Marketing can be seen as the techniques of streamlining communication into effective and emotionally compelling components. It isn't purely about influence and persuasion. Influence and persuasion are integral to consumer marketing, and online prosperity for a lot of people means taking principles of persuasion and applying them online through marketing.
Last night I finished reading Influence: Science and Practice, by Robert B. Cialdini. Well, to be honest I finished this book about three in the morning. Twice now I've sat down to read a few pages and suddenly realized I'd let hours pass away unnoticed while I poured over this tome. My copy certainly looks thin, and has only 262 numbered pages, but it is a tome nevertheless. The sheer amount of useable data in this book left my brain reeling, while the engaging, witty, and pragmatic tone Cialdini uses made the book very hard to set aside, even for something as fundamental as sleep:
This book details the techniques of the masters of persuasion. Research is explained point-by-point, case studies are presented, and illustrations are provided throughout the text. You'll learn about reciprocation, the powerful effects of social proof, how the trappings of authority can defer our judgement, and how scarcity can motivate snap decisions.
If you are considering using marketing and persuasion techniques in your own quest to become more prosperous online, or if you simply want to understand your own decision making process, this is the first book you should read. I quite literally could not put it down.
