In this Linkedin article, which cannot be more than 300 words long, the person has created story.

If I give you a 2,000 word white paper, you won't read it, but a 300 word article you will.

It's a simple story, but it's better than that.  

It has humour ... you feel that that the person who has written it, Brian Henry is funny.

It shows leadership ... I can only assume that Brian is a leader.

You feel closer to the person after you have read it .. that feeling you would get if you spotted somebody from a soap opera.  You think you know them.

Think of the world we live in.

Sales people, interrupt you and pitch to you your their products, so we do what we can to avoid them.  We assume leaders are the same.

Brands give out the same boring message "we are the best", "we are number one", "we are market leader".  And while people say to me "marketers, have to market", do they really need to spew out the same undifferentiated message that everybody repeats.

Here we have a guy that is able to capture, humility, humour and leadership in 300 words.  In fact, rather than avoid him, we might actually want to meet him.

Rather than avoid Brian, we might, I agree it might take a few more blogs, even want to meet the guy.

What is this "witchcraft" that drives you to want to meet representatives from a company, rather than avoid them? 

Could it me social media?

But There is no Business Case - Really?

At the time of writing Brian has 59 likes, if we assume the average LI profile has 500 connections, that's 59 x 500 = 29,500 people that could have seen his article.

Think of it as an email list of 29,500 people are opted in to see your content.

Now, I'm outside of Brian's network, so I'm part of his network, network, which is 14.75 million people.  Think of an email list that has 14.75 million emails in it ....?

That's 29,500 people that could have done what I did, I read about Brain, I read about his company, 3M.

Or put it another way, nobody from 3M called me up, interrupted me with a cold call and pitched 3M to me. Nobody from 3M interrupted me with an email and pitched 3M to me. I didn't even see a 3M advert.  I willingly went to Brain's profile and read about him and 3M.

I also think that Brian seems like a great person and think that 3M must employ some great people.

Now tell me this isn't witchcraft.