Persuasive communication is informing, encouraging, and convincing to get across a specific point of view.
In talent marketing and communication, we must be persuasive all the time. Otherwise our messages fail to influence and impact. When you learn to persuade others well, they take your word for it.
In this week’s episode of the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast, I talk about persuasive communication in talent marketing.
Check out episode 52 in which I introduce “Persuasion in talent marketing” >>
Check out episode 53 “Being more persuasive in talent acquisition” >>
Why persuasive communication skills are so essential in employer branding and other talent marketing?
Persuasion skills are much more essential in employer branding and other talent marketing than for example being creative and coming up with new ideas all the time.
The point of all business communication is to inform, strengthen or change preconceived notions of the target audiences, and make them take your word for it.
What are key persuasion skills?
- Knowing how to be a great communicator and getting your message right.
- Active listening to understand the other person’s view points.
- Emotional intelligence to connect better with your audience.
- Logic and reasoning to help others understand your point of view.
- Establishing credibility through trust.
Listen to episode 87 in the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast with Susanna Rantanen
In this episode:
- What is persuasive communication?
- What happens if you don’t become more persuasive in talent communication?
- In where do you need to apply persuasive communication and marketing skills in talent marketing?
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How to learn persuasive communication?
I recommend paying attention to your choice of words and expressions as well as the reactions and responses of your audience. In talent communication and marketing it should not be hard. After all, you are working mostly online and engagement data is at your finger tips. All you need to do is pay attention and analyze what you see.
Apply tactics such as:
- Create employer brand content that makes your talent advocates see them as social currency. Social currency are content who you want to share to your followers and networks because you want to be seen as a source for really good content.
- Use trigger words that stick to those minds of your audiences. When you connect your unique trigger word to your context over and over again, just hearing or seeing the word triggers your audience to think about your company as a place to work.
- Apply emotion into your content. Nobody wants to rub their eyeballs on a grater of dull, irrelevant content.
- Expose your target audiences onto your message and content by sharing them multiple times – and then again in your social networks. You should be surprised how many times the same piece of content could be promoted for it to get even a reasonable traction.
- Offer practical, quickly useful value through your employer branding content, such as tips and advice. This type of content when made well often appeals as social currency as well and gets other people to re-share.
- Storytelling continues to the most powerful tactic to build employer brand affinity. That’s why it is in such a central role in the Magnetic Employer Branding Method™️. Actual stories (not narratives) persuade because of the scientifically proven impact a story has on the recipient’s brain.
Persuasive communication appeal to emotion and to logical mind
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman argues that our brain organizes and experiences information through two systems:
- System 1 is mostly unconscious mind that works almost like on an autopilot hacking incoming signals and information really fast on an instinct and emotion.
- System 2 is the conscious mind, that is deliberate, analytical and much slower in the sense-making process.
For us to be persuasive, it isn’t enough to appeal to the logical mind. People get on board to new ideas and accept change when they feel emotionally safe to do so. When it feels right.
That’s why very logical and analytical style of messaging fails to persuade. Most people prefer a human touch in the message instead of sounding like a cracking computer.
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