Are you desprate enough to use 1 of these 3 can't fail tactics?

I'm not sure if you're aware, but times are tough for job seekers. Times are tough for employers.

And as the old saying goes, desperate times call for disparate measures.

Or somthing like that.

Have you noticed the typos?

That's tactic one for desperate people.

Actually, let's call it tactic 2, since I hid tactic one before that, chronologically.

But let's get into why this works.

If your goal is to get engagement, and you are desperate, typos are a great place to start.

The reason why is two-fold.

First, typos are difficult to ignore, because as my bickering children will tell you, it's not easy to let a mistake go buy unpunished, or at least unnoticed, especially by one of your peers.

Correcting mistakes is like scratching an itch. Sure, we don't have to do it, but man does it feel better. Doubly so if correcting that mistake ascends your social position, which we're all taught from a young age that noticing typos does.

It all goes back to the days we were crammed into thinly disguised prisons called "schools" and for whatever reason, someone trusted whoever was playing the part of teacher to go ahead and destroy our ability to think by telling us we were wrong, and she was right, when we disagreed.

One of the teacher's greatest tools to instill yes/no thinking that would cripple us for the rest of our lives, was to embarrass us in front of 30 of our peers when we got the answer "wrong". It doesn't take much, because children are fragile and easily influenced.

So, now that we've all got grammar scars, that injured part of our minds, that inner child that just wants to be loved and appreciated for being special, and not thought of as a dunce in front of the whole class, will be damned if it's going to let the chance go by again not to prove he or she knows better.

The other reason this works is that it's a pattern interrupt.

Our brains are largely pattern recognition machines, and so when you interrupt the pattern the brain is expecting, you force it to be present and to perform an inspection, however brief.

A well-placed typo is just what the doctor ordered, in a stream of noise that some sources estimate manifests in 6,000 - 10,000 advertisements we are all exposed to daily.

Tactic three is to find some way to let the reader be better than you. "A little more okay" as negotiation expert Jim Camp might have put it.

Actually, he called it the Colombo Effect, after the TV detective played by Peter Falk.

The idea is that if you can find some small, trivial way to let your audience feel superior to you, you've gone a long way to being able to operate the levers of influence.

In the TV show, Colombo, the detective was brilliant but was always playing dumb. He also dressed, well, humbly, for lack of a better term, and presented himself just short of a dawdling buffoon. The reason why is because if someone thinks they are superior to you, they are much more comfortable in your presence.

And when people are comfortable, they tend to be much more at ease giving you information and letting it all hang out.

A typo actually does this already, so bonus points for typos.

And while designing or publishing your communications online, you of course won't necessarily be privy to the easy flow of conversation bursting forth from your prospect's perspective, but having them in that frame of mind while they read can't hurt you, can it?

Plus, we like people who make us feel good about ourselves, and the feeling, consciously or unconsciously, won't be soon forgot.

Typos aren't the only way to do this and may not even be the most expedient.

Perhaps my favorite way is the honest profession of ignorance.

Some have taught the "false profession of ignorance" but that's never rubbed me the right way, because I don't like metaphors that imply deception.

I prefer the "Socratic profession of ignorance", an intellectually honest and humble recognition that you do not know something. Socrates, after all, led us all to the intellectual promised land when he said it is because he recognizes he knows nothing that he is worth anything at all.

So, a Socratic profession of ignorance is simply stating outright, "I don't know if..." or "I'm not sure..."

The beauty of it is that it is completely disarming as an invitation for your reader to say no.

Few things feel better in conversation than for someone else to acknowledge our power to judge, and the freedom to leave the chat or disagree without suffering consequence.

Once disarmed, your reader is open to the suggestion, rather than closed off.

"I'm not sure if you could imagine what it would be like to see your LinkedIn account growing in influence week after week, with new deals from new clients landing regularly, or with influencers you are truly excited to work with, as they sing your praises from the rooftops, and how much you might enjoy that, but here's why I think it could begin to happen in the next 30 days, if you'll just give me two minutes of your time to explain."

You see?

The Socratic profession of ignorance opens the door for your suggestion to walk through.

Alright, so you have tactic 2 and tactic 3.

What was tactic 1?

Well, for reasons no one quite understands yet, the human brain cannot refuse a question.

Questions are the only way I know of, that have been proven scientifically, to hijack the brain and get it working in a certian direction.

At least, the only ethical way.

I'm sure there are shock and awe measures you could use that involve more aggressive means, but those are hardly interesting to us here.

Yes, questions hijack the brain and are your best bet for not only getting attention, but sending it where you want it.

You can load quite a few presuppositions into a question.

For example, "Which of these four mistakes do you make most often in your copywriting?"

The presupposition is that you're making mistakes.

The question forces the brain to consider, and with attention on the question, there's barely any time to consider whether it's true or not that the reader is making four mistakes.

The number of mistakes is also a presupposition, and stacked together, it's almost impossible, unless you have installed a critical thinking defense, not to at least consider the possibility for a split second, that you may be making one of these things.

Now, I don't recommend doing this in a click baity way. You'll want to deliver on exactly what your question presupposed and the hook you reeled people in on, otherwise you will quickly be associated with junk mail, essentially, in the reader's mind.

Still, questions are quite powerful and gain exponential power with repetition.

One of my favorite authors, Robert Maurer, talks about this in his books on Kaizen.

When speaking at a multi-day event, to illustrate the power of questions repeated, Maurer would ask the attendees on day one what the color of the car parked next to theirs was.

Of course, none of them knew, because they hadn't been paying attention.

On day two, he opens with the same question.

Now there's a pattern.

By day three, everyone can answer the question, because they know that guy is going to ask that same question when he gets up to speak.

The brain loves playing games like this, and knowing patterns.

So, if you were to get creative and imagine some small way you could ask a question or point to a pattern that engaged your audience, what would one be?

I'm thinking of making these crazy AI images I've used the past two articles part of my "brand" as it were.

I'm also thinking of which questions I can ask on repeat that would associate my name and image with good feelings the reader wants to keep coming back for more with.

Consider the state of mind and emotion you'd like your reader to be, and ask questions that send them there.

"When you find yourself totally enthralled in a story, what is the first signal you get on the inside that lets you know this is going to be incredible, and you just can't put the book down?"

Maybe they've never heard such a question before. Maybe they don't even have the awareness to answer, because they've never checked in with themselves in their mind and body to analyze those moments.

But watch what happens when we ask it again.

"When you find yourself totally enthralled in a story, what is the first signal you get on the inside that lets you know this is going to be incredible, and you just can't put the book down?"

Even with that brief pause for my commentary, the brain has had time to consider it. Maybe it's a change in breathing. Maybe it's the eyes going wide as you say "OOoooh man!" to yourself on the inside.

Maybe it's that phrase, "ooooh man!" as I can so clearly imagine one of my childhood best friends saying when he was excited about something.

Haha, and now I'm smiling.

So there you have it.

Three proven tactics that we are all wired to be helpless to resist.

Use them wisely.

P.S. If you'd like to hire me to use them wisely for you, I may have a spot opening up in January to take on a new copywriting client. DM me for details.