How To Connect With Your Audience
5 Transferable Lessons from other areas of work and life
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Sometimes we try to figure things out and get stuck.
For example, how can we connect with an audience?
What can be helpful is to look into other areas of work, businesses, subject matters, or your past experience to find an idea or different approach.
Take photography as a model for how to connect with people or your audience.
Walking around with a camera and taking pictures of a city’s life and its people is good training for observational and connecting skills.
No Postcard Pictures, Please!
We just came back from teaching a photography workshop in Venice, Italy. The workshop was not about creating the best postcard pictures of Venice. These exist already a million times. In fact, one rule for the fully-immersed days was to not dare to show any postcard photographs in the picture critique and feedback sessions at the end of each day.
After four days of roaming this unique city on the water, the participants resumed their experience: A lot of their experience was about connecting. Connecting to people, to an unique place, to reality. Even connecting to themselves.
By the way, the photographs the participating amateur photographers created were impressive and stunning. They captured the soul of of Venice on a high-end photographic level.
There are a variety of “tools” you can use to connect to others or to a place. Photography is one option, and it teaches great lessons that can be transferred to any other field, such as writing, speaking, or selling.
Setting The Stage — Even If It Takes Time
What made the visit to this city and touring it with a camera special was the fact that we were in touch with local people. People with whom we had built relationships and formed friendships over time which we shared now with the participants.
We not only built a network of contacts in a place. Instead, we invested care, time, and genuine interest to create long-lasting relationships with local craftsmen, artisans, historic library…
