Articles

Below are my latest articles: the first appeared in Making Music Eastern's spring newsletter, the second in the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique journal, 'STAT News'.

For my series of 'Hot Topic' articles for Making Music, click here to visit the Making Music Eastern website.

Getting your Clicks: Enhancing Your Online Marketing

Making Music Eastern newsletter - March 2009

What do you want people to do when they visit your website? The answer to this may seem obvious to you, but it is actually the point at which most websites fail to be effective.

Perhaps you would like people to sign up for your newsletter, buy concert tickets, book your group for an event, join your group or contact you for more information. How clear is it what you would like your visitors to click on? How easy is it for them to find the information and take action?

A classic and simple technique for encouraging people to perform an action is ‘AIDA’ – not in any way related to the opera, but an acronym for:

 Get Attention > Hold Interest > Develop Desire > Call to Action!

An example of this technique might be the following:
[A] Revolutionary New Performance of Messiah to leap into the Record Books:
[I] The Great Hopham Baroque Chorus are joining forces with the British National Pogo Team and the Little Hopham Historical Society to host the world’s first come-and-sing bouncing messiah in full period costume!
[D] Limited free places are available (otherwise the cost is 15 jumping beans, to include pogo stick, costume and music hire). Participants will receive a one-to-one pogo tutorial, a singing lesson, a souvenir cravat to take home and discounted entry into our next ‘Bend over Bach-wards’ Limbo Festival.
[A] Email us at bouncingmessiahs@pogointernational.baroqsoc.mus.etc to book your place for this historic event by the next full moon at the latest!

For more ideas about how to measure and increase the effectiveness of your online marketing, keep an eye out for my next Hot Topics article which will be available to download from the Making Music Eastern website soon. Happy bouncing!

A First Impression of NLP

STAT News - April 2009

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a three day introductory training course in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. As a long-time student of Alexander Technique, I had never previously made a connection between the two practices, but I left on the third day more convinced than ever that AT not only provides me with the knowledge I need to conduct my life in a healthy and balanced way, but also that it teaches an ethical way to apply that knowledge.

Some aspects of the course were inspiring for me, particularly in understanding what underlying values I hold that have given rise to my life goals (one of the ‘four pillars’ of NLP is ‘Outcome Orientation’ – end-gaining?). My main reason for attending the course was to develop my personal influencing and negotiation skills - one of the main uses to which NLP technique is put. However, discovering this side of NLP made it clear to me that Alexander Technique practice already offers me a far preferable way to manage my relationships.

Practitioners describe NLP as ‘modelling excellence’: the approach taken by the developers of the technique was to visit numerous specialists in psychoanalytic and other fields and ‘model’ what makes them so successful. Most of the information presented to me was not new – I had come across much of it before and mainly in AT lessons – such as the fact that people communicate non-verbally and by physical mimicry, or that the psycho-physical world someone inhabits can be understood through their use. As an example, one of the exercises we undertook was to walk for a mile behind someone else on the course, mimicking their use and observing what they observed (an exercise I have also undertaken through acting training).

One of the fundamentals of NLP (another of the ‘four pillars’) is to create ‘Rapport’ with somebody by adopting their use and keeping pace with their energy levels, and then to use that rapport to lead them to the thoughts, energy level, physical space etc you would like them to inhabit (a technique labelled ‘Pace, Pace, Lead’). For me, this felt very uncomfortable: adopting someone else’s use in order to create the impression of empathy, and using a technique to manipulate someone else into your choice of direction without their conscious complicity seems to me a tool that is very open to abuse. It runs completely counter to the AT practice of looking to your own use and creating a good example whereby other people can choose to mimic you.

The ‘model’ for these changes in behaviour (typical of the course literature which constantly referred one to geometric diagrams and ‘representational systems’) sums up for me the difference between the two approaches: the NLP trainer told us that this process begins with observation of others and relationship management, and leads back from there to self-awareness and self-management. In contrast, in AT practice, everything flows from self-awareness and self-management, and other people are allowed to take responsibility for exercising free will and managing themselves in turn – the ultimate form of respect.