Ever see that video before?

It’s a very interesting rollercoaster of human behavior, human psychology, and the influence factor “Social Proof.”

Let’s break down this video…

At the first this guy is laughed at, made fun of, and even recorded because of his wild arm flails and back-rolls. Obviously, the dude’s on a little sumthin’-sumthin’, but soon after he starts dancing, a young kid comes over and throws back some arm pumps.

His friend’s probably told him to go dance with him as a joke. This originally started off as a joke, but soon turns into the “cool thing to do.”

So now the original leader, has a follower, he teaches him the dance and now becomes indoctrinated into the dance moves. 30 seconds later… a chubby kid joins in, rubs his stomach, does the flop method, and becomes the 2nd follower. He is now cool.

At this point, the risk for other to join is lowered. It’s not as embarrassing as it was when there was 1 person. No one wants to be the first, but the 3rd, 20th, or 338th is a no-brainer. We all want to fit in. Soon people are literally running and jumping over people to get in on this… because it’s now “cool.”

Did you catch what’s going on here?

Let me break it down, decode it, and feed it to you so you can do the same for your marketing…

No One Wants to Be First

There’s a reason why wedding have the dj guy and his side kick girlfriend getting people out of their seats to get them to go dance. You have to start the steamroll effect. One couple starts to boogie, your mom gets up, your dad gets dragged, your wild uncle pulls out the “charlton”, and soon before you know it debauchery has taken over.

Since you KNOW that no-one wants to be the first on really anything, HELP start the steamroll! For example, blog posts, like this one, I want people like you to comment on it, leave me feedback, get the interaction going. The more comments, the better, the more social proof.

When you’re going through a product launch and you have 2 comments, you beter do some interaction to get it moving along. A post with 1,274 comments – you know it’s going to be a badass launch day. Good job.

To get the ball rolling, generate some traffic, and the start the commenting, tweet, email, call, text your friends about a new post, video, content piece, product… whatever you just put out there. Have them help you to get the steamroll moving along.

Embrace Your Followers

When the first kid joins in to the dance, the leader embraces him, teaches him the move, and sets him on his way to bring on others. This kid went from joking around to enjoying it.

In your business and marketing, take in your followers, embrace them, communicate with them, comment when they comment on your blog. This is a great way to start the communication and the simple underlying benefit your followers will say is “hmmm, he’s really listening and paying attention to me.”

Try not to be the guy who never responds to comments people leave on your blog or replies to a video you made. If you don’t we take it personally. Come on now, you can’t be “that” busy. If you are, have someone do it for you. This is key with moving forward with the social proof steamroll effect.

You want to let them know that…

YOU CARE.

Because most people don’t and when YOU do, you become a higher priority in your followers eyes.

If Everyone’s Doing It, Then It MUST Be Good

It’s like the old saying, “if you’re friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?” Duh… of course!

Like our courageous leader above, 1 person joined, then another, then 6, then 26, then a lot more.

WHY?

Becuase it became “cool.”

It goes to our internal thinking is that, “Well, hey if everyone is doing it than it must be good.” So just imagine as more and more people comment on your blog posts, send you emails, facebook friend request you, retweet your message, and OTHER SEE IT you’re on the track to getting “compliance.”

With compliance I mean by getting to the final destination in your marketing… THE SALE. The money passes hands.

When other people can see how many people and who is sharing the messages, this itself has many “conversion” strategies alone. So if you see that a message has been retweeted 385 times, facebook shared 294 times, Stumbled 183 times, and Google Buzzed 123 times, the only logical thing to think is…

IT MUST BE GOOD.

In a later post I’m going to show you how to use social media to spread the word much much greater than you’ve ever seen before. No one is talking about this.

Anyhow, that’s some some insider info on Social Proof and how you can use it in your marketing.

I don’t bite, so leave me a comment below on what you thought of this bad boy post.

I like to comment to your comments, so leave me some comments,

Word.

Chris

He just posted an interview he did with Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and his latest book “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be More Persuasive” on his blog.

Go check it out… it’s awesome!

Download the mp3

[tags]Robert Cialdini, Influence, Social Psychology, Rich Schefren[/tags]

A change that problably pissed off alot of people in the company.

Want to know what they did?

Go pick up his book. No I’m kidding, here’s what they did…

They went from 26 Head & Shoulder products to 15 and increased their sales by 10%.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself. “why did that happen?” Well, the answer is simple…

When there’s too many choices tend tend to do NOTHING! You know like when you goto your local street fair and the lady is selling the 60 different dipping sauces and you buy none because you can’t decide. Yea, that’s what I’m talking about.

I’ll give you an example in my first business. I sold wheels and tire packages on eBay and started posting listings for every single wheel my manufacturer produced. I though, “Heck, I can sell all of these wheels. If I sell 1 a day of each set, I’ll be RICH!” HAhaaaa… Actually, I spent $5,000 in listing fee’s that month and only made $4,200.

You know why? I was selling products that would NEVER sell!

So how can this apply to your business?

Simple. Offer HOTT (double t) products. Products that people are buying NOW and in herds. And don’t focus on the trivial many. Focus on the hard core few.

The 80/20 my friend. It’s for real.

peace.

Chris

[tags]Robert Cialdini, Influence, Social Proof, Scarcity, Steve Martin, make money with less[/tags]

Not because of the craziness that’s happening across America as people from all walks of life flood the local Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, and the glutinous Wal-Mart, to take advantage of the Black Friday deals. (Whatever they are… Apple doesn’t really care, they give you a whopping $51 off a Macbook. WOW! No discount on the Macbook Pro though. errrrrrrgghhhh.)

I’m laughing because at 11:32 last night my girlfriend and I decided to make a trip to our local Best Buy in Boynton Beach, FL to see this so-called Black Friday madness in action.

Here’s how it went down…

So we take a left on Old Boynton Beach BLVD to turn into the parking lot. To our amazement we saw at least 600 kids, momma’s, momma’s babies momma’s, daddy’s, either playing cards, playing basketball, drinking booze, and sleeping. Most of the kids were trying to find chicks.

At that moment, Alex and I said in unison, “What a hell of a product launch!” (She knows this stuff because I talk about it non-stop.) Thanks to Jeff Walker for introducing us to the Product Launch Formula.

The laws of persuasion appeared in front of us…

Social Proof

What’s this? “Well, if everyone else is doing it, then it must be good.” It’s just like when you go to a club and see no-one at the front door. You say, “It’s dead, let’s check out somewhere else.” You then find a club that has a huge line because, “it must be good.”

I used to work at the front door of a club here in West Palm. My job was to help “control the door.” Controlling the door meant that I had to keep the line slammed with people and have it wrap around the building.

Why?

Social Proof. How can you do this on the internet? Blogs. Forums. A place where people can leave comments and add a social aspect (dynamic) to your webpage.

You see it in every big product launch.

The next law we saw in action double B was…

Scarcity

There were only a limited quantity of their “door busters” items so you have to get there early. This is another social influencer to get people to take action. For example, “We have 15,000 people on our list and selling only 300 copies. You better get in fast before they are all gone.”

This works wonders when you do it right when launching your product on the internet. You can base your scarcity on quantity and time. I use both when launching a new product or service.

Those were some of the most apparent laws of Influence. If I ever do it… I’ll get there at 5am when they open and run through the door.

Here’s a vid of the madness…
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=HZJVZ2p223o[/youtube]

Here’s to your Black Friday,

Chris