I'll admit it, I am massively addicted to Pinterest, the site that lets you create virtual pinboards to share inspiration across your social networks. Many of my friends and family are similarly afflicted, including my husband, who probably spends even more time than I do on the site. He's an artist, so collecting visual inspiration is technically part of his job. Why is everyone else so Pinterest-crazy? Well, aside from its clean visual presentation and ease of use, it's a ton of fun. Many people use it to hoard recipes or ideas for home remodeling projects. As a blogger, it's a terrific way to find people with common interests and to share my posts. Pinterest is quickly becoming a go-to search platform for tutorials and shopping, popular with consumers and marketers alike. So how can you optimize Pinterest for your personal use?
Kelby Carr is a friend of mine and she is also the founder and CEO of Type-A Parent and the Type-A Parent Conference. She recently published Pinterest For Dummies, which addresses many of these issues. Her book is organized to be a helpful reference for everyone from total Pinterest novices, who have not yet requested or received an invitation to join the site, to established Pinners who are looking for ways to expand their skill set and learn some new tips and tricks to use. I learned quite a few!
In accordance to the FTC Guidelines and the WOMMA Code of Ethics, I am disclosing that I received a copy of the book to facilitate this review and the giveaway copy is also being provided. As usual, all opinions are my own. Especially the good ones!
Sally Hogshead is an author, speaker and consultant whose specialty is finding the best approach to anything. She can tell you how to sell more units, engage more potential consumers, get invited to cooler parties. That sounds like a wide stretch, but at its core, branding– from the marketing campaigns of the biggest multinational companies to the seemingly innocuous lipstick choices of the single girl on a manhunt– is based on targeting the same essential human emotions. In Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, Hogshead breaks it all down in a style that is both informative and highly entertaining. Her sense of humor is pervasive, like the college friend you love because she will call you on your bullshit and make you own up to it. She's smart, she's funny, AND she can see right through you. (Yikes!)
I'm not a gigantic fan of marketing books or business books, in general, due to a math block that stops my brain from working whenever money or statistics take center stage. Fascinate isn't all case studies and bar graphs, thankfully. Hogshead uses storytelling, charm and dry wit to delineate her seven core Fascination triggers (Lust, Mystique, Alarm, Prestige, Power, Vice, Trust) in an engaging signature style that makes it as fun and compelling to read as a Cosmo quiz…albeit one with some serious business chops. This book reads conversationally, like Freakanomics or any of Malcolm Gladwell's best-sellers, because it's just as much about humanism and cultural anthropology as it is about money or business. Hogshead believes that we, as a culture, have moved swiftly from the Information Age into the Fascination Age, on a personal and professional level. "Information is no longer hard to find," she writes, "Search engines changed all that. Now, data are a commodity. What's scarce? Complete focus. Information isn't power– the ability to fascinate is power." Obviously, we all have some serious work to do in order to remain fascinating and persuasive. And, indeed, relevant at all.
Learning how to balance your Fascination triggers and utilize them in different contexts can make you incredibly persuasive. Dabblers in astrology and pop psychology as well as devotees of Briggs Myers and Jungian personality tests will certainly want to take Hogshead's F-Score brand personality test to see where they fall in the Fascination spectrum. When you take the F-Score test, you receive your results in an email with the suggestion that "Once you understand your own unique combination of personality strengths, you can start to create more influential ideas and messages." Being a Scorpio who likes to cover my bases, I took the test and met my triggers: Rebellion and Passion were my primary and secondary and Alarm was my dormant trigger. Umm, yeah, sounds about right.
Figuring out what makes you tick ostensibly helps you to understand what you're projecting onto the universe. It makes you a better marketer/salesperson/human being to get your Fascination triggers aligned. As Hogshead writes, "…fascination has little to do with what you say, and everything to do with what you inspire others to say about your message. Fascinating people, like fascinating companies, don't try to explain why they're fascinating." Indubitably, but I do feel compelled to share this additional insight that she shared with me regarding my F-Score:
Oooooh I have to admit, I do love the Rebellion/Passion combo! Our teams calls this "The Creativity Igniter." You're innovative, irreverent, and love to tweak the rules.
You bring tremendous energy to the things that matter most to you, which makes you immediately fascinating to others. Some people might even have trouble keeping up with your big mental leaps, because you so quickly conceptualize things before more others can connect the dots.
And though you get bored quickly, you know how to stir up just enough trouble to keep things interesting.
Wouldn't you love to be described thusly? Take Hogshead's F-Score test and let me know what your triggers are in the comments below. I'm curious to see how all my friends stack up, aren't you? If you've read Fascinate, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
In accordance to the FTC Guidelines and WOMMA Code of Ethics, I am disclosing that I received a stipend to purchase the book and facilitate this review. As usual, though, all thoughts are my own. I'd like to mention this chestnut that Hogshead offers up about the prestige trigger: "The word "classy" isnt when it's spelled with a k." Oh, and the Human League song totally fits, right?
her comment... Social media has enabled me to connect with more people, become more outgoing, and has facilitated me being able to better connect others with resources and support causes that are important to me.
I know you will be shocked but I have never been much of a career girl. I've had lots of jobs, good and bad, but nothing I really loved and excelled at aside from doing promotions for my college radio station. In retrospect, I kind of wish I'd payed more attention in advertising class instead of booking bands and making flyers all the time. At the time, I didn't really think that was viable work but it sure beat selling records at Tower. (I will admit that selling records at Waterloo was actually pretty awesome most of the time I worked there.) I always had a sense of unease with anything remotely corporate and kept to the odd jobs I felt meshed best with my self-imposed underdog status. Suffice it to say, being gainfully employed has never been my forte but, luckily, I've always had a knack for social interaction.
Why am I telling you this? Since I started blogging, I've developed an unhealthy interest in the world of social media. I like the unpredictable juncture of emerging technology and bare-bones person-to-person contact. Having been off the job market for some time now, I've been perusing business books and trying to figure out where I should start looking once Jasper is in school full time. Basically, I want to know how to put everything I already know to work NOW, which is almost entirely different than the work world I was in a decade ago, pre-kids and settling down.
I was pleased to be able to review Jay Baer and Amber Naslund's new book The Now Revolution because it doesn't waste a lot of time trying to convince you that the social web is here to stay. It pretty much assumes you already know that. What it does do is tell you how you can implement some simple changes to help you become more adaptive and keep up with the world around you.
Baer and Naslund break it down into “7 Shifts To Make Businesses Faster, Smarter & More Social” that are immediately actionable. The case studies cited are engaging and applicable and the whole thing reads like you're talking to a peer, not being preached at, which was refreshing. (In fact, the only time they lost me was when they started using football analogies. The business stuff I could wrap my head around but I know nothing about televised sports…) Oddly enough, there are a zillion parallels between using social media for business and parenting. Listening, empowering, respect, forward-thinking… good for your kiddos and good for your corporate culture.
Make sure you leave an email address in your comment or that you have one accessible on your blog so you can be contacted if you win!
In accordance to the FTC Guidelines and WOMMA Code of Ethics, I am disclosing that I received a copy of the book to facilitate this review but all opinions are strictly my own.
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, due out later this summer.
