I am going to reconstruct my last post on this thread. It was deleted in the hacker attack and it is not in the Google cache. I am going from memory and made some changes (hopefully improvements), so it is a little different. However the essence is the same.

I have been mulling over an idea recently and I want to leave it registered here. It concerns storytelling. I mentioned above that you should BS some personal story in a product review, but this deserves to be expanded on.

On the positive side, many of the gurus I read say that you should include stories in your commercial writing because it is in the nature of all of us to love a good story, that people like to feel you are human just like them, they like to confirm ideas with examples, yada yada yada...

A story actually is a psychological trigger for action, but it is subtle. The action is for the reader to keep reading. Since people tend to keep doing what they have been doing, if they read a small story, they are more likely to continue reading the rest of the sales copy than if they came across the sales copy cold.

But on the negative side there is even another action trigger: to get attention and get people to click on a link, especially in a busy marketplace where everyone is hawking like there is no tomorrow. Positive-wise people love a good story. Negative-wise they are nosy as all hell and love to gossip.



I have not read this negative part in any guru's material. I am merely observing and musing. This thought came to me as I was looking at the headlines of those sleazy gossip tabloids while standing in line at the supermarket. "God, what crap!" I thought as I read about some young thing checking into or out of rehab along with some scandal or other. (I forgot who. It wasn't Paris or Britney, but you get the idea.) Then I paused. Maybe it's crap, but it's good bullshit.

Off the top of my head, here is an example of what I am talking about. Imagine the following two headlines:

John Doe has a lover

or

John Doe's lover made a stink in public

In the first case it works if the person is famous, especially if he has a solid reputation for family values. But in general it is not nearly as attention-getting as the second, which not only promises to identify the lover, but also tell a good juicy tale full of dirt. Who is the lover? Is she famous or a slut? Where did the stink happen? When? Was there violence? What was the result of the scandal? Is John Doe's career now down the tubes? And so forth.

Here is another example that just came to me on a moneymaking level.

All gurus are liars!

as opposed to

Armand Morin lied to me!

The same observation applies about the second promising to tell a good story about dirt. Of course, if you don't know Armand Morin and never talked with him, you could then talk about something you read that he wrote and bullshit up a storm while you hype another product. The main point is that you got the person to start reading the story.

I recently had personal proof (inside myself) of how powerful the drive to gossip is in human nature. This episode got me mightily amused at myself.

I was watching a screencast video on YouTube about hacking into MySpace accounts. I am not particularly interested in this and, frankly, find it a bit dull to wade through. I was researching MySpace since I am drifting toward this venue as a marketplace, stumbled across the title and thought this information could be useful in learning how to defend my accounts.

The hacker was good, too. He showed how he got into a guy's account with no problem, then where and how he could alter they guy's layout, personal data, content and so forth. At one point, as he was looking at the guy's private correspondence, he said in an offhand manner, "Hmmm... this guy is cheating on his wife." He didn't even pause, but continued showing other things in the screencast.

Boinnnnnnng!!!

My antenna suddenly popped up and wiggled. Say what? Cheating?



Ah, the folly of being human...

The technical stuff that could help me protect my money was boring me to tears and the dirt about someone I didn't even know suddenly got me wide awake and bushy-tailed again. The sad truth is that we all love to gossip. Maybe that's not nice, but there it is. A good marketer will make use of this negative psychological trigger.

(Leaning forward, cupping hand behind right ear and cackling like a dirty old lady...)

"Confession is good for the soul."