Modern copywriting

Shocking Tiger Woods video (exclusive)

You should be careful about headlines.

It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to forgive your spam, and perhaps even to open your note (CyberMonday! 85% off...). It's pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to click through on their RSS reader. It's even easy to write a tweet that will get a click through.

But is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?

The mindset of the brazen copywriter is, "Well, even if only 1% of the people I trick are actually interested in the content, that's worthwhile. After all, there are a lot of people out there, and offending 99 to get one subscriber or one sale is good math."

The word I use for people like this is 'spammer'.

The mindset of the modern marketer is, "I can build a reputation in everything I do. If I teach people to trust me, then over time, I'll conserve their attention and build permission. That's priceless, particularly in a world that's getting more skeptical by the minute."

Of course, the best thing of all is to have content that deserves a great headline. If you can't do that, though, I think you should forgo the headline.

Fore!

Great referral idea

http://networking.entrepreneur.com/2009/11/02/getting-your-name-written-on-the-board-can-be-good/

Leadership from Tribes

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

Why not How

Don’t be at war with HOW when you should be in love with WHY. You don’t have to know what you’re doing. You don’t have to know where you’re going. You don’t have to know how you’re going to get there.

You just need to move – and you need to know WHY you’re moving. Lesson learned: Just keep starting. The finishing will take care of itself. If there even IS a finish line. Which there isn’t. Are you stopped by not knowing how?

Seminars and conferences

"Why am I here?"

This is a simple mantra that is going to change the way you attend every meeting and every conference for the rest of your life.

You probably don't have to be there. No gun held to your head, after all. So, why are you spending the time?

Do you have an agenda? It might be to change the agenda, or meet someone who will become a client or to learn something that will help you at work tomorrow.

Well, if that's why you're here, tell me again why you're just sitting there? If the only reason you came was to avoid the office, you need a new office. Quick, before the boss decides that for you.

Surely you have a question you can ask the speaker. Surely you have something interesting to say to the person sitting next to you. Surely you can do more than just sheepishly hand someone a business card they have no reason to save or remember or use.

If there isn't a good reason, go home. If there is, then do something. Loud, now and memorable. Productive too, please.

Trust

How can I get them to trust me?

It’s an important question for lots of people: financial planners, TV news anchors, IT help desk people in companies, HR folks who want a seat at the table, pharma company management, and parents and teenagers.

There are three broad approaches to getting others to trust you. They are not mutually exclusive, and are probably not exhaustive—but they come close.

Of course, you can’t control another human being. Trying to do so will paradoxically destroy their trust in you. Which is why all three approaches involve full acceptance of the one whose trust you seek.

Trust Creation Strategy 1: Trust Them.

We are powerfully wired as part of our social instincts to engage in reciprocal exchanges with each other. These acts of reciprocity create networks of cumulative obligation—or of enmity.

If someone behaves well toward me, I “owe” that person parallel behavior. This simple fact underlies the social role of etiquette, as well as things like gifts, Don Corleone's power, or ritualistic forms of greeting like secret handshakes.

We are powerfully motivated to return in kind what we are given. If you want to be trusted—first seek to trust.

Trust Creation Strategy 2: Be Trustworthy.

It sounds trite, but it’s not. It is a strategy of attraction, not promotion. To be trusted, try to be worthy of that trust. All else equal, people trust those who are worthy of trust. And people have finely honed capabilities of discrimination that far exceed our abilities to articulate them.

Which begs the question: what constitutes trustworthiness? Steven M. R. Covey, following consistently in his father’s Seven Habits behavioral pattern, identifies 13 behaviors—phrased as imperative-form verbs like ‘get better,’ or ‘confront reality.’

Much though we may like verbs--they suggest definitive actions we can take--they are misleading. You don't make people trust you, they choose to do so. You attract trust by being who you are, not by acting upon others.

I prefer the Trust Equation: it is couched in the ways people see us—as attributes. Four of them pretty much sum it up: credibility, reliability, intimacy—and whether we are seen as self-oriented, or other-oriented.

This definition of trustworthiness underpins the Trust QuotientTM self assessment test—take it here and find out how trustworthy you are.

Trust Creation Strategy 3: Listen.

The single most powerful trust-creating action we can take is to give to another the fine gift of our own attention. To listen—intently, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, without simultaneous cogitation, and devoid of judgment.

This has nothing to do with the content of what is being heard. It is simply about the act of offering attention. It translates, to the one being listened to, as an act of respect. As such, it triggers the reciprocity reaction: we are willing to listen to those who have listened to us.

All three strategies, to work, must be done cleanly. While we can all become more trustworthy, or better listeners, or better trustors ourselves, we have to keep our motives intact.

If we want others to trust us solely as means to our own ends—they won’t. The concepts of giving freely, and without attachment, are key. The paradox is: if you do these things, you become trusted. But if you set out to do them in order to be trusted, so that you can etc. etc. etc.—you don’t.

5 Tiny steps to stop being an idiot

This is from Leo Babauta's blog which I enjoy..

I was having a talk with my son yesterday, sitting him down and talking about consideration — how to think of others, and not just yourself. It’s a key concept that makes such a difference in life that it’s one of the few things I really want to teach my children.

It’s so sad because I see so many inconsiderate people around me every day — people who only care about what they want and don’t think of others, don’t see things from the perspective of other people. People who cut you off in traffic, who cut in front of you in line, who say rude things, who take your parking spot, who hurt your feelings. I try to brush these things off, but it’s unfortunate that so many people are so inconsiderate.

Thing is, they aren’t trying to be mean or rude … they just aren’t thinking of others. And I don’t think they’re aware of this. I think they think they’re being perfectly fine, and don’t think of themselves as inconsiderate.

I’m a good example — I think I’m fairly considerate, but there are plenty of times when I’m inconsiderate without realizing it. I realized, when I was having that talk with my son, that I had been rude to someone yesterday. Then I started to think of all the ways I’d been selfish recently. And I realized that I’m not as perfect as I think.

You probably aren’t either. While you might not be the “jerk” I called you in the title of this post, there are very few of us who are considerate without fail. I have an uncle who is the most considerate person I know — he’s one of my role models — and he can skip this post. The rest of us need it, I think.

What are the consequences of being more considerate? To start with, I think it feels good — we like being kind to others, doing nice things for others, making others happier. Second, it makes our lives better in so many other ways — people will treat you with more respect and kindness, will like you better, will be more likely to want to work with you and be with you. Third, it makes society better — when we all treat each other with consideration, we live better together, we work better together, we cooperate. Sure, there will always be jerks, but if we can make them a minority, society will be better overall.

At the very least, you can say with surety that you’re not one of those jerks. And that’s a good thing, right?

1. Admit you’re not perfect. I’ll be the first to say it: I’m far from perfect. I’m a jerk sometimes. I’m inconsiderate and selfish sometimes. And I don’t usually realize it until later. If you think you’re not a jerk, at least admit that you are inconsiderate at times. Try to recall those times. Think of how you could have acted differently. This is the first step, and it’s an important one.

2. Place yourself in the shoes of others. This is the key to consideration — to consider the feelings and needs and wants of others, to see things from their perspective. Try to think of what others are going through, what you’d want if you were in their situation. This isn’t always easy, but it gets easier with practice. And even if you’re not correct in your assumptions about what another person wants or feels or is going through … the important thing is that you’re making the effort, and it’s a transformative one.

3. Act with compassion and kindness. If someone else is suffering, even a little, try to ease their suffering in some way. Treat others with kindness, respect, love. Do it in little ways — a smile, a kind word, a thank you, a hug, doing something to ease their burden, going out of your way to be courteous, holding open a door, letting another person in front of you in traffic. Little tiny acts will make a huge difference.

4. Practice, practice. Old habits die hard, especially ones like this where we rarely think about it. Keep it in the forefront of your consciousness by making every interaction with another person a chance to practice being considerate. Every time you talk to someone, email someone, see someone on the street … make this an opportunity to practice consideration. Practice, and practice some more. That’s the only way you get good at anything.

5. Do 5 little things. As a way to practice, make it a goal to do 5 little things each day that are kind and considerate. It doesn’t matter what those things are — cooking something for a family member, tidying up a bit, sending a nice thank-you email to a co-worker, lending a hand to a friend, being there to listen to someone’s problems … I’m sure you could think of a thousand little things. Do this every day, and you’ll soon be a pro.

Quick way to get more sales

Here’s one of the quickest, easiest ways I know to get more sales.

It won’t cost you a dime, and everything you need for the strategy to be successful you already have at your disposal.

What’s the Secret?

Start collecting compliments.

For the next month start collecting all the compliments you’re getting from your customers. Every time they tell you you’re doing a great job, or that your product/service rocks ask that customer if they mind if you use their comments as a testimonial.

Make it easy for them to give you a testimonial by having a simple page on your website devoted to getting their feedback. Or, if in person perhaps an easy to fill out form will do. However, be sure that they know you are using their statements as a testimonial, you have their express consent to use it, and run it by them before you publish their praise for the world to see.

Where to Use the Testimonials?

Once you have a nice selection of customer praise, integrate it into your marketing materials, brochures, your website, or anywhere you directly interact with your customer.

To help get the most bang for your buck here, use testimonials that are:

• Specific - “Jim’s expert advice on small business writeoff’s saved me $500 on my taxes this year alone” is a lot better than “Jim is great at taxes”
• Authentic/Genuine – These shouldn’t sound like a sales seminar, in fact quite the opposite. You want to use comments that sound genuine and authentic
• Relateable – Some customers have a way of giving you feedback that will easily translate to the masses. Use the comments that the majority of your customers will relate to.

Why Does it Work?

Simple. A testimonial is proof you don’t suck. Consumers want to know that somebody before them has used your service and loved what you do, or they have your product and can’t live without it.

Testimonials act as a kind of social proof. When consumers talk about your products they are automatically thought of as more credible than when you talk about your products. Consumer testimonials:

• Build trust
• Aide familiarity
• Reinforce your marketing message

Remember:

• 2/3 of the United States Economy is driven by word of mouth

• 10% of consumers influence the purchasing decisions of the other 90%

• 91% of consumers are “likely” to buy off of a recommendation

• 92% of consumers “prefer” a word of mouth recommendation

Final Thoughts

Many business owners don’t like to toot their own horn, that’s fine with testimonials your customers do it for you. Many times you’ll find that they enjoy giving you feedback, and will get a kick out of seeing their statements or quotes on published material of yours. If you’re good, customers want to tell the world about you.

This takes no real time, cost no money, and you’re getting the “data” anyway, so tell me where you’ll get a better deal than that?

Your Turn

If you’re not using them, take a couple weeks to collect the praise and use the feedback – then come back and let me know how it went. If you do use testimonials in your marketing let’s hear about how it’s working out for you.

great idea from Seth

Tom points us to a provocative idea for home builders. If you want to sell a new house, why not offer prospective buyers help in selling their old houses? Send your idle crews to their house to paint it or do other important cosmetic fixes. Fill the old house with the furniture you use in your models, etc.

Take it a step further. If your home building service is totally slack, why not get to work upgrading and selling older homes or even foreclosed ones?

Consider what a solo entrepreneur could do using eBay: instead of waiting for people to hold garage sales, why not distribute flyers offering to run a virtual garage sale for anyone who will open their home to you? Go in with a digital camera, catalog and photograph the top 20 most valuable items in the house and sell them on eBay... and split the money. Your proactive effort overcomes the seller's inertia and you both profit.

There are huge opportunities for this in the business to business space as well. Most companies would welcome a post-tax-day accountant who offered (on spec) to review bills or expenses in exchange for half the money saved. If they had time, they'd do it themselves, but of course they don't.

In my experience, much of marketing is a game of waiting for the other guy to go first. Well, if nothing is happening, you go first.

Advice on Equity

A friend asked me to help him think about how to split the equity in a company he was starting. His colleague is contributing office space and some key technology. My friend is responsible for where the business goes from here. I told him this:

If you apportion equity, you will certainly do it wrong.

That's because it's based on a snapshot, a moment in time.

Sure, today, your partner's share is worth 50% and yours is worth 50%. His because of what he did, yours because of what you're going to do.

But a year from now, that number can't possibly be right. You may have acquired six more pieces of software, raised millions, traveled the world, closed sales and sold the company. Wow. Or, you may have done absolutely nothing.

So, my best advice is to say, "Today, right now, your contribution is worth 5% of the company and my creation of the company is worth 5%. The other 90% is based on what each of us does over the next 18 months. Here's a list of what has to get done, and what we agree it's worth..."

And then make a list. Stuff like commenting and updating and supporting the code. Stuff like closing sales and hiring people and raising money...

Of course, you leave an out for unforeseen events and dilution based on bringing in new partners.

You may end up having small disagreements about how to interpret the list, but this sort of advance flexibility is well worth the awkward conversation it takes to get it started. Another tip: put in a clause appointing a trusted third party as an arbitrator, so small disagreements don't snowball into litigation.

Getting serious about meetings

Do you have a meeting problem? Some folks are going to eight hours of meeting a day. At Ford, they used to have meetings to prepare for meetings, just to be sure everyone had their story straight.

If you're serious about solving your meeting problem, getting things done and saving time, try this for one week. If it doesn't work, I'll be happy to give you a full refund.

1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?
2. Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of realtime face time.
3. Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out.
4. Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.
5. If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.
6. Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.
7. The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.
8. Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.
9. If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

This is all marketing. It's a show, one that lets your team know you're treating meetings differently now.

PR v Publicity

Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego.

But it's not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It's the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna was great at PR. Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity. The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink. A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest you don't bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first. And you probably won't accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don't even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.

How to build your email list

click here

Twitter according to Randy Gage

go for it Randy - click here

Great view on Twitter from Matt Freedman

Until about 3 weeks ago when I immersed myself in Twitter I would have totally agreed with you. Unfortunately twitter is one of those things you don’t get until you get into it.

· I agree twitter is not a productivity tool and yes if you are not disciplined it can consume a lot of time for nothing.

· Twitter is useful though for

o Following people that have useful information to share. I follow a lot of technology nuts and in a couple of minutes a day I can keep abreast of the latest going ons in my industry and then delve deeper into what is relevant for me

o Positioning yourself as an expert by sharing valuable insight in your area of expertise with those that follow you (like you TTT on T)

· Twitter for conferences is awesome and allows you to get some key points out of a conference that you may not be able to attend. Have a look at Ad:Tech in Sydney today for an example. Attendees are commenting on it in real time (see http://search.twitter.com/search?q=atsyd)

My advice for Twitterers (Tweeps) is

· Don’t get obsessed with the number of people you follow or who follow you.

· Only follow people that you feel have interesting information to share eg industry experts, colleagues

· If you don’t have something important to say, don’t say it

· Treat it like email, only check it once or twice a day and don’t leave it running in the background.

· Use tools like Tweet Deck to group users so you can pick the great content from the noise

Have regular twitter free days

Newspapers

Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn)

Page by page, section by section, the influence of the New York Times is fading away. Great people on an important mission, but their footprint is shrinking and the company is losing stock value and cash and power and the ability to have the impact that they might.

Today's Sunday magazine has a cover story on Jennifer Aniston. Of course!

"All the News That's Fit to Print" is the heart of the problem. It was never that, of course. It was "All the News That Fits." The entire mindset of (every) newspaper has been driven by the cost of paper, the finite nature of paper, the cost of delivery and the cycle of a daily paper. You run enough articles to fit as many ads as you can sell.These are artifacts of a different age, one that today's consumer doesn't care a whit about.

Lots of organizations go through this analysis. How do you leverage your brand or your customer base to get to the next level, to enter new markets or new technologies--and do it while running your old business. And almost without exception, organizations are run by people who want to protect the old business, not develop the new one.

When you think about your business, realize that it is a combination of assets and constraints. The Times understood both, but suddenly, the constraints changed. Now, it's possible for a single individual with a Typepad account to reach more people than almost any newspaper in the country can. Loosen one constraint and the game changes. That leaves you with the assets, for a while anyway.

When in pain, the answer is not to pander to the masses and undo the very things that made you special.

Ten years ago, the paper knew what it had to do. They had a shot at inventing the future, but compromised their way to it instead of leading. Here are some simple ways they could think big instead of merely failing to defend the status quo:

1. Use their influence and brand to enable users to spread their content:
Why, precisely, aren't the Zagats guides a NY Times product? Or Yelp? That's a quarter of a billion dollars worth of value that the paper with the most influential restaurant reviews page didn't create. Why didn't they build Wikipedia? Or a platform to influence the way politicians govern?

Hiring and promoting David Pogue is a great example of expanding that base into the online world. Buying about.com was smart, but being afraid to put the Times name on it was an error... an opportunity for leverage, wasted.

2. Leverage the op-ed page and spread important ideas:
Sure, Tom Friedman and a handful of other columnists have a large reach and influence. But why doesn't the Times have 50 columnists? 500? Tom Peters or Jim Leff or Joel Spolsky or Micah Sifry or Pam Slim or Patrick Semmens or Dan Pink would be great columnists. Why not view the endless print space online as an opportunity to leverage their core asset?

What would happen if the huge team of existing Times editors and writers each interviewed an interesting or important person every day? 5,000 or 10,000 really important interviews every year, each waiting for a sponsor, each finding a relevant audience...

3. Build a permission asset:
Times readers are among the most informed cultural consumers in the world. They tend to have money to spend and are eager for new ideas. What an opportunity to build 10 or a 100 or ten thousand silos. Carefully focused free email newsletters, and then blogs, each with an editor and plenty of relevant and useful ads. Well-written ideas, delivered with authority, are as important as ever. The Times sat back and let hundreds of other micro-sites deliver this instead.

4. Keep score:
The New York Times bestseller list used to matter a great deal. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, because bookstores discounted and promoted the bestsellers, which helped them sell more.

We still want to know what the bestsellers are, but the Times works hard not to tell us. There are literally a thousand categories of media that people want to know about (top blogs, top DVDs, etc.) and the Times abdicated their ability to keep score, to be the trusted referee and to drive the short head in almost every form of culture.

Consider this for a moment: Oprah is able to sell ten times as many copies of a book than the New York Times can. The Times abdicated their role as the leader of the conversation about books.

5. Stringers:

The Times has always used freelancers and stringers to report and contribute to the paper. But how many? Why doesn't the paper have 10,000 stringers, each with a blog, each angling to be picked up by the central site? You wouldn't have to pay much per story to build a semi-pro cadre of writers and reporters. When you organize the news (delivering unique perspectives to people who want to hear them) you influence the conversation.

6. Create new platforms for advertisers:

The Times has profited longer than most newspapers because of New York. New York is an efficient place to be a newspaper. Lots of people, lots of advertisers, lots of spending, influence all over the world. But even that isn't enough to support the failing economics of dead trees and delivery. The only reason a paper exists (from a business point of view) is to sell ads.

So, what sort of ad-rich, ad-centric media could they build? From directories to pdfs to coupons to promotions, the list is nearly endless.

• • •

Instead of building something that dominates in this century the way they did in the last, the editors at the paper are pandering to the masses (and failing). Today's Magazine not only features the aforementioned volumes of insight about Jennifer Aniston, but it also includes yet another lame Ethicist column (they run it because they always have) and a weak interview with David Lynch (which no one will talk about on Monday). It also features recipes (we don't need more recipes, thanks, we now have an infinite number of recipes) and their latest affectation, which is overdesigned typesetting that is unreadable. All of these efforts are placeholders, not bold moves to create something that matters.

The people I know at the Times are smart, driven, honest and on a mission to do great work. The people didn't fail the system, the system failed them.

Do the people running the Times know more about running a newspaper or building ideas that spread profitably online? How about the people running your organization? Odds are, they're great at yesterday's business.

I guess it's about the difference between:

• senior management playing defense, supporting and protecting the status quo and avoiding offending the elders upstairs vs.
• using existing momentum and clout to build assets for the next business.

Great idea for sales

The panhandler's secret

When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.

One day, I'm walking down the street and a guy comes up to me and says, "Do you have a dollar for four quarters?" He held out his hand with four quarters in it.

Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.

Then he turned to me and said, "can you spare a quarter?"

What a fascinating interaction.

First, he engaged me. A fair trade, one that perhaps even benefited me, not him.

Now, we have a relationship. Now, he knows I have a quarter (in my hand, even). So his next request is much more difficult to turn down. If he had just walked up to me and said, "can you spare a quarter," he would have been invisible.

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it.

Interact first, sell second.

A great job ad

http://www.squidoo.com/Hiring-for-Acumen-Fund

4HWW - Email and the Inbox

Awesome stuff

Click here - go

Negotiation

Negotiate Late — Make Others Negotiate Against Themselves

Never make a first offer when purchasing. Flinch after the first offer (”$3,000!” followed by pure silence, which uncomfortable salespeople fill by dropping the price once), let people negotiate against themselves (”Is that really the best you can offer?” elicits at least one additional drop in price), then “bracket”. If they end up at $2,000 and you want to pay $1,500, offer $1,250. They’ll counter with approximately $1,750, to which you respond: “I’ll tell you what — let’s just split the difference. I’ll overnight you a cheque, and we can call it a day.” The end result? Exactly what you wanted: $1,500.