The Influence Principle

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(By Loyd Ford) Have you noticed how everyone in social media appears to want to ‘go viral?’ Yet, so much noise on social media follows principles that are the opposite of being influential. Maybe you don’t think about ‘going viral,’ but you think about how to influence potential clients, diary holders or behaviors behind those portable people meters. Maybe you seek influence with managing up, managing down or even sideways in your company. That’s what “The Influence Principle” is all about.

How does it work? How do so many people seek to be influencers and yet many are going against the grain and defending the opposite of what brings real influence as being smart? It’s human nature. We naturally feel that we have something to say, we ARE influential, we ARE tastemakers. This makes us more likely to speak without listening. This puts even more downward pressure on even the potential that you will be influential or ‘go viral.’

People want to be heard.

We have more opportunity today to become influential than at any time in human history, but ‘man makes no progress.’ In other words, it isn’t how something is rated or how measurement occurs. It’s about behavior that produces influence.

What does increase your opportunity to grow influence as a programmer, an on-air talent, a local radio sales person or someone else in a broadcast cluster or anywhere in the radio business today?

Let’s focus on ‘The Influence Principle.’ The Influence Principle is the idea that almost anyone can become more influential today than they ever imagined if you follow certain available ideas within this principle.

  • The influence principle states that in order to bring real influence you must serve others.
  • The influence principle states that in order to bring real influence you must bring something significant of value directly into people’s lives.
  • The influence principle states that in order to bring real influence you must start by thinking about others (not yourself and certainly not what you want).

I’ve said for years that ratings are not real; behavior is real. If you want to influence ratings, don’t focus on ratings. Focus on the individual behaviors on your radio station and how consistently you are focused on the listeners you most want to attract, their music (if you are a music station), spoken content and both local community and promotional opportunities to melt into their lives.

  • The influence principle states that in order to bring real influence you must be focused on what is important to your target of influence. This goes beyond the surface to more authentic desires. People can tell when you stay on the surface.
  • The influence principle states that in order to bring real influence you must be able to communicate that you care about the person or persons you wish to influence.
  • The influence principle states that in order to bring real influence you must develop very good skills at capturing attention rapidly in today’s environments for influence. Attention span is shorter than it has ever been.

It doesn’t matter if you are part of a morning show, a local sales person, someone in marketing, a true market manager or someone at a corporate or upper management level inside a large corporation, to be influential today, you must be able to master the ideas behind the influence principle to create real influence and have that influence grow to others. To do that, you must study influence, others that consistently prove they create influence, current behaviors of the people you intend to influence and you must spend extra time studying how to capture attention in environments today where attention span is shorter than ever. Doing this study is valuable and being successful in valuing, understanding and creating influence makes you more valuable today.

Go On The Offensive – Start By Learning What Makes Successful Influence

Starting today, go on the offensive. Don’t settle to be like everyone else chasing how to become viral. Chase how to become more valuable.

In radio today, where you are often judged by your influence, both on the air (if you are talent) or in the sales arena (if you are a local seller), proving that you can create influence will potentially allow you to bend the employment curve and move ahead in a variety of environments and companies.

Loyd Ford consults radio stations, coaches personalities, and provides behavioral and strategic programming to radio with RPC. If you’re on the Clubhouse app, you can join Loyd’s radio pro encouragement group “The Encouragers.” Reach him anytime. 864.448.4169 or [email protected].

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