The Lesson of Persuasion

I guess I didn't really understand how much there was to know about persuasion, until I read this chapter. I understand that, especially in writing, persuasion is a very powerful tool, but I guess I just did not know how powerful one could make it. After reading chapter three I realized there are so many things that go into making that perfect persuasive piece.

There was a couple of sentences in the book that I found very appealing, to say the least. It was on page 37, and it read: "Writers who can think about persuasion at the strategic level will be at a premium. It is clear that a writer who knows how will always have a job. But the writer who knows why will always be the boss." That seems to hold true. As I was reading I was thinking that if everyone were to read this book, they would know way too much about what PR really is and what is all involved in it. But good thing for the PR practitioner that not a everybody has to study the art of public relations.

Persuasion is a very powerful tool, as I mentioned before, so naturally I did some research on persuasion and its amazing powers. The Power of Persuasion, this online excerpt is from the book "The 7 Triggers to Yes", by Russell H. Granger. He also has a website dedicated to his ProEd teachings.
Right off the bat in the excerpt it reads: "The most influential people are those who can effectively get things done. They influence others to agree or comply, to effectively execute goals, objectives and wishes. Success, perhaps survival, for you and your organization hinges primarily on one skill: the power of persuasion—the ability to persuade people to say “yes,” to willingly concur or follow your directions or act on your behalf." The article then goes on to explain how useful and critical persuasion is.
I also read in this excerpt that not only do PR practitioners need persuasion skills, but also everybody that wants to influence someone does. As Dr. Condoleezza Rice said, “Power is nothing unless you can turn it in to influence.”

So after looking through that article and going to Russell's website dedicated to ProEd teachings, I kept hunting for other persuasive communication articles, and came across "Persuasive Communication in Business", well since I am going into business I thought I'd take a look. This article was written by Robert F. Abbott, where he goes over three techniques for increasing your persuasiveness. Paraphrasing the three points, the first point deals with focusing on the other person with whom you are trying to persuade. The second point is to use persuasive words (a site with some good words on it). And the third point is to eliminate any barriers that would effect persuasion.

E.L.B.

The first chapter, I must admit, was very well detailed in what public relations really means. Pulling it away from people assuming it is the same as advertising, but as it is found in the chapter, it is not even close to what advertising is. As mentioned in the chapter, the lines between advertising and publicity have been blurred. In the readings, it says that advertising is paid time or space in a medium. While publicity is information provided with no fees.
In the readings, the name Edward L. Bernays stuck out the most to me. As the quote goes from the chapter (found on page 5) he said,

"Public relations is not a one-way street in which leadership manipulates the public and public opinion. It is a two-way street in which leadership and the public find integration with each other in which objectives and goals are predicated on a coincidence of public and private interests."

After reading this, I made note to look more into the late Edward L. Bernays, who the book calls the "PR authority." An interesting article that I found on him, which stuck out because of it's unique title, is "The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR." Which is the actually the name of the book that Larry Tye wrote. The article is a book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, whom in the first paragraph wrote,

"Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to
figure on historians' lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century."

Not being an actually PR major, I myself have never heard of Mr. Bernays, until I read the chapter and did some research.
An interesting fact that I found from the book review mentions how Bernays's uncle was Sigmund Freud. Since Freud was, as the review puts it, "the father of psychoanalysis", I have actually heard of him thanks to a psychology class from high school. According to what I have read, they seemed to use similar tactics with what they did. From the book review I found that Freud would use his ""talking cure" [that] was designed to unearth his patients' unconscious drives and hidden motives, in the belief that bringing them into conscious discourse would help people lead healthier lives." While Bernays would use "psychological techniques to mask the motives of his clients, as part of a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping the public unconscious of the forces that were working to mold their minds."
Furthermore, I think that what Edward L. Bernays did for PR seems to be pretty major. It seems he really helped people understand what the world needed back in the 1950s. And yet, as I have read, he also did some things that hurt his image. All in all, he did something right.

First Week - Getting Back Into The Swing

When deciding to take this course I wasn't really sure what to expect. Public Relations, why would I need to take a class on that? But when it comes to any career in business, I can see this class being very beneficial in the long run.
My blog, for this first one, is going to just express my thoughts on the introduction assignments and a little on the book.
When I took the wrapping off of the book, I flipped to the first chapter, to mainly just see what we will be going over for the next week. And it seems like there will be a lot of very valuable information that, as I have already said, will prove to be very beneficial in my career after college.
As for the assignments that we did for this week, I thought that the scavenger hunt was a good way to make sure everyone has either read through the material and kind of let it sink in. I also thought that the personal homepage assignment was neat. Except coming up with the three media sources, I really didn't know what to put in all of them. I guess I need to start hitting up media sites more often. The main sites I seem to hit up are on movies, I am a huge movie buff after all.
I believe that it will be pretty fun interacting with people in an online class. This is my one of my two online classes for this semester, but I have online taken one prior to this semester. In that class, there was no interacting with the other students in the class, unless you wanted to of course.