with.
It sounds very simple and ‘101’ – but I consistently find that spending a few minutes workshopping this question in relation to the messages we need to get across, results in very different positioning. Sometimes it even changes the medium we use.
What’s with the WIFM?
The WIFM – or What’s In it For Me – filter is commonly known among marketers and advertising professionals, but it’s just as powerful for anyone considering how to get more audience engagement.
Often, we get so caught up in communicating what we know about a topic, or the message we think our audience should know – but forget to consider why it matters to them and what they really need to know.
I recently worked with a client who had to give a data-heavy presentation to two completely different audience groups – both were professional, educated communities, but their specialties and contexts were completely different. While the presentation title and most of the slides stayed the same, spending time investigating the WIFM for each group meant we framed the key messages, context and language completely differently.
Consequently, my client saw increased audience engagement for a presentation that she had given six times over the past year – but until recently, had been presenting it in much the same way regardless of context.
The WIFM filter is not about making your message salesy or untrue. It is about making it relevant, meaningful, and removing anything that’s interesting to you but not pertinent to your audience. It’s also about removing the superfluous information that doesn’t serve your message, and adding any necessary context that might not be as obvious to your audience as it is to you.
Think about what will be most interesting to your reader or listener, rather than just what you want to say.
The better you understand your audience and what they want (or need) to know, the better your communication will be – because when you’re clearly thinking through the WIFM filter, you’ll naturally tailor your content and language to best suit.
I’d love to hear any thoughts, questions or experiences you’d like to share in the comments section.
Thank you for being here,
Larissa