What is it with people these days?

With the rise of use of smartphones and twitter more and more people (both celebrities and lesser mortals) are taking photographs of themselves and posting them online.

These self-portraits – or selfies – can be taken quickly and shared with thousands of people online immediately.

A recent article on the BBC News site revealed that “a search on photo sharing app Instagram retrieves over 23 million photos uploaded with the hashtag #selfie, and a whopping 51 million with the hashtag #me.”

I guess this extreme form of narcissism is a sign of our celebrity-obsessed and image conscious times. For some it is a natural form of self-expression – to others it proof that our culture is becoming ever more shallow and self-centred.

Whatever your opinion of the ‘selfie’, understanding what drives people to take them actually gives you the key to persuasion and ultimately making money.

You see, we are all – ultimately – selfish. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s something that is hardwired to our genes in order for us to survive as a species.

Chances are you will have seen Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs – it’s often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom (food, shelter, warmth, clothing) and the need for self-actualization at the top.

I’m not going to go into details about each of the needs, but if you are interested, you can read more about Maslow’s Needs here.

Connecting with people’s deep desire to satisfy one or more of these needs is the key to influencing people to take action – or more specifically – spend money.

Now, if you are selling anything – whether it is a digital or physical product, a service or simply want to persuade someone to take notice you need to target people’s needs (and by extension their wants)

No matter who your target market is…

You need to get your prospect to visualise themselves enjoying the ultimate emotional benefits of using your information product

And answer the big question:

“WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?”

So how do you make your product or service attractive to your prospects? How can you rise above all the noise and information overload and get people to notice you?

To answer that, I’m gong to be a bit cheeky…

I put together a training video for my mentoring students. Now they’re a lovely group of people and I am sure they wouldn’t mind if I shared this particular lesson with you.

There will be some details and references to earlier videos, but that shouldn’t detract from

Also, bear in mind that the lesson was originally made for people running an information publishing. However the principles I outline are true no matter what you are selling.

The video runs for 38 minutes and you can of course stop and start at any time.

I’d be really interested to get your

http://canonburypublishing.com/nickmentor/benefits2/

I’d love to know what you think. And if you’d like me to share other [principles of persasion with you.

The post Mind Control and The Rise of The Selfie: How to Increase Your Powers of Persuasion by Tapping into Human Self-Interest appeared first on What Really Makes Money.