Make people want to write something down I had multiple conversati

mdimranhasan139

Not subjective advice You can almost divide industry “thought leaders” into two camps: the gnomic inspirational ones (ALL catchphrase) and the super technical/tactical ones (no catchphrase, just data). MozCon, in my experience, features both kinds of public speakers – the high-level, conceptual speakers and the low-level nitty-gritty speakers. Both types get lots of love from the audience, so there’s no real right or wrong here. But in my view, the wrong way to be “inspirational” is to share prescriptive advice that’s purely subjective. For example: “Don’t be creepy.” Or “Be amazing.” The problem here is that “creepy” and “amazing” are only useful judgments when you know who is making the judgment and you already trust their opinion.



I’m sure you trust your own opinion of what is creepy/uncreepy and awesome/unawesome, but you IT Numbers probably don’t trust everyone else’s opinion, and you have no guarantee that anyone trusts yours. In reality, very few, if any, people think of themselves as creepy, and a whole lot of people think of themselves as awesome. It’s like thinking you’re a good driver, or make great smoothies. (Why does everyone think they make great smoothies?!) great public speakers The “creepy” rhetoric often surfaces in discussions of remarketing, but the data doesn’t bear out the assumptions; in reality, people are decidedly more tolerant of remarketing ads than non-remarketing display ads, even when they see more of those ads; they convert better even after a lot more impressions. It’s mostly industry insiders who recognize remarketing for what it is that judge them as “creepy.




But for businesses, your savviest marketing peers aren’t necessarily your target client base. Instead of these vague, subjective recommendations, make concrete, actionable recommendations. For example, instead of saying “Just make great content,” say: “Answer the real questions your customers are asking, better than anyone else who is ranking on page 1 already does.” (Not just better, says Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin, but 10X better.) Then show people HOW to surface those questions, and what “better than everyone else” means, by example. Instead of saying “Don’t be creepy,” show data that actually illustrates when people start to perceive you as creepy. Tell people how to work around that data. This kind of advice is so much more actionable. Which leads me to my next point.