Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

We know people prefer to use email to share content they find interesting with their friends but more interesting is knowing what they share and why. There are some answers now: according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who spent more than six months studying The New York Times’ list of most-emailed stories, people are more likely to pass along stories that are positive, long and intellectually stimulating.

Researchers found that popular stories often inspired a sense of awe by tackling a broad topic and requiring the reader to approach the subject from a fresh angle. Researchers say these articles are popular because they create emotional connections between the person sending the article and its recipient. “Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” the researchers said.

A picture is worth a thousand words and if I could present these findings in visual way I think the picture below speaks for itself, doesn’t it make you go AWE?

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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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The formula to successful networking: Give to receive. Create relationships. Quality not quantity.

Ask yourself:

If I disappeared tomorrow who would care?

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Kira Wampler from Intuit talks about how Intuit created word of mouth by connecting their customers around a topic they cared about. It all stared with a simple yet powerful question: How do you elevate the conversation for small business owners?

To connect our customers we need to understand what’s important to them:

It’s not about going after the latest social media fad; it’s about building a program around a subject important to both you and your customers. For Intuit, they’ve built communities around the challenges small businesses face. Once you’ve found the common issues that connect your customers, you can start to look at the tools and tactics you’ll need to bring these folks together.

Amazingly they got positive metrics and ROI from this simple initiative…

Key takeaway: Before you start any word of mouth initiative, ask yourself:

What do they really care about?

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When people come to our website, blog, Twitter, FB they want to know why should I do business with you? and we need to be able to make them care.

As humans one of our favorite things to do is talk about ourselves. Me, me, me, me! It’s a natural human tendency to do so. In business this is even a bigger problem because our ability to create new business depends on how we communicate (what matters) the benefits of our product or service to our audience.

When all we do is push our message of how great we are to prospects, we block others out because we’re not telling them why they should care and so it’s harder (if not impossible) for us to influence them. What they really want to hear is ‘what’s in it for me?’

I just finished reading a fabulous book written by Mark Magnacca called So What? How to communicate what really matters to your audience.

It provides an invaluable framework we can use to communicate what matters to prospective audiences when they visit our websites, when we’re networking or just when we meet new people.

Formula for answering ‘What do you do?’

Mark gives some great advice in actionable steps. Something I particularly liked was the So What Positioning Statement Generator:

Step 1: Determine the issues your clients and prospects face.

Step 2: What are the 3 things you do to address these concerns?

Step 3: Choose the most relevant of these 3 concerns and then the best answer from Step 2 that addresses it.

Once you have these put them in this format: Do you know how…(insert primary concern). Well, what I do is (insert what you do to address the concern).

Here’s how one person used this formula:

Mark: What do you do?

Floyd: Do you know how many people don’t like the process of buying a new car because they don’t like dealing the salespeople?”

Mark: Yes.

Floyd: Well, what I do, for $295, is take people through a 15-point process designed to help them determine the exact right car for them, and then I go with them to the dealership to negotiate the best price.”

That’s it! Didn’t that example get your attention? As you can see the framework is very intuitive. If you want to see this framework in action watch Mark Magnacca apply it to Andrew Warner in an interview.

Key takeaway: If you want to be better at persuading and gaining interesting from prospective clients, I honestly suggest you read So What? I’ve already sent a few copies to my team and other colleagues.

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