Empathy

The better you understand your audiences and tailor your messages to them, the more influential you will be. Delivering the most logically satisfying argument is often counterproductive while making a more concise and palatable appeal to an audence's nature will make progress.

Targeting & Tailoring

• Targeting is aiming your media to reach desired audiences.
• Tailoring is choosing your message to get a favorable response from an audience.

You have to understand how a person thinks to communicate with them effectively. You can tell when someone comes from empathy or hostility and you will react accordingly. They might use neutral language but if their attitude seems patronizing or dismissive you will react defensively.

Understand Your Audience Before You Open Your Mouth

Your message should be tailored to influence your audience by maximizing the interaction of message ideas with the audience’s ideas.

You're Someone's Target Audience

Think of yourself and your idea profile. You are someone else’s target audience. How do they define you? How could they try to manipulate you?

Pandering

Sometimes media gets accused of "pandering to their audience" when they do something others find objectionable in order to maximize their popularity with their target audience.

What is Nonviolent Communication?

NVC language strengthens our ability to inspire compassion from others and respond compassionately to others and ourselves.
NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves, how we hear others and resolve conflicts by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting."

—Non-Violent Communication

"There's a stick. You can beat people with it, but they'll most likely resent you for it and, when the time comes due, they'll most likely turn on you, grab the stick and beat you ten times over what you gave them back when you were holding it."

"There's a carrot. Offer it to people, teach them that it's nutritionally rewarding, that it tastes good, that it'll fill their bellies, that they can mix it with other stuff and, best of all, they can grow their own carrots and become self-sufficient. They probably won't try to beat you with the carrot somewhere down the road."

"It seems counter-productive to me, trying to get a message across by inspiring people to abhor you and, thus, most likely your message as well."

—?