Dale Carnegie famously said: “The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?”
What Carnegie meant is we should look at the works of others and draw inspiration from them. Writers, artists and other creative types, maintain “swipe files,” with clippings, notes and other bits of material that can help fire up the brain’s synapses on cold Monday mornings.
After a blurry weekend of drinking hard, stealing cars and breaking out of jail, I’m stuck for some good ideas so I’ve been looking through my swipe file and came up with Carnegie.
Carnegie was a salesman who wrote several self-help books including How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. He wrote the first in 1936 and the second in 1948, yet they still resonate today because those titles are perfect examples of headlines that capture interest.
Here are but a few tips from one of best-selling authors ever that will help you (and me) write headlines and copy that reel in readers and pitch to them convincingly:
- Arouse in the other person an eager want.
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
- Make the other person feel important–and do it sincerely.
- Begin in a friendly way.
- Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.
- Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
- Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
- Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
- Appeal to the nobler motives.
- Dramatize your ideas.
- Throw down a challenge.
- Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
- Do not imitate others.
- Learn to relax at your work.
- Put enthusiasm into your work.
- Do the very best you can.
- Analyze your own mistakes and criticize yourself.
