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Comment by ironkeith | Hacker News Reader

I've read in the past that telling people to do something isn't as effective as telling them that everyone else is doing it. I wonder how a phrase like "most people who like my blog follow me on twitter" would fare?

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Here are the other 49 tricks, briefly summarized:

http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-w...

(This link is via HN, naturally: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=613402)

I've read the book, as well as Influence. Influence is a far stronger book because it does a better job of describing the theoretical underpinnings of why the 50 tricks work.

Some of the tricks are really narrow and so they aren't all that useful themselves (e.g. to write post it notes and put those on interoffice forms and surveys for a better response), but with the theories you can make better extrapolations.

With the one about towels (number 2), I wonder if people behaved better because they thought they were being monitored; and, if so, whether some of them decided not to stay in that hotel again.

I wonder how to best apply this to job-seeking.. Hmm...

I guess the original suggestion corresponds to the "experience" section on your CV/resume; it's demonstrating that others have hired you.

Yeah, that doesn't really work for someone just coming out of college next year, with no experience, unfortunately.

I don't have the source or exact words on hand but I read there were A/B tests done on phrasing in infomercials. The phrase "operators are standing by" fared overwhelmingly worse than "if the lines are busy, keep trying" which implied that they were typically so busy with orders that they could hardly staff enough operators.

[EDIT: thanks to ironkeith for the Cialdini link ... it was a book by him and it was in a section devoted to the "Social Proof" research]

It was an article referencing research by this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini

I thought about this. But there's a fine line between being tacky and being efficient. When I read bandwagon phrases like the one you propose, I always cringe. It's just not genuine.

It would still be interesting to see the results.

I have a similar reaction to "you should follow me on twitter". Before knowing about this test, it possibly made me a little less inclined to like/trust you than otherwise. (I think it did, but I don't know how to measure that.)

I wonder if that's a common reaction: maybe there's an uncanny valley-type effect, where more efficient phrasings become turnoffs? Does the high conversion rate come at a cost of slightly alienating a subset of your readers?

how about "Follow me on twitter here. I have x followers."?

Similarly, I wonder how some automated text like "11,399 people follow me on Twitter, you should too" would work.

I'm not familiar with Twitter, but would it be possible to have the site say something like:

"You're following X, Y, and Z, who are also following me; you should too."

I don't really like the tone I wrote, but you get the idea.

I'd word it like: "Join the 4,615 people following me on twitter _here_."

Maybe... "You should join my 4,615 followers on Twitter _here_."

'twitter' seems to be more effective than 'Twitter'. ;o)

Why not just go all out ;).

"You should join my 4,615 followers on Twitter _here_. Everybody uses it. All the interesting people follow me. You really need to follow me now. I can't believe you're reading this when you could already be following me. DO IT DO IT DO IT. Fine. Enjoy your miserable life without me and die alone. Don't you want to be popular and interesting?"

Probably not as well as notaddicted's suggestion below/above. People don't like being told they "should" do something, and it also presents a statement they can answer "No, I shouldn't" too. Ideally you'd need to ask an obvious "yes" question or just direct them to do something without allow them to think about it.

Number of followers is great for determining spamminess of an account, but mentioning the number of followers makes the message seem less personal. I would guess this would reduce its effectiveness, but I'm sure a quick test would provide harder evidence :)

Or the Cialdini route: "Can you follow me on twitter because I have X followers?"

"You should follow me on Twitter because I need to make some copies."

Am I doing it right?

But some people are going to respond negatively to large numbers (or at least very large). e.g.: if I see "I have 28,437 followers" I'm likely to think: okay, this is probably some Perez Hilton type person.

But if the info could be tailored more (e.g., "2,437 HN subscribers that follow me") I would be more interested. In other words, not everyone finds following the most massive crowd a sign of value.

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