Category: persuasion
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365 Ways To Persuade And Motivate: #3 Small Steps
One of the best ways to motivate people is to stimulate a desire for mastery. People are naturally curious and this curiosity helps people master their environment. People want to learn, improve, and master skills and knowledge. One of the things you can do to stimulate this sense of mastery is to break things into…
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365 Ways To Persuade & Motivate: #2 Use The Word “Because”
In the first blog post of this new “365” series I cited new research on eye contact. But sometimes I think it’s important to go back to “foundational” (i.e. old!) research. So #2 in the series comes from research conducted in 1978. Ellen Langer (Professor of Psychology at Harvard) published a research study about the…
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New Series: 365 Ways To Persuade & Motivate
If you’ve been following my blog posts for a while you probably know that a few years ago I did a series called “100 Things You Need To About People”. It was a popular series that finished in April of 2011. Since then I’ve been writing individual blog posts, and wondering if I could/should come…
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365 Ways To Persuade & Motivate: #1 Direct Eye Contact Is Not Always Best
We’ve all been told how important it is to make eye contact when interacting with other people. Direct eye contact makes you seem trustworthy, confident, and interested in the topic you are discussing, right? All those things are true BUT new research shows that direct eye contact can lessen the effectiveness of your message in…
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Red Or Blue?: Research On Screen Color That May Surprise You
How does color affect our behavior when we are doing things online? Does it make a difference what the color background is? Does it depend on what we are reading or doing? Can you affect people’s decisions and behavior by changing the background color of a particular page or screen? Research by Ravi Mehta and…
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Design For Engagement Live Video event
Join me on June 5th at 12 noon EDT for a FREE live video event via Livestream. Design for Engagement Live Website Critiques Wed Jun 5, 2013 12:00pm — 1:00pm EDT Come join me in a free live online video event. I’ll be taking website suggestions from the audience and then discussing–on the spot–how to…
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How To Get People To Do Stuff #6: Hot drinks, soft pillows & heavy objects
Do you think you’d make different decisions if you were holding something heavy in your hand than holding nothing? Or if you were holding a cup of hot coffee instead of a cold drink? Sounds unlikely, but it’s true: Here’s a video about “haptic sensations.” Or, if you prefer, you can read the summary text…
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How To Get People To Do Stuff
Are you good with people? Do you know how to get them to do stuff? Are you using tips and techniques you picked up from others or experimented with? If so, I bet that sometimes your strategies work and other times they don’t. There are 7 basic drivers of human motivation. And if you understand…
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How To Get People To Do Stuff #5: What makes things go viral?
Why do some ideas, articles, videos go viral and others don’t? Check out these ideas and the research in the video: Here’s a summmary: Things go viral if one or more of the following is true: The piece elicits a strong emotional response — either positive or negativeThe person who is doing the communicating is…
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4 Reasons Why Online Video Is Compelling & Persuasive
Why is online video so compelling compared to text? I’ve been in my video studio working on my new online video course (Designing For Engagement). It’s a lot of work to create my online video courses (through Udemy.com), but it’s also fun to work on them, and it’s exciting to have people taking and enjoying…
