NLP uses language to influence the mind. Although developed in the 1970s, the discipline draws on the insights of prestigious antecedents like psychiatrist Milton H Erickson (1901-1980), therapist Fritz Perls (1893-1970) and Alfred Korzybski, founder of General Semantics (1879-1950). When carefully applied, Neuro Linguistic Programming can have a big impact on your readers and listeners. Here are some of the ways our skilled writers use NLP to help you:
Manipulating Modality
Exploiting modality preference is an important technique for any influencer. Humans have three main modality preferences: the visual (seeing), the auditory (hearing) and the kinaesthetic (feeling). Writing falls flat when it does not use one or more of these modalities. In addition, different readers have different modality preferences dependant on age, gender and socio-economic status. For example, younger readers tend to be more visual than older readers.
Telling a Tale
Turning a basic pitch into an exciting story exposes the reader’s subconscious to emotion, symbol and metaphor. Embedding messages in a dynamic narrative structure is one of the best ways to convey information and influence your reader or listener.
Homophones
Homophones, words that sound or look the same, are one of the key ways to influence your reader or listener. Well-chosen homophones like ‘by now’ and ‘buy now’ embed key messages in your reader’s subconscious without them even realising it.
Emotional Massage
Charities invariably make use of emotions in order to sell their message. This is because associating facts with emotions excites powerful responses in the reader. For example, saying ‘Feed a starving family of four for a year’ is far more engaging than saying ‘Give us $40 a month for twelve months’.
Pattern Interrupts
Breaking the flow of text or speech in unexpected places unhinges the reader’s or listener’s expectations, exposing their subconscious to your message. This is especially true of sales pitches, where digressing from expected patterns can temporarily bypass your target’s defences. When a target is confused, you can bring them back into your sales narrative with far less psychological resistance.
Social Proof
Humans are social animals who instinctively compare themselves to others. Little wonder that describing a product, service or individual in terms of social success is such a popular sales technique. Demonstrating social proof makes your readers instinctively want ‘a piece of the action’.
Disclaimer: Our use of NLP applies certain stylistic and verbal techniques to the written word, methodologies that we have found in our extensive experience to be highly effective in influencing the reader. Beyond this, we make no claims for the validity of NLP as a therapeutic tool.
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