Welcome to the Media Shower Better Communications
series.
This is "Making Things Simple."
The work that we do is very complex.
It's hard.
We have to communicate very difficult, abstract,
technical, and financial concepts.
And in so doing, we have to strive for simplicity.
Here's one of my favorite drawings by Picasso
where he starts with a sketch of a bull and
gradually simplifies it into its bare essence.
Apple uses this drawing as part of their training
to show how their products strive for simplicity.
They evolve toward simplicity over time.
And in the communications sphere, when doing
our content, we have to strive for the same
level of simplicity.
But SIMPLE is HARD.
Making things simple is actually quite difficult.
This is the great psychologist Stephen Pinker,
and he talks about "the curse of knowledge."
That's why it makes it so hard for us to communicate
technical concepts is that we take for granted
that other people don't know as much as we
do about the subject that we're writing about.
That causes us to use jargon and "inside information"
and we forget about serving the reader, who
may not have any idea what we're talking about.
So, in this video we're going to talk about
some tools that you can use as a communicator,
as a content creator, to simplify.
Things like stories, analogies, tables, charts,
repetition, and rhyming.
Let's get started.
The first and most important tool is to TELL a STORY.
We covered this in "The New Rules of Writing"
but stories are foundational to the human
experience.
We start children off reading with these very
simple stories, and as we get older we still
are attracted to stories in our media, such
as this woman, who's so excited about reading
the daily news.
What are great religious texts, like the Bible,
but collections of our oldest human stories?
And the largest media companies today, like
Disney, are based around stories.
The human brain is hardwired for stories.
So whenever we can find stories to illustrate
these technically complex or difficult concepts,
we will go much farther in helping people
understand them.
So, how do you tell a story?
Well first, you need to know what the story
should demonstrate.
You need to have a core message.
And the story should demonstrate that message
that you're trying to get across.
A good story has a beginning, a middle, and
an end; however, we want to be brief -- that
story can be told in just a paragraph.
Jokes follow this format.
Stories can take different formats, so we
can find real-life stories.
That might be around a customer success story,
or a real-life case study; but it can also
be an anonymized story, where we take a real
story, but we change the names and details.
We might say "a well-known security company
used our product and did X" or it can be a
hypothetical story, so we can say "security
companies could use this product to do Y."
So, that is the three different types of story
formats that we can use when communicating
these difficult, abstract, technical products
and concepts.
The second tool is to use analogies.
And think of it in a very simple format: that
"this complicated thing" is kind of like "this
easier thing that you already understand"
and we've been doing that throughout this
training series by explaining the Media Shower
communication platform as like a factory assembly
line.
So that gives us a mental model; that gives
us a framework that we can use to easily understand
how all of these parts fit together to create
a great communication campaign.
We've been talking recently about this idea
of "immunity passports," which is like upgrading
our vaccination records to make them electronic.
And we simplify this by talking about Disney
FastPass+ which is this speed pass that you
can get for Disney World theme parks where
you can get expedited access into rides.
So, having this complicated digital immunity
passport is kind of like having this fun,
easy thing at Disney World that helps you
enjoy more out of your day.
Sometimes we'll talk about time periods such
as the blockchain technology in the 2020s
is a little bit like the internet in the 2000s
in terms of where the industry is and the
impact it's having on society and the economy.
Sometimes we'll be more creative.
The CRM software is a little bit like an address
book on steroids.
And we can be more abstract: great communication
(what we're talking about here) is a little
bit like Velcro for your brain -- that great
analogy from that book "Made to Stick."
They say great ideas are like Velcro balls
that stick to your brain.
And that's what we're trying to do with
great communication.
So, that's analogies.
The third is to use tables; we just shared
it with you in a table-type format.
One of the greatest ways of locking in learning
is with a table that compares and contrasts
two things.
It helps you understand it better, but it
also helps your audience, your reader, understand
it better as well.
Here is a great table from the book "Statistics
From A to Z" that describes false positives
versus false negatives.
These are two different and very complex concepts
but they have compared and contrasted the
two of these in a really creative way by having
rows that explain what it is, also known as,
with a little illustration demonstrating each
of these.
Tables can also compare products.
We use this a lot for top products in an industry.
We also use it for top books or top conferences.
Things like that to compare a lot of similar
things across a range of different criteria.
Tables are effective, especially if they're
put at the top of a piece of content, the
top of a blog post, at the top of the article,
where Google can easily read them, but also
your readers can easily get the summary snapshot
as soon as they load this piece of content.
The next is to use charts.
So, charts are basically data visualization
and charts can get extremely complex so think
about simplifying them into three main formats:
line charts, bar charts, and pie charts.
That's it.
Line charts, bar charts, and pie charts.
And you want to keep them as simple as possible
with just one or maybe two separate data series
(in other words, one or two separate lines
or stacked bars or bars side-to-side).
And they're used for different things: a line
chart will typically show data over time.
So, sales growth or market penetration over time.
A pie chart shows percentages, so when you
want to show a whole (100%) and how that breaks
down, how the pie is sliced, that's where
you want a pie chart, and bar charts will
show comparison, so when you're trying to
show different countries and how they measure
up, for example, or different segments of
the population, a bar chart is your best bet.
And, as a content creator at Media Shower,
if you just pull the data in Excel, we will
create this for you.
So it might look something like this: a very
simple Excel sheet or Google sheet where you've
got the criteria and then you've got the numbers
here over time, either as a time series or
by product category, you can put together
a simple chart in Excel, and we can rework
this for you or you can just give us the data
and we'll take it from there.
That's charts and the three kinds that you
want to use.
The next way to simplify is to use rhymes.
Again, the human data is hardwired for rhymes.
The earliest songs that we teach our kids
are "Jack and Jill went up the hill" and they
have this cadence, this rhyme.
There's something about that that helps it
stick better and we also trust it more when
it rhymes. "an apple a day keeps the doctor
away" "keep calm and carry on" governments
use these.
They understand the power of rhymes.
Corporations use these.
They understand the power of rhymes.
"Sana, sana, colita de rana."
Get well, little frog butt.
Rhymes work.
So if you can find a principle or a theme
idea for your piece of content and you can
make it rhyme and include that rhyme as a
callout or as a graphic within your content,
you will be more likely to help that idea stick.
When you rhyme it, you define it.
Finally, you want to use repetition.
So again, songs are extremely catchy because
they have this repetition.
The chorus of every great song repeats this
basic melody which also rhymes.
So, using rhyming and repetition together.
"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way."
It's this repetition.
If you hear great speakers or orators or preachers
they will often use this idea of repetition
to take a basic idea and say it again and
again and keep returning to that core theme
or that core idea.
Politicians use this all the time.
Teresa May used this theme of "Strong and
Stable" and she repeated it so often that
it became a meme.
But it landed.
People really understood and believed that
it was strong and stable government under
her leadership.
And we've mentioned brands like Coca-Cola
and how they repeat these ideas and these
themes, like "things go better with Coke"
or "open happiness" again and again over the
years.
So, when it comes to repetition, think about
the rule of threes: "Repetition, repetition,
and repetition."
If you can try to repeat that thematic idea
or that core principle three times within
a piece of content, you're much more likely
to help it stick.
So this is the communicator's toolkit: how
to make things easier for your audience to
remember.
Stories, analogies, tables, charts, repetition,
and rhyming.
And that's how we make better communication.
Thanks for watching.
