You Have 8 Seconds – GO! Brand Trust Secrets With Debra Jasper at #Pubcon 2018

“ Pubcon Pro Las Vegas 2018 keynote address. Before Debra took the stage, Pubcon founder Brett Tabke told the audience how one of her previous keynotes holds the record as the conference’s highest-rated, and her latest presentation showed no sign of letting go of that title. With so much mobile traffic, and the average person touching their phone 1,600 times daily and feeling addicted and anxious without them, Debra brought up the AirSelfie personal drone camera as an example of how quickly our world is changing, and said that businesses need to change as well. Loyalty and advocacy are more important than ever, and Debra pointed out that more people today are avoiding brands that don’t do good in the world, encouraging the audience to become brands that give back. Brands should have messaging that is engaging, social, fun and inspiring, because when this is done smartly it will create loyal customers that will gladly pay, and most often also recommend you. Debra noted that if we were to dedicate time to answer each of these e-mails it could take two and a half hours each day, but used this as a jumping off point to dig into how we should learn to write for mobile — using less space and writing for shorter attention spans. She shared the SOS methodology — short, organized, and skimmable e-mail messages, always including the important “what,” “why,” and “now what” elements near the beginning of any message. Debra also explained that typically the higher up in an organization the person you’re corresponding with, the less words they generally want to see, and encouraged Pubcon audience members to strive for a ReadabilityScore.com goal rating of 65, which is a Reader’s Digest-level score. She shared a number of other additional e-mail messaging tips, including: Try to meet as equals Mirror the tone of your correspondent Never use two or more exclamation points Avoid using the dreaded “vendor voice” Write more as a partner, and less as a pitch With more people than ever now also using presentations, Debra took the time to offer up a selection of some of her recommended best-practices for slides: Use fewer words If you can’t see it on the slide, don’t reference it Slides are free (witness the 367 she used!) By creating the right social and digital habits, it’s possible to achieve measurable results, and to track and demonstrate real return-on-investment, she added, and then asked us to consider “How am I celebrating success?” With a strong digital mindset and the right habits, we can tell great stories, and by making daily habits we can unpack a lot of complexity and tap into the power of gamification, making brand messages inspiring and fun, Debra said.