Robert Cialdini – Gabriel Catalano®

If you are seeking to increase leads, sales, visibility or all of the above, the first thing you want to do is make sure everything you do online and offline obeys these six principles, that Dr. Robert Cialdini covers in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

1. Scarcity: Run limited offers on your Twitter and Facebook pages that provide attractive reasons to register, enroll or buy right away. Offers exclusively for current or past customers can be effective but one adding the element of scarcity is really your secret weapon. Groupon has a countdown that shows you how much time you have left to purchase and it certainly encourages people to buy sooner than later!

2. The Law of Reciprocity Leer más “6 Steps to a Perfect Social Media Strategy | vía SiteProNews”

What About Face-to-Facebook?

The recent frenzy of acquisition and consolidation in the social media space is reminiscent of many other boom periods in specific industries. With a wave of social media acquisitions that really came into prominence with the recent acquisitions of CMS vendors Vitrue and Buddy Media, there certainly are those out there that are riding that wave to glory.

Yet this is also a time that marketing consultants Ed Keller and Brad Fay liken to the Gold Rush in 1848. They point out that while this period brought fame and riches to some, for many others it was a farce, a period in which great promise bought little return due to the abandonment of reason by those attracted by its riches.

Keller and Fay carry out a survey that measures offline word-of-mouth, a service called TalkTrack, which dives into what gets consumers really talking. Their research shows that 90 percent of conversations about products, services and brands that take place every day happen offline, maintains that the conversations that we have online are wildly different to those we have offline and warns against what I label Bright Shiny Object Syndrome (this is the desire to blindly follow the latest trend without looking at a true goal or purpose, often leading to botched programs and unsuccessful activations).

Keller and Fay make many valid points in the book, all around what drives word of mouth and how marketers should take the time to understand how their end target will share information. It also maintains that social media are ultimately about people.

On reading it, this ultimately made me connect back to the principles of good social media and how their theories relate to the work we are doing. I have always strongly supported the importance of IRL – in real life – in all we do. I also support the “people theory.” Put otherwise, human beings are at our core fundamentally social. We are, and always have been, guided by the drivers of influence. All good social media practitioners will base their work on social behaviors rather than the latest trend.

At Ogilvy, we combine different theories of human behavior to drive impactful social that scales. One of the most effective theorists in the space is Robert Cialdini, seen by many in the industry as the Godfather of Influence.

His “six drivers” is a very useful list, and one that can be held up to any program to check off and ensure its effectiveness. (…) Leer más “What About Face-to-Facebook?”

The Psychology of Why Sexy Websites Suck at Sales

Social Media Today | http://bit.ly/Kwh3Oz

Did you know we trust attractive people more than unattractive ones?

Illogical, but true.

We like people who are nice to look at—and we want to say yes to people we like. Not only that, but we actually think beautiful people are smarter, kinder, and more trustworthy.

Personally speaking, I was once suckered into paid membership with an organization I’m ideologically opposed to because the young woman selling subscriptions was, well….let’s just say I bought it. True story. On the other side of the coin, I was pretty suspicious of famed internet marketer Bob Bly when I first saw his photo.

But don’t take my word for it — Dr Robert Cialdini wrote all about it in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

WEB DESIGNERS AUTOMATICALLY GRASP THIS PRINCIPLE AND APPLY IT TO THE WEBSITES THEY CREATE

And good for them. Recent research from Melbourne University vindicates their instinctive belief that attractive websites are more trustworthy—and thus more likely to convince prospects to buy. It shows that consumers are 20% more trusting of websites than they were five years ago—largely because websites today are prettier than the websites of 2006:

As aesthetically orientated humans, we’re psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people, and the same goes for websites. Our offline behaviour and inclinations translate to our online existence … With websites becoming increasingly attractive and including more trimmings, this creates a greater feeling of trustworthiness and professionalism in online consumers.

All great news—we can rest easy knowing our desire for a flashy, sexy, all-singing and all-dancing website is actually going to increase sales as well as our egos. Right? Leer más “The Psychology of Why Sexy Websites Suck at Sales”

The Psychology of why Sexy Websites Suck at Sales

WEB DESIGNERS AUTOMATICALLY GRASP THIS PRINCIPLE AND APPLY IT TO THE WEBSITES THEY CREATE

As aesthetically orientated humans, we’re psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people, and the same goes for websites. Our offline behaviour and inclinations translate to our online existence … With websites becoming increasingly attractive and including more trimmings, this creates a greater feeling of trustworthiness and professionalism in online consumers.
All great news—we can rest easy knowing our desire for a flashy, sexy, all-singing and all-dancing website is actually going to increase sales as well as our egos. Right?

OKAY SMARTY-PANTS, THEN WHICH OF THESE WEBSITES IS MORE TRUSTWORTHY—?

http://blog.kissmetrics.com

Did you know we trust attractive people more than unattractive ones?

Illogical, but true.

We like people who are nice to look at—and we want to say yes to people we like. Not only that, but we actually think beautiful people are smarter, kinder, and more trustworthy.

For my own part, I was once suckered into paid membership with an organization I’m ideologically opposed to because the young woman selling subscriptions was, well….let’s just say I bought it. True story. On the other side of the coin, I was pretty suspicious of famed internet marketer Bob Bly when I first saw his photo.

But don’t take my word for it — Dr Robert Cialdini wrote all about it in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

trustworthy and untrustworthy websites

WEB DESIGNERS AUTOMATICALLY GRASP THIS PRINCIPLE AND APPLY IT TO THE WEBSITES THEY CREATE

As aesthetically orientated humans, we’re psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people, and the same goes for websites. Our offline behaviour and inclinations translate to our online existence … With websites becoming increasingly attractive and including more trimmings, this creates a greater feeling of trustworthiness and professionalism in online consumers. Leer más “The Psychology of why Sexy Websites Suck at Sales”

Don’t keep yourself DRY; be REAL instead

“Taking the look at organic impressions one step further, recall, awareness and purchase intent were still rising after 10 or more exposures to the message. These results stand in strong contrast to the scant four impressions that usually influence growth in these dimensions for standard display campaigns. What’s more, the jump in awareness between the consumers who were exposed to between three and nine organic messages and those were exposed to 10 or more was a considerable 15 points.”

: Image by courtneyBolton via Flickr

If you look up DRY in Google you’ll probably get as a first result the Wikipedia entry for:

Don’t Repeat Yourself

“Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.”

It’s an excellent principle for software development and comes from an awesome book called The Pragmatic Programmer that I highly recommend to anyone in the software industry.

But a problem with this principle for developers and non-developers alike is that people (even unwittingly) apply it to all situations in there life. Leer más “Don’t keep yourself DRY; be REAL instead”

How To Harness Influence

Time100landingimage “Influence is not something done by certain people to other people. It’s the result of those people we call The Influenced doing something in response to those we call Influential.” [Mark Earls]

Influence is not something that is done to people. Public relations professionals work on identifying the people they’d like to reach and crafting messages that appeal to them in order to get the word out and sway publics.

To understand why your PR pitches may strike out, we’ll take a look at the three main components and six drivers of influence through a PR lens.

“Influence is not something done by certain people to other people. It’s the result of those people we call The Influenced doing something in response to those we call Influential.” [Mark Earls]

Influence is not something that is done to people. Public relations professionals work on identifying the people they’d like to reach and crafting messages that appeal to them in order to get the word out and sway publics. Leer más “How To Harness Influence”