People can smell insincerity just like that.
You NEED to build trust without coming across like a sleazy car salesman who bathes in cheap cologne.
It reminds me of that scene from Matilda when Danny DeVito rolls back the odometer.
We don’t need to do any of that shady shit to get our warez out there and make people fall in love with our stuff.
So what we need to do is:
Front-Load the Good Stuff
Don’t make your readers dig through seventeen paragraphs of your life story to find the nugget of wisdom they came for. That’s like hiding bacon in a salad. Just give them the bacon first. (Immediate Gratification Bias…we’re all impatient bastards.)
Off the back of that we can Show Our Battle Scars
“I made six figures by following these simple steps!” Bullshit.
Tell them about the time you ate ramen for three months straight and cried into your keyboard at 3 AM. Did I do that last night? I don’t know. You tell me…
(Social Proof + Vulnerability Effect = Trust Goldmine)
Sometimes you need to just give them a truth sandwich, so layer it like this:
Painful truth they know + Solution they need + Another painful truth they suspect…
(Confirmation Bias + Loss Aversion = Reader nodding so hard their neck hurts)
It’ll be better if I give you an example:
Bad: “Learn to write better!”
Better: “Your first draft probably sucks donkey balls. Mine did too. Here’s how to fix it, but warning…it’s gonna hurt like hell, and you’ll hate me for a while.”
Remember the Reciprocity Principle? Give value first, ask for nothing, then watch as readers stick to you like lint on a black sweater.
Want to know more about specific psychological triggers that make readers trust you faster than their own mother?
(See what I did there? That’s the Curiosity Gap principle)
One of my favourite books on the psychology of selling which can be applied to our art is Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
If you’re not re-reading that book at least once every 3 months. You should start right now.
Stephen Walker