3 Things you must do to effectively tell your Canadian ag story

‘Agvocating’, or having an online presence (blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), isn’t just about being present and simply telling your story to a consumer audience. To understand how to do all that effectively, you first need to go a layer deeper.

You need to explore and understand how the human brain receives, processes, stores, and remembers information so you can tinker with how, when, and where to present your messages to ensure they have the best possible impact.

You can also use this insight to anticipate and strengthen arguments, help debunk myths, and connect with consumers on an emotional level (which is proven to be more impactful).

We developed a tool (see visual below) to help you categorize communications outreach into the three areas that are key to effective communications with your consumer audience. There are relatively simple changes you can do when structuring and presenting information that can make a big difference in how much of an impact that information has. Like a piece of music, the goal of each communication with your audience should be to transfer something to them, not merely ‘express’ it.

Intrigue – To intrigue your listener or reader – to hook them, reel them in – you first need to relate. “Relating is letting all that seep into you and have an effect on how you respond to the other person.” – Alan Alda. Relating consists of active listening, honing your emotion reading skills, and recognizing that you are subject to the Curse of Knowledge.

Resonate – Learning how to resonate emotionally with your listeners allows you to connect on a deeper, more meaningful level after you’ve hooked them. Resonating takes relating a step further by analyzing the data you’ve gathered (their levels of knowledge and trust and their emotional investment), and using it to build a two-way communication path. Engagement occurs when people make an emotionally based choice to connect and listen because something you said resonated with them. “Emotional words can often turn a recital of the facts into something more engaging that will stick in the mind…and make it more memorable. And why tell them something we think is important if don’t want them to remember it?” – Alan Alda

Nurture – After their interest is piqued, they’re listening, they’re engaged. You’re on your way to building trust and transparency and you’ll want to make sure you nurture this relationship going forward. Leaders of high-engagement cultures understand the importance of developing communications that are clear, concise, and impactful – of nurturing what’s good and what works. Those types of communications will nurture the relationships you’ve worked so hard to build in step one and two (intrigue and resonate). And it’s those highly engaged relationships and brand ambassadors that will search you out for credible information moving forward and help you build the Canadian ag brand (or your ag business).

You need to be strategic about how you interact and respond. While we are not all gifted communicators, good communication, like any skill, can be learned through awareness and reflection and by using the right tools and a little practice.