I rarely do this.

But after my last blog post on the idea that Twit­ter is pop­u­lated by drones and fakes, Tiffany Dow posted a spir­ited rebut­tal to my blog post.

A gaunt­let has been thrown down.

I felt com­pelled to respond.

In fact, I posted sev­eral com­ments. But that’s not what I meant when I said “I rarely do this.” (I always love a healthy debate.) What I rarely do is repost my com­ments on its own blog post, which is what I’m doing now.

Why? Because I believe they’re rel­e­vant and impor­tant to this discussion.

So here are some of them, with a few addi­tional edi­to­r­ial com­ments here and there. (Yes, I know this blog post is long, and I apol­o­gize in advance. But I think you’ll find this dis­cus­sion insight­ful, if not some­what interesting.)

Read the rest of this post or share it »

My wife and I are shop­ping for a new home. We’re quite excited as one house has caught our eye, and we’re mak­ing an offer on it as I type this.

With the excite­ment comes a bit of trep­i­da­tion, how­ever, since we know we’ll have to start pack­ing, mak­ing mov­ing prepa­ra­tions and, of course, go fur­ni­ture shop­ping in order to fill some of the “extra space.” (Our new home is dou­ble the size of our cur­rent one.)

This reminds of the last time I went shop­ping for fur­ni­ture when I bought my pre­vi­ous house. Why? Because some­thing strange occurred that reminded me of the power of apply­ing pres­sure in copywriting.

Read the rest of this post or share it »

Take­away sell­ing, for the unini­ti­ated, is a way to limit the sup­ply of a prod­uct or ser­vice in some way to increase scarcity of an offer. Because it’s a proven fact that scarcity sells.

It’s that age­less law of sup­ply and demand. The less the sup­ply is, the greater the demand will be.

Peo­ple don’t know how much they want some­thing until it’s about to be taken away from them. As Jim Rohn once said, “With­out a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.”

Why? Because pro­cras­ti­na­tion is the biggest killer of sales — par­tic­u­larly online where the chances of a prospect stay­ing on or return­ing to a web­site (in order to think about buy­ing), in today’s click-​​happy world, are just as scarce.

It’s like walk­ing into a depart­ment store and you see a shirt you’re inter­ested in. Since there’s none in your size, you ask the sales clerrk if one is avail­able. The clerk goes into the back­room and emerges a few moments later, say­ing, “I found one in your size…

“… But it’s the only one we have left in stock.”

Now, how much more do you want that shirt?

Read the rest of this post or share it »