The Fear of Losing: Using Competitive Instincts as an Advantage
The Winner’s Curse is a term used to describe auctions whereby the winner will overpay because he/she overestimates the item’s actual market value. This tendency to overbid is due to factors like incomplete information or other market participants. Recent research show that people also overbid because of the fear of losing in a social competition.
A team of NYU neuroscientists and economists conducted brain imaging studies and discovered that the striatum, a part of the brain’s reward circuitry showed an exaggerated response to losses during an auction game. When a group was told that they would lose $15 if they failed to win an auction, they consistently bid higher than others who were told they would win $15.
The difference lies in way the auction was framed. When simply reminded of what they had to lose instead of what they stand to gain, participants responded with higher bids.
While there have been investigations of overbidding which have attributed the phenomenon to either risk aversion or the ‘joy of winning,’ it was the use of imaging data which allowed us to distinguish between these conflicting explanations and actually arrive at a new and different one, the ‘fear of losing.’…We were able to use neuroimaging results to highlight the importance of framing, and specifically the contemplated loss, as an explanation for overbidding during experimental auctions.”
This ‘fear of losing’ seems to be triggered by competition with others and perhaps, attachment to the value of the item. A interesting takeaway point: instead of only highlighting the benefits or promise for a product/service, it would be beneficial to indicate what the buyer might potentially lose by not making a purchase or taking action.
People implicitly understand that they’re dealing with other consumers because of factors like exclusivity and scarcity. The one who acts swiftly will get to purchase and enjoy the benefits of the product, while others may not. The call-to-action is much intense in an auction, because the actions of others occur in noticeable real-time. Competition is in the forefront of the mind.
This study reminds me of how much competition is almost intrinsic to human society. You see competition between individuals, groups and countries in business or sports. It is perhaps, both an evolutionary necessity and a learned behavior that one develops in order to survive or thrive within a social environment.
We are all familiar with the pleasure of competition. Many of you have bought items from Ebay, an online auction marketplace. Often, your decision to make or abandon a purchase is rushed along on a subtle but tangible undercurrent of excitement during the process and a feeling of minor elation for having won an item at a favorable price.
Could there be a way to transplant the fear of losing and the pleasure of winning into a non-auction scenario? Perhaps the use of a competition as a backdrop where each consumer’s individual drive can play out against others. Make them interact and challenge one another within a superstructure that helps YOU fulfill specific end goals.
Let the Competitive Instinct Flourish Within a Social Environment
Image Credit: Swamibu
Businesses or marketers should think about how to create a social environment which encourages the natural competitive instincts of their audience. Interaction within this sphere motivates each individual consumer/participant. This helps to increase the level of audience engagement and automatically enhances the value of the product/service/site.
Social news sites like Mixx.com proudly highlight their top users by displaying them on a leaderboard or giving them specific awards/badges. This symbolic segregation of a group of users from others and the conferring of exclusive emblems of acknowledgment enhances the visibility/reputation of these individuals. This becomes something others can strive towards.
Not everyone will lust after awards or a higher user ranking. In fact, most casual users won’t care or bother to go after greater recognition. But owners of these communities know that there will always be a segment of hardcore users (the more competitive or goal-oriented ones) that will work extra hard so they can improve their score or rank higher on the leaderboard.
This addicted 1% of users enjoy a sense of achievement and are often enough to generate enough activity to make your site grow. This effect is even more prominent when the community itself is the main attraction. Take the example of video games with online features: players will gladly pay for a monthly Xbox Live subscription or WOW account so they virtually cooperate or compete with other individuals. Inter-user competition becomes an value add-on.
Such a social environment is not very difficult to create: there are a few fundamental elements involved. For starters, users should be able to interact freely with one another, through the site’s main features or separately in an standalone environment. Also, bind user profiles and on-site activity to awards, rankings, points, recognition, rewards and achievements.
Allow people to form sub-groups to pursue a diverse level of interests. Facilitate inter-user contact and interaction by organizing open competitions or one-off events that everyone can join. These special events can be plotted on an established calendar of regular activities which involve the community or its sub-groups.
The general theory is simple enough: Think about creating social environments that are conducive for your overall business objectives. Apart from simply marketing your site, we should look at giving our audience the ability to connect (and compete) with each other.
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The Fear of Losing: Using Competitive Instincts as an Advantage
Still More YouTube Tactics…
You might have noticed that even the worst YT videos get a number of hits every day.
With this in mind it’s worth considering just having your headset and mic plugged in as you go through your every day routine as a marketer.
If you’re uploading a new website, or adding a new message to your Aweber account just record it with camtasia and upload it to YouTube with the appropriate tags.
If you get into the habit of doing this and just commentating as you do it, you can realistically upload a video a day in less than half an hour, with links pointing to your websites or affiliate links.
Better still, if you link from your video to a website of your own then you control that traffic and can change the links on your salespage as you wish (as long as it relates to the video content or people will lose interest) and redirect or divert the traffic as you go.
If you can make your video interesting, viral or quirky then internet users will do the job for you by passing the link to your video (and of course the links FROM your video) around their friends and customers.
For example if you put together a short camtasia presentation about ‘how to upload a simple website using Filezilla FTP software’ which might only take a minute – literally – for you to demonstrate and record, this could effectively get passed round tens of thousands of people by marketers who are asked this question but don’t have the time to answer emails.
Instead they could just link to your video as an easy answer.
Putting together a complete internet marketers ‘FAQ’ set of Youtube videos has long been an idea of mine that I’ve not yet got around to doing.
I’m sure someone will do it soon if they already haven’t.
Good luck.
More Traffic Tips For YouTube. . .
You don’t need to just stay on Youtube to drive traffic to your Youtube videos.
Here are some Web 2.0 tips to steer traffic to your Youtube videos:
On your blog or website, you should link to your Youtube videos or embed them on your site.
You can create a Squidoo lens, at www.Squidoo.com, that links to your Youtube videos.
Then make sure that you go find other people on www.Squidoo.com who are in your market, and post comments on THEIR Squidoo lens.
This is how it works in any social networking community. When you interact and comment on people’s writing, or posts, or pictures, they will often visit you and go to check out your website.
And people who are visiting the blog or Squidoo lens will see your comments, and the link to your Youtube video or website or both, and go to check them out.
The more you interact, the more connections that you will make.
Hubpages.com is another great place to interact and meet a lot of people in your field. Again, create your own “hubs”, and go comment on other people’s “Hubs”.
Another great place to do this is on Twitter.
You can create a Twitter account, and sign up to follow people in your field. Many of them will follow you back.
To find a targeted market on Twitter, you can use www.summize.com, to search for what people on Twitter are talking about.
You can also go to www.Twittermoms.com, which has lists of mothers who Twitter, broken down into subgroups like mothers who scrapbook, mothers who are into green living, work at home mothers, et cetera, if any of those are in your market.
Playboy Using YouTube to Pick 55th Aniversary Playmate - The Power of YouTube
Why Use YouTube?
As the title implies, even Playboy recognizes the power of YouTube. This year they are encouraging applicants to submit videos of themselves to Playboy’s YouTube Channel. YouTube Submissions (warning: models aren’t nude, but they aren’t wearing nun’s habits either)
When you create a new website or try to promote a new website, you are joining a huge throng of hundreds of millions of other websites and blogs that are all competing for attention. When you’re trying to establish your site it can be difficult to get noticed in such a vast “ocean” of competition. You need something that will differentiate you from the herd, errr I mean pack.
People who do business on the internet are increasingly adding YouTube to their marketing strategy. It’s a medium that’s difficult to ignore.
However, there’s a right way and a wrong way to use YouTube, and we are going to tell you how to take advantage of YouTube’s massive traffic correctly, so you can steer some of it your way.
When people go to YouTube they are looking for one of two things: information or entertainment.
It’s much easier to create a video whose primary purpose is to inform than it is to make an entertainment style video.
Here are some ways to quickly make your presence felt in the internet.
Learn From Your Competitors – search for relevant topics and while you are searching make comments (making sure to include the URL of your site) on the videos that stand out to you (this will be explained in greater detail later)
Use TAGS PROPERLY – Search Google Keywords Tool for relevant long tailed keywords to use. You can easily stuff the TITLE and DESCRIPTION of your video with relevant tags.
For example:
Title: Tips for Internet Marketing Success
Alternate Title: Essential Internet Marketing Tip
Media Author: (Put URL Here)
Media Description: (Put URL Here)–90% of internet marketing tactics end in failure for one simple reason - Don’t make the same mistake; learn how to get tons of traffic and build a hungry list.
Getting Viewers for your videos - Go where the traffic is. This is where those comments you made to good videos will come in handy.
These comments should be helpful and positive, and should make people want to click on your user name, which will lead them back to your YouTube home page. They will also act as backlinks to your site with is important for SEO as well.
Recession Fear Keeping You Up at Night? Product Creation Can Provide Security
The economy is teetering, the government is hemorrhaging money bailing out Big Business, and YOUR Bills are Still Coming In. Learn how to create info products and ensure your independence from financial worry.
One of the biggest hurdles new internet marketers face is choosing what type of information product to create.
Since you most likely want to make a profit off of this, you need to create an information product that solves a problem or tells people how to do something.
Solving problems is profitable.
Also, you want to make sure that there’s a decent sized audience for this product, and you want to make sure that they have money to spend.
So you wouldn’t want to create an information product that solves a really obscure problem that is only faced by a tiny group of people. And you wouldn’t want to create an information product that appeals to a crowd that has no money to spend, such as young teenagers or children.
Here is a list of evergreen product ideas where you will always find a hungry crowd. Provide these people with a genuinely helpful solution to their problem and you will have a grateful crowd that will come back again and again:
Weight Loss
Dog training
Pet health
Acne cures
Curing romantic woes
Saving money
Debt Consolidation
Avoiding foreclosure
Fitness
Parenting
Fertility
Making money online
Driving targeted traffic to websites
This doesn’t mean that you should only stick to that list, by any means. If you have a skill and you can teach other people - for instance, as we mentioned earlier, applying makeup or painting a portrait or arts and crafts or home repairs - by all means create an information product around it.
You need to make your information product stand out, so you would want to develop a method that lets people learn how to do something quickly and easily, and emphasize that when promoting your product.
“Learn How to Paint Portraits Quickly And Easily!”
“Take Pictures Like A Pro - Learn How in Just Five Lessons!”
You get the idea.
If you still feel overwhelmed by the thought of creating your own info product then use Private Label Rights material to provide a base for writing your own product.
Learn How to Use Resell Rights Products to Keep Your Head Above the Water.
The Future of Content in the Age of Information Overload
The decline of newspaper popularity has been attributed to the rise of the internet and the proliferation of web-based content. With an extremely low barrier of entry and variable cost, the web allows anyone with a computer to become an independent publisher: As a result, the amount and variety of content online far exceeds print publications in most fields.
So how can newspapers survive and do well as a business in the future? Perhaps by cutting back and going more niche to provide content that features deeper analysis and investigative reporting. In an article entitled ‘The Elite Newspaper of the Future’, Philip Meyer suggests that the money and audience comes from specialized, not general media.
This particular quote explains in greater detail:
I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.
By news, I don’t mean stenographic coverage of public meetings, channeling press releases or listing unanalyzed collections of facts. The old hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no longer sufficient. Now that information is so plentiful, we don’t need new information so much as help in processing what’s already available.
Just as the development of modern agriculture led to a demand for varieties of processed food, the information age has created a demand for processed information. We need someone to put it into context, give it theoretical framing and suggest ways to act on it.
Scaling back on the all-you-can-eat content buffet in favor of more exclusive material does not just appeal to a hardcore audience. People get their information from one another, not just through the direct consumption of media. Catering to the leadership audience, the well-educated news junkies and opinion leaders, will help spread your content in the long run.
Will this topical specialization make newspapers profitable? Maybe. If newspapers can’t compete with blogs and online news sites in terms of speed and variety, perhaps they can trump them in terms of depth or trust. After all, feature-length content with solid, investigative reporting is not something you’ll often find on most blogs or personal sites on the web.
Daily newspapers will always be around, although they will be read less as more people come to have persistent access to the internet. A newspaper gives you the opinion of the journalist, but a blog throws in the comments of other readers. The web also gives you instant social interactivity, which is appealing for people who want to connect over what they’ve read.
To be able to share an opinion on what you’ve just read is enormously satisfying. Good content can be one-way but I think its increasingly important to socialize information and make it a facilitator for communal interaction. Print publications of the future would do well to consider developing some form of an online component to complement their offline product.
On the other hand, the problem of information overload is very real. Just think about it. More and more online/print publications are created everyday: to track and read many of them is very time consuming. People will be forced to pick and choose what to read. Some blogs will get dropped from a feed reader, others will remain. It’s easy to predict who survives.
Blogs that just repeat information already published elsewhere are providing value that can be substituted. To put it another way, these sites are completely dispensable. They lose out when a choice has to be made due to time/attention scarcity. These sites are usually the ones that just regurgitate content released on mainstream media or other larger blogs. Their identity is virtually unrecognizable. A great logo and design won’t save them.
Sites that serve as a comprehensive and reliable filter of information on a topic will be read, but they’ll always have to compete with other fast-paced news publishers. To aggregate information is incredibly easy. To process, analyze and situate it within a big picture context while offering an intriguing/unique perspective is considerably more difficult.
Those who can do so will be trusted: they are a valuable knowledge asset for any reader.
Detailed, unique content immediately stands out on its own, even without extensive marketing efforts. People don’t just want to be informed, they want to better grasp a topic in all its nuances. The joy of consumption lies not only in the skimming of a news story but the processing of new perspectives to enrich a personal worldview or professional need.
Publications that provide such content will always have an audience. In the end, it’s just a natural consequence that results from the consumer’s problem of information overload.
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The Future of Content in the Age of Information Overload
Don’t Go to the Slammer Like O.J. - Check the Reseller Rights
Selling ebooks with resell rights can be quite lucrative as well as a great source of content if you happen to be suffering from some block. However, Be sure to check the rights of products that you intend to resell first or you might end up like this guy.
Remember, always comply with the original seller’s requests and you won’t have any problems selling products with resell rights.
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