Psychotactics

People often ask: Where do you get the time?
Or instead they’ll say: I can’t be bothered to go into forums etc., because then I never get any work done.

And they’re right. If all you ever do is go into forums to waste time, or to just hang around, then you’ll end up doing very little of your regular work. Time will fly and you’ll struggle to get things done. And of course, instead of blaming yourself for your not-so-smart habits, you’ll blame forums.

But forums are an exceedingly good way to spend time…
Take it from someone who has well over 16,000 forum posts in less than five years. That’s a whopping 10 posts or more a day (including weekends). And you know that I’m usually on vacation for three months in a year. So suddenly it seems more like 13-15 posts a day. And if you think…um…every post is just 5 minutes long (and it’s not) then I’m spending about two hours a day in forums.

And heck you don’t have two hours a day.
Well neither do I.

What I do is maximise time.
So if I’m going to spend time in the forums (and I do) then I’m making sure that I segregate the forum time into two segments.

1) Where I give a short, important comment.
2) When I give a detailed, over the top comment that leads to an article.

The short comment is like speed chess.
It forces me to answer 30-40 posts every single day and bounce between various topics at high speed. This is good for my brain. Good for the person reading the comment too. This answer is usually meant to fix ONE thing on the page. So if the person has posted about twenty different things, I don’t focus on twenty. I look at ONE. I comment on that one, and then I expect them to fix it. Then I comment again. This behaviour is win-win. It helps my brain, it helps the customer and it really helps in implementation.

The detailed comment is almost involuntary. It’s like I’m trying to give a short comment, but then I feel the need to expand and explain, and before I know it, boof…we’re already into a sort of blog post. Of course that blog post can balloon. And it can become an 800-1000 word article. I’ve even seen a single question become a series of articles and then a book. So yeah. Again it’s good for me, and good for the person who needs the answer.

In almost every case, I’ll cut and paste the answer right into my dropbox (www.getdropbox.com). I’m hopelessly disorganised, so I have to make folders and post the articles into the folders, or I’ll almost always lose the articles forever. I have to do it right after I type the article/blog post or kaboom…somehow it’s buried under a mountain of advice—and it goes without saying that I’ll never find it again.

Time is ruthless. It marches on.
I have a great respect for the ruthless nature of time.
I have to be smarter, or time ploughs over me.

And while there are times when I look like a well-ploughed field, but in most cases I win.
Or at least we come to a truce.

Make your truce with time. Use it well. And most importantly, stop making excuses.

Long Footnote:
At the start, we had no clients at all. Or very few. The chunk of my clients came from forums. Why? Because I used the system I just told you about. And so on any given day, the forum members would see me post both long/short posts. This did two things:

1) It didn’t make me a know-it-all.
2) It gave me enormous branding and created a doorway to our site.

About the know-it-all: If all your posts are lengthy, then people almost avoid you. You know this feeling because you know someone like this in real life. This ’someone’ won’t ever give a short answer to a question. They’ll give the longest answer ever, and even though it’s a very smart answer, you feel like you’re trapped. You may need to leave in a hurry, or go to the restroom, but there you are having to listen to this long-winded person. This of course causes you to avoid that person, even when you know that they probably have a solution to your problem.

However if the person mixes up long and short answers, then that person becomes like you and I On forums, if all you do is just provide super-duper-long answers, then by looking at your name alone, people won’t open up your post. But if you mix up your posts, there’s a factor of unpredictability. And surprise. And so you get a factor of expertise without becoming a fuddy bore.

And short and long answers do one more thing.

They give you a factor of branding.
Let’s say you’ve got just 20 minutes to spare in a forum. In twenty minutes you may be able to give one long answer and about 3-5 short answers. This puts your face, name and expertise (not to speak of email signature) in front of quite a few people. If you answer several topics, then people will recognise your name/face and a brand is created; an expertise factor is created. People work very hard to create credibility by advertising, and yet you can create enormous credibility by simply giving information.

And this information creates a doorway. Clients read your comments and advice. They not only realise you’re smart, but they can see you’re not a bore. And that entices them to visit your site and check your products and services. But even if they don’t buy anything from you, it doesn’t matter. The information you’ve created has created goodwill. And someday when you need the help, you can be sure that the others will be first to pitch in, should you need any help at all.

———————
Next Step: “There are marketing books and there are marketing books – I bet there are not many you have read many times over?
The Brain Audit really teaches you the art of persuasion because it gives an insight into how people’s brains work. I have used the principles in writing WebPages, writing articles, making presentations, networking, negotiating and even writing submissions for a judge!

But the best bit about the Brain Audit is that it actually works.The principles are easy to understand.

Would I recommend it to people serious about getting on in business? Absolutely.”

Michael Smyth, approachablelawyer, Auckland
Judge for yourself The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t

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———————

You’re in a seminar.
Oh, the seminar’s interesting.
The content is great. The presenter’s outstanding.

But you aren’t paying attention

You’re fidgeting in your seat. You’re kinda brrrrrrrrrrr.
As in coldbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And the seminar drones on.

Drones on, did you say?

So we’re pretty clear that the seminar was interesting and outstanding, and all that jazz. How did the seminar get to be such a drone all of a sudden?

The answer lies in the ‘bug’

No matter what you sell, there’s going to be a bug.
A bug that stops the customer from moving ahead.
A bug that causes the customer to think a little less highly of you.
A bug that drives a customer to distraction.

Like, this line; for instence

See? That bugged you, didn’t it?
First you noticed the crappy grammar.
Then you noticed the incorrect spelling of the word ‘instance.’
And then suddenly your reading (and your perception) hit a speed bump!

You’d be lucky if your business could get away with a speed bump

It’s more likely that your business has a minefield instead. A minefield of bugs just sitting around, waiting to be fixed. And it’s not just grammar. Or spelling.

It could the air-conditioning at your seminar.
It could be the missing paragraph in your book.
It could be the lack of introduction to your product.
It could be the fidgety way in which you shift from side to side, when making a presentation.
It could be the font size in your brochure.
It could be the colours on your site.

It could be just about any thing.

And you’re not super-human

But your customer doesn’t car. (See, I made that mistake on purpose?)

But you don’t care. You want to see the word ‘care’ and not ‘car.’
And the more I bug you (without wanting to, of course), the more irritated you get.

To the point where you concentrate on the bug, the whole bug, and nothing but the bug!

Luckily, there’s a way to get rid of the bug

It’s called, “What Bugs Me.”
If you look at the website at Psychotactics.com, you’ll see a little cigar-smokin’ bug. (The cigar may bug some people)

And right under the picture of the bug, is a “What Bugs Me” link

The link says: Website Bug
Does anything on this website bug you? If there is something we can fix, we’d love to know. In fact, we will give way free product worth US$50 for the best BUG OF THE MONTH! Nothing is too small or too big.

Click here to report a Bug!

There are, as you see, more than one component to that bug

Component 1: The bug himself
The illustration is meant to draw your attention. You see the bug. And you know you have recourse.

Component 2: Product Worth $50 for the best bug of the month.
You know what this tells you, right? It tells you that not only can you…um…complain, but you might actually be rewarded. Holy, moly!

Component 3: The terminology of ‘What Bugs Me’
Why not something like ‘complaint box?’ Or ‘Feedback Form?’ Why use the term ‘bug?’ Because bugs are bugs. You feel the power over a bug.

You can squash the darned thing if you like. Or reach for a can of Raid, and spray the heck out of the bug.

A complaint is (gulp) formal.
Feedback forms are forms (and you don’t care for forms)
A bug is easy. It’s non-threatening. It’s downright friendly. So customers don’t hesitate to use the ‘bug’ frequently.

Component 4: Nothing is too small or too big
How would you know what’s big or small for the customer? Your customer who’s freezing her you-know-what in that seminar room, thinks it’s a big deal for the room to warm up a bit.

But she also thinks that she can’t slow you down. So she brrrrrrrrs her way to distraction–till she can’t take it any more.
But she won’t/can’t bring herself to complain, because she thinks ‘air-conditioning’ isn’t a big deal for the others in the room.

So you need to tell your clients that nothing is too small or too big to report.

Let them decide what’s small or what’s big.

Which of course, brings us to the fixing the bug

Oooh, the Pandora’s box has opened sesame!

At Psychotactics, we get about three bugs sent to us almost every day. That’s about 700-900 bugs a year.

That’s 900 times we don’t have to check our own stuff with a fine-tooth comb.
But it’s also 900 things that we may need to fix.

And is that a problem?

Is it?

First of all, bugs slow down the selling process. If a customer is distracted, they ain’t gonna listen; let alone buy.

But more importantly, you’re giving the customer a chance to interact with you. Moreover, when you fix a problem, you’re telling a customer that you actually care.
Both for your own business. And for the customer’s problem.

So look around your business today…

You can either go over your entire website; your entire products; your entire services.

Or you can put in the ‘What Bugs Me.’

Not a hard decision to make, eh?

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How do you become an expert in your customer’s eyes?

How do you become the person the customer most wants to work with?
How do you then increase prices 500% and still have customers wanting to work with you?

To understand how this unusual situation occurs, let me tell you a story:

I was a cartoonist by profession. Then one fine day, I decided to get into ‘marketing.’

Now tell me honestly:

Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to attract customers.
Would you hire a cartoonist to show you how to improve your website?
Would you hire a cartoonist for anything–but–to draw cartoons?

Why would you?

I wouldn’t.

And that was the uphill battle I faced: No one knew me as an expert. Now it didn’t matter how many times I looked in the mirror and called myself an expert.

I still wasn’t getting any respect, let alone pesos in the bank. And it drove me crazy.

But there’s always a way out of crazy-land

So here’s what I did.
I started writing articles.
And it was painful writing those articles.
I’d write one article after slaving over it for two days.
And then sometimes after two days, I’d trash the article and start all over again.

Did I say there’s a way out of crazy-land?

Well, it sure didn’t seem so, because this article-writing-jazz was driving me loco.

But here’s what I found too.
That there were systems. And techniques.
Techniques that enabled me to write faster.
That enabled me to make an article almost like a movie.
That enabled me to see a pattern as to which articles would go down the gurgler, and which articles would get lapped up by the readers.

That there were certain articles, when published, that got customers to my website in droves. I’d wake up, and suddenly there were fifty, or a hundred new subscribers.

Sometimes as many as two hundred or more.

And then as the weeks and months passed, I started getting calls

Calls to help customers with their website (um, after I wrote a website-based article).

And then emails. To help customers to help them attract clients (um, again, it was an article that did the job).

You’re guessing what crossed my mind, eh?

Not only were the articles pulling in customers to the Psychotactics website, but these customers were asking me to work with them.

Me, a cartoonist, work with them?

I have to say, I was scared out my wits. (For two whole years actually). But after two years of writing articles (and I just wrote about 20 articles in the first two years), even I began to see a trend.

I figured I could go nuts and cold-call…

Or I could sit at my computer and write an article. And have a customer call. (Ooh, I did like the sound of that phone ringing).

But you have to remember this was back in the year 2002-2004.

Back then, the Internet was a bit of a novelty. People doled out their email addresses like peanuts. Today it’s not that easy to have two hundred people stream through your website. Which means that it’s not enough to just write an article.

There are squillions of articles on the Internet today

And those articles are competing with audio.
And video.
And heck knows what else.

So the questions do cross your mind:

1) How do I write so that my clients actually read my articles
above all that noise?
2) How do I write, if I struggle to put a paragraph together?
3) Is there a ticket out of crazy-land? Can I really become an
expert in my client’s eyes?

There indeed is a ticket

And if you’ve been putting off writing, because you think it’s hard, well, it’s time to get that ticket out of crazy-land.

Information (um, Article Writing) creates expertise

Ask every author on Amazon.com
Ask every top consultant.
Ask every top trainer.
And ask a cartoonist.

But don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself. Get some solid methods to write better articles at this link.

Don’t wait. This link won’t stay up forever.
http://www.psychotactics.com/articlewriting

Sean

It doesn’t matter which website or blog you go to—most of them make one fundamental mistake. And it’s a mistake that can be easily avoided, if only you did one tiny little thing.

That tiny little thing is placing the ‘subscribe’ button in the right place. And to understand the right place, we have to understand a tiny little quirk of human behaviour.

So here’s what we tend to do in real life.

Let’s say we’re meeting a stranger. At what point do you give that stranger your contact details? At the beginning of the meeting, or at the end? The answer is, you give them your contact details both at the beginning and again at the end.

When we first tend to meet a person we don’t know, we immediately give them our business card. Notice that at this point we don’t know the result of the meeting.

If it’s a business meeting, maybe we’ll do business and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll like the person and maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll agree to their terms or maybe we won’t.

But we give them our business cards anyway.

And we do this action because we’re introducing ourselves, but also saying that we can be easily contacted. This quick gesture of giving out a business card, instantly gives the stranger the ability to get in touch with you.

The same concept applies on a website or a blog.

When we put a subscribe button at the top of the blog or website, we’re saying we can be contacted.

But you also have to realise that your subscribe button is not the reason why the visitor has come to your blog or website. They’ve come to your blog or website for their own selfish motives.

For instance, I went to a blog today that gave me ’10 Wordpress Plugins That Increase My Search Engine Rankings’. I instantly downloaded the plugins, got distracted and closed the page.

And the blog lost the opportunity to make me a subscriber.

And it’s very likely that hundreds, if not thousands of visitors just like me would have done the very same thing. They got what they wanted and now they’re off on their merry way.

But what if there was a subscribe button at the bottom of the blog?

Do you think that would have somehow changed my behaviour? What if there was a line that said: “Would you like to get goodies or smart articles like this in future? If so, simply subscribe via email or RSS”.

Do you think I would have clicked away? Or would I have subscribed? It depends on the content of the page, right?

If the content was great (and was indeed very useful) then my selfish motive would kick in and I would subscribe. But there was no prompt. No subscribe button at the end of the page. No next step.

And so I left.

And so did a hundred, if not a thousand people after me. Those subscribers are leaving by the truckload, not because they want to leave, but because you won’t give them a simple instruction to stay and join the conversation.

So what should you do in the next five minutes?

You should do the following:
1) You should put a subscribe button at the top of the page.
2) You should then make sure you have a subscribe/take action button at the bottom and a little teaser that encourages me to subscribe.

This simple act alone may not quadruple your subscribers.

It may quintuple them. It may double them. Who knows! But if you’ve got great content, you’ll see a definite increase in subscribers, that’s for sure.

So remember that business meeting with the stranger? You gave your card at the start of the meeting. And then at the end of the meeting, you gave that person an action plan.

You told them: I’ll call you. Or you call me. Or email me. Or whatever. Without that simple action plan or next step you’d have been wasting your time. And we don’t like wasting our time, do we?

So there you have it.

A five-minute action plan. Put it in place, and watch your subscriber numbers go up, up and away.

(Sean’s note: Yes, we take our own advice most of the time. Our website at Psychotactics.com has a subscribe button and precise teaser, but the blogs don’t. So guess which of the two has the better hit/subscribe ratio! Seems like it’s time for my own five-minute action plan, eh?).

Next Step: Want to learn more about website marketing? Find the entire website marketing series in text, audio with cartoons!
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Step into a bookstore, step into the business section and pull out a book. Then flip the book to the back cover. And here’s what you’re sure to find on almost every business book. Yup you guessed it. You find bullets.

And there’s a reason why bullets make it to the back cover of a book
It’s because you tend to read the title, then the subtitle (on the front cover) and then flip the book to get a gist of the book. Yes there’s the yada, yada about the book on the back cover. Yes, there’s an index. Yes, there’s a contents page, but you ignore most of the yada, yada and head for the bullets.

And you do so, because bullets are like flashing Christmas lights
They flash because of their ability to create curiosity. And not just some amount of curiosity, but a massive amount of curiosity. So here I’ve got a book on my desk that’s about podcasting. And at the very top of the back cover are these bullets.

* How to find and download audio and video podcasts to your computer or portable media player
* How to develop, format, produce, edit, encode, and upload your audio or video podcast, including in-depth information on using music legally
* How to set up an effective audio studio, including the complete and updated “The podcast studio buyer’s guide”
* How to create great video, including tricks of the trade such as the law of thirds, the line, and the three-point light
technique, as well as tips on casting, locations, scheduling, and more
* How people are marketing and making money through podcasting in the era of Web 2.0

Notice how they’ve put the entire guts of the book in those four or five lines?
And notice how each of those points started with a ‘how’ statement?

So let’s tackle those two ideas one at a time.
Idea 1: Notice how each of those points started with a ‘how’ statement?
Idea 2: Notice how they’ve put the entire guts of the book in those four or five lines?

Idea 1: Notice how each of those points started with a ‘how’ statement?
It doesn’t matter what the line, if you put the word ‘how’ before it, it instantly becomes interesting and curious.

e.g I went to Ireland this summer
With “how”: How I went to Ireland this summer.

e.g. I make butter chicken.
With “how”: How I make butter chicken.

Of course you can always add a “why”.

e.g. I make butter chicken.
With “how”: How I make butter chicken.
With “why”: Why I make butter chicken.

e.g. I went to Ireland this summer
With “how”: How I went to Ireland this summer.
With “why”: Why I went to Ireland this summer.

Of course you need to tidy up your sentences so that they’re not as boring as the ones above, but you do get the point, right? The only question that does remain is how do you get all of these sentences. And the clue lies in Idea 2.

Idea 2: Notice how they’ve put the entire guts of the book in those four or five lines?
So take your entire book or course, or speech, or whatever. Split it up into distinct parts. e.g. The Brain Audit has seven parts so it could be split into seven distinct parts, but hey you could choose seven or you could choose five.

Then pull out something from each part to describe what the reader could get from that part.

So in The Brain Audit the bullets read like this:
1) How to instantly get (and keep) the attention of the customer.
2) The roller coaster sequence (and why it matters when selling).
3) How to create a uniqueness factor in a matter of days.
4) How to know if a customer is really interested in your offering.
5) Why benefits and solutions aren’t the most effective way to sell.

Each of those bullets represents a different part of the book.
And each of them have a simple ‘how’ and ‘why’ structure to get and keep attention. In fact this same technique that you see at the back of a book, can be used for any promotion, be it a sales page, an event, a speaking engagement, product or service.

The fundamentals are simple.
Take your product/service. Split it into five/seven parts and pull out the most important highlights/benefits.
Take those highlights/benefits and put a ‘why’ or ‘how’ before it.

And there you have it: a whole bunch of bullets.

And that’s how you make your product/service or course stand out. Like flashing Christmas lights.

———————
Next Step: Are you losing tons of potential business because you don’t know how the brain works?
Read how The Brain Audit can help you…

New Products: Introductory Price

1) Do you sometimes wonder if planning books are written just for the ‘organised’ people?
Learn Why Most Planning Fails: And The Critical Importance of Chaos in Planning

2) Do you want to put some sanity into your design even though you are not a designer?
Learn how, you can immediately improve your design with some really simple tweaks.

3) Yes, you needs visuals on your sales page, but how do you use visuals to immediately improve your sales conversion?

4) How to Create Powerful Testimonials To Sell Your Internet Marketing Product. Find out the sec’rets…

———————

Have you got eleven seconds to learn a simple principle? A principle that will radically change the way you do things?

You do, don’t you?
Ok, tick, tick, tick….here’s the principle.
It’s called..um…the 70% Principle

So what’s the 70% Principle?

If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing 70% right.
You can always come back to do the 20% later.

Yes, read it again, and no, the math isn’t wrong.

If you’re going to build a website, a 70% effort is fine.
If you’re going to do a presentation a 70% effort is fine.
If you’re going to bake a cake, for that matter…do you need all the ingredients?

The perfect cake? With all the perfecto ingredients? Or the cake with ‘70%’ of the ingredients?

The ‘perfect’ wording on a website? Or the ‘70% perfect’ wording on the website?

And nope this isn’t a case for mediocrity

No one is telling you to do crappy stuff. No one’s saying that you need to keep your project unfinished. But in the quest for perfection, most of us never start.

The 70% principle is about getting your best effort out and into the hands of your clients. That you don’t need to start off with a 100%-kaboom-wow-start.

So let’s tell you about our ‘who pushed me?’ start in 2002

We started Psychotactics,in the year 2002, with a 16 page booklet. We called it the ‘Brain Audit.’ And indeedy-doo, it started with just 16 pages. Those 16 pages, we cheekily sold for $20 or thereabouts.

And you know what?

We weren’t trying to keep the pages down to 16 pages, but we certainly weren’t trying to pad up the contents of the book either.

The 16 pages of information were all we knew at the time. And yes, we could have made it 100% perfect, but decided to put our 70% effort out anyyay.

Did I say, put it out? I meant, I got ‘pushed’

You see, I wasn’t keen to sell the Brain Audit. I wanted to get the e-book just right. But I was forced into putting it on the market.

I was forced to putting it on a sales page, by another marketer who promised to promote the book to his audience.

And he never did promote the book

I reminded him. Gently. Then became a bit of a nag. But that promotion never, ever happened. What did happen was that the ‘Brain Audit’ began to sell.

And as it turned out, I was able to add the next 20%,
and the next 20%, and the next 20%.

And yes, the math still adds up

Because all along, that ’so-called incomplete’ product was selling. And when you think about it, which product or service of yours is ever complete?

As your knowledge grows; as your customers ask more questions; as you apply the concepts in different ways, your product or service gets better all the time.

And today, the Brain Audit is a comprehensive document that not only helps you understand how the customer thinks, but is also the basis for being a member of 5000bc; for doing any of our courses like the copywriting course, product-creation course.

What started out as a ‘who pushed me?’ product, now helps us get thousands of customers. And helps us grow our business considerably from year to year.

Kinda like the iPod, you see

When the iPod came out at first, it was just 10GB (yeah, pathetic ten gigs).

Then it went up to 30GB. And hey, we got video too. Then whoopsy-doo, it was 60GB. And uppity up it keeps going, both in size, features and ease of use.

Where’s the market for the perfect iPod?

There’s no market for the perfect product or service. The product or service that your customers want, is the product or service you have now.

That 70%-perfect product/service, will do fine for your customer.

How can I be so sure?

Could this article have been at least 30% better?
Couldn’t I have found more examples? More case-studies? Put in more details, perhaps? Tweaked my words just so to make it richer, more vibrant?

Sure I could. But you’ve got the point, right?

If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing 70% right. You can always fix the 20% later.

———————
Next Step: Are you losing tons of potential business because you don’t know how the brain works?
Read how The Brain Audit can help you…

New Product: Do you want to put some sanity into your design even though you are not a designer?
Learn how, you can immediately improve your design with some really simple tweaks.

———————