Last year, The Editorial Advantage took a long look at Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion, with posts on scarcity, keeping it simple, calling attention to your faults to get your audience to invest in your strengths, and priming your audience for a large request by first making a small one.

We were pleased, then, to see that software engineer Alex Moskalyuk had placed his own summaries of all 50 secrets on his Website. (Secret #6 is “Giving away the product makes it less desirable;” nonetheless, please check out the link to the book itself as well.)

At Magnificent Publications, we create publications to persuade, so of course we read all 50. Number 8, about the importance of giving specific instructions, is particularly-well- persuasive:

8. If a call to action is motivated by fear, people will block it, unless call to action has specific steps. A group of people received a pamphlet describing the dangers of tetanus infection. It didn’t describe much else. The second group of people got a description of tetanus infection, plus a set of instructions on how to get vaccinated. The second group exhibited much higher sign-up rate for tetanus vaccination than the first one, where many participants tried to block out the high-fear message urging that something as rare as tetanus would never happen to them.

This one is useful in pitch meetings – and also just fun to know:

30. People like the sound of their name, and that defines their vocation. There are three times as many dentists named Dennis as any other names. Number of Florences living in Florida is disproportionately high, same goes for Louises living in Louisiana.

For even more, see The Editorial Advantage’s “persuasion” tag.

(The idea for this post came via The Rumpus.)

Posted in Persuasion