Latest / Pathological Positivity / Your Message Needs A Medium – Episode #705
Transcript
- This is Live On Purpose Radio episode 705. Your message needs a medium. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul, the shrink who expands your life. Your message needs a medium. Great ideas don't create impact until they're shared. In this episode, let's dig into some things that I have learned about media. Okay. The context around our conversation today goes back to a boot camp that I attended recently with Mark Albert and John Bates around media and some of the skills that you need to be a good expert on a television program or in the in the news media or in print. And I'm geeking out about this a little bit, so stick with me a minute while we while we dive into the word. Media is the plural of medium, which is a go between or a connector. So what is it that goes between whatever's in your head and whatever somebody else gets to know about what's in your head. Well, that's the media that it has to travel through. So here's a basic communication model that I share in the trainings that I do. The idea originates with the sender. So just think of a sender and a receiver. Okay? The sender is where the message originates. The receiver is the one that picks it up. This is true in radio and television, but it's also in true true in a family or in interpersonal communications. People having a conversation. Sender and receiver. Now the sender has an idea, something in their mind. That idea has to be encoded. Encoding usually happens with language. English, for example, is a code. And if you don't believe that, just talk to someone who's trying to learn English. It's a very complex code. And if you were programmed to speak English like I was, it comes very naturally to you. But try learning a second language or a third language, and you'll see that these codes are actually very complex. The idea has to be encoded, and that's always imperfect. It's an approximation of what that person is actually thinking, but it gets put into a code. Now it has to travel from the sender over to the receiver. The way that it travels is through a medium of some kind or media, plural. So if I'm speaking to you, the medium is air. And when I encode it into English, my vocal folds translate that into sound waves that travel through the medium, you following this, of air and then they get to the ears of the receiver. Now once it hits the receiver, it has to be decoded. And if that person doesn't speak my language, they're gonna have a hard time decoding because they don't have a decoder. Now I just encoded it in Finnish, but you probably don't have a decoder for finish. So you can see that the decoding is just as important, and then whatever that person receives might resemble somewhat what the sender had in mind, or it might be totally different. You know, the old party game telephone. This is a good example of it because between the encoding and the decoding and all of the noise in between and then... And the media that's used, you can lose a lot in the translation. So whether it's sound waves, writing, video, digital platforms, every message depends on a medium in order to carry that to the receiver. Now with that in mind, I wanted to spend a little time with that because when we talk about the media, we often think about, oh, there's reporters and journalists and, you know, people on TV or on the radio. Yes. But if we understand a little more clearly what media actually means. These are the very channels, the the methods, the vehicles by which our thoughts and ideas get to be communicated to other people. So I don't... I told you the context around this was a boot camp that I attended in Washington DC with some very highly skilled professionals about what we can do to to better access the media. Let's talk about three kinds of media. Not all media is the same. There's paid media. So if you've got a message you wanna get out there, you can go buy an ad on radio or on television. I've done this before. I remember when I first started a program as a young psychologist, we were treating, teenagers, juvenile delinquents. These kids had been declared ungovernable by the juvenile court, and we had a program that kept them at home. We worked with their families, taught them some of the models that you've probably heard about if you've listened to this podcast very long. And, to get the word out, we bought a radio ad. And I remember we paid quite a bit of money to have that radio ad run on local radio during the morning commute, and this is how we got that out. So this is an example of paid media. Now another type of media is owned media. So this podcast, for example, this is owned media. This is my show. Sometimes when I am interviewing a guest, they'll say, oh, how long is our is our conversation? And I would... It's however long we want it to be. This is my show. So owned media is a platform you control. Now if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay. I'm a business owner or I'm a coach or I've got some message that I wanna get out to the world. If you've got your own stage and your own microphone, you can use that all day long, but the question becomes, okay, who's gonna listen? Right? Who is the audience? So owned media, you have a lot of control over, But the problem is who are you gonna put in the seats? Who's going to be listening to that? Who is your audience? Now let's go to the third kind, and this is the kind that I've learned the most about in recent weeks. Earned media. These are platforms that you're invited to. So a television interview, speaking engagements, guest appearances, expert interviews. This is someone else's stage, someone else's microphone, someone else's audience. But as they try to serve their audience, they need you as the expert in your field. So each type of media... And and just as a quick recap, paid media, ads that you paid for, Owned media, you own the platform and the mic. And earned media, where it's by invitation only. Each type of media expands your reach in a different way. So, going back to something that I've shared here before, and this is something that I do in the entrepreneurial training and in the coaching support that I provide to certified positivity practitioners, we talk about a very simple business model. Picture three buckets. And in bucket one is all of the people who know you exist. These, these people actually have heard of you. They know you exist. They know a little bit about what you do. That's bucket one. Bucket two are the people who know you, like you, and trust you. It's a smaller number of people. We're trying to get people from bucket one to jump over into bucket two. Bucket three are the people who are paying the bills. So these are your customers, People who actually exchange monetary value for you to do what you do for them. That's bucket three. What is the role of the media? Marketing. Marketing is what fills bucket number one, and marketing always requires media. Now I know that's a bold statement. I said the word always, and my editor tells me to always avoid the word always. Marketing always requires media. Why is that true? It's because of what I shared with you already regarding what media is. It's it's the... What the message travels through to get to the listener, to get to the receiver. One thing I didn't even mention was social media. There's probably different versions of social media, both paid, owned, and earned, but it is a form of media. So however we get the message to those people, that's what we're talking about. What if we didn't just rely on one? What if we were able to leverage all three intentionally? So that brings me to my final point for today. If you want impact and you really believe that your message is important, be intentional about distribution. A lot of people focus on crafting their message and refining their message, but not enough on how to get it out to the people who so desperately need it. It's not just about what you say, it's where and how it shows up. In a previous episode, I talked about my experience pitching a story to a Wyoming television reporter and the fear that I felt. This was an opportunity that came to me because I stepped into this idea of earned media. The reporter that I reached out to, and I I stretched a little to do that. It... I mean, it wasn't that bad. It's never as bad as we think it's going to be to reach out to to pitch an idea to someone. There's the fear of rejection. And, yeah, probably most offers will be rejected. But in doing that, one of the things that really stuck in my mind is his gratitude that I had reached out. See, he's he's got a job to do too. He's trying to fill airtime for his television news program. And what is he gonna put into those slots? Well, sometimes it's obvious because of the news of the day just lands in his lap. And other times, he's sitting there scratching his head about how can I serve this audience the best, and dead air is bad news? So he was grateful that I had reached out to him. Where could you share your message this week? And as I talk about the three kinds of media, what medium are you not using? Which ones are you more comfortable with? Get familiar with the the way your message is getting across to people. Living on purpose means that you have a purpose. And there's a double meaning because it also means that you engage in that purpose on purpose intentionally. You get to choose how you're going to deliver it. Your message matters. It only makes a difference when it actually reaches real people. Be intentional about how you connect. Your message has power. Give it a way to travel. Your message needs a medium. Can you use this? We've heard it. Let's go live it. It's time to live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.