As a friend recently explained to me, it’s not the knowledge you share, it’s the way that you share it.

Most of us (especially those who participate in social media) love to spew our opinions give advice. Sometimes we hand it out for free, sometimes we get paid, sometimes it’s requested, and often it’s not. But we give it anyway As we approach 7 billion individual opinions globally (and that’s just the ones from those currently alive!) it really makes me feel great to know when my little voice helps someone out.

The question is when you find yourself in a position to offer advice how should you go about it for the greatest impact?

1. Consider your Audience
I’ll use this article as an example, which is advice about how to give advice My audience various widely from close friends to total strangers. As a result the advice I’m sharing has to be somewhat generalized, but I still want to give it a personal touch and of course want it to be as useful as possible to you in whatever situation you need to put this information to use.

The biggest advantage in this particular case is that if you’re reading this chances are you are either looking for this exact type of information, or you have a measure of respect for my thoughts. Either way you’re open to considering this advice even if you end up deciding you disagree. Which leads to…

2. Solicited vs. Unsolicited
By contrast to the agreeable conversation you and I are having through this article. There may be times in your life where you find yourself in a position to have to give advice to someone who may not want it, and certainly didn’t ask for it. When advice is unsolicited you can’t exactly go around beating people over the head with it no matter how right you might be. Use some tact and put your perceptive powers to use.

3. Personal or Professional
Are you offering your advice on a personal level or as a professional service? For me right now it’s a little bit of both, if you’re reading this article because you just searched “how to give advice” then you might consider this my professional opinion. But if you’re a regular reader of my blog it’s so much more personal than that. My advice is to offer professional quality advice with a personal touch no matter what the situation. If they don’t like what you’re saying you won’t change their mind by not being true to yourself, so you might as well just be yourself and have fun and let the chips fall where they may.

4. One-time or On-going
You love my articles and you’re going to keep coming back to read everything I need to tell you, right? So even if this is your FIRST visit you and we will see each other again and again, right? Offering on-going advice and opinion requires a relationship to be established and the more trust that is built over time the more effective (I believe) your advice will be because your audience will do their best to act upon that advice.

5. 1st Person vs. 3rd Person Experience
Sharing your own personal experiences is generally preferred but much of what we know we’ve learned from others and their experiences. When offering advice based on a 3rd party’s experience don’t pretend like it happened to you! You’ll miss important details and it will be obvious you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

6. Keep Your Expectations Reasonable
My last bit of advice on giving advice is not to take it too personally if your audience doesn’t act on your suggestions. Most of us need to have things repeated and backed up over and over again before we believe it, especially if it’s something that’s not easy to accept, something perhaps that we are in denial about and lying to ourselves. When offering advice to someone in that state just be patient and hope for the best.

Photo Courtesy of: hellojenuine