215 | How to Make Better Decisions Using Social Influence With Jonah Berger

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Why do some things catch on while others fail? How come certain products or services become more popularized than others? Our guest, Jonah Berger examines the behavioral science behind this topic. He shares with us how people make decisions, how ideas are spread, and how social influence shapes behavior. Also, we will be exploring a more effective way for small businesses to arrive at more calculated and thus successful decision.

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Target Audience: Jonah serves companies and organizations get popularized by their ideal customers. This includes Fortune 500 companies to small start-ups, and multinationals and non-profits. He helps them sharpen effective messaging, and develop marketing strategies.

Jonah is the author of 2 best sellers: Contagious: Why Things Catch On & Invisible Influence which explore how things catch on how to spread ideas to become popular.

Jonah says everyone understands the importance of things like social media but if we don’t understand how to be effective with them it doesn’t matter. The more we understand the science behind these things, the more we can take advantage. The Initial book is for products while the second one is about transforming behaviors.

What motivates us to take action?

There are patterns to social influence. It’s happening all around us all the time. Social influence either attracts or repels.

Marketing for Small Business

Jonah speaks about motivating employees in this segment. He says that by mimicking how people behave, we make it more likely for them to like us. This includes paying attention to nonverbal cues we receive and mimicking that is highly effective to connecting with ideal customers according to his research. For example, by repeating back what people say, it makes the 2 of you feel closer. It facilitates social interactions.

Jonah BergerPractical and Actionable:

Check out Jonah’s free resources on the website on how to be more influential, how to motivate employees and how to make better decisions.

Often in small businesses, we make group decisions. Whoever goes first has a big impact on the decisions the group makes as a collective. Sometimes the decision goes awry. And people then wonder how they could have gone a different way.

So, how do we make good decisions? Jonah says to set up a designated decenter. Point someone out who will purposely disagree or play devil’s advocate. Why? Because people feel like they can’t. Create that role right off the bat. This frees everyone else to come up with their own opinions too. They will feel more comfortable to share their independent viewpoint. This facilitates better decision making.

Resources and Links

How is your business going…would you like to talk about it?

I love my audience of listeners. I really do.  I would love to help you in some way. I started doing calls with listeners and realized that it was a great way to understand you.

Ok, then I formalized the process to offer a Results Roadmap…it is a private one-on-one call with me about your business.  I want to help you see your roadmap with more clarity and confidence. Find out more about the Results Roadmap (it takes you to my personal website). This is not a sales pitch. Let me serve you.

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