How to write powerful headlines, scoring IFA websites, and what to say with your hands.

Hello and thank you for tuning in to today's episode of The speak PR podcast. My name is Jim James and I'm your host and I am talking to you from my newly refurbished studio here in the UK. When I see refurbished it's because I have put in some new blinds, got a fan because the children are still knocked down. And so I have renovated the garden shed and I'm now calling it the studio. So it's my own little domain. Very proud of it to it. It's very comfortable. And I think it reminds me of the of the time nearly 25 years ago back in 1995. When I left England at the age of 28 to set up my first company in Singapore, East West PR on the 14th of June I should be celebrating starting that company up where I left England with a couple of suitcases and set up as public relations here I am now back all these years. Later on, and I'm still doing DIY to get the show on the road. So this morning first thing though, I was listening to the great progress shared webinar, led by the team here at action coach. And on the call this morning was Brian Hill. And Brian Hill is a multidisciplinary expertise, a financial planner, a ski instructor, and also lives in Italy. But he's also just finished his MSC and he is a specialist in body language and body language training. So listening to Brian this morning, and he was talking about the way that body language communicates so much about us. And I was interested in that as always, because over 60% of all of our language is nonverbal, which means in PR, if we are writing, press releases, or doing anything that doesn't show the people. One of the greatest challenges is how you communicate the energy and the personality of the client and the founder of the product. So Brian was speaking this morning about the about the three to seven rule. And he was saying that there are three red flags that can be seen by people, that there could be two channels such as the hands, the eyes, what people say. And the general time limit is seven seconds, people can catch themselves again within seven seconds and move on to the next emotional response. Now it appears that a sneer is the cardinal sin where one side of the face lifts up slightly. And really, I guess this is where the jealous face concept comes from, from Latin times with the two faced person and he showed pictures of people including Donald Trump. With a smirk on one side and on the other. Now I personally have a bit of a problem in that a number of years ago, about five years ago, I suffered from Mr. blastoma, which is a tumour of the jaw. And it's rendered my left side of my face slightly without say, well, without the same kind of nerve feeling and the same kind of control. So I think that sometimes I'm quite self conscious now with video and otherwise, because part of my face isn't, isn't always feeling like it's exactly under my control. But I don't think I need to I hope I don't have to explain that every time I see someone I hope that they don't see that I'm in some way dismissing them or what they're saying. But Brian was talking about how we have all these different emotions, and they're expressed through our hands and our eyes and our words in our body language. And interesting enough, saying that the hands are the The greatest gift or tell of all, I had thought it was the highest, but it's the hands apparently that give the most indication of what people are thinking. And some studies were done on injuries, where if the, if the person, the accused had their hands under the table, the propensity to convict those people in considered to be guilty is greater than if they had their hands above the table. Of course, I've just written recently about Boris Johnson having both hands on the table in his address, but with clenched fists, and the the impression of frustration and anger that that has given or shown that he's feeling at the time. So Brian mentioned, the author Alan Pease, and his wife who Alan is an Australian body language expert and author of over 15 books. And they've written some books of which 10 apparently a number one and they talked about smiling. And about watching, if you watch a video, he talks about how even tribes will all kind of lift their forehead slightly in recognition. They'll smile, show teeth with a proper crows foot, and that they will then have some kind of a handshake, which is an even straight up handshake. And Alan says that the handshake actually comes originally from armwrestling. So we have a straight up rather than over the table under the underneath expression when we when we shake hands. So, I asked the question about what happens with zoom because often with zoom, we don't see the people we just see a small postage stamp and the view and the studies apparently are that our cameras are too close on our desktops. And it's really a great case for buying a an external camera. I have an external Logitech camera that I use. So that really you can get a head and shoulders and you'll notice Some of the more professional presenters and of course on TV, they'll have the whole upper body. So it might be that going forward is we do PR interviews, for example with journalists, that we ask our clients to make sure that they are further away from the computer, and that they're at eye level. Because at the moment when we're doing interviews and people using their computers, or if you're using your computer camera, almost always it will be below. It'll be almost like an adult child relationship in terms of the camera, which is a bad body posture, a bad body language. So we're ushering in now this challenge where we're looking at a camera or looking at a screen. And our focus might be on the subject matter of the of the screen, but we're trying to look at the camera. This creates some challenges. So what can we do then to overcome that? And one of the first things that we're talking about today is to make sure But if you are going to be on camera, can you stand back a little bit? Can you make sure that you're lit? And can you ensure somehow that your hands, even at the beginning, are in your screen? Now Brian was, is living in Italy so he actually gesticulate a good deal like anybody I suppose in, in, in Italy would. But realistically we need to think about if we're not doing presentations at conferences, and regular meetings. How do we compensate for that when we're doing online? Brian then kindly offered to share his dissertation and I and I asked for it and I read that this afternoon and it's fantastic. And what he's done actually is research on the impact of your website, on the the oppression that a website gives on first impression to people that are about to visit your company. And of course, this is an extension of the of what happens when you are looking Somebody, the website is a proxy for the for the human for the body and for the face. And Brian writes about the what they call the is see the immediate surface credibility evaluation for websites. So he's saying, What does your website say about you and your company on first impressions, and they had over 300 people take the test will take the response and they they analysed 10 IFA internet independent financial advisory firm websites. And what they found was that it did make a difference. That the colour, the simplicity, the symmetry, and the promo typicality. In other words, does it look like everything else and what's to be expected did impact the impression of the IFA worthiness, the credibility and interestingly enough, the expertise And what's interesting about that, for me is that often companies will delegate their website, and indeed their PR, to a third party and having built websites for clients, they often think that it's a bit of text and a nice picture. And they don't see it as a direct extension of the DNA of the company. If you have a website, take another look at it and see, does it represent you and your company? does it represent the products? And if someone was to visit that website, what would what impression would they be getting about you and your company? And does it stand out? Does it differentiate? Now, David Ogilvy, the advertising guru wrote that five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. So when you've written your headline, you spent 80 cents of your advertising dollar. So on a website, there's often a tendency to put a great deal of content but actually It could be the headlines and the workflow, or the funnels that are really impactful. So Brian's research shows that the initial impressions are very important. And the Ogilvy observation shows that we have a few things that we can say about ourselves or a product that will make an impact within those first four minutes. As LMP said, you really have four minutes to make an impression. My experience on my website, websites or clients is that people will stay for about a minute to two minutes. bounce rates may be as high as 30 to 40 or even higher. So the internet you may have even less than that. So as I mentioned, I'm planning 25 years of East West PR on the 14th of June. And I I've been trying a new website called co schedule comm because in light of what Brian has been saying, and in light of what David is saying, I've been wondering How do I represent myself? So I wrote in a headline, which I might write as a press release, because I know and I've shared the press releases and what people want to read as journalists. And I wrote in PR agency reaches 25 years and had a score of 66. Then I wrote in amazing PR agency scores 25 years of service in Asia, and I had a score of 64. So I had on emotions a zero percent 20% on common words 10% on colon 10%. On power for the word amazing. 52 characters is about right, apparently, 55 is the optimum length, but my 10 words is too many. So when skimming content, most readers will tend to read the first and the last words of a headline, and eight to 10 words is plenty. So I tried a new one with is how obnoxious staring Brit hits jackpot in forbidden Asia. But I got a 74 how to write powerful headlines, which is the CO schedule, remit, standard one got 77 so my obnoxious daring Brit hits jackpot and forbidden Asia got 22% on emotional 22% on power 22% on common and zero on being uncommon. So we can see actually writing a headline is really not such an easy thing, after all, whether it's for press releases, or for direct mail, or for advertising. Now on this website, they share a list of words and I've downloaded them and I'll upload them and you can you can get them from East West pr.com they have words that drive traffic shares and search results and include emotion was like bumbling catastrophe colossal, delightful, arrogant, and they have words like nightmare, payback, pero, provocative surrender, and underhanded. So, common words at from to me joining words can be minimal. But much like our companies, our keywords on our websites and in our press releases and dinner videos all need to be solving a problem for somebody else. They're pro tip is to write a headline that suggests or premise a solution. So their pro tip is how to do something that will help you to do something else. The challenge with that, of course, is that if you're sending out a lot of content, then you're going to be keeping repeating the how, but as we know, there's the how, what why, when and who Where our businesses are solving all of those problems for clients on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, either on a one off transaction or a multiple repeating basis. So as you look at writing your own, or working with an agency or a writer, think about not just what you would like to say what is safe to say, but what is going to differentiate you. Now, I've had 25 years of running businesses. I've set up companies in Singapore, China, the UK, India, I've owned homes in England, Singapore, China, and even Inner Mongolia. Sorry, outer Mongolia. So as I started about how I differentiate myself, as an international PR, an entrepreneur, counsellor, I have my own narrative, just as you will have your own narrative. If your own company in your own product, and the real challenge is not to be too safe. Now we talk about the challenge in COVID times being the need to have our PR and messaging being compassionate, optimistic, values based, informative and digital. And that still holds true today. What we're saying now from from the talk this morning from Brian, is that we can give out red flags. As companies. We can give out red flags. I talked earlier on about my experience with eBay. Does your company create any red flags for its customers, or for its staff or its partners, the three key stakeholder groups because as we with our programme of, of speak PR, we talked about, we talked about the need to Storify to personalise, to engage, to amplify and to know Part of what we need to know is how are we in our body language both as individuals and as companies representing the core values that we've got. So that we differentiate and make our company, one that other people want to work and deal with. So thank you for listening. And I'm in my garden shed, I hope otherwise known as the studio. It's very comfortable. And I pray that you've been as blessed as I have been, with some good health, some profitability, and I do pray that you keep communicating. Thanks once again for listening to speak PR