Tag: New York Times

The 6 things you must know about the science of persuasion


Katya Andresen shares this:

If you have never read the classic book Influence by Robert Cialdini, you really should.  But you’re also in luck, because the Influence at Work team just released this summary of the six principles of persuasion that the book covers.  Spend 11 minutes watching this video – it’s well worth your time.

Trouble viewing the video?  Go here.

No time to watch?  Here’s my summary of the principles and how they apply to us.

1. Reciprocity – People tend to return a favor, thus all those annoying address labels charities send out as a fundraising ploy.

2. Scarcity – Perceived scarcity fuels demand. “Only four memberships are left” prompts action!

3. Authority – People will tend to obey authority figures.  What expert can attest to the value of your organization?

4. Consistency – If people commit to an idea or goal, they are more likely to follow through. It’s why pledging is a great option for people who aren’t ready to take action.

5. Liking – People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. That’s why you want your champions spreading the word about your cause among their friends and family.

6. Consensus – People will do what other people are doing. That’s why it’s great to show who is taking action for your cause – others are likely to conform.

Source: Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog

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There are thousands and thousands of Twitter tools and choosing the ones that support your business objectives can be a challenge. Here are the best I have found for the ‘e1evation workflow’ creation and curation process along with my top 10 tactical Twitter videos…

There are thousands and thousands of Twitter tools and choosing the ones that support your business objectives can be a challenge. Here are the best I have found for the ‘e1evation workflow’ creation and curation process along with my top 10 tactical Twitter videos…

http://storify.com/e1evation/my-top-twitter-tools

Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or ‘connect’ so we can talk about how this applies to you and your organization…

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Eat More Dirt

A farmer in West Virginia blogs:

My morning routine gets me moving and my brain awakening. After I get my coffee and breakfast prepared, I carry it to my desk where the computer is first turned to email.  I was happy to see today that this blog has a new subscriber who lives in the Philappines. We can safely assume she will not be shopping our farmers markets but something I wrote struck a cord for her and she signed on. Welcome!  The local food movement is growing!

As I wandered down my email I came to my daily subscription for the New York Times. One of the op-ed pieces caught my eye and I want to share it with you: Dirtying Up Our Diets was written by Jeff D. Leach, a science and archaeology writer and founder of the Human Food Project. In the New York Times piece Leach poses one benefit to the increase in farmers market participation that I had not considered: we will be eating more dirt!

During the 20th century more Americans moved off the farm into the cities and no longer grew a good percentage of their own food. As food distribution industrialized, packaging of fresh produce became more prevalent and now we can get prewashed plastic bags of salads, vegetables all cut up ready for stir frying, and even prepared trays of fruit to bring to the next office party.

That popular time saving package saves you germs too. Sounds good, right?

Well, Leach says it is not all good. While he is not truly suggesting that we actually go eat some dirt and therefore ingest some harmful bacteria, he does say that all this washing has resulted in a reduction of the GOOD bacteria that our guts need.” Get more here: Eat More Dirt « wvfarm2u.

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Intelligence Follows the Wheel

English: Exercise wheel for a small rodent, di...

I ran across some interesting research the other day that I wanted to take a few moments to share here. For years scientists have known that giving mice “enriched” environments makes the mice smarter. They would put in colorful toys, tunnels, exercise wheels, etc. and mice who lived in the “enriched” environments performed better on tests than the mice in the non-enriched cages. Finally some scientists started trying to figure out exactly what it was in the enriched environment’s was making the mice smart.

It turned out it wasn’t the colorful balls or toys. it all came down to the exercise wheel. Even though the mice loved the toys the thing that made them smart was running on the wheel. The intelligence followed the exercise wheel–not the toys.

This has some interesting implications for people who want to perform at their peak mental capabilities. Maybe exercise is the one of the best ways to invest your time in getting smarter.” via Intelligence Follows the Wheel | Productivity501.

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Three Habits You Can Break or Create Today

Book Cover

“When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you hop in the shower, check your email, or grab a doughnut? What did you say to your kids on the way out the door? Salad or hamburger for lunch? When you got home, did you put on your sneakers and go for a run, or pour yourself a drink and eat dinner in front of the television?

Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, and how often we exercise have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial security, and happiness.

In the last decade, our understanding of the neurology of habit formation has been transformed. We’ve learned how habits form — and why they are so hard to break.

As a result, we now know how to create good habits and change bad ones like never before.

At the core of every habit is a neurological loop with three parts: a cue, a routine, and a reward.” Go to the source: Charles Duhigg: Three Habits You Can Break or Create Today. There’s valuable information on understanding cues, routines and rewards…

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Six degrees of aggregation

“Of the many and conflicting stories about how The Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68 sections, three international editions (with more to come), 1.2 billion monthly page views and 54 million comments in the past year alone, how it came to surpass the traffic of virtually all the nation’s established news organizations and amass content so voluminous that a visit to the website feels like a trip to a mall where the exits are impossible to locate—the earliest and arguably most telling begins with a lunch in March 2003 at which the idea of an online newspaper filled with celebrity bloggers and virally disseminated aggregated content did not come up.” via Six degrees of aggregation : CJR.

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Your starting place does not define you

Personal Best

“Your story is where you take it to, not where you start.”―Tony Robbins

Let’s be honest and get a few things out on the table:

Your starting point does not define you.

Your starting point is a neutral data point.

What matters is where you want to go rather than where you are right now.

Your starting place is just that—where you start. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s neutral.

Jeff Bezos started Amazon in a garage. Steve Jobs started Apple in a garage. Many people think a garage is a pretty terrible place to start a business. However, both visionaries built incredibly successful companies that have since changed the world and our view of what’s possible.

Iyanla Vanzant, an author and self-help guru, went through a divorce, lost her daughter to cancer, and lost her home. She is now a NY Times bestselling author and will soon have a self-empowerment show on Oprah’s network (OWN). Although, we tend to classify our starting place in an extreme way, it’s just a starting place. No need to be dramatic.

“We can think, speak, and bring the best possible outcome into existence by focusing on where we are going, not on where we think we are.”—Iyanla Vanzant

Do yourself and everyone around you a favor, please stop being so tough on yourself because your starting place is difficult…

Source: Your Starting Place Does Not Define You [BLOG] « Positively Positive

Go to the source if you want more…

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Me??? NUTS??? Not today people, not today!

Mr. Peanut

Adrienne shares a great post over at ‘12 Steps; Think About It’ and it gives me a tool I’m going to hold on to for a long time…

When things get crazy in my house and I feel like shouting, “Stop the world I want to get off!” I have often struggled to find something that makes me stop and think.  Sure, I can say, “Stop!” or I can think “Stop!” but the world still keeps going around. What that does to me is put what is at odds with what I want as the focus in my mind.  That doesn’t work for me.   Most often the stop the world I want to get off feeling  has to do with my children.  You know, they get to that age where it doesn’t matter what all the evidence says, what the book says, what the rest of the world knows is correct, or what the teachers say, in their eyes they are RIGHT.  Or they are at that age where their answer is always “No!”.  With four children under 12 this happens quite frequently in my house.  So I do my best to try to move forward. Usually with a statement such as, “I’m going nuts!”

Yep, you guessed it.  Well now when I say that I will forever start laughing.  NUTS now means…Not Using The Steps.  Best acronym ever!  Because truly when the world gets crazy around me and I start to feel it affect me, that is what I’m doing, or not doing to be more precise.

So think about this for a minute. Think about in our lives all the opportunities we might have to use this acronym. And if you think of more please feel free to share the phrases!

Someone does or says something completely incomprehensible to us..and we think “That’s NUTS!” We find it incomprehensible because we’re “Not Using The Steps.”

Source: Me??? NUTS??? Not today people, not today! « 12 Steps – Think About It!

When you feel yourself getting NUTS, remember that just for today you can do something for 12 hours that would appall you if you felt you had to keep it up for a lifetime. Read more of the ‘just for todays’ here…

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Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…

 

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Something to ponder…

Are you about to start a conversation with a statistic?

Stop.

Emotion must lead, reason must follow.  Because that’s how you commune with the human brain.  Emotion first, reason second.  Heart, then facts.

Please, REMEMBER THIS.  Whatever your cause, whoever your audience, you must start every conversation with the emotional heart of your cause, not the facts of its scope or scale in the world.  If you don’t create emotional space in the mind for your cause, there will be no place for your information to find a home.  And if you do not create a social landscape for a relationship, there is no place for human connection.

If I had a dollar for every person who asked if this applied to them, I’d have a lot of money for my nonprofit.  My answer is always this: There are no exceptions to the rule that you must awaken the heart to arouse the mind.

David Brooks says this so very eloquently in his new book, The Social Animal:

“Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it.  Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations.  The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.”

Decision making is not a point in time, says Brooks: “We are primarily wanderers, not decision makers… We are pilgrims in a social landscape.”

So true.  So well said.

via nonprofitmarketingblog.com

Hmmm. I’ll have to think long and hard about this one. How many times have I started a class or a presentation loaded with statistics? I’ve lost track!

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Photo of the Year?

Photo of the Year Candidate – By Kathryn Jean Lopez – The Corner – National Review Online.

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Isn’t blogging for 40 year old political malcontents living in their parent’s basement? Not at all. Smart companies are using blogging as the glue to bring their internet content together and drive their social media outposts. Late last year, I wrote…

“Here’s the real payback, however, and the real reason why these corporations do it: HubSpot says that companies that blog get 55% more visitors, have 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages [which are valuable from a search perspective]. Better yet, customers who are engaged by a corporate blog and social media spend 30% more than their disconnected counterparts, according to MarketingSavant Dana VanDen Heuvel…” Source: Why a company must have a blog… | e1evation, llc

For those who are skeptical, read on…

“With tens of millions of blogs online today, major corporations have started to recognize the value of a corporate blog for communicating with customers. However, corporate blogging is far different than the more traditional blogging that most of us encounter on a daily basis. Corporate blogging brings its own unique set of challenges and opportunities that must be considered and addressed by the company in order for its users to have a positive experience.

…Probably the most significant reason for companies to manage a corporate blog is the communication benefits it can provide. As a higher percentage of the population uses the Internet for researching and buying products and services, companies can often benefit from having a more direct line of communication with customers and potential customers.” Source: Corporate Blog Design: Trends And Examples – Smashing Magazine

According to the source, the five reasons why companies should blog are:

  • Communication with customers and the public
  • Demonstration of corporate responsibility
  • Reputation management
  • Promotion of products and services
  • Provide executives and/or employees the chance to communicate openly

To this I would also add…

  • Search engine optimization
  • Public promotion

If you want to read more, go to the source. In the meantime, I’m going to post a couple of examples of great corporate blogs to illustrate these points. Here they are in no particular order…

GM…

“The GM Fastlane Blog is a great example of corporate blogging because GM has clearly realized that regurgitating press releases is not what blogs are made for. GM talks a lot on their blog about their cars and trucks and the design choices they make while creating them, but they also throw in interesting treatises on current hot-button issues, such as alternative energy.” Source: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Social media maven Dell…

“Though Dell’s corporate blog rarely strays from Dell-centric news, the company posts with a great conversational voice, often breaks news on their blog (which keeps people coming back), and listens and responds to customers. Dell also posts regularly (1-2 posts per day at least) which keeps content fresh and encourages repeat visits.” Source: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Lenovo

“The great collection of blogs from computer maker Lenovo demonstrate that the company really understands blogging. Lenovo intersperses posts about its product line with musings about business, design, life, and technology. Definitely don’t miss the Design Matters blog, which should be a must-read for any designer.” Source: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Amazon Web Services…

“What could be more dreary than commoditized data processing and storage services? While that might sound boring, the AWS Blog does a great job of highlighting cool things that are done on top of Amazon Web Services. Lately they’ve put up posts about how AWS are being used by the New York Times to provide online access to 150 years of archives and by the little ShareThis widget that you’ve probably seen on hundreds of thousands of blogs around the web. Lots of charts, graphs and other fun stuff for nerds on this blog.” Source: Nine Company Blogs That Are Fun For Anyone to Read

And the list goes on. imho, smart companies will use this tool as part of what I call a ‘Perry Como’ approach to PR [you know “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on the affirmative, and don’t mess with Mr. Inbetween]. Looking for more? I suggest the Alltop list of corporate blogs…

Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment, call or contact me so we can discuss how this applies to your business…

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Steve Jobs: Master of Irony

I’m not sure if it still is, but at one point in time this commercial was the most popular of all time…

Now, ironically, Robert Wright of the New York Times says Steve Jobs has become the ‘Big Brother’ that Apple warned us about in 1984…

“Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies. He’s long played hardball with journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn are verboten, and some kinds of political commentary don’t make the cut. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech hegemon and congenital control freak — and you get a scary scenario: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother.” Source: Is Steve Jobs Big Brother? – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com

Follow the source — it’s an interesting read…

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Das social media manifesto 2/22/2010

Image representing Loic Le Meur as depicted in...
Image by Joi Ito via CrunchBase

Let’s start with some good stuff from Loic LeMeur, founder of Seesmic and social media expert…

“Tomorrow I am giving a talk at Stanford University with Robert Scoble and MC Hammer on how social software changes marketing so I thought like sharing a few points here and had to chose a title inspired from Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto in 2003, just for fun. The talk should be online on YouTube next week watch this space or my Twitter I will post it. I also have a simpler version in French. ” Source: Loic Le Meur Blog: The Corporate Social Networking Manifesto

Next? Some worthwhile thoughts on improving the Facebook experience…

“The sheer number of friends I have, in the real world and on the internet, who use Facebook ultimately led me to capitulate and start using it a little. I’m not a huge fan by any means, but I will admit that I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to.” Source: How to Vastly Improve Your Facebook Experience with Filters and Lists | Newsome.Org

Next, how Twitter can save your life…

“It’s safe to say that the majority of the world thinks Twitter is a waste of time. Yes, Twitter is a darling of the New York Times and frequents front pages of mainstream media. But Twitter gets coverage not because the intelligentsia loves Twitter, but because the intelligentsia hates feeling like it’s falling behind.

This post is for all the people who think Twitter is stupid but wish they didn’t.” Source: Twitter can save your life | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

Here’s a Darren Rowse video on how bloggers should use twitter…

“In this video I interview Darren Rowse, founder of the popular blogs Problogger.net and Twitip (a blog dedicated to Twitter).

Darren also authored the best selling book Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

In this video Darren shares why Problogger took off and his great tips on how bloggers should use Twitter.” Source: How Bloggers Should Use Twitter (a Darren Rowse Interview) | Social Media Examiner

Follow the source link for the video. Finally, a list of blogging resources to follow…

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Google Living Stories

California - Santa Rosa: Snoopy's Gallery & Gi...
Image by wallyg via Flickr

Google is like the Lucy van Pelt of media. She is quoted as saying “I’m torn between the desire to create and the desire to destroy.”…

“Today, a new Google project popped up in Google Labs (Google Labs) that is a unique extension of this effort. It’s called Living Stories, and its goal is to provide a new and efficient way to read news coverage on breaking stories from one location. Oh, and it’s enlisted The New York Times and the Washington Post for help.” Source: Google and Top Newspapers Experiment with a New Way to Deliver the News

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZhCY9FF608

Another tool I’d be checking out if I were a news anchor!

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Are location-based services overrated?

Image representing Foursquare Solutions as dep...
Image via CrunchBase

Please consider this…

“Despite the buzz around location-based services, I have been ambivalent, if not skeptical about the technology.As much as social media has encouraged people to share information, I have not been convinced there is the same amount of enthusiasm for broadcasting your location.There’s the issue of privacy, as well as few “rewards” for telling the world your location.

In many respects, however, being unconvinced about the potential of location-based services has been like a Don Quixote-like experience, particularly when you’re an enthusiastic member of the social media community. The idea that you don’t really buy into the next new thing seems almost sacrosanct.

It was interesting and, to be honest, encouraging to read Joshua Brustein’s column in yesterday’s New York Times about whether the excitement surrounding location-based services is being driven by technology companies and investors, while consumers only seem modestly interested.

Brustein’s column came on the heels of a Pew Internet and American Life Project survey that discovered only 4% of Americans use location services like Foursquare and Gowalla, compared with 5% last May. Even among smartphone-toting 18 to 29-year-olds, only 8% use location-based services.

It may just be that location-based services won’t be widely embraced. Or it could be that location-based services have yet to find their sweet spot. However you want to explain it, the reality is location-based services have failed to live up to lofty expectations as social media’s next hot thing.

Perhaps Facebook’s entry into the market will change things, particularly if consumers are attracted to the link between the company’s Places and Deals services.

Or maybe not. It could be that most people have no use for location-based services despite the best efforts of companies and investors.

After all, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” Source: Do Consumers Really Want Location-based Services? | Social Media Today

When I teach ‘curation’ as a form of blogging, I usually say that the author’s comment can be ‘yes, no or maybe so’. In this case, my response is a ‘maybe so’, but I’m leaning toward no. Let me tell you why…

Something like 87% of Americans have cell phones. Of that, 25% have smartphones. That number is projected to grow to 50% in 2011. The default mapping application on the two fastest growing platforms is Google Maps. Google just released a new product called Hotpot that makes it easy for patrons to write reviews directly on to Google Maps. Think about the implications. Say someone’s driving through Algoma, WI on their way to Door County and they’re looking for a place to grab a bite. They check Google Maps to see the options and as they try to decide, they check the reviews from Hotpot directly on Google Maps. Unfortunately, earlier that week someone had a rare bad experience at one of their choices. Do you think that won’t have an impact?

Michael Moon quoted Peter Drucker astutely in his book ‘Firebrands’ over a decade ago when he said that we’ve moved beyond the information age to the aged of ‘trusted relationships’. I believe that tech-savvy people with smartphones are going to change the face of American retail business by holding retailers accountable through mobile tools that allow them to report good or bad experiences immediately as they happen. These ‘trusted’ mobile ‘relationships’ will have the power to guide purchasing decisions at the mobile ‘point of sale’ like an endcap in a grocery store, directing potential customers to the ‘right’ place. Smart business owners will keep an eye on this trend…

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