Taylor Swift uses these 3 influence principles to become a phenomenal pop icon (and how you can use the same
Taylor Swift is the highest paid celebrity on the planet according to Forbes.
To be honest there are many country musicians and song writers and singers, the all of them combined may not make as much money as Taylor Swift.
There must be something that makes her so attractive.
In this article I'd like to share 3 inference principles that Taylor utilized to keep increasing her influence and growing her audience or across the world to become such a phenomenal pop icon, so that we can use the same principle in our own life and business to increase our influence and build our audience as well.
Increasing our influence in life and business is not only beneficial to our wallet and bank, but also with facilitate growth and expand exposure.
The article is part of my series on influence, because I’m currently learning about influence from the Masters using my framework of profitable learning, which is the fastest and most effective learning method to turn knowledge to money.
If you want to learn more about the power and laws of influence and how to use it for life and business,
1
The first influence principle that I've seen Taylor using more than once and is very effective on her is labeling.
Whether we are aware that or not each one of us would be having some kind of label on us - " introvert" , " extravert", "CEO", "sensitive", "lonely", "quiet", "energised", "mum / dad", "wife / husband", "a good girl/guy", etc.
Those label may not limit to the road that we have in life and business, it could also be description of the character and personality that others put on us.
For example I am labeled "socially withdrawn" and "a good, but quiet girl" by my teacher when I was small.
These label may all may not be true, but once we are stuck with those labels, we are more likely to act in a consistent way to those label - that is the power of influence.
For Taylor Swift, as anybody else there are multiple labels, one is a successful country music writer and singer, another is being a serial dater -jet setting around the world collecting men.
Labelings are nothing more but the character that add people drawn up for us or in this case for Taylor, but it has an effect on that person's behavior.
With Taylor's label being a serial dater, despite her denial, her behavior would still be affected by that label when she took it to heart.
Now of course there are definitely mental pressure with that label, and it may hurt her relationship as well, but it works as a two edged sword.
That label makes her different from other country and pop song writer and singer, because now news become juicier, it becomes more than enjoyable music but also something interesting to talk about and share with friends.
How can we use that influence principle in our life?
You may have heard of story about how you can induce your partner to behave in the way that you want by labeling.
For example if you want your partner to how with some household chores like cleaning the floor you could say something like "there's no one who can clean the floor as fast and good as you!" in effect we are labelling him or her "the best floor cleaner" in the household scenario.
With that label he or she is more likely to behave in a way consistent with that label.
2
The second influence principle that Taylor Swift has used is what I called "similarity".
Many woman can relate to Taylor's character to apologize first.
In the cultural context, women usually have a softer approach to things that people and even before they confirmed that they've done something wrong they would tend to apologize first.
That similarity is what attracts many women fans to Taylor.
If you want your product or whatever you offer (even yourself when you're looking for a job) more desirable, you need to be liked.
One of the proven techniques to be liked is by having similarity.
Where we are similar in the certain aspect, it would draw us closer instantly and build a friendship in a short period of time.
Similarity is a huge influence weapon. And Taylor Swift to know how to use that well, she's not more likes because of similarity.
The more people can see a piece of in her, the more people like her.
How can we use that influence principle in our life?
When we go out and meet new people, sometimes we would be afraid of the uncertainty and we want to withdraw because those are strangers that we don't know.
One good way to use this influence principle is to keep asking questions about the strangers until you discover a similarity.
That way you don't actually need to think about a very strategic ice breaking method or a prepared script to start a conversation.
You can actually start with asking question about where you're working, how's family, how's life, where you want to travel next, why did you come here today, what do you like to eat for dinner, or any other questions relevant to the events that you attend.
Keep asking until you can answer " oh really me too!" - you have a win then.
That way you can actually discover at least one similarity that you can rely on for that person to like you and feel like you are just like an old friend because of that linkage of similarity.
This is the quickest and easiest way to make friends with strangers.
3
The third influence principle that Taylor Swift use is what I called "contact points".
Weather it is launching a new album or releasing a new song or needs about her new relationship or news about her break up or news about her ex-boyfriend buying the right to her songs, there are always a lot of mentioning of her name and what’s happening with her.
Even though you may not be a fan to Taylor Swift, you must have heard of her name and you must have heard about her song or her life.
That’s the power of the influence principle of contact points. You may not like her or her music but because of those frequent contacts and frequent hearing about her, you feel like she is a familiar person to you. She doesn’t feel like a stranger to you.
That brings her closer to you because you feel like you know a lot about her already.
I myself have heard less than 10 songs by Taylor Swift but still I feel like she’s always around because she keeps popping up in news and different media and platforms.
There are many multi-national big corporation businesses who have to spend a huge amount of Fortune (talking about millions of advertising and marketing dollars) to have less than half of the exposure that Taylor Swift has.
Contact points have a lot of value.
So how can we apply that to all life and business?
In life, a very simple way to increase the contact point is to send cards (digital or physical) or messages to people that we know, people that we want to network with people that we just met, people that work with us, people who buy from us.
In this day and age social media makes contact very easy and technology allows us to tailor personalised mass messaging with ease as well. There’s really no reason why we don’t keep up and increase the contact points.
In business, to turn our knowledge to cash, we also need to keep up and increase the contact points but we don't need to do 100 strategies or 100 staffs because that would actually get us distracted and we would be overwhelmed to keep it up.
Contact point is a long game. In Profitable learner, I share the tricks to keep consistent in outputting and creation - that is a simple and easy way of keeping touch with your audience or strangers on platforms of your choice.
To your success,
Connie
