You want to persuade. You’ve got great facts. You’ve got a great, well-reasoned argument. Now what?
Facts and argument are information. People aren’t looking for more information. Today they have more information than they want or can even process. They don’t need more facts. They need faith. Faith in you. Faith in where you’ve been, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there.
Faith is more than credibility. While it’s popular to talk about building credibility today, focusing merely on credibility misses the point. Credibility is sterile, factual, and most importantly, impersonal. One can be credible without inspiring faith.
Faith, on the other hand, is immensely personal. You inspire faith when you let people see your humanity. A great way to show your humanity is to tell a meaningful story. A meaningful story allows others to experience what you’ve experienced. It allows them to share your journey with you and then reach your conclusion on their own. Telling a meaningful story encourages others to decide for themselves to believe you.
People usually don’t argue with their own “facts” and conclusions. If you want to influence others, tell them a meaningful story about who you are to let your hearers choose to have faith in you.
[note: this was my second blog post on the squarespace platform way back in 2005; just happened to run across it today when I was looking for something else. Oh if I had just gone with WordPress from day 1!]
You have a good idea. You have courage and you’re willing to take a risk. You’re an entrepreneur and you can change the world.
Zig Ziglar says, “you are who you are and where you are because of what’s gone into your mind. You can change what you are and where you are by changing what goes into your mind.” Here’s a Monday morning micro-pep talk to help put business building thoughts into your head today.
Confession: Apparently I’ve been being a bad boy on LinkedIn. Though there’s no rules committee for how to use social media, there are cultural expectations. Chris Brogan and several others have convinced me that there is a better way to use LinkedIn. [read more…]
If you’re struggling to create compelling content for your blog or enewsletter, here are some simple steps you can follow for a never-ending supply of great blog content ideas.
Here are some simple steps for creating compelling content [read more…]
If you want to use social media to build relationships with your customers and prospects, you’ll want to have a very good idea of exactly who they are. ExactTarget and CoTweet have done the heavy-lifting to develop 12 online personas to help you understand customer expectations and behavior on social media.
Their report examines both user-generated content and user-content consumption and charts the results. Here is a quick list of the 12 social media profiles. [read more…]
Toy Story 3 is an incredible story. Yep, even at my age I cried through the buildup to the ending. (The fact that my oldest three children are 20, 18, and 16 may have something to do with that; the three youngest are getting old, too: 8, 10, and 13; so, yes, it’s expensive to go to a movie!)
One of the lead characters is Sheriff Woody. If you can grasp Woody’s worldview, you just mightget that social media return on investment you say you’re looking for. [read more…]
Seth continues to demonstrate the use of new currency: free. Here’s his personal addendum to the best-selling Linchin. It’s called Insubordinate. [read more…]
Wondering how to put Facebook to work building connections with prospects and customers? You can use unused photos from your catalog photo shoot to give catalog recipients behind-the-scenes access. When you do, you use the power of social media to help customers experience your “who we are” story for themselves. [read more…]
If you’re in business, you probably want to increase your sales, get more customers, get more business. Sometimes we need 7 Habits or 12 Steps to get what we want. Sometimes all we need are the words our kindergarten teachers told us.
When I was in London recently, I asked a 19-year old small business owner—a rickshaw driver—how he got people to notice him and buy his services. He eloquently defined the key for getting more business for him:
nice speaking
smile every time
More importantly, he demonstrated all three by what he DID. (Oh, I just listed two? Here are the three things he did to increase his business: 1. Be nice. 2. Be pleasant. 3. Work hard!)
More posts featuring hard-working entrepreneurs in big cities:
Sales Sizzle New York City Style (the Manhattan Street Vendor: Show your sales force THIS before sending them out into their sales week. They’ll sell more.)
What do you do when Google doesn’t have what you’re looking for? (Okay, Google probably DOES have it, but you just don’t know how to ask the right question.) That’s the question a friend asked me just yesterday. Whenever I need something, the first thing I think of is Twitter (you’re shocked, right?) [read more…]
With Facebook marching toward 500,000,000 users, it looks like social influence is gaining power. What business people are looking for are ways to tap into that power and generate positive word of mouth conversations around their brands and products. The good news is, it’s fairly simple to create buzz. [read more…]
Flying is fun. Right now I’m sitting in The Village Inn after checking in at London’s Gatwick Airport. In a couple hours I’ll board a US Airways plane for flight number 32 of the year and number 8 across the Atlantic. Even though US Airways seriously dropped the ball (several times) on that infamous number 30 flight, flying is still a kick.
Now that everyone is a publishing, sooner or later, you will have to deal with a negative blog review. When someone posts negative comments about you or your work online, it will feel like a bad experience. It’s actually a relationship-building opportunity.
