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I've read in the past that telling people to do something isn't as effective as telling them that everyone else is doing it. I wonder how a phrase like "most pe
by ironkeith 17y ago
I've read in the past that telling people to do something isn't as effective as telling them that everyone else is doing it. I wonder how a phrase like "most people who like my blog follow me on twitter" would fare?
- siong1987 17y agohow about "Follow me on twitter here. I have x followers."?
- PStamatiou 17y agoSimilarly, I wonder how some automated text like "11,399 people follow me on Twitter, you should too" would work.
- petercooper 17y agoProbably not as well as notaddicted's suggestion below/above. People don't like being told they "should" do something, and it also presents a statement they can answer "No, I shouldn't" too. Ideally you'd need to ask an obvious "yes" question or just direct them to do something without allow them to think about it.
- whughes 17y agoI'm not familiar with Twitter, but would it be possible to have the site say something like: "You're following X, Y, and Z, who are also following me; you should too." I don't really like the tone I wrote, but you get the idea.
- notaddicted 17y agoI'd word it like: "Join the 4,615 people following me on twitter _here_."
- thorax 17y agoMaybe... "You should join my 4,615 followers on Twitter _here_."
- eru 17y ago'twitter' seems to be more effective than 'Twitter'. ;o)
- notaddicted 17y agoWhy not just go all out ;). "You should join my 4,615 followers on Twitter _here_. Everybody uses it. All the interesting people follow me. You really need to follow me now. I can't believe you're reading this when you could already be following me. DO IT DO IT DO IT. Fine. Enjoy your miserable life without me and die alone. Don't you want to be popular and interesting?"
- forgotmypasswd 17y agoNumber of followers is great for determining spamminess of an account, but mentioning the number of followers makes the message seem less personal. I would guess this would reduce its effectiveness, but I'm sure a quick test would provide harder evidence :)
- jseifer 17y agoOr the Cialdini route: "Can you follow me on twitter because I have X followers?"
- SwellJoe 17y ago"You should follow me on Twitter because I need to make some copies." Am I doing it right?
- HoneyAndSilicon 17y agoBut some people are going to respond negatively to large numbers (or at least very large). e.g.: if I see "I have 28,437 followers" I'm likely to think: okay, this is probably some Perez Hilton type person. But if the info could be tailored more (e.g., "2,437 HN subscribers that follow me") I would be more interested. In other words, not everyone finds following the most massive crowd a sign of value.
- timf 17y agoI don't have the source or exact words on hand but I read there were A/B tests done on phrasing in infomercials. The phrase "operators are standing by" fared overwhelmingly worse than "if the lines are busy, keep trying" which implied that they were typically so busy with orders that they could hardly staff enough operators. [EDIT: thanks to ironkeith for the Cialdini link ... it was a book by him and it was in a section devoted to the "Social Proof" research]
- ironkeith 17y agoIt was an article referencing research by this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
- byrneseyeview 17y agoHere are the other 49 tricks, briefly summarized: http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-persuasive http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-w... (This link is via HN, naturally: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=613402 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=613402)
- antiismist 17y agoI've read the book, as well as Influence. Influence is a far stronger book because it does a better job of describing the theoretical underpinnings of why the 50 tricks work. Some of the tricks are really narrow and so they aren't all that useful themselves (e.g. to write post it notes and put those on interoffice forms and surveys for a better response), but with the theories you can make better extrapolations.
- 10ren 17y agoWith the one about towels (number 2), I wonder if people behaved better because they thought they were being monitored; and, if so, whether some of them decided not to stay in that hotel again.
- ehsanul 17y agoI wonder how to best apply this to job-seeking.. Hmm...
- dcurtis 17y agoI thought about this. But there's a fine line between being tacky and being efficient. When I read bandwagon phrases like the one you propose, I always cringe. It's just not genuine.
- philh 17y agoIt would still be interesting to see the results. I have a similar reaction to "you should follow me on twitter". Before knowing about this test, it possibly made me a little less inclined to like/trust you than otherwise. (I think it did, but I don't know how to measure that.) I wonder if that's a common reaction: maybe there's an uncanny valley-type effect, where more efficient phrasings become turnoffs? Does the high conversion rate come at a cost of slightly alienating a subset of your readers?