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There was a person on Facebook who commented the following under this post, “I speak it and nobody I speak it to wants to hear it. I post it and I’m censored and shadow banned.”
I replied, “Keep speaking your truth Eileen, you do not always know who reads your posts then goes away and thinks about them or who sees another post corroborating it and changes their view based on multiple exposures.
I read many years ago from marketing materials that it took 6 exposures of a message to get through to people.
In the intervening 50 years I cannot imagine it now takes fewer, probably many more.”
Jay Lawrence posted this as a comment. I thought it contained some wisdom worth sharing.
“In support of your statement to keep on keeping on I would share the following personal experience.
About fifteen or twenty years ago, before social media, I would see actions by society and govt and be dismayed. When my dismay reached a point that I felt that I needed to do something I would write a letter to the editor of local newspaper. When I wrote these letters I would quickly jot down every thought that I had on the subject. I would then edit it in to progressive logic so that it started with basic premise, built upon it with a few irrefutable arguments and culminated with a statement of what I felt should be done, all as concisely as possible.
I was also VERY careful to not allow ANY words that indicated any emotional opinion, ONLY facts and undeniable truths. I would then post it on the newspaper’s website and copy and paste to a state wide and federal paper as well. And that was usually enough to let me allow the matter to drop.
Then two things happened:
1) Friends and acquaintances started saying to me, “I saw that letter you wrote to the editor on ________. That was really good. You put into words what I have been thinking for ages” and
2) One of the letters I wrote was on the ridiculousness of the T-lanes on major roads that restricted use to cars or trucks that had two or more occupants. I pointed out that this policy was prejudiced against the very road users responsible for the majority of road taxes, whether they be through registration, stamp duty on insurance or the taxes on fuel, and that’s business vehicles. I pointed out that the majority of these vehicles were delivery vehicles or sales rep cars that were always going to carry only one passenger. I also pointed out that for the majority of the day these T-Lanes remained virtually empty because single passenger vehicles made up most of the cars and trucks, along with other things.
It was a VERY good argument, even if I do say so myself.
And though no one contacted me, two months later the T-Lanes were gone.
As a third example, I still have people coming up to me today that I only met once several or many years ago who say, “You know, I’ve never forgotten what you said that time we met in ______ about ______. And as a direct result of that I did _____. Thank you.”
So:
1) Take all of the emotion out of your rants so that they become statements,
2) Learn to construct simple, easy to understand and comprehend truths that are irrefutable AND DON’T require the recipient to know something that they may not be aware of,
3) Deliver it as a FACT and never back down but ALWAYS be willing to figuratively or physically walk away from any conversation mid-sentence and
4) NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOU TO HELP OTHERS.
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