This whole thing from Content Marketing Institute is a good breezy overview, but we’ll give you an even breezier overview that covers all 10 principles…

Four of them are from Cialdini’s (six) principles of persuasion, which we detailed in this series. CMI’s article covers Reciprocity, Scarcity, Authority, and Liking (they didn’t cover Social Proof or Commitment and Consistency).

To preview the remaining six in roughly a sentence each:

Novelty. Advertise new, original, and/or thoroughly remixed things that the audience hasn’t seen a hundred times before.

Paradox of Choice. We keep thinking more options is better. We keep being wrong about it. And by “we,” we mean “most of you.”

Loss Aversion. The sting of loss is twice as bad as the thrill of gain; plan your messaging accordingly.

Herd Mentality. We naturally pay attention to other people and look for leads to follow—so make those “leads” visible!

Confirmation Bias. People can’t agree with you, much less gravitate to you, if you never say anything they can latch onto.

Information Gap Theory. The first 80% of the info captures attention and the remaining 20% is (until the end) the mystery keeping them hooked.

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Jeff Bezos has said for years that “it’s always Day 1 at Amazon.” Day 1 is basically Amazonian slang for the hustle, ingenuity, and customer focus of a young business carving out a niche (as Amazon once was.

Jeff also defined Day 2. In his own words: “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death.”

Jeff might soon wish that he’d invented a three-day system, because as this NYT article frames it, Amazon’s Day 1 might be ending despite his best efforts to the contrary. Here’s the idea in three pieces:

1️⃣ The world is watching Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, where a historic union vote (count) is underway. We’ll have results in the next few days, but this vote could produce the world’s first Amazon union—and if so, it’ll force Amazon to rethink major elements of their labor equation.

This would spell the end of Day 1 because…

2️⃣ Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the country. If some of their employees unionize, many others will follow suit—especially because (A) most of Amazon’s employees have blue-collar jobs and (B) Amazon has run those workers ragged. In a population like this, the desire for security can easily outweigh the burdens of unionization… and if Amazon’s union vote passes, their 1.2 million employees will become considerably more expensive.

Here’s the thing Jeff might not have considered in all of this:

3️⃣ Amazon’s Day 1 ethic isn’t sustainable unless you’re a stakeholder (and most of Amazon’s employees aren’t stakeholders). We all know that Amazon’s not a philanthropic organization at heart; if you truly care about Day 1 at Amazon, it’s probably because you have something to gain from it. We picture the company’s shareholders and white-collar professionals.

Jeff is nothing if not a hustler, and Amazon is his baby. Of course he believes in Day 1; that’s how he got here. (Hell, Day 1 describes him more than it does Amazon.) But he’s long since forgotten what it’s like not to have a stake—and worse, he maybe never knew what it’s like to have only your job, where you don’t have a choice and you don’t care which day it is.

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