Using Rhetoric to Connect With Your Audience
In today’s vast social networking world, connecting with your audience can be difficult. Every day, people are constantly bombarded with new content. If you want your message to rise above the noise, you need to connect with your audience.
How do I do this?
The funny thing is that a philosopher from over two thousand years ago in Ancient Greece has given us the answer. Aristotle outlined the skill of Rhetoric to help people connect with others. He wrote about the three parts of the rhetorical triangle, pictured below. The three points of the triangle are ethos, pathos, and logos.
What is a Rhetoric Triangle and what does it have to do with me connecting to my audience?
The Rhetoric Triangle is a tool to assist in understanding the connection between the presenter, the audience, and the message. Ethos is the presenter. To be effective at delivering a message, one must appear credible. Pathos is the audience. For a message to be received, it must connect with the audience on an emotional level. Logos is the message. For the audience to accept the message, it must be delivered with logic and reason.
These tools can be used to better connect with readers of a blog, viewers of a YouTube channel, or followers of the myriad social media networks. Yet, to do so, you need to adapt each tool to your style, your audience, and your message.
How do I do that?
I’ll show you. Well start at the top of the triangle with Ethos.
Ethos is everything you do, presentation, credentials, style, to express your message. Ethos is the credibility you build. An audience will not listen to your message, read your blog, or watch your video if you lack credibility.
Here is an example. Someone is scrolling through Instagram. They see post after post, barely glance at them before moving onto the next. Eventually something catches their eye. Something about the layout, composition, subject matter, or presenter causes them to stop.
Don’t believe that ethos is just what catches someone’s eye. Ethos is the credibility you build with everything you say and do. Someone starts watching a YouTube video then turns it off a few minutes in. Why? Maybe the host said something offensive. Or the viewer realized the host didn’t do their research on the topic. Or the audio was of poor quality. There are so many variables that can cause someone to lose interest in your message.
To build credibility, you need to know what you offer to your audience. This will be different for everyone and the medium they are using. A YouTube channel can offer good editing and dialogue. Another channel might offer funny jokes. Another channel might offer well informed opinions. Knowing what you have to offer allows you to play to your strengths.
Think about the credentials you have. If you are a video game reviewer but you have only played a handful of games, why would anyone want to know your opinion. Yet, if you have played hundreds of games over many years, you have something to offer. You can also utilize research to strengthen your credentials. Citing credible sources shows your audience that you have something to offer. Remember that when using sources, your credibility is only as strong as your sources. So, choose wisely.
Maintain open motives when interacting with your audience. If the audience feels you are not being honest or you are hiding something, they can be turned off. Ethos and showing credibility is talking about your own story in a relatable way, relevant to the topic. Popular social media accounts can get paid sponsors in return for endorsements. If the account is not open about sponsorship, the audience might not trust your motives behind the endorsement. This hurts your credibility. This doesn’t mean you can’t get sponsors. Just be honest.
Lastly, maintaining a clean design shows professionalism. This strengthens your credibility. No one wants to listen to poor quality audio, look at low resolution pictures, or read difficult text. Everything you present builds or tears down your credibility.
Pathos is the audience. More accurately, it is your audience’s emotional connection between you and your message. When you appeal to your audience on an emotional level, they will engage more. This is not a sappy emotional appeal, but a recognition that the audience is real people living real lives.
Let’s work with an example. A student is assigned to read an academic paper on the effect global warming has on the environment along the coast. As they read, the student barely focuses because the paper is so dry with facts and numbers. Later in the evening, the student reads a blog post about a family who lost their home to rising flood waters in the same coast region of the academic paper. The flood was caused by global warming. The blog post draws the student in, leading them to donate money.
Why did the blog draw them in when the academic paper did not? The blog drew the student in on an emotional level. The academic paper was devoid of emotion. This does not mean the academic paper was bad. It just didn’t have the right audience at that moment. For some audiences (academics and researchers), the academic paper would be the better read.
Now, how do we appeal to the Audience? The first step is to know who your audience is. To connect with your audience, you need to consider the values they hold. Are they more reserved or do they prefer something flashier? Are they focused on a goal or are they looking for entertainment? When you know what they want, you can better provide value to them.
Think about the emotions you are invoking. Are you trying to provide pleasing entertainment or eliciting action? These require two different emotional approaches. Humor can weaken a call to action, and frustration can turn off someone who just wants to relax.
Avoid jargon that can alienate. Knowing your audience can allow you to meet them on their level. This does not mean dumb down what you are saying. The audience is smarter than credit is given. Instead remember everyone comes from different walks of life and using the language they are comfortable with encourages emotional trust.
Logos is your message. Rhetorically, it is the logic within your message. Your credibility will be affected if your message is not logical sound. Your audience is aware of the context surrounding your message. How you present your message can affect the surrounding context. You can provide background information, deal with counter arguments, and fit the message to the audience.
With social media, you have a message for each individual post, blog, video, etc. You also have an overarching goal of trying to increase followers. Being aware of your goals allows you to strengthen the message. Each post’s logical soundness can affect your credibility.
Each point on the rhetoric triangle affects the other points. Your credibility affects how the audience perceives you but also how they will receive your message. Different audiences will react differently to your credibility and your message. You must keep all three points in mind when you craft a post. Let us explore how to do this in different types of posts.
YouTube
With YouTube, views and subscribers are key to success. Anyone who follows a YouTube channel will want a bit of consistency with their content. They are following a channel because they want more content like they have already seen. Having similar videos within the channel builds credibility and plays to the audience’s needs. The overarching message of the channel is to have people scribe. Meet the expectation of the audience.
Blog Post
Blogs have similar goals as YouTube channels, though each post can have a unique message. The largest part of a blog’s credibility is its visual layout. A blog with contrasting colors, strange fonts, and poor design will lead the audience to believe the blog is amateurish. After first impressions, a successfully viral blog considers the emotion that is needed to be invoked. A business blog might gain traction with a few jokes, but if the jokes are in poor taste, readers will flee. A style blog that frustrates readers can cause more controversy than provide helpful tips.
If you want to learn more about rhetoric check out these links:
https://virtualspeech.com/blog/rhetoric-inform-persuade-motivate-your-audience
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40037-018-0420-2
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/RhetoricalTriangle.htm
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/
I think your blog is well organized; you start by addressing a writer’s need to connect with their audience, then you dive right in with how to do that. I like the images you use as headers to separate the subtopics (ethos, pathos, logos). I appreciate that you begin each subtopic by defining the Rhetoric Triangle element. You did well explaining the importance of each point and how to apply them in writing and visual (youtube).
So much valuable information. Thank you. This should be a blog read recommended to all college students. Your explanation of Pathos, Logos, and Ethos made the concepts very easy to understand. Adding these concepts to your Rhetorical Tools was a great segment of this article and wrapped up the entire subject perfectly. I never thought of Logos as “knowing my message.” But, that’s exactly it.
And, though we tend to think of Rhetoric as essays or academic papers, our rhetoric is also our social media posts. Yes, we should also write with intention when we post on social media and apply these concepts.
Great tips, as well!!
Great job on making what can be a difficult subject into something easier to digest! I like that you have made it clear that logos, ethos, and pathos aren’t just for academic writing, something we all need to remember since a majority of us communicate in other ways. I also really like your graphics and how you used the color scheme throughout.
This is such a good topic for discussion between college students. Using rhetoric to connect to my audience feels like an end goal for me, being in college and working my way towards a degree in rhetoric. These concepts are the root of what I am learning (or using) in class every semester. It always helps to have it all laid out in front of me as a reminder.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I relearned that the Rhetoric Triangle is a tool that assists in understanding the connection between the message, audience, and the presenter. I remember learning about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. It has been a while since I have heard about these three parts of the rhetorical triangle. I like how you described how to use rhetorical tools.