Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
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Software is trying to change your habits. Make sure you agree with it.

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Have you ever gotten lost in a mall? It's not your fault.

Malls are intentionally confusing, a sort of modern labyrinth. The idea is you'll get lost, see some random stuff you don't need, then spend money on said stuff. It's called the Gruen transfer, and it's just one example of design choices specifically made to change your behavior.

Another example: grocery store shelves. You might think some employee arranges cereal boxes as they come in, but each placement is the result of a ridiculously complicated series of negotiations. Food companies pay grocery stores a lot of money so their products are at eye level because, statistically, you're likely to grab whatever's right in front of your face. This is why store brands are frequently on the bottom shelf.

The physical world is full of design choices like this—seemingly random decisions that are actually made with intention, because of a specific agenda. Software isn't any different.

App notifications and intention

Facebook notifications used to be so simple: if someone tagged me or responded to one of my posts, the red dot would let me know. Over time, this changed, and I started getting notifications for all kinds of things. Sometimes I'd get notifications about a friend liking a post by someone I don't know. Occasionally I'd get notifications that were just friend recommendations.

As with malls, this isn't some accident. This is a decision Facebook made. I can only speculate, but the data probably showed people are more likely to engage with content if there's a notification, and a decision was made to put more stuff in the notifications. Their agenda, if I had to guess, is for me to spend more time on Facebook.

You might not think about this much. Tech companies do—a lot.

The shopping mall also has an agenda: they want you to walk around, see a bunch of different stores, and buy stuff. Knowing about this agenda can help you make better decisions. Maybe you'll look up maps before heading to the mall, so you know where you're going. Maybe you'll give yourself a strict budget ahead of time, so you don't overspend. Or maybe you don't mind the mall's agenda and are perfectly happy to wander and buy things.

My point here isn't that malls are bad—it's that they're not neutral. Malls are designed with an agenda, and knowing about that agenda can help you make better decisions.

Software is the same way. The companies that make software have an agenda, and every design choice is in service of that agenda. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but that agenda may or may not line up with yours. So it's worth thinking about your agenda and how it aligns with the agenda of the services you're using.

When it comes to Facebook, I want to see posts from my family and basically nothing else. I can accomplish this by changing my Facebook notification settings, so that only those posts show up. Your personal Facebook preferences may differ, which is exactly my point: you need to think about what you want to get out of an app, then try to consciously use it in that way. The alternative is to be lost in the mall forever.

Worried about how much time disappears online? Here's how to ruin your brain less while using the internet.

Business apps are the same way

Slack's red dot
Admit it: you have a deep, burning desire to click the Slack icon and make that red dot go away.

You might think apps you pay for are different, and it's true these companies are making a different sort of calculation. They don't necessarily need to optimize for engagement—they just need to convince you to keep paying for their product. But that's not a lack of agenda. It's a different one.

Automation can help you spend less time in apps by letting you create workflows to automatically move information you're managing manually. Create to-dos, log messages, and create custom alerts in Slack. Send information between Google apps like Sheets, Calendar, and Gmail, without copying and pasting.

Neither of these are examples of companies trying to do anything nefarious—they're just trying to do things that you, personally, might not want. Other apps are designed to change your habits in ways you might appreciate. Distraction blocking apps are built to break your habit of opening social networks when you should be working. Todoist uses karma to review productive behavior. Habitica, another to-do list app, takes this one step further by turning productivity into a role-playing game.

Every app is trying to change your habits, and in some cases, you might actually want that. In other cases, less so. Every app has an agenda. That's ok—just know what your agenda is, and actively think of ways to get there. Your computer is a tool, and you should use it like one.

Make technology work better for you by using automation to create habits and help you learn new things or add joy to your day.



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/37QNsWd

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