Ep. 139. Master Your Message: How Controlled Messaging Can Change the World | with Ralph Brogden

Today our expert guest is Ralph Brogden, who helps smart people like you master your message, showing you how to package and promote your ideas for maximum impact, influence, and income.

Ralph is a best-selling author, publisher, and strategic communication consultant specializing in marketing and media. His clients have been featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, USA Today, The Huffington Post, and hundreds of nationally syndicated television, newspaper, and magazine outlets. He is a producer for Business Innovators Radio Network and the host of Rebelpreneur Radio for WCKG 102.3 FM in Chicago. He is also a former copywriter and marketing strategist for a digital media agency in New York.

Ralph had always been fascinated with the ways communication played a role in our world. We communicate to get people to buy products, to vote for certain politicians, and to try and change their habits and behaviors. That led him into a field called strategic communication, where he began to study how to influence the beliefs and behaviors of massive populations of people.

He wants to encourage people to use that power for good, but we are already seeing it being used in ways that are not very good. Kids are using these tools for cyberbullying, harming one another instead of helping them. It has become a professional and academic interest for Ralph to figure out how we can master our message to change the world and make a difference.

One of the key tenets of strategic communication that hold true across cultures is the power of storytelling, or narrative persuasion. We associate meaning through stories. It is something so native to humans that it is almost as if it’s in our DNA.

An example of this is with negative self talk. We tell ourselves stories about why we aren’t happy, why someone else is more successful. We could just as easily create a new story that empowers us instead of weakens us, and encourage others as well.

Everyone’s story is different, but there is still a process of 3 rules of communication that they all follow:

1. Have something worth say
2. Say it well
3. Say it often

There is also a 4-step process to follow when crafting your message:

1. Visual: People make judgements in a microsecond based on the way something looks (a web page, book cover, clothing, etc.)
2. Voice: Not just what you say, but how you say it. The language and voice that you use. This needs to be authentic to you instead of an imitation of someone else.
3. Vibe: How do you make people feel? People make decisions depending on whether it is emotionally relevant to them.
4. Value: No matter how great the other 3 factors, people want to know what it is worth to them. You need to solve a problem or deliver a result.

These four factors maximize the effect of communicating to people that you can solve their problem and create a result. And if you can’t, then you say that you can’t and move on. By bringing that level of authenticity to the conversation, everyone involved is going to feel better about the situation.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“If you master your message, everything else falls into place. You don’t have to struggle with marketing. You don’t have to struggle with a lack of self-confidence. You don’t have to struggle to attract customers, or clients, or whatever it is that you want to accomplish. If you master your message, it becomes magnetic. People are attracted to you, they want to do business with you, and it seems almost magical. Master your message, and your marketing will take care of itself.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at:  https://www.ralphbrogden.com
• LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphbrogden
• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/RalphBrogden
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/RalphBrogden
• Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/ralphbrogden

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media