Persuasive Messages

1. Some questions to ask when gauging the audience's needs during the planning of a persuasive message are: Who is my audience? What are my audience member's needs? What do I want them to do? How might they resist? Are there alternative positions I need to examine? What does the decision maker consider to be the most important issue? How might the organization's culture influence my strategy?



2. Demographics and psychographics allow the speaker to take into account cultural expectations and practices so that he or she does not undermine the persuasive message by using an inappropriate appeal.



3. Emotional appeals call on feelings or audience sympathies, and logical appeals are based on the reader's notions of reason. The appeals can use analogy, induction, or deduction.



4. The three types of reasoning that you can use in logical appeals are: analogy, induction, and deduction.



5. The AIDA model organizes a presentation into four phases: attention, interest, desire, and action. The limitations of the AIDA model are that it essentially talks at audiences and not with them. It is also built around a single event rather than on building a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship. It is also not the best tool regarding compatibility with today's social media.