20 Magic Words, How to be Interesting, & More – Roger’s Picks

Here’s a longer than usual batch of diverse (but great) content we discovered in the last seven days… add your own great find in a comment!

Need a quick primer on some of the key theories and models of persuasion? Kevan Lee (@kevanlee) covers a lot of ground in How to Win Friends and Influence Your Audience: 10 Theories to Know For Greater Persuasion. There are lots of illustrations, and even a nod to my Persuasion Slide model.

Social media is a crowded space these days. With the emphasis on content marketing, everyone is sharing and trying to get shares. With this deluge of activity, how do you make your posts stand out? Jordan Kasteler (@JordanKasteler), writing at MarketingLand (@MarketingLand), gives us some neuro-tips in 8 Brain Triggers Guaranteed To Boost Your Social Media Marketing.

We could all stand to juice our headlines a bit. If you’re working on a headline that seems a bit flat, try adding one of the words Barry Moltz (@barrymoltz) recommends: Use These 20 Clever Words to Get Your Posts Read.

Who doesn’t want to be more interesting? You don’t have to don a wingsuit and jump off the Empire State Building, even though that would make you quite interesting (if you survived). Get some more practical approaches in Want to Become the Most Interesting Person Around? Start With These 7 Steps by Harrison Monarth (@HarrisonMonarth).

TED talks are awesome, and Dr. Jeremy Dean (@psyblog) curates the best of the best in How the Mind Works: 10 Fascinating TED Talks. It’s a compilation of ten brainy but accessible talks guaranteed to fill your own brain with new insights.

Organizational psychology is gradually yielding to a combined neuro-psychological approach. . Andrew Blackman (@BlackmanAndrew) gives us a peek at The Inner Workings of the Executive Brain with a particular focus on creativity and decision-making.

Branding expert Dr. Peter Steidl has put together a great neuromarketing primer. In his article, What every marketer needs to know about neuromarketing, he does a deep dive into the consumer decision-making process.

Everyone loves tools. Everyone loves lists. So, what’s not to like about a list of tools? 20 Tools To Help Skyrocket Your Conversions And Get More Leads For Your Business from Adam Connell (@adamjayc) has plenty of utilities that will boost your conversion, from exit popups to survey tools. (Watch out, though, some of these tools can be pricey!)

Some of us learn from the “what you should do” approach. Personally, I like the “you may be making these dumb mistakes” approach better. There’s just something that goads you into action when you see the exact thing you are doing on your site described as an epic fail. Corey Eridon shares some common errors in How Smart Marketers Are Sabotaging Their Calls-to-Action.

My Stuff

In this week’s episode of The Brainfluence Podcast, we talk with Dr. Carl Marci (@CMBiometrics), a co-founder of Innerscope Research. Carl and his firm have been leaders in taking the cloak of secrecy off neuromarketing studies and actually publishing data. Carl and I have a wide-ranging chat covering everything from doctor-patient psychology to landing page optimization with biometrics. Get it all here – read the show notes, click the resources links, subscribe by iTunes, or play it right on the page: Ep #4: Multimedia Engagement with Carl Marci of Innerscope.

You can take more notes faster with a laptop or tablet, and they will be perfectly legible compared to those hand-scrawled phrases on a legal pad. So, use a laptop to remember more, right? Not so fast… check my Forbes article Persuade The Old-Fashioned Way: With Pens, Pencils, And Paper to learn the surprising truth about notes and memory.

Shakespeare asked: What’s in a name? More than you might think… One of our favorite topics is fluency, and it appears to be the root cause of differences in perceived truthfulness that depend on your name. Read Can Your Name Make You A Liar? to find out if it’s time to change your name!

And in case you missed it, here is last week’s edition of my picks – it came out a little later than usual: Web Psychology, Snackable Content, Flow, and… Boobs? Roger’s Picks.

Weird and/or Wonderful

I’d guess that the most common word across a wide variety of social profiles is “coffee.” Twitter seems to be fueled by the caffeinated drink. But what if you could learn about people from their coffee preferences? Dr. Jeremy Dean (@PsyBlog), normally a sane guy, teases us with that possibility in What Your Coffee Order Says About Your Personality.

Remember, comments are open here… share your own pick of the week below!