5 Ways To Engage Your Audience…Can Anyone Create An A-HA Moment???
Dr Gregory House on Fox’s show House M.D. is always trying to solve the worlds most challenging and craziest ailments that the world has ever known. He will go through all of these brainstorming sessions that they will bat around all these solutions. He will knock them around if he feels they have merit or he will belittle the idea if he doesn’t. During the course of the show he will see something in normal life that will always be his A-Ha Moment. He will see someone pop the tab on a soda can and it will all of a sudden unleash the answer…
My first and most important priority when I write a blog post is to get a WOW or an A-HA moment. It may not always be earth shattering, but may be WOW I haven’t thought of that before or A-HA- what a neat way to think about that.
Right now Oprah & Mutual of Omaha are haggling over who owns the “aha” moment, but anyone can create one. 
Many think you have to be Einstein or Sir Isaac Newton who come up with these incredible thoughts that redefine the world as we know it. I think that is the farthest thing from the truth.
You can come up with unique, relevant ideas or views… that can make your target audience think. Shed some new or different light on their situations. Here are things I think you can do to engage your audience and create that WOW or A-HA.
So whether you are helping someone get better ROI on their marketing or helping them save thousands of dollars on negotiating for a car
1. Be Different – Lets face it, 99% of information out there is not “new” or original thought. So even though we agree its not new, it better be different. Maybe take the information and look at it from a different angle. Highlight certain parts and share your viewpoint on it. Your view is yours and original. Stand out & Surprise them.
2. Be Relevant & Relatable – Keep your message on target. Make sure your target audience will be able grasp your message. If they grasp it, then they have to be able to put themselves in that situation. They must of either felt it before or think they could avoid it by using the information. So they may say WOW, I am glad I read that because I can use that. Maybe they heard it before, but you put your spin on it and it helps turn on that lightbulb and that A-HA, I get it now.
3. Focused - Try to keep it brief and to one take away. If the can remember and recall one thing, that in my book would be a success. I have heard that 90% of what is said or read is forgotten in 48 hours. So you have a better chance of going to memory if you keep it simple and laser focused.
4. Make it very visual - I don’t necessarily mean with actual pictures, but having a picture can help support your point. Just as important, I try to write in a way, for the person reading it, that it will create visions of what I am trying to help them see. So I try to find stories, case studies or examples to illustrate the point I am trying to make. The higher the emotional value the better. If the illustration adds emotional value to the reader then it will increase the episodic memory and will help them recall it later.
5. Connectors & Stickiness - I like to think of the brain as a climbing wall that has the anchored rungs on it. You are trying to get something to stay on the readers mind. Only 16 –20 percent actually have a real interest in what you are saying and you have under 30 seconds to make a point stick and worthy of their memory. So use a real life example that will give the reader something to talk about and use those connecting experiences that provoke conversation.
The Last Point Is To Start With The End in Mind… Think about the A-HA moment before you write the article. Think about what would trigger that emotional feeling, just like Dr House’s epiphany. What story might illustrate it and connect the dots.
Remember the #1 action on the internet is the back button… In our fast paced society, time is even faster. You have 3 seconds or less to capture awareness or attention. According to Malcolm Gladwell you have less than a second. You have to earn people’s time. So remember, write for those who are excited to read what you have to say and are giving up their most precious asset…time. So you have to pay them back with that WOW or A-HA
What ways might I have missed that can create engaging a-ha moments? Share your successes.
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You should also consider reading ‘Made to Stick’, The six principle from this great book are:
PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY
How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission — sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.
PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day’s worth of fatty foods! We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. But surprise doesn’t last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. How do you keep students engaged during the fortyeighth history class of the year? We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps.
PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS
How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions — they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images — ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors — because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.
PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY
How do we make people believe our ideas? When the former surgeon general C. Everett Koop talks about a public-health issue, most people accept his ideas without skepticism. But in most day-to-day situations we don’t enjoy this authority. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves — a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas. When we’re trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach. In the sole U.S. presidential debate in 1980 between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Reagan could have cited innumerable Statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead, he asked a simple question that allowed voters to test for themselves: “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.”
PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS
How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. In the case of movie popcorn, we make them feel disgusted by its unhealthiness. The statistic “37 grams” doesn’t elicit any emotions. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.
PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES
How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.
Thank you for the incredible thoughtfulness. I have that book on order and can not wait to get it and read more.
I am reading the Tippping Point by Malcolm Gladwell now and really enjoying it. Have David Meerman Scott World Wide Rave up Next.
Would love to discuss more and share more thoughts and insights. Lets connect.
Chad Rothschild
Thanks for a good article. So much of what we all see through LinkedIn & elsewhere isn’t worth the time to hit the back button. This is a pleasant exception. Way to go! Keep it up.
When you’ve plowed through your current list (all good choices by the way), shoot me a note. I’d be happy to line up the next 50 or so choices I’d suggest if you’re interested
Keep it up. I look forward to your next post.
P.S. I always tell audiences, “Different is good. Weird is not.”
Yes, yes, another great blog post, and, even the comment from Bjark is awesome, too.
Good work.
Great points that need to be incorporated into every site I look forward to your next meeting.