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By Wayne Buckhanan
One of Marlon Sanders’s key mantras is ”produce and promote.” A wise set of words if ever I heard any.
I’ve been deep in production mode the last few days and have let the promotion aspect slip. Hence, the question: where is the balance between producing and promoting?
When dealing with products the production often happens up front. Physical goods have built-in limits on how much promotion to do because once they are sold there isn’t much point in promoting them more!
Information products are the other end of the spectrum. Produce them once, promote them indefinitely (or at least as long as the information is relevant and/or useful). And with print-on-demand books and the equivalent for CDs and DVDs even the physical version of information products can be sold independent of how many copies you have in your spare bedroom closet.
Services raise an interesting balance between the extremes mentioned so far. The natural tendency is to promote like mad, generate paying gigs, and let the promotion die down while fulfilling the signed contracts. The trouble comes when all the gigs get wrapped up and the cycle starts again.
A better idea is to promote like mad, generate paying gigs, and budget time/money/energy to maintain promotion through the busy periods. This limits the amount of work that can be taken on but those of us with a strong desire to deliver quality work every time can actually use that to our advantage.
The economic rules of supply and demand suggest the solution: when demand is high (from consistent promotion) and supply is low (finite time/money/energy to put towards maintaining quality work) then the price goes up! I’ve heard from a number of copywriters that when they hit that significant busy point in their business that they started raising rates, attempting to turn people away, and extending a waiting list to those who were not turned away easily.
How nice will it be when you’ve got a six month waiting list filled with clients paying two to ten times as much as you’re paid now? How much better when you can do the equivalent with information products and indefinitely feed your service queue with qualified prospects (to extend that waiting list as long and as deep as you desire).
So, how much promotion versus production? It depends on what you’re producing, but almost always more than you’re already doing! I know I’ve turned to the man with the plan, Marlon himself, to learn more about pitching at his 6 week round table. If you move quickly you can still join us for the first official call this Wednesday.
By Wayne Buckhanan
Social media is like the mythical creature Medusa. Besides the fact that if you go in unprepared you’re likely to get stoned, social media has many slithery heads.
I’m beginning a new experiment. In the past, I was following the usual advice to pick one or two platforms and concentrate on those. I fell into that mode automatically because of my current time constraints.
Watch what happens when we take the higher intent of that platitude and balance it out with the higher intent of social media in general. The reason to pick a few is so that it is more convenient for us to stay on top of the communications and to interact fully on each platform. The reason social media is so popular is that it is about what is most convenient for each user as far as interacting with their circles of influence.
Here’s my new take: be regularly active on a few platforms, facebook and twitter in my case, and maintain a presence on as many other platforms as can be easily automated. I plan to make it clear on the other platforms that I’m checking in sporadically, or at least not daily, and will continue the conversation then. This allows people who do not happen to choose facebook or twitter as their primary platform to receive information from me in a timely manner on their preferred platform(s) while still maintaining my own time considerations by not having to keep up with dozens of platforms multiple times a day.
I’d been formulating this plan for a while but a wordpress plugin came across my radar today that helps to automate this plan to a great degree. It really caught my eye because the plugin is currently 80% off and the proceeds are going to fund asthma research. (I’m a sucker for a good deal and a bigger sucker for a charity!)
Go check out the WP-Syndicator plugin and see if it fits with your own social media plans.
By Wayne Buckhanan
Ryan Healy recently wrote a couple articles that came to mind today:
Why People are Addicted to Info-Products
Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?
Today has been an S.O.S. day (Shiny Object Syndrome). And just like the mariner in distress that SOS means I need help. (Because I feel rather stupid and addicted!)
I realized I was looking for my “hit” by refreshing email, twitter, facebook, and not doing the things I wanted to get done today. So I focused that “nervous energy” into writing this blog post. This has a few positive results.
The first positive result is that I have now created more content, which is one of my tasks for every day. I just happened to get it done earlier today than I usually schedule my content creation.
Second positive result, I will have a legitimate reason to go on a social media site (to post a link to this blog post) and then get off. If I go with no specific outcome in mind, I end up idling on twitter following random links I tagged earlier for follow up.
Third positive, I’m getting a hit of my own personal mix of neurochemical “happy juice” from several aspects. I love creating, so I get a hit there. I am getting something done ahead of schedule, so I get a hit there. I have a small win to celebrate, so I get a hit there.
And the biggest positive result, as far as I’m concerned, is that I’ve just done something productive rather than succumbing to the Resistance (as Steven Pressfield calls it in The War of Art) and I’ve won a small battle against Avoidance (as T. Falcon Napier calls it).
By Wayne Buckhanan
Yesterday’s post riffing on Mashable’s 6 Challenges brought to mind a few folks that are really good at congruence, alliances, and being customer-centric.
All four of these men are good at all three (congruence, alliances, and customer focus) so when I emphasize one or another aspect for each it is only for example purposes. Without further ado:
Dr.Mani is a heart surgeon in India who treats children with congenital heart defects. He funds the surgeries through donations as well as through his own information marketing efforts. I hold him up as an exemplar in congruence. He has a consistent message across platforms and across time. He demonstrates that congruence through what he says in his blog posts, what he tweets and retweets on twitter, what he interacts with on facebook. He has also started to segregate some of his different aspects by creating multiple twitter accounts: @DrMani for the gestalt and non-profit aspects, and @infoprofitz for the information marketing specifics.
Mark Joyner is called the “Godfather of the Internet” for his ability to make an “offer you can’t refuse” (he is even giving away the book on it: The Irresistible Offer). His world changing projects develop through his constructs. I hold him up as an exemplar in building strategic alliances. His social media is not promotion driven, in fact he rarely sends out links — even for his own products. This is partially because Mark is selective about who he accepts into his program to promote his Simple·ology programs and relies on those partnerships for the promotion, while he builds the relationships — with his partners and with his prospects.
Marlon Sanders is a marketer through and through. His online presence is focused on one thing: producing and promoting products. This is a great thing because he is an exemplar at being customer focused and consistently overdelivers on what he promises. As an example of that, he is starting a Quickstart call this evening for his 6 Week Round Table. This may not seem like a big deal, but he is charging less than a quarter of what the typical “guru” (with little to no experience) would charge. Rewarding those who purchase early and being humble enough to create a “round table” rather than lording it over others from the head of the table shows Marlon’s commitment to his clients.
Paul Myers is a great marketer with a minimal presence on the social web. Yes, he has facebook and twitter accounts, but is rarely active at either. I hold him up as an exemplar of managing his social web presence through minimalism. Paul has a ton of great marketing resources and his primary mode of communication is through his email newsletter (which is worth it’s weight in gold!). He shows a way to be present, but not active, on the social web.
Notice, that the four men I chose as exemplars are all “old timers” — they’ve each been doing their thing online for over a decade and are still going strong. The biggest lesson here: find what works for you (and your clients) and do it with consistency, through strategic alliances, and with a focus on what’s best for the customer.
By Wayne Buckhanan
Today’s post is prompted by a Mashable post “6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web” shared by my friend Gary Walter.
Here is my response to Gary’s question “are there more you can think of?”:
I hope the first guy was misquoted. ”Be everything to everyone” means you’re anything but yourself. I agree with the transparency, especially upon screwing up, and think he and/or the editor missed the mark.
Congruence is the key to what was said about making sure internal personnel know what external message to communicate. Same thing applies to individuals. And by being congruent you can *never* be everything to everyone.
It’s much more useful to polarize people and increase the gap between lovers and haters of your brand and to make sure you get as many people your brand touches out of ignorance and indifference as possible. The clearer you are on who the lovers of your brand are the less time/money/energy you’ll waste on the indifferent and the haters.
Another area they missed was choosing your allies. The alliances you make define your brand as much as the actions you take. As one mentor said ”we’re Jets and they’re Sharks.”
In many ways, this turns into an issue of congruence as well. Knowing who you are and what you stand for (and against) makes alliances easier to choose. If there is no way for me to serve your brand lovers, or vice versa, it is obviously not going to be a very good alliance.
Which leads to the last piece I think they may have skimmed, but didn’t clearly hit: being client centric. Yes, you must cultivate the relationships, but even then it needs to be based on a win-win-win situation, not just because you’ve mandated that ”we’re customer focused” or the horrible platitude that ”the customer is always right.”
By keeping the people you serve at the center of the planning and execution, you’ll not only have a clearer plan but you’ll develop stronger brand lovers, etc. “You cannot serve two masters” + “in order to get everything you want in life help others get what they want.”
And all of this applies equally well when applied on the personal level, as a small business, as a corporate entity, or as a church. Any time you’re serving others it becomes a marketing and sales situation. Marketing to let people know who you are, whom you serve, and in what capacities. Sales to get people to take action for their own benefits.
What do you think is missing from my additions to their list?
By Wayne Buckhanan
Happy 4th of July, and specifically happy Independence Day here in the USA.
Being a professional wordsmith, today was the perfect day for me to ponder independence. Not so much the independence of our country, but specifically the independence of our personal actions from our environment.
Many people blame their environment, whether they consciously mean to or not. “He made me so mad” or “The weather is so dreary” both give control of our emotions to something outside of ourselves.
Whatever “he” did was not the cause madness. The internal reaction to his actions was to start feeling mad. That feeling was not caused by an external stimulus. The stimulus prompted an internal choice, conscious or otherwise, that resulted in that person entering a state that they labeled “mad.”
Similarly, the weather itself was not dreary. The “dreary” label was applied based on past experiences and current choices that led to an internal state labeled “dreary” and projected onto the weather.
This is where the independence kicks in
Start by taking the stimulus/reaction and replacing it with stimulus/response. When talking about Newtonian physics “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” When it comes to emotions we are not mechanically driven to an “equal and opposite reaction.” We get to choose what our response will be.
Most of the time, when we’re in a situation where we have a set pattern, it is too late to change our “reaction” into a measured response. This means we need to do a little preparation ahead of time.
State control, and specifically controlling our own emotional states, is best done in a calm and rational moment far removed from the “offending” stimuli. There are a number of NLP technique that can be used for establishing new responses and most, if not all, work best when applied before hand.
Here’s a challenge: apply this idea to your business.
Where is your business “reacting” rather than “responding”?
What one area would you like to have more control over?
How will you plan ahead of time to develop that control?
By Wayne Buckhanan
One NLP technique is called “pacing and leading.”
Pacing and leading is about meeting people where they are (pacing) and after you’ve started building rapport you shift (leading) and check to make sure they follow your lead.
What does pacing and leading have to do with web development? An obvious choice for people who know the pattern would be to apply this sort of rapport building to the sales process.
A less obvious time to use pacing and leading is after the sale has been made. This is especially true when doing any sort of web work.
People have existing web sites, or a look and feel that they want to maintain independent of how much they claim to the contrary.
Pacing allows me to suspend what I want and be open to what the client wants to achieve with their web site. Once I’ve gotten a clear idea of what they want and developed some level of rapport, I can begin making technical suggestions and leading them towards a feasible solution.
Where in your own service offerings could you use pacing and leading with your clients (and not just your prospects)?
By Wayne Buckhanan
One of my teen-aged friends, Alex, was asking me about NLP today. I must admit, I got so excited about him asking that I dropped into a shameless teaching mode and we chatted through at least an hour of content before I asked what prompted his questioning.
He had seen something on TV where someone claimed to use NLP to pull off the stunt of “paying” for purchases in NYC with blank pieces of paper. Many details were lost in the retelling, but I got enough to recognize some conversational hypnosis, embedded commands, and use/abuse of metaphor.
Once he’d shared what he remembered from the TV show he asked the golden question: is that real or just stage magic?
I assumed that in this case it was some of both. Having recognized several real patterns from the very human retelling I had to admit that there was likely to be real influence going on and that it was leveraging some NLP concepts.
We went on to talk about some of the language patterns and meta programs we use to interact with the world. It was interesting to be able to refer back to what we talked about when we were interacting with the 4-5 year olds at the Lego table a few minutes later.
There was some whining over the Legos. I asked my 4yo daughter to use a good voice. Alex encouraged his 5yo brother to stop whining. Both patterns are useful at different times. I took the time to make it a teaching moment and pointed out the “towards” of my request versus the “away” of his. The light went on immediately and I saw a (permanent?) shift in Alex’s awareness of the towards-away meta program and his use of the negative command language pattern.
I love experiencing those profound shifts in awareness and behavior that occur because of sharing knowledge. In this case, I venture to guess that the effects will be far ranging.
I also find it apropos that I’ll be adding Alex to the NLP Space Monkey group as the first beneficiary of the NLP Training for Volunteers since his family are the ones who run Shily’s Promise Youth Ranch! (If SPYR doesn’t ring a bell, check out the story at the IndieGoGo project.)
I’ll admit I’m biased, but go check out the benefits of NLP Training for Volunteers and do what you’re feeling lead to do to join in — you never know how quickly you’ll benefit from NLP Training yourself!
By Wayne Buckhanan
I just committed to Tinu’s 100 days of blogging challenge. (Thanks Tinu for the prompting and Dr. Wright for assuming I’d be up for the challenge!)
Over the last week I participated in another blogging challenge and wrote 5 posts in a week when I hadn’t posted anything here or at LifeLoveAndLearning.com for months.
I realized that I’m a very social beast. There are certain types of tasks that I do well once I get going, but the prompting is usually having others there working along side me. (I’m a social cleaner, and quite likely a social blogger! Who’da thunk it.)
Are you ready to take up this challenge? What ever you decide to do I suggest learning to leverage your own working style.
Now go out there and change the world from the inside out!
By Wayne Buckhanan
Below is an email I sent out today. I decided to extend the offer beyond just my list and let you join the party. Let me know what you think:
Today’s note is for you if are in business or interested in starting a business online. Keep doing what you’re doing if you don’t want to learn how to earn more.
(Impatient, like me? Click here. )
My good friend Dr. Letitia Wright is the person I run to when I’ve got any questions about traditional media such as TV, radio, film, etc. (Over the last 10 years, she’s grown her own cable TV show that now goes out to well over 4 million homes in the LA area, so she knows what she’s doing with media.)
When she set up a 10 Week PR Challenge last fall I jumped at the chance to learn more about interacting with the media. ( http://wrightplacetv.com/pr-challenge )
She and I both know the power of learning from those who have gone before us as well as the power of collaboration and accountability.
When the chance to study with one of the “old time” masters of marketing came along we both took notice. The master I’m talking about is Marlon Sanders, the man who has documented that 1 in 102 people with Internet access had accessed one of his websites, those same sites that have resulted in multitudes of sales of his products!
Marlon is hosting a 6-week “Round Table” series where he shows his computer screen and walks us through the “secret sauce” he’s used to get all those visitors and those sales.
Find out more about Marlon’s offer.
Now, Marlon only promises that we’ll have a personalized plan for going from “nothing” to “something” and scaling that up to whatever amount you can dare to dream.
After Marlon’s part ends most people will be left on their own to implement their plan. Most of them will do nothing.
Dr. Wright and I have come up with a plan to make sure you are one who puts that plan into action and gets things done!
When you join Marlon’s Round Table through the link in this message, you’ll be able to join Dr. Wright, myself, and the other action takers we’ve associated ourselves with in an additional 6-week mastermind group to implement our personalized plans from master Marlon.
This is the perfect opportunity for you if you’ve signed up for any courses in the past and either didn’t finish the materials or got through it all and just never got it going.
As part of the mastermind you’ll get access to my upcoming group coaching “24 hour TRANCE” where I help people break old patterns, get out of that trance, and get things done!
Besides, when are you going to get access to three masters of their trades for such a small investment?
Master of marketing, master of media, and master of motivation.
Join the masters!
Click that link, find out what Marlon’s offering, and join us before the calls/webinars with Marlon start next week!
Now, go out and create a great day!
–
Wayne Buckhanan
“Change the world from the inside out!”
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