This might upset some sales copywriters

With obvious intonation of "the truth never persuades, so you've gotta choose the one or the other."

Or "sales copywriters" there was a terrible typo for "sleazy sales managers," but who am I to know.

Nice article. I always wondered about No8, social sharing. For example, the site I ran helped people with real problems. But whose going to share that? They're simply advertising to their peers that life isn't rosy for them! This seems to be a problem for Gen X and Gen Y, but the so called Peter Pans don't seem too bothered.

I also managed a charity site that provided help and advices for those suffering domestic abuse. Not a widely "shared" topic...for all the reasons. (Exception noted as Chris Brown concert posters show Rihanna's face... is this brandjacking or a dirty PR tactic?)

Likewise, for example, specialist sites that promote say "taboo subjects" (like Tax avoidance) - is being bashed in the press at the moment as the big corps are chastised for being "tax efficient"... Who is going to "LIKE IT" on f/b or twitter...

One school of thought is that there is no such thing as bad press... but a corporation stands to gain from the exposure. An individual may get dragged through the press like recent celebs..rightly or wrongly depending on your tax standpoint...debate for another place and another time! But, whatever it is, tax-saving or Clearasil there is an emotional charge behind it and what you tweet/like is the lifestyle you project. (I used to see the neighbours shop at the discount store only to arrive home with the shopping re-bagged into 'premium' store bags. Apparently this goes on a lot...!) If an advertiser can get over this stigma, happy days. I think Lynx deodorant did this very well, and poked fun at the end of the world2012, capitalising on the end-of-days prophecies.

"An interesting study done by Empirica Research found that like and tweet buttons suppressed shares on a Clearasil skin product page by up to 25 percent."
This is bewildering. If the like and tweet buttons suppressed shares, then how was the article being shared before the tweet and like buttons?? Eh?!

Besides, what is the point of social sharing buttons? Is it cloud sourcing of advertisers?

I was just watching a video today (Y/T "Brian Clark Keynote from Affiliate Summit West 2010") and he re iterated the reciprocity influence factor. That is to say, if you give value to your customer first, then you get the right to ask them for things. But this is not a 1:1 relationship. Since you gave first, you get to ask, and ask again, and ask again. Then, you can do the scarcity bit, ask for a commitment and ask again for a consensus (social proof)

Another thing that Ive struggled with is the A/B test itself. From University days, i recall something called chi-squared. If memory serves, this statistical point determines whether a difference is significant or within the tolerances of say, random chance or noise. That is, say, if your website has 10 hits, and your split test suggest 7:3 in favour of B, then is the sample of 10 significant enough to believe the bias as significant? I never seem to have enough traffic! When I DO get the 5000th hit, its several months later and things have moved on anyway and both A and B are irrelevant!

Likewise price points. Selling say, high-ticket financial services on a commission basis kinda fixes the fee.

"Use best practices"...then "Break Best Practices"...its enough to drive you crazy!