To gain interest in your story, your business, your art, you have to be interesting.
It is that simple.
Stay Positive & Let’s Not Make Things Difficult When They Needn’t Be
Interesting
Driven By A Core Tribe
All of your idols have a core tribe.
It’s easy to distance yourself from their popularity, their status, their celebrity because they have such a large following. Surely you can’t be like them because they already exist and surely you can’t take away from their tribe, so why try?
It’s an illusion.
The most popular marketers, branders, bloggers, speakers, artists have far less true fans than you realize. They have a core tribe, likely 20 percent of all the people you think are their tribe actually are and provide for 80 percent of their status, income, and drive.
Just because someone views a blog daily, doesn’t put them as part of a person’s core tribe. Most often the core tribe is a collective of friends. You have friends, right? Then it looks like you’ve already started down the path of becoming noticed, appreciated, and respected. You’ve began growing your core tribe.
It’s not as hard as it looks. All it really requires of you is to befriend people (to be nice more than interesting) and to show up every day (give something and embrace vulnerability daily).
Stay Positive & 1 Million Followers On Twitter Is The Wrong Goal
Enlighten Others
6 Lessons From Contagious (Why Things Catch On)
1) The moment you start paying people to share or putting a monetary value to them, then they’ll never do it for free again. Many managers rely on monetary incentives or prizes for good work ethic and behavior. Not only is it costly, but as soon as you do it, people won’t continue the behavior for anything less. Instead, focus on social currency. That’s why promotions and cool new titles work better than a pay raise in terms of employee satisfaction.
2) Social currency can be accomplished in three ways. First, sharing something amazing. Snapple facts are remarkable, as in, worth remarking to others about. Second, turn it into a game. Metrics that show people where they are in comparison to others (think Insurance provider rates and frequent flier miles) gives them status, which they’re happy to talk about. Third, make people feel like insiders by giving them something that’s scarce like Cadbury is or exclusive like a speakeasy.
3) Accessible thoughts lead to action. Music you play in a bar can sway people to order more French wine (if French music is playing) or German wine (if German music is playing). Essentially, we have to leverage triggers, but I’ve noticed when we’re so focused on making something out of this world, we forget about making it also top of mind.
4) For as much as I bash the lizard brain and encourage you to ignore the little voice inside your head saying you’re not good enough, any marketer can use the lizard brain to their advantage in a good way. Quite plainly, people share articles, stories, products that get the lizard brain going (excitement, amusement, anger, anxiety, etc,.). The sad insurance Superbowl ads didn’t get shared as much because sadness doesn’t spark the lizard brain.
5) Interesting, surprising and novel doesn’t lead to more buzz than average, uninteresting, and “meh” products because the latter is often ongoing and the former is more immediate.
6)If promoted, telling others helps us celebrate. If fired, telling others helps us vent. Sharing emotions helps us connect.
Book by Jonah Berger. Worth the read.
Stay Positive & Marketing Is About Spreading Love
Enlighten Others
How You Deliver
It’s not so much what you deliver. Getting caught up in that is a losing battle.
But, how you deliver matters a ton.
Do you make a phone call, respond to email, or knock on their door?
Does the Chef making your sushi work behind a wall or can you watch her create your meal?
Does the painter let you watch what he can do while he works or does he push you away and tell you he will be done in 4 hours, to come back then?
Does the student use a Powerpoint or her own voice, limbs, and energy?
Post industrialization, it’s not a matter of seeing to believe, it’s downright a desire to see all we can see. This makes how you deliver an extreme importance.
Stay Positive & Over Deliver
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
What May Be Interesting To You
is extremely likely to not be interesting to others. That’s the largest problem that aspiring marketers, writers, artists, speakers, and storytellers alike are faced with.
Yesterdays story about running with the UW Womens rowing crew may have only been interesting to me and I felt like it needed to be shared. That doesn’t mean that it was interesting to others (you).
I went out with friends last night and you would think everyone had attention deficit disorder because no one would finish listening to someone tell their story, no matter how excited they were to tell it.
When you are trying to reach people, connect with people, win people over, you have to discover a way that your story is interesting to them.
And that requires a lot of emotional labor. Well worth it though.
Stay Positive & Interested
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Well, That’s Interesting!
After a truly phenomenal speech, I asked UW Madison’s Dean of Students, Lori Berquam, how she got so great and comfortable with public speaking.
“It wasn’t until I realized I had something worth saying,” she replied.
She mentioned that she didn’t enjoy public speaking for the longest time because she didn’t have anything interesting to say – or at least she didn’t think it was interesting. We shared a laugh together at the idea of how simple it is to be good at anything, not just public speaking.
Be interesting.
You’ll never truly be good at anything until you learn to be interesting at it.
Stay Positive & Often Times, Being Interesting Begins With Being Interested
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Two Ways To Live Life
You can be interested and intrigued by others
or
You can be the interesting and intriguing one
One simply can’t be both at the same time. However, much like myself, you can get on and off the dance floor at your will. Personally, I spend more time on the dance floor. That doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial to step off every once and awhile.
Stay Positive & Just Dance
Garth E. Beyer