You can guzzle from an inexhaustible supply of tricks from the deep well of psychology.
You will learn to repeat messages back to people, ask for more than you need, use flattery, and mirror behavior to get what you want.
Some of these tricks will get you a slightly higher compliance rate – at least for a while.
The problem with psychological tricks should be obvious, people feel tricked!
If your audience doesn’t feel good after the behavior, they avoid you and resist the behavior in the future. That hurts you over the long-term.
Don’t search for psychological shortcuts. Do the hard work. The best tactics to influence people are those that
- Increase your expertise and credibility.
- Grow the number of people who know and like you.
- Help you understand what they need.
The best and most influential people in your field didn’t go looking for psychological tricks, they developed a solid base of unique expertise, demonstrated credibility, and grew their connections.
This is a deliberate process. Begin with your expertise and credibility.
Increase your Expertise and Credibility
Like a diet change, the process is clear. Sticking to it is hard.
I’d begin this way.
- Visit Amazon. Buy the top 5 books in your field. Set an hour aside each night to read the books over the course of a month. Identify where the cutting edge of your field is and who the top authors are. Make sure you get through this book first.
- Google Alerts. Setup Google alerts for the relevant terms and questions in your field (use these hacks). Tag stories in evernote which could serve as useful case studies in the future. Keep tabs on how frequently the examples follow the theory. Highlight discrepancies.
- Google Scholar alerts. Setup alerts in Google Scholar for relevant terms too. Identify the top academics in your field and build up a list of studies to support your future points (believe me, you will want to do this early). Tag these in evernote too.
- Find the Experts. Use alltop.com or search for ‘top blogs about {topic}’ to identify the top experts in your field. Interview the top 10 in a webinar series. Publish your results as an eBook too – use Unbounce.com to collect the email addresses of the respondents.
- Dissect and Improve. Break the key parts of the field down into distinct components and study them individually. We spend a lot of time studying psychology and motivation for example. Identify what could be improved. Read the books that others don’t on this topic. Read the academic articles. Talk to experts in this unique niche. Find your unique cutting edge.
- Search for the conferences in your field. Search in Meetup, Lanyrd, eventbrite and on Google for the top conferences in your field. Volunteer to help in exchange for a free ticket. Ask for introductions to the top people in your field from the organisers during the event. Better yet, host your own events.
- Develop a project to test the proven knowledge in your field. Write up your results. Either it succeeds and you have a successful example or it fails and you’ve disproven what others believe. Publish this project as a case study other people can download – collect the email address. The more frequently you can repeat this, the better. This is by far the most important step. Make sure you amplify your posts.
- Get a professional recording. Pay $500 – $1k to shoot a professionally recorded video at either the beginner or expert level for someone in this field. Send this video out to conference organisers with a speaking pitch idea. Approach local meetup groups offering to speak as well. You need a unique angle here. Something that most people don’t know. Make sure this footage looks professional.
- Pitch guest posts and white papers. Find those with an existing audience in your field. Offer to create a guest post or co-create a white paper. They get the material for their audience, you get to increase your reputation within this field.
- Host a webinar series. Sign up for a GoToWebinar account. Setup a recurring webinar series for every Wednesday. Host an expert interview each week and ask follow up questions. Post the videos on YouTube/Vimeo/Wistia and collect the email addresses. If you run out of experts to interview, host your own webinars sharing your knowledge and expertise.
Each of these will help you become a credible, authority, in your field.
Each of these will deliver a far better return on your time than trying to master another round of psychology tricks.
By the end, you will have tested the theory, gained expertise, and have something of proven value to add. This gives you credibility which attracts an audience. If you’re starting from scratch today, begin with building your credibility. Once you have a core group of believers it’s a lot easier to do anything else you need.
Make no mistake though, this is really hard work. This is a good thing. It makes it rare which in turn makes it valuable.
