Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Want to know what your natural persuasive way of communicating is? Take the F Score Fascination trigger test from Sally Hogshead and find out, it takes less than 2 minutes! Sally Hogshead is the author of Fascinate where she uncovers the 7 triggers that brands use to persuade or captivate us and the test is designed to tell you which triggers you use to persuade on a consistent basis.

I took the test a few moments ago and found out that my primary fascination is Mystique, which knowing myself isn’t that far off and neither are the rest of the results to tell you the truth! Although there is no detailed action plan after taking the test you do get some insights on where and what you can improve on.

I was fascinated with the ideas from the accompanying Change This ebook that I have the book incoming and can’t wait to read it…the trigger of lust won me over!

Follow Sally on Twitter and let her know your result!

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Here are a couple of kids across the border in Tijuana that earn their money by entertaining rather than blowing fire from their mouths or just outright asking for it. If you didn’t already know, wrestling is BIG in Mexico and what you see here is very very good wrestling entertainment from a couple of 12 year old kids who after school go to an intersection near their home and put on a show.

They’re making around $30 – 40/day (dlls not mexican pesos) while only doing this for a couple of hours. Compare that to others who might not even make it to $10 in a week cleaning cars!

A few months back we saw these kids in person and were captivated and inspired by their creativity that to honor them we created the illustration below which is now our main character, he’s the differentiation superhero.

The principle of ‘being different’ is very simple: Think and act like a kid and don’t be afraid to be wrong.

So if you want to partner with us in the future, now you know where we’re coming from. How are you being different?

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Here’s an accompanying video of Duncan Watt’s ‘Is the Tipping point toast?’ article where he argues that targeting the so called influencers is a total waste of time and instead marketers should target everyday people who are more receptive to new ideas. You should read the full article at Fast Company, it’s well worth your time!

I found the above video as well as 2 other perspectives on how ideas spread through networks via @ariegoldshlager and also wrote about this a few days ago that to spread ideas go to the edge where people are more receptive to new things.

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So where do you place an idea so it spreads through networks?

There’s some network research from MIT that trumps the notion of the influencer: the most influential spreaders in a social network do not correspond to the best connected people or to the most central people.

The truth is we don’t really know specifically from where an idea/trend will spread from, we only know that the weakest links (the people we never think of) have higher spreading power than the strongest links and these people are found at the edges of a network.

So what’s a marketer/innovator to do?

Influencers don’t care about you

There are some theories but the one most everyone focuses on is reaching the influencers made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his book the Tipping Point. Well good luck with that because most everyone including your competitors is doing the same thing, the race is on to reach the so called influencers and they can barely keep up with all the ideas they’re being asked to spread.

Imagine being the care taker for the President of the United States and you get all sorts of letters from people who want to say something to the President and your job is to filter out the one’s that are most relevant for him to read and take action on. Well that’s exactly the battle you have to fight when targeting the influencers, everybody knows them so why would your idea come first?

People will ONLY ‘spread an idea’ if they think it’s worth remarking about, not because you paid them for their attention.

The fringe is much more friendly

New ideas and trends come from the fringe, from the edge and not from the mainstream, and spread from the edge to the center and then the process repeats itself. You stand a better chance of catching that ‘fire starter idea’ by going out to the fringe (where nothing is settled) instead of looking for ideas where everyone is looking (the mainstream) and then focus on making your idea take form with people at the edge.

In conclusion here are a few things to remember to help your ideas spread:

1. Go outside the mainstream where things are changing and look for ideas there.
2. Do algorithmic innovation: generate a lot of ideas, figure out ways to try them out cheaply and quickly, and then scale-up the ones that seem most promising.
3. Your idea needs to be buzzworthy. Ask yourself: Would anyone tell a friend about this?
4. Feed it to the fringe.
5. Make the influencers come to you.

What do you think, what’s your experience with making ideas spread?

Collapse theory graphic by BlackCoffee

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What makes people go WOM (word of mouth)? Something that makes them go WOW!

Check out the video above where two young girls do some pretty remarkable things. It’s safe to say that the people who witnessed this event went home with a big smile on their face because they were entertained and now have something interesting to talk about!

The point is that actions speak louder than words and as these young ladies did, they let their actions speak for themselves.

What actions are you taking to make your customers go from WOW to WOM?

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