Good copywriting is a superpower.

Amazon, the second most valuable brand in the world, puts an emphasis on teaching its employees how to write.

They know good copy equates to more customers.

These are the 8 tips to write like an Amazonian 🧵

1. Keep Your Sentences Under 30 Words.

I'd keep them under 15 words.

They should be Kevin Hart short.

And only focus on one idea.

Short sentences help break down info into bite-size pieces.

This makes the communication smoother.

Digestible info = Retained info

2. Replace Adjectives With Data

In 1880, Mark Twain said, “When you catch an adjective, kill it."

In Amazon's case, don’t kill them -- replace them with data.

Why?

Because numbers are eye candy.

It organizes info into a logical order.

3. Eliminate Weasel Words

Weasel words kill sentences.

They're vague. Boring.

If you’re going to use adjectives -- use descriptive adjectives.

NOT interpretive adjectives.

Ex:

Interpretive - We went on a long boat ride.

Descriptive - We went on a 5-hour boat ride.

4. The “So What” Test

Re-read your writing and ask, “so what?”

Can the reader understand the sentence, paragraph, or page?

Does it make sense?

Does it provide value?

Are they learning?

This helps give you an understanding from the consumer's perspective.

Storytelling is a superpower.

A key to unlocking growth in your writing, startups, marketing, business, or career.

THREAD: 10+ principles of effective storytelling (that you can start using today):

Clarity of Purpose

The best storytellers always define a clear purpose prior to crafting their story.

What is the story trying to achieve? What does success look like with this story?

Commit to answering these key questions before doing anything else.

Define the Audience

Every great story begins with a well-defined audience.

Who is the audience? What do they consciously (or subconsciously) want from the story?

Be deliberate with this exercise.

Be honest with yourself. The audience may look different than you expect.

Establish Structure

“People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.” – Steven Spielberg

Stories need structure.

Clear narrative arcs (like Pixar’s “hero’s journey”) work well.

The Story Spine

Playwright Kenn Adams created a neat framework - “the story spine” - for establishing structure:

Once upon a time there was [blank]. Every day, [blank]. One day [blank]. Because of that, [blank]. Until finally [bank].

Fill it in and watch your story take shape.

GrooveFunnels Affiliate Program: Earn $1000 Recurring Commission per Week
https://t.co/fY1Dab6lZH

Recently Mike Filsaime, the Co-Founder of GrooveDigital and GrooveFunnels, released a new video about the GrooveSell, GrooveFunnels JV, and Affiliate Program.

I promised threads about recruiting for the next week. Here's the first one on referrals. In growth/marketing speak: referrals are your organic growth, inbound is your brand, and outbound/sourcing is your ad spend. You want to growth-hack your referrals. Here's how. 1/n

2/ Referrals (people on your team referring candidates into your recruiting pipeline) is great because it scales with your org size. They also convert higher since one of their friends is trying to convince them to join, plus they are generally not interviewing at many companies.

3/ The main disadvantage is that they tend to re-enforce your current team makeup. So if you have a diverse team, referrals will continue that diversity, but if you do not, you'll be entrenching your existing makeups which can have some real cons.

4/ A common tool for incentivizing referrals is the referral bonus (the coolest version of which is in equity IMO, although $ works well too), but I think you can do a lot more by leveraging process (referral parties) and culture (creating real pride about your referral culture).

5/ Referral parties are about making a game out of referrals by (virtually) locking 2+ teams in a room for 60 minutes and asking them them to go all out putting together a referral list. Here's how to do it.

NLP

Subliminal psychology is mental influence that passes beneath the limits of normal human perception. A subject will not notice they are being exposed to a subliminal stimulus.

a great deal of it is used by marketing and the Media

▪Thread

People who you can use subliminal psychology tactics on

-People you need a favor from e.g superiors in work
-Seduction
-Stubborn people in your life
(coworkers, roommates, partners)
-Hypnotize yourself to accomplish something

You can make life easier as you bypass the power struggles and effort it takes to get people to like you and to do what you want.

Down below are subliminal tricks you can use in your relationship

When you establish dominance and submissiveness, you end the need for fighting because one person delegates all decisions to the otherThe subliminal secret to gaining dominance is to make a power move that floods your partner’s subconscious mind with respect and awe.

The way to do this is to use leading and pacing.

Practice mirroring of eachother. Then you can start making some small movements of your own to see if your partner mirrors it back.

Write a free ebook and make $25,000 from it

// THREAD //

You've heard it before
>> write an ebook
>> charge $10 for it
>> sell to 10 people
>> yay you made $100

This is entirely different.

Let's start.

1. Think big

You're not going to create a twitter growth guide.

You're going to create the most insane lead magnet to get you an innumerable amount of leads for your business/agency.

That's when your ebook becomes worth it.

2. What to write on

It has to be so relevant + actionable that prospects go out of their way to contact you

Market research will GIVE you what to write about
>> what problems + solutions exist in niche
>> direct steps to use solution to fix problem
>> get personal, be concise

3. Positioning

What does a free ebook that is actually valuable and actionable to do for you?

It positions you as an EXPERT.

You know them, and they can tell.
You know how to help, and they can tell.

THAT IS YOUR GOAL.

Marketing isn’t a scam

Marketing makes change happen. Marketing makes your creations known

I'll share some tactics & frameworks I use

How to get lucky in marketing in 2021:

How marketing has evolved:

Marketing used to be a contest for attention

But now, marketing is a contest for CONNECTION

Whoever owns the connection, wins

Turn your product into a social statement

Products that make you feel good or defend you from being cancelled, spread fast

Ex: Make clothes out of recycled plastic

Point: People want a chance to show they stand for something

Are you working with creators?

Some of the world’s biggest brands were catapulted in the 1960s via TV

Brands bought TV ads. Captured attention

Working with creators is like buying TV ads in the 1960s

Point: Co-building with the right creators is like fishing with dynamite

Avoid ads. Build media companies

Prediction: every public company will own a media arm

It’s a magical shortcut to building true fans

Ads just don’t hit the same way

The Ballad of Paul O'Neill:

Get a cup of coffee.

Today, I will talk about one of the brilliant management stories I have ever read. Let's get started.

1/

It was the year 1987, where a bunch of analysts and investors have teamed up to meet the new CEO of Alcoa.

Alcoa is one of the largest aluminum manufacturing firms where employees work in a dangerous environment. Millions have invested in the stock.

2/

Recently management has made missteps letting competitors take away profits and market share.

It was a sign of relief when investors heard about a management change.

The new CEO is Paul O Neill, who is a former Govt bureaucrat.

3/

AGM has started. Paul entered the stage. His only emphasis is *worker safety* He aimed to bring down worker injuries to zero.

He talked nothing about firm profits, capital ratios, taxes.

The investors were confused. They thought he is crazy and sold their shares.

4/

But to their surprise, the firm market value has increased from $ 3 billion in 1986 to $ 27.53 billion in 2000 while net income improved from $ 200 million to $ 1.484 billion.

What's more, all the growth occurred while Alcoa becoming one of the safest firms in the world.

THREAD: Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. It’s 6pm on a Friday evening, everyone is sat around a table at a nice restaurant in London. The head of Marketing from some big company is sitting down with his agency who invited him down to talk things over.

They insist on paying the bill, it’s a casual thing they say. Just a chat about ideas.

Wine starts flowing and jokes too. Everyone has a good time.

Especially the agency, they just signed a new client retainer for £5,000 a month.

Easy pickings.

Too often we see Marketers signing agency contracts because of a few casual chats, usually following some conference waffle sales pitch about how everything in Marketing is dead now and only they have the solutions in this “new world”.

The point here is that turkeys won’t vote for Christmas.

They won’t sell you the best option, they’ll sell what’s best for them.

But the problem isn’t the agencies, its Marketers.

Agencies will try to sell you what they sell, of course they would. Marketers of all people should be aware of this. It doesn’t really matter if you get on really well and they paid for your meal and they are young, millennial, white and middle class and do digital.

THREAD:

Machiavellianism in Different Professions

SALES:

It has been said that a con-man is just a salesmen without a product, but this is a lie; a salesman is just a con-man with a product.

Your job is to persuade people to buy product, regardless of whether or not it is in their best interest to do so.

Charm and Persuasion are your tools.

Keep in mind that Charm fuels Persuasion, in the sense that many people will buy from you simply because they like you, not necessarily because they are in love with the product itself.

Zero sum negotiation (an intrinsically machiavellian domain of performance) is a key job function within sales; you will have to negotiate price and deal terms.

Notably, zero sum negotiation is also common within Law and Finance.

How complex the manipulations you must engage in for the sake of persuading a target to buy product will vary from one industry to another.

As a door to door magazine salesmen, simply being good looking and hyping up the product by being extroverted may be enough.

Writing Emails to Professor; Important tips & Samples for your consideration

Every year, Profs get several emails from students & difficult to accept all. You want to ensure yours is concise & deserve a response. This thread will provide insight & some samples you can use.

1/n

Your opening statement; Here, please briefly introduce yourself & connect your interest with the Prof's own (refer to sample attached). Mention one or two of the Prof's research areas that you've checked and find interesting.

2/n

Following this, let them know what you've done in the past: Demonstrate your experiences & tools you use (this is important for them to gauge your fit). E.g: I have good experience working with neural networks, ensemble forecasting & published a paper in ABC Journal.

3/n

Lastly, quickly summarize what you'd like to research & state again the skills you've got that will be a good addition to their lab. E.g: I'm interested in conducting research on improving model prediction in AI (the Profs interests). I use Python, ArcGIS & R for modeling.

4/n

SOME IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER

1. Your email should not be verbose. Ideally, I'd keep within 3 paragraphs (something one can read in 2minutes)

2. You can attach CV & Transcript, but not in a drive or folder. Have it there as an attachment, they decide to open it or not

5/n

1/ One of the best things I did in 2020 was to join a growth marketing program called @growclass

I’d seen it hover around online, I saw some friends talking about it. But I thought, wow, that looks great but it’s too expensive for me at the moment.

[continue thread ...]

2/ Then I kept coming back and getting more nervous because the more I looked at it the more I wanted to join.

It finally came to a point where I felt an irresistible urge to join the program. And I remember I was on the landing page 10 minutes before the program closed.

3/ And I immediately thought to myself: “I need to learn how to make people interested in career coaching feel like Growclass made me feel just now”.

4/ Then I tried to think about it as an investment. “If Growclass helps me gain 10 more students over the next 12 months, it will pay for itself.”

5/ Well things have changed significantly since then.

I was inspired by others to raise my prices significantly. Now my prices are triple what they were when I first started (and waaaay undercharging).

But the copywriting and website tear downs have made a big change for me.

Here are 6 things you need to know before applying for a remote marketing job...🧵

In 2015 I was offered a remote contract from a guy I’d met in an airport bar. 🍻

No joke. If my best friend wasn’t sitting beside me during that layover, I’m 100% convinced that everyone would think this was completely made up.

He’d overheard me talking about an SEO portfolio site that I’d recently made & that I was going to start looking for new side projects.

After a quick conversation and a week to think things over at the beach,🏖️ I flew home and took the offer. 😬

Working remotely in marketing has helped me grow personally and professionally in ways I never could at an office.

I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned and everyone who has helped me along the way.

I hope sharing a few tips I’ve picked up will help you on your journey. ✨

1) Make it real by making an action plan. Start by taking baby steps.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

When you first sit down to frame out what you’re looking for, it’s important to set clear goals and make a solid plan.

1 - Why do I care about new customers when my industry obsesses with catering to best customers via omnichannel theory?

Good question!

It goes back almost 30 years.

2 - Ok, I was working at Lands' End in 1991. One of your Circulation Managers had a challenge. She had two segments of customers she mailed, and one she didn't. She knew how the mailed segments performed, but needed an estimate for the segment she didn't mail.

3 - Estimating segment performance for an un-mailed segment was easy ... I had done this work at the Garst Seed Company in the late 1980s. So I performed the exercise for her.

4 - And my results were accurate enough that I was asked to analyze other issues.

We had a division that mailed 2 catalogs in a quarter. What would happen to the two catalogs if a third catalog was mailed?

I recommended a strategy ... an A/B test.

5 - Say the first catalog generated $5,000,000 in sales and the second catalog generated $5,000,000 in sales. What would happen to the 2 catalogs if a 3rd catalog was mailed, and how much would the 3rd catalog generate?

1/13

Successful enterprises do not relish in the faults of competitors.

They relish in competition.

They relish in a market with multiple use cases.

Rising tides lift all ships.

I am ashamed of the ETH community today.

2/13

We fault the close mindedness of Bitcoin maxis, but then mock any project that takes a new approach and hits a snag?

If you want to mock rip off grifter scams like Tron, that’s one thing.

3/13

If you take pride in “dunking on” legitimate projects who have differently philosophies and approaches to our industry then you are now better than the foaming-at-the-mouth BTC maxis you denounce.

4/13

Worse still you forget the faults we had along this journey. The times ETH went down, the times we had forks.

We sit high and mighty on some judgmental ivory tower, when most of you have never worked on consensus problems or chains.

5/13

I do not own any SOL, but I recognize that there is room in this industry for a range of products with different use cases and different trade-offs.

This blind cultish commitment to one implementation is childish and short-sighted.