The newscaster said shark attacks are directly related to the economy, because in order to have a shark attack two conditions apply:

1. People Have To Be In The Water
2. Sharks Have To Be Where People Are

Then he proceeded to explain that as the economy declines less people go to the beach (People In The Water), because they don’t have the money.  He followed that up with a stupid line that basically disproved his theory, “But surfers are not deterred by the economy, and are out in the water everyday, regardless of the economy, so they stand to have a much greater risk for shark attacks!”

Shock Attack!

Stories like the above are ways the television and radio news teams sucker you in to listen to the entire newscast by giving you a teaser headline, “Economists Predict Decline In Shark Attacks In 2009! The complete story after these commercials.”  They just baited you with a shocker.

First, why would an economist be predicting shark attacks?

Second, why are shark attacks declining?

Shocking headlines tend to grab your attention and pull you in.  You are going along on your merry way and you hear something that does not make complete sense to you. You have to know more.  They baited you.  You listen and they tease you until you are fully hooked, you listen all the way through the story until the stupid anticlimactic conclusion and you leave ticked off that you wasted your time.  But they got you.

Tweeting A Big Juicy Worm!

Social media is like that, you can keep people engaged with golden nuggets that pull people in.  You can ask open ended questions that require people to reply to you. Tell funny stories that can only be completed on your blog.

These are ways you can bait people into your sphere of influence.  Using humor, love and good information.  Seducing your audience like a fisherman uses a lure or a worm to tantalize a big bass from under the log in the lake.  He may look at it suspiciously for a few minutes, but if you don’t scare him off, he’ll bite.

Ride It Like You Stole It

As you know Lance Armstrong had a one of a kind bike stolen during one of his races this week.  The guys who make his bikes didn’t waste a second getting another bike to him.  They inscribed a great motivating quote on it that you just have to read:

Lance uses twitter as a way to stay in touch with the thousands of fans he has all over the world, and he receives an insane amount of motivation from those people who follow him!  But he makes sure that he keeps them fed with good content, he will send out videos, blog posts and pictures like the one above that inspire.

I don’t think Lance has a strategy in his use of twitter.  Instead, I believe he is genuinely interested in his fans and he allows them the chance to look into his life 140 characters at a time.  When he needs to communicate more than that, he has his images, blogs and videos.  His communication with twitter acts as a distribution center as it directs people to his more detailed information.

Fishing With Headlines

Your tweets should be the bait for the bigger story.  Like Lance, you should be giving a glimpse into your life without revealing everything in a tweet.  You should be saying to yourself as you write a status update, “take a peek, but if you want more, come to my blog, or my flickr page, etc.”  Each tweet is the headline of the newspaper, and the reader can decide if it is interesting enough to follow to the website.

You can really be sneaky and see if anyone is paying attention.  Start a story, and don’t give anyone a place to go to find out more.  If you have done it right, you will get a lot of @replies asking you questions about what you started.  Mark Joyner calls this the Zeigarnik Effect, where people have to have completeness in their lives.

On television, you see Monk always completing sequences, or putting a book back on the bookshelf to complete a series.  Same as puzzles, they are so addicting, because they are incomplete.  If you only give readers a couple of hints, it will drive them nuts until they get the complete story.

If you don’t want a riot, you really shouldn’t wait to complete your story until your next blog post…

Jason Ewart is a Sydney-based transformation writer and speaker who obliterated obesity & demolished debt.  

It was often said to me that “most of us are like the rest of us” . Even in our similarities, there is a uniqueness that you & I bring to our communities in areas from business to recreation.

What has helped me to extract potential from others & myself is discovering some things about the way that I am “wired”. This has assisted in honing in on strengths & removing hindrances.

My aim today is one of two things

1. You will discover a new lens for understanding how yourself, team mates & clients are “wired”.

2. You already have found benefit in using this and you are willing to share with us all by joining the conversation via the comments section

There is a tool available called DISC Assessment.

Let’s briefly look at the four frames

D = Dominant (Bold)

I = Influencing (Communicator)

S=Stable (Steady)

C = Compliant (Details)

D & C tend to be task driven. I & S are people oriented.

All four frames have strengths & weaknesses. (Read: the importance of teams/collaboration)

I would encourage you to explore the link, google & ponder as there is more to extract.

I will give you an example from my life on how this has added value.

The results of my survey indicated that I was a high D. Meditation of this result was very freeing. It explained a lot. In simple terms, I want things done & I want them done YESTERDAY!

INTERNALLY, impatience & unrealistic expectations were leading to frustration.

This is good to know as myself (along with my wife, team etc) are able to work with this toward eliminating frustrations.

EXTERNALLY, the potential is there to hurt people (ie. family, customers, co-collaborators) and also miss important details. The “C” people are great to have in my world!

I believe there is great benefit for discovering how ourselves, our families, our teams and our clients are “wired”.

Keep in mind, as my friend Dana Byers reminded me recently,

“knowledge of our own and other’s personality types must be used as a means to improve working and personal relationships but should never be used as a means of judging or manipulating others’ behavior.”

On that note, what is the cost for not improving working and personal relationships?

]]> http://successfool.com/wired-part-1-of-3/feed/ 3 http://successfool.com/using-gratitude-to-grow-your-internet-business/ http://successfool.com/using-gratitude-to-grow-your-internet-business/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:44:58 +0000 Matt Detrick http://successfool.com/?p=417

Matthew Detrick is President Heart Massager of Inner Gold, helping you grow your business by opening your heart and mind. Find Matthew at http://MineMyInnerGold.com/blog and on Twitter

Hi, how YOU doin?

Matthew Detrick here with MineMyInnerGold.com
holding it down on SuccessFool.com to share
with you, a gift on the day of my birth.

Today brought me back to a conversation Alejandro
and I had about what it means to be a success fool.
My first response:

“Success fool to me means remaining foolish in
our lives and in our businesses, having fun, and
when things go the opposite of what we might have
expected, taking ourselves a little less
seriously whilst letting it go”

As I went to Starbucks this morning, and
reflected on life, it hit me that at times
we forget what we have to be grateful for.

Being grateful is also a humongous part of
what it means to be a success fool.

Listen, if you’re not grateful for what you have
right now in your business, then what makes
you think that you will get any more business
then what you have right now in your internet
business?

Sure, the economy according to the tv is horrible.

You can choose to buy into it, which injects
the very same greed into our hearts that got
us here in the first place.

Take your ego out of the equation for a minute
whilst looking at it from an objective viewpoint
and you will see what I mean.

If not, just ask

OR…

… you can CHOOSE to be grateful for what you
have in the first place whilst finding new
ways to reach your target customers/clients.

So what if you didn’t have a record year in
sales

but look at the lives you DID change with
your products and/or services!

Figure out what worked and DO more of THAT!

Be grateful for that one life you did change

And yes, I know that things go wrong in our
business, or more along the lines of:

not the way we wanted them to go.

Instead of crying woe is me

Speak blessings over your internet business because
you know the hard time WILL come to pass

In business and in life, especially
right now, you BETTER come with your A
game or risk standing stagnant whilst
watching your business wither away and
die from choosing not to grow.

What did we learn today

1. Be grateful for what you already have

2. Speak blessings over your business in
rough times to GROW your business.

3. Do more of what worked

What does being a success fool mean to you
as it relates to your business?

Please leave your thoughts/comments/observations
below. We thank you

Jason Ewart is a Sydney-based transformation writer and speaker who obliterated obesity & demolished debt.  

As I continue to learn about leadership and social media, I am challenged by the following scenario. (Let’s use Twitter as an example.)

It was pretty cool to see numbers of “followers” ticking over in my early days of usage, I must admit. Wow! Someone wants to connect with me?!

I would be prompted to consider my niche, product/service, methods and tools. Topics that I can learn a lot about from my fellow guest bloggers & the Successfool community I’m sure.

Then it dawned on me, just maybe “followers” are expecting leadership? An ancient proverb states that leadership is nothing without a following.

It’s not a witty self-anointed title or a creatively formed position in our business models. As author John Maxwell defines it – “Leadership is influence”

A few days ago, News.com.au published an article discussing Twitter “influence” and ranking social networking users.

It mentioned that established users on Twitter

“frequently compare each other in terms of “influence” – more or less derived from how many other users read and republish their posts.”

Is influence defined by how many readers we have or how many readers are prompted to action or even reproduction? (Retweeting? Mentoring other leaders? Resourcing?)

We all have a certain size & particular sphere of influence, or “tribes” as Seth Godin frames it.

I am challenged repeatedly to use that influence within community for things of worth, to add value to people and be a voice for the voiceless.

After all, even some of the most despised figures in history were great leaders!

Will my influence be used for maintaining a neutral position? (read: atrophy) or to conform to the status quo, possibly not meeting defined needs and assisting people?

This tweet by @MatthewBarnett resonated with me in recent days

“tweet message recap. If we strive to be relevant will only try to catch up to the moment. When we are revolutionary we are setting trends”

That is the type of leadership I aspire to: Influence that is innovative, advancing and even courageous.

Where am I taking “followers”?  Where are you taking them?