NeuroPunch

The Moral of the Story: ‘The Storytelling Animal,’ by Jonathan Gottschall

“Narrative is stitched intrinsically into the fabric of human psychology.”

“There are several surprises about stories. The first is that we spend a great deal of time in fictional worlds, whether in daydreams, novels, confabulations or life narratives.”

“A second surprise: The dominant themes of story aren’t what we might assume them to be…They bubble with conflict and struggle…Trouble, Gottschall argues, is the universal grammar of stories.”

“When researchers pick apart the hours of dream content, it turns out dreamland is all about fight or flight.”

“Neuroscience has long recognized that emulation of the future is one of the main businesses intelligent brains invest in. By learning the rules of the world and simulating outcomes in the service of decision making, brains can play out events without the risk and expense of attempting them physically.”

“Changing the brain requires the correct neurotransmitters, and those are especially in attendance when a person is curious, is predicting what will happen next and is emotionally engaged.”

“If the narrative doesn’t contain the suitable kind of virtue, brains don’t absorb it…This leads to the suggestion that story’s role is ‘intensely moralistic.’”

“Stories serve the biological function of encouraging pro-social behavior.”

“‘If the research is correct, fiction is one of the primary sculpting forces of individuals and societies.’”

“The medium of story is changing, in other words, but not its essence. Our inborn thirst for narrative means that story — its power, purpose and relevance — will endure as long as the human animal does.” — David Eagleman, NYTimes.com

Theory of Mind and the Psychology of ‘Being Social’

“Theory of mind is the cognitive skill of understanding another person’s state of mind. It’s an ability to intuitively comprehend that other people have mental states (beliefs, intentions, desires, knowledge etc) that may differ from your own and an understanding of others’ emotions and behaviours. Closely related to empathy, theory of mind is an innate ability that everyone possesses, but that some have developed to a greater degree than others. Scientists have now proven that the size of a person’s social network is directly related to the size of part of the brain called the orbital prefrontal cortex, but that this is only true when brain size is combined with the psychological skills associated with a developed theory of mind.” — Paul Sutton, FutureComms

Double Check Your Life Priorities

Double Check Your Life Priorities | NeuroPunch

Image: Pete Boyd on Flickr

I saw a friend post this today:

“Suppose you graduate from college at 22 and work until age 70…you would’ve spent: 16 years working, 15 years sleeping, 5-7 years watching TV, 3 years eating, 2-3 years commuting, and 2-4 years on recreation.”

I haven’t had a chance to double check his numbers, but I think the message is clear. 

What are your priorities today? Don’t end up 70 years old with these five most common regrets.

Top 5 Most Common Regrets of the Dying and How to Avoid Them

Image: 85mm.ch on Flickr

How many people have ever lived on Earth? Whether you believe it’s 107,602,707,791 or not, I think we can all agree that the answer is a lot.

That means we should have tons of insight into what people regret the most when they are dying so we don’t make the same mistakes over and over and over again for thousands of years, right?

After reading countless articles on this topic, here’s what I learned…

In 2005, Scientific American and WebMD claimed, ”New research traces regret to the brain’s medial orbitofrontal cortex.” As recent as a couple months ago, ScienceMag.org published a study (reported on NYTimes.com) saying, “…brain activity in a region called the ventral striatum, which is associated with feelings of regret.”

Top 5 Most Common Regrets of the Dying (by Bronnie Ware, author of the full-length memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying - A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, released worldwide):

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Top 5 Regrets, Inverted (by Paul Graham, an essayist, programmer, investor, and founder of Y Combinator):
  1. Don’t ignore your dreams.
  2. Don’t work too much.
  3. Say what you think.
  4. Cultivate friendships.
  5. Be happy.
“Managing regret productively may be an essential ingredient for mental health, a good quality of life, and a positive sense of well-being.” — Michael Craig Miller, M.D. Editor in Chief, Harvard Mental Health Letter

So, what are you going to do today, this week, this month, and this year to live with no regrets?

How You Will Win with Twitter Today

search.twitter.com

Let’s face it. If you are reading this, odds are you aren’t Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, or any of the other top 100 most followed on Twitter. If you aren’t on Twitter yet, sign up today. In fact, do it now and then come back and finish reading this post.

Twitter isn’t new. The more people that join and follow other users, the more your tweets get diluted. The secret is to not wait for followers to come to you. Don’t tweet and hold your breath to see who replies, mentions, retweets, or follows you (but, if you do receive replies, mentions, and retweets, be sure to respond to ALL of them).

The key is to consistently send tweets, but spend the bulk of your time using search.twitter.com. Search for your company or brand name, products or services you offer, competitors, and any other relevant keywords related to your industry. Then, start authentic conversations with all of the people that are already sending relevant tweets. You can quickly build real relationships (and followers) by taking this approach. And, the best part is that you can be certain that the people you are talking to are highly engaged. Quality over quantity.

Twitter even put together its own tips on how to use Advanced Twitter Search.

What Small Biz can Learn from Big Brand Super Bowl Ads

Image: MightyBoyBrian on Flickr

Super Bowl XLVI was the most watched television broadcast ever - estimated at 111.3 million people.

Did you know the Super Bowl ended in a tie? According to Marketing Land, out of the 59 Super Bowl commercials, there were 8 Facebook mentions and 8 Twitter mentions. 

As the game ended, Twitter counted 12,233 posts per second, the most for any English language event in the six-year history of Twitter.

So, how did the big brands fail? Simple. They didn’t give the viewer a good reason to continue the conversation online. Simply adding a Twitter hashtag or Facebook icon/URL at the end of an ad is not enough. Big brands paid big budgets to gain the attention of 111.3 million people and then left them hanging. It’s going to cost them a lot of money to regain that attention in the future. To make matters worse, a lot of the brands that showed Twitter hashtags in their commercials were not actively engaging with tweeters online (#wasteofmoney).

Whatever you do as a small business, always keep the conversation going (Gary Vaynerchuk is a big advocate of this).

Be sure to subscribe so you can read my next post: How your Small Biz will Win with Twitter.

3 Things you Must Learn from Gary Vee and the Social Media Hustle

Gary Vee Social Media Hustle No Sweat Social
 
 
Most people either love him or hate him. Personally, I love him, and I love him for one simple reason: Gary Vaynerchuk (“Gary Vee”) is a social media doer. He has practiced everything that he’s preached. For those that aren’t aware of him, you can read about Gary V here. 
 
There are tons of books, blog posts, news articles, tweets, and videos about Gary Vee, but I’m going to focus on just a few recent ones:
After reading his book and watching all the videos, here is what you need to know:
1) The businesses with the most real relationships win.
 
Much of his book centers around this principle. Gary believes we are coming full circle; back to a time when our great-grandparents ran businesses and knew each of their customers by name (as well as their life stories). There are some fantastic quotes including:
  • “No interaction left behind.”
  • “Caring first, sales second.”
  • “Scale caring.”
  • “Invest in relationships.”
  • “Treat every customer as if they are the most important customer in the world.”
  • “Create advocates by offering superior customer service. Offer superior customer service by building one-on-one relationships using social media.”
Gary doesn’t believe in social media campaigns, or “social media one night stands” as he refers to them. He believes in “marrying your customers.”
 
2) Hustle: Talking vs. Doing
 
Finally! I’m glad this topic is getting some well-deserved attention. Gary wants to know how you’ve executed. Seriously, what have you done? Have you actually used social media for your business, or have you just been talking about doing it? As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is exactly why I respect Gary. He believes in the hustle, hard work, and doing. He believes that he got to where he is today because he “outworked you.”
  
“You can’t read about push ups in order to get muscles.” In his opinion (and I agree), there are way too many people reading and regurgitating vs. doing. “Everybody is half pregnant…Go all in.”
3) Successful Storytellers and Storytelling
 
This deserves its own point even though it was only briefly mentioned by Gary. Success in social media means success in storytelling. People connect with those who have a compelling, authentic story. Just look at TOMS founder, Blake Mycoskie (highly recommend his book, Start Something That Matters, as well).
 
So, there you have it. Marry your customers and invest in real relationships. Hustle! And, have a compelling story and share it with the world.
  
Who are your social media inspirations and what are your tips for success?

Top 5 Most Compelling Social Media Stats for Small Biz

5) 1 out of 5 social network users is likely to visit another social site after leaving one.

4) There are now more than 800 million active Facebook users, with over 200 million added in 2011.

3) More than half of Facebook users log in every day - that’s more than 400 million people.

2) Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other U.S. website.

1) Nearly 23% of online time is spent on social networks.

**BONUS: Small businesses don’t have to spend much to get results.  Zoomerang found that nearly 60% of all small business decision-makers spend less than $100 on social media and 74% of businesses don’t employ anyone to manage their social media marketing.

Source: Read 20 more stats on SocialMediaExaminer.com

“All of these problems at the end of the day are human problems,” he said. “I think that that’s one of the core insights that we try to apply to developing Facebook. What [people are] really interested in is what’s going on with the people they care about. It’s all about giving people the tools and controls that they need to be comfortable sharing the information that they want. If you do that, you create a very valuable service. It’s as much psychology and sociology as it is technology.” - Mark Zuckerberg”

Read the full post here.

The Social Media Buying Process (in a nutshell)

Nice wake up call here.  Originally posted by Brian Solis on SocialMediaToday.com.

“Over the years, I’ve researched the gap that exists between what businesses think consumers want in social networks and what it is that they really want or expect. As you can imagine, there’s a significant delta between each and here, Nielsen delved a bit deeper to share insights into specific brand-related behavior by consumers in social networks. Much of their time is spent in pre-commerce phase of decision making, reading consumer feedback and learning about products. At the point of the decision, they seek to obtain coupons and promotions. Post commerce, they’re actively posting positive or negative feedback, thus influencing the decisions of others.”


Read the full article here: The State of Social Media 2011 - Social is the New Normal