The Smug Baldy Speaks

Experimenting is cool, and when we’re talking about experiments in social media, the results can sometimes be extremely cool as well as pleasantly surprising. Take for instance Mark Laymon’s recent experiment on the Collective Thoughts blog. In a fairly short post about how dandelions evoke fond memories of his childhood, Mark also does his bit to spread some social dandelion seeds himself:

The Collective Thoughts blog is about Social Media. Social Media to me is about using interactive elements of a website to get your proposed message across. What better way of getting into someones head then to let them see a little bit into your own mind. It is all about how you build your rapport.

Mark then goes on to request readers to imagine their own favorite flower, to reconnect with why it’s their favorite, and to then write a review of his post on stumbleupon. Yeah, I did all that, but what would motivate me to actually take time out of my increasingly busy life to review this guy’s post?

The answer is quite simple – he didn’t just ask for a link. Instead – he gave me something of value first. It might be that his simple effort to actively connect with his readers made me stop and think for a moment: What was my favorite flower?

And there it was – all internet marketing copywriting wisdom rolled up into one simple concept: write something sincere for your readers, and they might do something for you. He wasn’t asking me to buy anything, just imagine my favorite flower – and that’s all it takes to plant the seed in someone’s mind.

BTW, I really like sweet olive blossoms – they’re so tiny but smell amazing.