Books (Photo credit: henry…)
However, apart from slim earnings from Amazon Associate sales, we don’t generally make money on these book reviews, while we do provide great amplification for the authors.
Book reviews are good for business development in 3 ways
- They are good blog post material
- We can recommend them to clients – and appear informed and up-to-the-moment with new publications
- We hone our own business development skills and train ourselves on new ideas and techniques
so what’s the best way to write a book review without spending days reading and crafting your copy?
How to speed read and write a book review
- Read chapter 1, carefully taking notes of all the ‘big ideas’
- Read the last section of all the other chapters. There will be one idea per chapter and most business books have a review and actions to take section at the end which will give you all the information you need about that chapter with out reading it all
- Read the last chapter summary carefully as step 1
- What’s the book’s big idea?
- Who has done the big idea? (case studies)
- How is this different from what’s gone before?
- Does it apply to biz dev for creative agencies? [this is obviously for our audience]
Refining your book review copy
easy. Today we showcase a client and their challenges and a book and a blog post. Together they give you the one principle you need to write a B2B online brand strategy.
How to get customer community integrated into your marketing
Three things we read and discussed coincided this week:
- Planning with the Silver Fern Farms marketing team
- Reading The B2B Social Media Book
- Commenting on Confused of Calcutta’s blog post – Musings about communities and prices
Start with the blog post - there are three main points: Everyone in the community is a customer; Communities expect a range of prices for each product or service; A connected community converges to act as a single, composite customer.
Take the range of prices – some customers are happy to read free offerings; others will contribute to comments or test purchase items while others are avid fans. The Silver Fern Farms team were discussing how to organise messaging across different geographical marketplaces – not all their range is sold in each country. [They sell lamb and venison in supermarkets.]
Treating all the customers and prospects as a single, composite customer enables us to deliver into separate marketplaces with variable messaging. Yes, we do not use the same message to each group. BUT we know the customer is smart and can read. Being clear about what products are available in which supermarkets matters. It builds awareness of the wider product range and helps customers appreciate the global nature of the Silver Fern Farms business.
Is B2B any different for online?
Slant these ideas into the business to business B2B world. This is where I find clients have the greatest problems “coping” with a singular community. And ironically, this is where the greatest opportunities exist for B2B.
Read this quote from the Book
Most B2B companies live with fear. The fear of giving away too much information, saying something wrong, giving competitors an advantage.
But I know B2B companies have another fear. Integrated messaging.
This is perceived as hard to do. Mainly because of the territoriality of the agencies and staff who service the brand.
Each market, each customer, each group of buyers fits into a hierarchy of customer-types. From the inquirer who wants to read for free but not participate up through to the possible purchaser. Your brand needs to set up its marketing to allow and
enable each customer type to engage at the participation level the customer chooses.
I wrote that in bold because this principle is the key to your strategic marketing plan.
How does engagement work in practice?
Set up a range of marketing activities that allow any customer from the vast pool of possibles to enable customers to get what they need.
Think of it as a staircase, each step has an increasing level of engagement and possibly a higher price.
When planning your online messaging think of your brand’s online presence as if it were a niche magazine. You should aim to be the best ‘trade journal’ magazine you possibly can be. Dominate your niche and the customer will figure out which of your offerings (from free to paid) she wants and where/how to acquire for herself.
If you think that that was a coincidence, think again. It was newsjacking.
Interview with David Meerman Scott
On an episode of the radio show Internet Marketing for Smart People, Copyblogger interviewed David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist and author of Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage.
So what is newsjacking?
Newsjacking is a marketing technique where a company strategically coincides a product development, company promotion, etc. with a larger-scale news-worthy event. Essentially, a company rides the wave of another news piece, gaining coverage and promoting their product with minimal effort.
Meerman Scott identified the insurance company TIO as a prime example of a newsjacking success story. When the company heard that President Obama was visiting Australia for the first time in his Presidency (an event sure to gain extreme media coverage), they decided to offer him an insurance policy against crocodile attacks. It may sound ridiculous, and in truth it is a little, but it worked. For the short amount of time that it took TIO to announce that they were offering Obama the policy, they gained a huge amount of media attention.
But why does it work?
During his interview Meerman Scott explained that there has been a shift in journalism. Where it used to be that companies would seek out journalists for coverage, journalists now venture out themselves and seek news. Their search includes a variety of sources, including blogs, twitter, and more. That’s how a company can release one snippet of information into the cyber tide pool and have it become viral, often gaining a second paragraph nod.
The benefits of newsjacking are enormous…
- minimal time input
- avoidance of through-the-roof PR expenses
- viral media coverage
- anyone can do it
All it takes is a post and well-planned timing!
Have a listen to this show and decide for yourself: is newsjacking the PR technique of the future?
Take a look around the other books written by David Meerman Scott - yes that’s an affiliate link. Thanks for supporting Creative Agency Secrets.
]]>- Become a force to be reckoned with. AKA, get found. Hopefully, you have a website and you can add a blog section to it. If not, start a blog to develop a reader-base. Start writing about your area of expertise, and get the word out that you know what you’re talking about. The power of the internet lies in getting found. If you create a reader-base first, your e-book is going to sell much better. It’s all based on generating high quality content on your website, and helping people find you. You can also start a newsletter to keep track of any followers. Give them an incentive to join, by offering them special tips over time, or discounts on your products.
- Get in on the conversation. During your morning coffee, make it a habit to do a daily search on relevant content being published on other’s blogs. Read what other people have to say and contribute to the conversation. If you have something good to offer people will start searching for your name, and your own blog will come up. This is not blatant marketing, mind you. Don’t scrawl your blog site all over everyone else’s blogs in flashing letters—nobody likes that. Simply contribute to other people’s conversations in the areas of your expertise, and traffic will come to you.
- Tweet about it. Number 2 flows right into number 3 here. You already know who has good blogs out there and you’ve joined in on the conversations, now, share the gold! Tweet about those great blogs you’ve found and show that you know what great content is, even if it isn’t your own. The authors of these blogs will see that you’re linking to them, and then take a look at your blog. If they see you know your stuff, they’ll link back to you too. Do the same with Facebook, LinkedIn and any other relevant social media sites.
- Listing the book. Selling your book through a variety of websites is key. It’s this simple: the more hooks in the water, the easier it is to catch a fish. Using sites such as Amazon, Fishpond and Barnes and Noble will open you up to a bigger audience. It will also create links to a highly ranked website. In addition you can sell directly from your own website (now that you have one!).
- A discount for the loyal followers. By this time you have established a following that you are hopefully able to track, perhaps you have Facebook fans, Twitter followers, newsletter subscribers, etc. Just before your book is released offer your loyal followers a limited time ‘buy early’ discount, to get the ball rolling on sales. This also encourages more people to become your fan, or subscribe to your newsletter, etc. They get special offers from it, and honestly, who doesn’t love a discount.
Remember, like most things, persistence pays off… it may take weeks or months to get the audience and the traction that your book deserves, but keep going and little-and-often will definitely get you noticed.
We have 5 free E-books by Norman Evans to give away. Please contact us if you would like to be one of the lucky recipients! This is actually true, so hurry and send us your details and see if you get to read ‘Becoming an Entrepreneur’ for free!
Now, get out there and market your e-book and let us know how it goes!
Situation: Met a prospect – verified; decision maker with a budget.
The conversation got stalled “we’re busy” and I wanted to push for a second meeting with a hope of getting a pilot project identified.
How to overcome the stale mate: We already had an invitation to get in touch ‘in 4 weeks’ to continue the conversation and had sent a friendly reminder email to the gate keeper. Nothing came back.
And so we decided to turn tables and approach them as if we were the customer not the vendor.
How does that work?
Remember how keen you are to sell to a new prospect – how excited it makes you listening to their business issue and thinking out solutions / campaigns?
Well using the table turning Vendor into Customer trick, you transfer that energy onto your prospect.
Get them to feel energised to sell you their service or product and engage you as a client of their organisation. And once that business is transacted – be ready to put forward your own pitch to them.
What happened in practice?
The second chasing email got sent and within it we added a document and a brief explanation of the issue we were facing.
Quick as a flash the gatekeeper came back with a date for us to meet the prospect – 2 days later.
Meeting complete. Deal done.
Now I’d better get on with writing that proposal…..
- Find out what hashtag is being used and follow it.
- Set up a browser window to get all the tagged tweets in one place using Twitterfall
- Set up a twitter group of attendees and follow them. Tweetdeck allows you to form groups – I make a temporary one then delete it after the event.
- Search blog posts for content that hasn't been on Twitter. This is worth doing each evening / morning. Try Google's blogsearc h or the more well-known Technorati
- Mike Damphousse has written a great summary called "My favourite top 20 tweets" from the Sales 2.0 conference. Neat idea but worth favouriting each Tweet as it happens for ease of aggregation later.
Steve asked me to help out by chairing the three fabulous presentations – each one answering the question "What Happens Next?" for TV, book publishing and newspaper publishing. I love doing this stuff… and being in the front row for three articulate and very persuasive presenters was a blast.
I will summarise their arguments below – but for the New Biz Development readers of this blog, here are some short sharp actions
1 – Have you got any clients in publishing or broadcasting… send them here to read about what key organisations think will be happening in the future
2 – Do you ever put out campaigns on TV, newspaper or book publishing? Send your account teams and planners here to think about what you will do in the future when those campaign methods no longer work.
3 – come to the next event. They are due monthly. The sign up for this one is here … presume it will be updated.
Jeremy Ettinghausen is Head of
Digital Publishing at Penguin
The publishing world is polarising, books online and videos are leading the charge for technology versus traditional methods. The scientific/technical/academic press is further along than consumer fiction.
E-books started in 2001 and they still haven't really taken off 7 years later… but it may happen this year that they join the mainstream.
Books in print are not redundant yet. But paid for digital content is increasing – the question is how much people will pay. What is clear is that if your content is entertaining, valuable and drives a good user experience, there is an audience who will pay for it.
However, reading habits are changing and how we view web pages affects our reading habits. This is a non-linear process.
Looking forward, what is a publisher? Are they book makers and marketers and book distributors? No more they are disseminators of entertainment and ideas.
A quote from Chris Heuer of the Conversation Group (at SXSW) "the Best stories will win".
The vision is for the "integrated" book delivering image, sound, vision in multiple media. I read, I get into my car and continue the story in audio….
Kevin Anderson is the Blogs Editor
at The Guardian
We are taking the tools that are disrupting our business model and applying them to our business.
New media does not support the traditional business model for newspapers because the young do not read newspapers. We are not replacing old readers.
A news company needs a new vision and positioning and new audiences – not just for newspapers.
Industries need to identify their core market and focus on new markets in order to survive, Open source tools enable editorial experimentation. This is really important because at present it takes us 6 – 12 months for new product development. We need to lower the cost and time of innovation.
The business model is eroding advertising and uses outdated distribution and delivery methods. WE need to innovate frequently and fast and 'fail forward' when the innovation cost is £0.
Delivering into a community with connection is possible future for newspapers.
Matt Locke is a Commissioning Editor at Channel 4
Befreo the mobile phone device we had more divisions between our public and private spaces. Compare a phone box (private) with a mobile phone conversation (private or public?).
ATMs are the ultimate – a private transaction within a public space. We develop body language to communicate our intention to be private while outside at an ATM.
The personal and social have replaced the private and public. These are more fluid and the gestures and etiquette is different. We need to understand this in broadcasting.,
What young teens find hard to understand about the world in 1990 is not the paucity of channel choice, it is the fact that in order to speak out publicly in 1990 you needed permission. This is not needed today. Talking in public is easy now.
Key issues:
Data – being misused or mis-released.
Playfulness – find how technology can help your life and find play within it
Vernacular – what is the new language of who our relationships are with?
The goal for technologies that allow us to make the shift to personal and social. And do it simply.l
]]>Wonder if it was all true???
]]>I choose to use Green Metropolis who support the Woodland Trust through their book sales activity. Here’s their latest newsletter.
Have a think about adding your support.
]]>It’s been a busy few weeks for us here at GreenMetropolis.com.
First we achieved our 100,000th transaction at the end of January! That’s around 130,000 books which have been reused, recycled and saved from dusty bookshelves! So on behalf of the environment and the Woodland Trust, we’d like to thank all our members for helping us achieve this great target.
Secondly, as a result of all this recycling, we’ve just completed upgrading and replacing our aging web servers. Our new servers are significantly faster and have a much greater capacity, making it quicker and easier to find the books you want, it also enables us to continue with our enhancement and expansion plans!
Finally, for those of you, like us, who didn’t receive a Valentines card, we’ve pulled together some of our favourite titles on love, life and romance!
if you want stuff that is 10% off for Home and Garden, click on the 10% link next to the category.
Wow!
Now, how do I find a new lawnmower?
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