It’s been a minute, I know, but over the past few months, I’ve been cooking up some big new projects that you’ll start to see rolling out soon. One of those projects includes some revisions to my newsletter (Not subscribed? Here’s a link to sign up.)—it’ll soon have a new title and look, for example—but the focus will be more of what you love best: everything you need to design powerful, persuasive messages on your own, no expensive consultants or agencies required.
But even the best messages land even better with the right example or support, which is why I decided to bring back the “Swipefile.”
What is a Swipefile? It’s a collection of stories, studies, and other interesting stuff you can “swipe” to make your messages stronger and even more interesting. The links I share come from my daily reading and research into what’s happening in the world and in the worlds connected to messaging, motivation, and making change happen.
While I’m still experimenting with how and where I’ll be sharing these publicly on a regular basis, I wanted to share the first seven Swipefiles of the year just with you.
So, without further ado, here they are:
How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background
A huge part of effective message design lies in understanding why people do the things they do, as well as staying as up-to-date as possible on when that understanding evolves or changes. That’s why this article is so important: people with lower socioeconomic status backgrounds may be less sensitive to rewards. What does that mean for you? That anchoring a message in the positive benefits of an action, initiative, or offering may not work as well as you’d expect for a potentially large portion of people.
How effective are climate protests at swaying policy — and what could make a difference?
Lots of good and useful information here. It’s focused on climate protests, but the explanations of who joins movements and why, as well as what happens to movements for change over time, applies well beyond climate messaging. One of the biggest takeaways is that one of the primary roles of protests, even those whose approaches you may personally disagree with, is that they do, in fact, raise people’s awareness of the issue being protested. That said, the more disconnected an action is from the underlying message it’s raising awareness for, the more it’s seen as performative—a lesson all of us can learn from. Other bonuses: the definition of the concept of the activist’s dilemma (which demands a choice between attention and popularity), and the fact that women protesting for the right to vote in 1913 “were undertaking, on average, 20 bombings and arson attacks per month” (emphasis mine).
National Park Service’s tweets are so funny that you’ll learn about nature without noticing
Yes, I’m including this because the Park Service’s tweets are reliably great and who doesn’t love a bit of humor in their day, but also because they’re a great example of what I call the Mary Poppins Approach (or Mary Poppinsing!). That’s where you add a “spoonful of sugar”—in this case, humor—to help the “medicine” of your message go down. Any time you can wrap a message into something that is itself naturally engaging, like humor or an interesting story, people are more naturally inclined to read or listen. Also, because you’re activating emotions, you’re making the message stickier.
A reading list about the neuroscience of reading
I love a good list post, as you often get more bang for your Swipefile buck. In this case, you get not just one article, but seven on words, language, and how all of that interacts with and is processed by the brain. Since a huge proportion of messages are read—even though, as the article notes, “humans were never meant to read in the first place” (!!!)—the more you can understand about all of that, the better. These seven articles focus on:
- How as someone reads more and more, their brain evolves from processing reading as simple “symbol comprehension” to a point where they “begin to feel what [they] read, truly ‘living’ through the words.” Similar to the first link, above, this tells me there may be a huge range in how your audience responds to written versions of your message, depending on how much they read on their own.
- The role reading fiction plays in someone’s ability to develop empathy and how it may affect their willingness to accept new technologies, thanks to science fiction.
- How the brain learns a new language, or a second one, and how truly marvelous that is, which, as a devoted Duolingo and Babbel user (learning Italian for the first time and reviving my high school German), was lovely to discover.
- The benefits bilingual writers experience, and how those benefits transfer to their readers, whether bilingual or not.
- The ways in which words change meaning over time, and thus, how any rigidity you attach to definitions may limit your ability to communicate and evolve, as well.
- The role of non-word-based forms of communication, like gesture and movement, as illustrated through the history of emojis, how they’re used, and what they really say to the person’s brain who “reads” them.
- The case against copywriting and why “it’s absurd to insist that any choice about language be apolitical.”
People watch other people shake boxes for science: Here’s why
Speaking of gesture and movement, here’s a great example of “actions speak louder than words”—or at least as loudly as them. I think we forget how powerful non-verbal communication is and how powerfully attuned to it we humans are. What I read into this article is that it seems we can see intent in how people move. Since perceived intent, along with perceived capability, is how humans evaluate someone’s trustworthiness, that’s an important factor to consider. I also think it adds to the case for more in-person (or at least video) communication, as—at least so far—we can’t bring large language models into rooms or auditoriums to speak for us.
These are the behavior changes that drive growth
The title of this article doesn’t really get at its main point, which is that framing organizational purpose and values as “how to act” messages may be how to bring purpose and value to life. So, as in the article’s example, instead of just saying something like, “we value true hospitality,” IHG Hotels and Resorts goes on to explain what that looks like to them: “talk straight, move fast, think return.” How could you add that level of “how” to the “whys” in your messages?
39 colors you’ve probably never heard of
It wouldn’t be a Swipefile without at least one article with oddball information. I love articles like this, as you never really know when or how they might be useful. At the very least, they may make you more interesting at cocktail parties! Anyway, this one’s pretty self-explanatory, but don’t miss that the names of these colors aren’t really what’s most intriguing—it’s the stories of why and how those colors got named in the first place, one of which may be the perfect fit for something you’re trying to illustrate or explain.
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What did you think? My goal is to make the Swipefile as useful to you as possible. So email me and let me know what you liked, what you didn’t, as well as what you want more or less of—or if you’ve found something that I should include the next time!
Please note that many of the links are affiliate links, which means if you buy a thing I link to, I get a percentage of the cost, and then donate it to charity.
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