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The secret to creating successful LinkedIn posts…

Want to know what makes a great LinkedIn post? LinkedIn have revealed the secrets…

Earlier this year, Jason Feifer interviewed both Daniel Roth and Alice Xiong from LinkedIn on how to create high performing LinkedIn posts.

This was my takeout from their conversation:

  1. Help people to be better in their jobs. People come to LinkedIn for a purpose – often to learn more about something. If you can help them with this, you are off to a good start.
  2. Share advice/knowledge on things you are knowledgeable about. Think about the specific audience you are targeting and what might interest them.
  3. LinkedIn will share your content to your contacts and followers first. So, to increase your reach, be sure to connect with people who share similar interests.
  4. LinkedIn cares about authority of your post rather than volume of shares. So if it sees interactions from your audience then your post will reach more of the same audience.
  5. Linkedin values meaningful comments from your audience. If possible, encourage interactions and conversations with your target audience. If you get some good conversations going then your post will be shared with similar people.
  6. The platform isn’t interested in promoting your newsletter, learning programme or otherwise. If you are constantly linking out of the platform then don’t expect LinkedIn to be as excited about it as you are.

At wethepeople we have years of experience in helping our clients make LinkedIn work for their brands.

Contact me to find out how we could help you.

Harness FOMO to power up your next marketing campaign

We’ve all heard about FOMO – the fear of missing out.

FOMO is brought on by loss aversion; when we behave in a certain way because we are more motivated to avoid losing something, than gaining that same thing.

Like many similar principles, loss aversion is thought to have its roots in our evolution. Our ancestors faced scarcity and had to make decisions that maximised their chances of survival. Back in the day, the loss of resources or opportunities had a greater impact on their chances of survival compared to similar gains.

Robert Cialdini, in his recent webinar, Win with small changes that deliver big results, talked about how this principle could be used to help customers to see product benefits in a new way. Cialdini cited a study involving a home energy company selling roof insulation services. Rather than express the fuel bill savings from adding more insulation, the company highlighted the ongoing costs if the consumer didn’t install the insulation. This change of approach resulted in a 150% increase in sales.

So next time you are thinking about your brand benefits, think about how you might frame them from a loss perspective. And watch as your customers FOMO drives interest in your brand.

The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 and KPIs in 2023

In 1902, Hanoi had a big rat problem. So someone in power came up with a bright idea – to get the city population involved.

The government decided to pay everyone 1 piastre for each severed rat tail (the tail was seen as adequate proof of the kill).

However, this choice of this “metric” had enormous consequences.

After a few weeks people noticed rats running around Hanoi without tails.

On further investigation, it was found that people weren’t killing the rats and cutting off the tails (they were only doing the ‘cutting off’ part).

Conversely, a number of entrepreneurial types realised that they could make a lot of money by catching and breeding the rats, then cutting off their tails and claiming the bounty.

So, rather than solving the rat problem, the incentive was actually making the problem worse.

Why’s this important?

This story shows us how important it is to choose the right KPIs.

For example, measuring the performance of your digital marketing activity on click-through rate alone, without ever knowing if those clicks come from your target audience, or indeed convert to further engagement or ultimately, a sale.

So be very mindful of the KPIs you set. We know that “what’s measured gets done”, but be sure what gets done aligns to your ultimate goal.

To learn more about setting the right KPIs for your brand, contact me here at wethepeople.

Run faster, achieve more:
The power of the Goal Gradient Hypothesis

The goal gradient hypothesis is a powerful psychological premise, discovered by Clark Hull in 1932.

While watching rats in a maze, he noticed they would run faster as they got nearer to a food reward at the end.

According to Hull’s hypothesis, the strength of an organism’s behaviour is determined by two things: the intensity of the reward/goal and the distance to that reward/goal. As an individual moves towards the goal, the motivation to reach that goal increases.

This means we are more motivated, and work harder, as we approach the final stages of goal completion. For example, we run faster as we approach the finish line of a race.

So, when developing content for customers, be sure to break up the content into bite-sized sections. This increases the chance of your customers getting to the end.

And if you are working on a big project, similarly, be sure to break the project into smaller stages, and watch your productivity boost as you approach the end of each stage! 🏁 🏆

Your campaign might be visible to the eye…. but what about the brain?

Did you know that the human brain brings two types of attention to the world?

The right side is receptive to new thinking and ideas, whereas the left side brings attention to things that are already familiar. If your marketing doesn’t appeal to the correct type of attention that your audience is bringing to the world, then you’re at risk of wasting your marketing budget.

Our guide – What the brain doesn’t see… – will help you dramatically improve your marketing effectiveness by understanding how our brains really work. It even shows how the brain’s physical construction plays a role in the way customers behave, and how they respond to communication messages.

Ultimately, you’ll immediately see how you should and shouldn’t be spending your marketing budget.

Don’t risk wasting your budget on communications that your target audience’s brains won’t respond to.

Let’s get real about artificial intelligence

Understanding its limitations will allow marketers to harness the opportunities.

Artificial intelligence is generating a lot of commentary right now, especially with the advent of more accessible versions such as Chat GPT.

In a way it’s reminiscent of many technological changes that have come before, where an immensely useful technology is hyped far beyond its actual usefulness, before settling down into doing what it is actually best at. Anyone remember blockchain hysteria – at its peak about 5 years ago?

AI is an incredible technology, capable of recognising and replicating staggeringly complex patterns in colossal datasets. It develops this skill by being trained using datasets of the same type which are tagged and targeted to allow the AI to learn the rules that apply.

This ability to apply complex pattern recognition to massive datasets means that AI is making a huge difference to diagnostics, drug development, engineering and probably will to many other things that we haven’t yet thought about.

The interesting thing is, that the skills that make AI brilliant at this type of work, also make it look like it’s brilliant at lots of other stuff. As Jason Lanier, interdisciplinary scientist at Microsoft aka the ”Godfather of virtual reality” or “the Dismal Optimist”, points out in a recent Guardian article, we call it artificial intelligence, but it isn’t really intelligent.

Simulated intelligence would perhaps be a better term.

A limitless opportunity? Not quite… or, perhaps, not yet.

A competent creative brief from a human user can certainly produce interesting results from both an imagery and written word perspective. But this is where the limits of AI become apparent. The AI recognises data as data. The AI’s output is correct so long as it holds true to the patterns and rules that it has learned. It has no clue about the representation of that data in its real-world form.

Once we get beyond factual writing and illustration, the meaning of words and images themselves is often an abstraction. Our reaction to them is often more about how they make us feel, what memories they stir up or what they cause us to imagine than the components of their content. Which is why a lot of AI creative output, no matter how unusual, feels flat. A huge amount of our frontal lobe gives us the power to put ourselves in the place of others, to imagine how they might feel. It also gives us the power to imagine how other people would react to our actions, words and things we create. An ability no AI possesses.

If briefed to do so by a human, an AI can create an image of Donald Trump riding a walrus whilst eating a burger in the style of Van Gogh. Amusing for sure, but it has no way of comprehending what the reaction from a human being to the image might be, or even what the image represents. All it has done, in reality, is to faithfully take the patterns of data that it recognises from its training as images of Trump, a burger, a walrus plus images created by Van Gogh, and combine them into one single dataset which we then see as the requested image. This amusing ability is a side effect of what AIs are good at, even though, at the moment, most commentators seem to be focusing solely on this aspect.

Apply human expertise to artificial intelligence and you’ve got a powerful marketing tool.

Now, there’s another side effect which is just as interesting and possibly more useful. Using AI to collect information may free us (at the moment anyway) from the almost unnoticed restrictions that social media and search algorithms use to filter what we see. Ask an AI to summarise information on any particular subject and it is likely to give a different answer each time. This element of randomness mean we have to use our judgement when choosing between the options.

Going back to more core uses, particularly in marketing, AI is already proving very helpful by picking out patterns in customer purchase and behaviour data, looking for trends in market and customer quantitative data etc. Some interesting uses are emerging which involve facial and expression recognition. These are designed to look for emotional responses in video of market research respondents as they are being exposed to various stimuli. There may be applications for taking a master campaign and creating multiple executions in different formats and languages… ready for QA by a human! After all, nobody wants to see a toothpaste ad where the model has two rows of teeth, in the style of the Xenomorph from Alien. Take a look at some AI-generated imagery of human faces and you might be very surprised at how often this actually happens.

Using AI for commercial creative purposes may have more serious consequences than xenomorphs obsessed with dental hygiene. Predictably, several lawsuits alleging breaches of intellectual property rights have already been launched, one notably by Getty. It seems likely that regardless of whoever or whatever does the scraping of the source material, it will likely be the final user who is found liable for any breaches of IP rights legislation.

It is, of course, fascinating to discuss the future AI-related demise of poets, artists, copywriters, and art directors but to spend too much time doing so risks missing out on the real opportunities offered by what AI is good at right now. Whilst, of course, still having fun with the side effects.

 

 

 

So you’ve set yourself a New Year’s resolution…

So, you’ve set yourself a New Year’s resolution… That’s great, but how do you turn this expressed desire into a real, lasting improvement? The evidence for successful adoption of New Year’s resolutions isn’t encouraging. According to Forbes overall success is about 8%.

However, before we abandon any hope of self-improvement let’s look at ways we can change our habits. Erasmus wisely said that “A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit”. This view is supported by our increasing knowledge in neuroscience.

Why we form habits

We form habits, essentially, to save precious energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. Even at rest it uses around 20% of the total consumed energy of the human body. So, anything that automates processes and reduces that demand is of great evolutionary benefit. Habits are about short cuts. The more often we repeat them the more likely it is that we will do it the next time without even thinking about it. They are automated processes that, with each repetition, are wired further into our neurons.

So how do we form good habits?

  • Step 1:  Understand what triggers your current habits
    To change a habit, you first need to recognise what triggers that response? Does receiving a deadline for a major project trigger immediate procrastination?

  • Step 2:  Decide which behaviours you would like to become your new habit
    For example, would you like to replace the procrastination with an immediate period of outline planning? Be very specific.

  • Step 3:  Decide how you will reward yourself for each successful new behaviour
    Rewards are important. The establishment of habit is closely linked to dopamine reward, which is often how we get into bad habits. Problem gambling is strongly linked to this mechanism. Augmenting the brain’s reward system helps establish the new habit.

So, try this…

Imagine you’ve received a deadline. You’ve immediately done some rough planning and role allocation. Try going out and getting a coffee or having a 5-minute walk… or something else simple that you enjoy doing. Repeated often enough, your brain will rewire your neurons to create a new habit to replace the old one, giving you the best chance to be one of the 8% who succeed over time.

Good luck!

Even complex customers need simple stories

When you have a fantastic brand with lots of powerful messaging and supportive data, it can be tempting to create a story that encompasses it all. But is that really the right thing to do?

Today, I’m sharing a link to a really interesting white paper by ZoomRx. It confirms what many of us already instinctively feel, underpinned by evidence from 30,000 personal sales interactions.

The key points are:

  • Focus on 3-5 key messages and keep them short (10-14 words maximum)
    • Customers who recall more than 5 or fewer than 3 messages about the brand are less likely to prescribe
  • Use data to support your messages, but don’t overdo it
    • Keep it to around 3 data points per message: more than this confuses customers while fewer can lack credibility
  • Make sure your story actually connects the messages to build a compelling proposition

Unsurprisingly, doctors care most about efficacy and safety.

Slightly more surprisingly, these findings are from oncology – an area that is traditionally seen to rely on stories built around colossal amounts of data.

To find out more about building concise, compelling brand stories get in touch with us – we do this for our clients every day.

Interrupting people is way harder than it sounds.
Just ask a Boston cop.

Here’s a little story about how hard it is to get the attention of people who are thinking about something else.

In 1995, 29 year old Kenneth M. Conley, a cop in Boston, was in hot foot pursuit of a suspect. As he chased the man, he ran past a group of his colleagues who were savagely beating another suspect. It turned out that the suspect taking a beating was an undercover cop, Michael Cox – who was so displeased with his colleagues that he pressed criminal charges against them.

Conley was called as a witness at their trial. Under oath, he stated that he hadn’t seen anything. Given that Michael Cox is black, there was a suspicion that racism was involved and the jury didn’t believe Conley. He was later convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, sentenced to nearly 3 years in jail and fined $6000.

But is it possible that Kenneth Conley was telling the truth? There is strong evidence that he may well have been.

Human beings (and other animals) seem to bring two types of attention to the world:

  • The first is a narrow-focused attention to things that we already know to be important. When in this mode we can abstract the object of our attention and ignore everything else.
  • The second is a much broader focus which is alert to the unexpected, the new or the incongruous.

The real kicker though, is that we appear to only be able to bring one type of attention to anything at once.

Why? It may be an energy-saving mechanism. Brains are expensive to run in terms of energy. They may only represent 2% of our body weight, but they take up around 20% of the energy we consume. Saving energy here would be an evolutionary advantage!

This effect has been demonstrated numerous times by authors like Chris Chabris (the invisible gorilla guy) who carried out an experiment based on Kenneth’s experience and discovered that around half of people didn’t see the fight.

Happily for Kenneth, he was exonerated in 2005 and awarded $647,000 in back pay – without ever going to prison. Michael Cox also remained a police officer and in 2022 was appointed as Commissioner of the Boston Police Department.

So, if we are trying to interrupt people who are doing other things, we need to try pretty hard. Predictable, familiar approaches are simply not going to cut it if we want people to see something new.

Is your brand a few bars short of a symphony?

How music and sound can help to capture the hearts of more customers

Is your brand fit for the fight? Of course it is.

I bet your mission, vision and values are all nailed, glued and velcroed down and that your brand promise will never ever be broken. I’m equally sure that key tints of the colour palette are in place, there’s a crystal-clear tone of voice and an x-height demilitarised zone around the logo. (I’m guessing it sits in a corner and is never reversed out of a full-colour image. Right?)

All good so far. But can you describe to yourself, your colleagues, and your customers what your brand actually sounds like?

If not, why?

Visual consistency and tonally-compliant writing are your table stakes – critical yet necessary.

However, marketers looking to make meaningful connections know that well-developed sonic attributes can help their brand perform at its brilliant best.

Beethoven’s Dopamine Symphony

The last two decades have given us endless sonic brand triggers and a plethora of brand sound designs wide enough to make Phil Spector’s wig spin.

But research has proven that hearing songs that we like triggers a dopamine release. And, as we all know, dopamine = pleasure. But, interestingly, even the anticipation of hearing likeable songs, or upcoming parts of songs, is enough to release dopamine in some people.

Beethoven, it’s reckoned, used anticipation expertly in many of his scores. He would define the tonic chord, then never actually play complete versions of the tonic until the very end…finally fulfilling audiences’ expectations and letting loose a commensurate deluge of dopamine in the run-up.

Clever huh?

Now, imagine a pleasurable song happened to be your brand’s sound. Suddenly, you’re engaging with customers on a very different, multi-sensory level. You’re making them happy. They want to hear from you. They feel positive about your brand. So they’re more likely to tell others. What’s not to like?

But wait. It gets even better.

There is solid evidence that music can actually change the type of attention we are paying to the world around us. Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master and his Emissary) proposes that listening to music in a major key, or with a simple rhythm, tends to attract the narrow-focused attention that we use our left brain to generate. Conversely, McGilchrist argues that minor key songs, or those with a more complex time signature, tend to attract the more open attention of the right brain.

Could bespoke deliver an even better ROI?

Music is beautifully abstract, yet very powerful. It’s pure escapism, guiding emotions effortlessly through major and minor tones. And it’s memorable. Why else would we claim to suffer from ‘earworms’ or use phrases like “the soundtrack of my life/year/day”?

In practical terms, music and sound can make a congress experience more memorable; they can help an e-detail or other face-to-face sales piece create a more vivid experience by supporting the tone of the piece as the story develops.

Four watchouts when creating sonic branding

Creating the right sonic landscape for your brand could be the best commercial commitment you make this year. But it’s wise to beware the pitfalls. Wary treading is essential, as is the need to follow these recommendations:

  1. Commit to making sound an integral part of your brand’s architecture and devote concerted energy to getting it absolutely right.
  2. Determine the role(s) that sound will play in your brand’s presence – do you need it to support content, help lead the conversation, introduce innovations?
  3. Think carefully about the character of your brand and decide how best to reflect this in a brief.
  4. Diversify the talent you involve in your brand’s sound creation. Don’t be afraid to mix creatives, planners, colleagues, and music professionals.

If you need any further help, my Bontempi organ is plugged in and ready to go! You hum it, I’ll play it.