We are very grateful therefore to soon-to-be-published first time author Hugo Tugman of Architect Your Home and to Richard Burton of Publishers Infinite Ideas for sharing their experience of approaching getting a book to publication. Please see their separate Blogs.

Do I really want to do this?

There is no doubt that having a book or two published adds gravitas to your profile in the eyes of clients and prospects, not to mention journalists and event organisers. As well as having a tangible manifestation of your expertise, if you have used a publisher this in itself acts as some endorsement that your expertise is considered genuine and unique enough to be a commercial publishing proposition.

Publishers’ and book retailers’ web sites can have a huge impact on your search engine optimisation because of their sheer weight in the on-line marketplace. Publication also opens up different opportunities to penetrate the media, through reviews and book launch news, that will often have more impact than a PR strategy based on feature placement alone.

And finally, of course, there is the income potential. For most this isn’t a major part of the return. It’s often quoted that very few business books sell more than 25,000 copies, which, with average royalty levels, doesn’t equate to a huge income. However, we do have clients who, as experienced authors with a number of books to their name, can generate up to 25% or 30% their income from their books.

On the other hand
Writing a book undoubtedly takes a great deal of time and energy that, if equally applied to other “promotional” activity, may well generate far more exposure and income.

Your book is also unlikely to stay news for long, but in publishing it you may have released years worth of ideas and IP into the market in one go. Some of this may well get overlooked and be lost.

So what’s the advice to would-be authors? That’s probably best summarised as:
~ Be sure that a book really fits into your strategy . . .and that the time and energy are going to generate a return.
~ A stand out concept with appeal to a wide audience is the ideal. If the concept has niche appeal is a published book the most practical option?
~ Enlist help. Unless you’re a natural writer it may be worth, for example, using the services of a professional writer to assist you polish your material or even craft some of it.
~ Be prepared to put the effort in yourself – or invest in help – to gain the marketing benefits. The publisherAs focus is on selling books, which is not the same as promoting your services or expertise. Their marketing activities may well be of some assistance, but they are very unlikely to lead to significant consultancy income or even profiling opportunities without a proactive approach from you to exploit the book.

I spent a couple of days at the Cheltenham Literary Festival last month. It was great a experience and interesting to see the likes of Stephen Fry to Andrew Marr making the extra effort to be there in person to promote their book. But hats off went to June Whitfield. Despite being a month off of her 84th birthday, and me choosing a strategically positioned seat by the exit in a very full Town Hall, she still made it to the book-signing tent before me. Obviously not one to miss a promotional trick!

If you’re interested to read more, please check out Hugo’s Blog on writing his first book or Richard’s publisher’s eye view.

The big day has finally arrived. You can’t do anything else to your book. It’s perfect. So stop staring at it and get it out there. The world wants to know your name.

As writers, we often like to write for ourselves, but show me a writer who says they don’t ever want to be published and I’ll show you a fibber.

It’s one of the most thrilling experiences imaginable – seeing your own work in print – but the road to success is long and curves in some strange directions, so just remember to brace yourself.

Home alone

The most common way of approaching a publisher is by going solo. If you’re planning to send your book off there are a few rules you should follow. Don’t just send it to the first publisher you come across or the only publisher you know. Do some research, find out which house or imprint is most likely to publish your style or genre – a textbook publisher won’t accept your Manga self-help book even if it’s the best thing they’ve ever read. Get hold of a publisher’s catalogue to see what kind of books they publish. Alternatively, buy a yearbook that provides information on what a publisher accepts and the guidelines for approaching them.

On target

Once you’ve decided which publishers you’re aiming for, make sure you follow the correct procedure. When the Aztecs approached Montezuma they had to take off their clothes and put on cheap blankets, enter his chamber barefoot and with their eyes cast down, and bow three times saying My Lord, my great lord! If they didn’t, they’d get their heads lopped off. Publishers are perhaps a tad less demanding but there are ways of submitting your work without becoming an irritation.

First, don’t send in your entire manuscript. Nothing’s more likely to get your work sent back unread than an unsolicited typescript plopping onto the welcome mat. Instead, write a brief letter to a publisher detailing who you are, and including any information about your past successes and your future plans (publishers like to invest in writers who have a future, so it’s always wise to claim that this is the first of a series of related books even if you’re not sure that it is). With this letter, include a 300-word synopsis of your work, and two sample chapters (usually the first two). And never send a proposal to more than one publisher at one time: it’s considered very bad form.

A not-so-secret agent

If going it alone seems too daunting, you might want to think about getting an agent. An agent is somebody who does their utmost to find a publisher for your book, who gets to grips with a contract to make sure you’re not getting ripped off, and who incessantly pesters companies to keep publishing your work long into the future. And you get all this for a 10-15% cut of the earnings from any book they represent. Not bad.

Of course finding a good agent can be just as hard as finding a publisher. If you know somebody with an agent, ask them to recommend you: it’s the quickest way to becoming represented. Otherwise, look through a listing of agents (they can be found in writers’ yearbooks) and send them a short letter, synopsis and sample chapters. It may seem easier to devote your time to the search for a publisher, but if an agent takes you under their wing your work will be prioritised when it arrives at a publishing house, and you’ve got a guardian angel who can harass an editor to give you a chance without the risk of making them angry.

A short word about failure

What do Catch-22, Harry Potter and the PhilosopherAs Stone, The Time Machine, Sons and Lovers, Moby Dick, The Lord of the Flies, Northanger Abbey, Tess of the DAUrbervilles and Animal Farm have in common? They were all rejected by publishers, often many times. Some famous writers have literally been able to paper their walls with rejection slips. The moral of the story? Never give up, always try, try, try again: every good book will find its home eventually.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Submitting your work is like dropping your kids off for their first day at school. You don’t know whether they are going to be bullied, rejected or become best friends with everybody and make a real impression. Be prepared for all eventualities.

OK, let’s defy Wild West tradition and start off with the ugly. And it doesnAt get much uglier than this. Rejection.

It’s the word that no writer ever wants to hear, but almost inevitably will at some point. Unless you are extremely lucky, you’ll have to learn to cope with rejection. It isn’t easy: during the abyss of time between submitting a piece of work and hearing an editor’s response you can’t help but build up your level of anticipation. And if the response comes back negative it can crush your confidence and make you want to throw everything you’ve ever written in the fire.

Don’t give in. It can feel like the end of the world. You can hide yourself away in your room for days on end debating various forms of revenge against the offending editor but you have to put it behind you and try again, with a different editor. Contrary to popular opinion, editors want to open an envelope and be delighted by what’s inside, they want to find material worth publishing. They’re not out to try and crush your self confidence by rejecting your work.

Take notes

Rejection can take many forms. More often than not, you’ll get a printed compliment slip with nothing written on it. This is the easiest response for an editor but the most frustrating response for a writer. What did they think? Was it not even worth an acknowledgement? Don’t get too wound up, editors are busy and sometimes they simply don’t have the time (or are too badly organised!) to respond.

Sometimes the printed slip comes back with some scribbled comments. These might be complimentary: good but not quite right for our list; promising: please send something else; critical: good overall but you haven’t quite pinned down the business case for your new process; or just plain derogatory. We won’t give an example of the latter, but they do occasionally happen. If you do get a grumpy response, just try to ignore it (the editor’s probably got haemorrhoids from sitting down all day) and move on.

Pay attention

If an editor sees real promise in your work he may take the time to write a more detailed analysis of his decision. Don’t take this as an insult and bin the comments, or get on your high horse and write a scathing letter back justifying your work. It’s an editor’s way of encouraging you to look at certain elements of your writing in order to improve your chances of publication. Take a few days to cool down, then look at what he’s saying: it may not be relevant, but he might just be pointing out a weakness you’ve completely overlooked. Editors don’t often make good writers, but they do know what sells and what doesn’t. Paying attention to their comments will give you a great advantage next time you submit.

And the good

If your work runs the gauntlet and makes it from the slush pile, through the juniors or freelancers who’ll read it first, and past the senior editor who’ll try and sell your book and you, the writer, to the big cheeses, then you’ll get a phone call where an offer is made to publish your book. They might not say this directly, but they will most probably want to meet you to talk about possible changes and to get a feel for how promotable you are as a writer. Once the legal and financial blurb is out of the way, you’ll probably have to wait up to eighteen months before you can visit Borders and start drooling over your book on the shelf. It may seem a long wait, but this gives the marketing department time to work their magic and allows the book to be released at the most opportune moment.

And finally, here’s an idea for you

It always pays to be careful when youAre submitting something for publication. It’s rare, but every now and again an editor, publisher or passing janitor might be tempted to pass work off as their own. Print off a copy of the manuscript and all the blurb you’ve written for it, put it in a sealed, registered envelope and post it to yourself. When you get it back, leave it in a safe place unopened. It can be used as proof that your work was around first.

If a publisher declines your manuscript, remember it is merely the decision of one fallible human being, and try another.

STANLEY UNWIN, publisher

Richard Burton is a co-director of publisher Infinite Ideas and can be contacted via richard@infideas.com. Richard has provided more insight into getting published in the form of some brief Q&As. For a copy please email acb@hydemarketing.com

We were approached by a publishing house to write a book called Architect Your Home. The publishers seemed to be a very large and professional outfit, who among other things, specialised in branded books with such organisations as the National Trust, M&S and Good Housekeeping. Having agreed the bones in principle, they made a combined offer of a writer’s fee, an advance on royalty and a fee for the images – all of which we were going to supply.

At this point I sought out a literary agent. An author friend put me onto her agent and this proved to have been a very good move. My agent negotiated all sorts of clauses into the agreement that I would never have considered, such as the royalties on international sales, serialisation rights, the staging of payments etc. etc.

With the agreement in the bag, I made a start. Writing the book can’t be that hard, I thought. After all, it will simply be a whole collection of articles, similar to those that I rattle off for magazines all the time. The initial challenge seemed to be how to structure the book and I thought that I would talk to my publisher to see if we could work something out together.

The thing about publishers (in my limited experience) is that they are the very NICEST people in the whole wide world and they give the impression that they REALLY know what they are talking about, that they are REALLY well organised, that they have UNENDING patience having to deal with all of these batty authors all of the time.

My meeting to work out the structure led nowhere, so I decided to take the project on holiday with me and aimed to have a structure worked out while away. This proved more difficult than I imagined. In fact, after my holiday, once immersed in the daily business of work, it proved very difficult indeed to consolidate a structure that I was happy with. In the end it took me nearly six months to map out exactly how I wanted the book to be structured. No matter, I thought. Now that I have the structure, the writing will come easily.

It didn’t. Finding the time to get really stuck in proved very challenging and after a while quite demoralising. Eventually, I took a few days off and went off to a friend’s holiday cottage in Dorset, shutting myself away and just getting stuck in. This broke the back of the writing.

Alongside this, I was finding that dealing with the terribly nice publishers was not as much fun as I had thought. Being a very visual person, I wanted to have a sense of the page layout before doing most of the writing. They wanted the writing before they commissioned designers. We compromised and I wrote one spread from each of the six chapters so that they could design sample layouts. This process seemed to take ages, and when they finally came, they absolutely did not fit with the structure that I had spent so long creating.

I was told that we could include no coloured text (our brand design guide contains LOTS of coloured text). The reason given was that when the book would be re-printed in a different language, they would only have to change the black plates if all the text were black. We spent a great deal of time trying to work out how the design guide could be preserved without coloured text before they suddenly reversed the decision and said coloured text would be fine after all!

The book is essentially arranged as lots and lots of double ’spreads’, each with an essay on a subject, like for instance: planning permission or staircase design. The publishers told me to write no more than 700 words for each spread, or 400 to 500 where there would be pictures. Once I got stuck in, it was challenging to keep to this limit and many things were omitted and I suggested that I write around 1,000 words per spread so that we could edit accordingly. The publishers urged me not to write more than 700 max. Much later on, with the page design in it’s seventh or eighth version, they asked me to go back and write an extra 150 words here, 300 words there, all over the place. Trying to add 150 words to an essay that has been finished is much harder than writing more from the outset.

Every few months, the publishers would issue a new and FINAL timetable of events. They would put on their most serious voice and tell me that they really needed me to stick to this one, so I would rush about, move other commitments, work late into the night and meet the first deadline on their new schedule, only for nothing to happen for six or eight weeks once the ball was in their court. I realised that by comparison, I was FAR more organised than they were!

Images were supplied, and lost. With all of the delays I found that they were asking for the same thing three or four times. Staff would change and I had to go back over old ground with a new, terribly nice person frustratingly often.

Eventually, nearly two years after the original meetings, I was set to finish. They wanted me to go through a print-out of the book and make hand-written changes so that they could input them into the artwork. I wanted to work directly into the computer. They would not let the artwork document out of their building, so we compromised on my spending an entire week sitting in their offices, going through everything with a toothcomb. Finally, I thought. I am just about there.

Again, after the latest timetable pressure, again, nothing happened for weeks. After chasing them, they eventually sent through a “final” draft for me to check and I hit the roof. They had changed LOADS of things. Layout, design, sequence, text, they had combined spreads into two and cut other spreads entirely with no reference to me at all. I complained bitterly.

Again, nothing happened for ages, and then as if by magic, they backed down on pretty much everything and returned to where we had been weeks before.

Now, well over two years since we started, having finally formed an effective working relationship with a very nice, and for once, very well organised junior editor, we are finally there and the book is (currently) planned for publication in February 2010.

In summary, for anyone thinking of writing a book, my advice would be:

~ Listen to all those people who tell you that it will be a lot more work than you anticipate BECAUSE IT WILL BE! In my case, it has taken FIVE TIMES as long as I thought.

~ Get a literary agent.

~ Trust your own instincts. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the publishers know books so the publishers know best. This is YOUR work.

Just because publishers are the very nicest people in the world, don’t hold back from pushing them to get the book done in the way you want it.

Be able to identify your prospective customers
And you must be able to do so in such a way as your telesales company can source accurate lists of such people to contact. If you cannot be specific about who might buy, the agency will have a lot of wasted calls for every success they bring you. And they will have to charge you accordingly.

Some prospects will want to see something before agreeing to a meeting. The agency must be able to quickly provide materials (printed and / or web) which support their script in order to call again and book the meeting or close the sale

If you cannot follow up appointments made with the right members of your team in a timely manner your investment will be wasted.

If you do not have these factors in place even the best telesales agency will not be able to get you appointments with customers you want to meet. This is not to say that they won’t get you appointments. But the appointments they do get may well be with customers you don’t want to meet, most commonly constant price switchers and clients who are difficult to service or perennially dissatisfied with their suppliers. Both will be low or zero-profit customers for you.

And finally,

Understand what the value of a new customer is to you, how many you want to gain AND can service in a specific period of time, and therefore what return you are looking to get from this exercise. Set that as an objective for the agency and incorporate it within their contract. Agencies who can genuinely deliver will have no problem with this. But beware of those who show very specific returns in their marketing material but won’t agree to be tied to anything more than hours spent or calls made within the contract.

If you’d like to find out more, a more detailed article on this subject is available. Give us a call or email acb@hydemarketing.com

Sadly in the current environment this has become a real issue hitting businesses out of the blue. The impact can be inconvenient or potentially commercially disastrous. One business we know estimated they had lost over GBP 50,000 when their hoster went down recently.

If your web site is an important part of your sales or marketing operation we suggest reviewing how you would answer the following quick questions, or asking them of your suppliers:

In the current environment we really recommend that you take a few minutes to review this now. Please don’t wait until a problem takes you off line. In a tough market none of us can afford to be hard to find or, worse still, closed for business when customers are looking to buy. It is always cheaper to be prepared.

With this check list most businesses will be able to identify and remedy any problems. However, if you don’t feel that you have the resources or knowledge to tackle this issue or you are concerned about how this could affect key suppliers we can assist.

The term social media refers to a basket of different tools, but in a business context, these essentially perform three functions. If this is still a new-ish area to you and you would like to get a feel for how each of these tools can build sales, check out our previous post on using on-line tools for business development.

The key to success lies in understanding which mix of these tools is right for your business, as using them in combination is much more powerful than relying on one approach.

For example, how can you use these tools to get you onto page one of a Google search for your product or service?

Of course you can pay for pay-per-click adverts (on the right hand side of Google for example) and sponsor key terms (the top few lines in the search results are often sponsored). Other than that it is all about the content of your site and how relevant search engines perceive it in answering the search criteria.

Without going into the mechanics of how a search engine works, it is new, fresh content that search algorithms crave. Content is king. The trouble is, how often can you update a website without just changing content for the sake of it? You can add new material and product information, client recommendations and so on, but in anything but the largest business this usually has to come from a small, internal pool of people who have got other things to do. Alternatively you may deal with an external supplier to get changes effected, or have to get senior approval, and in the end it either doesn’t get done at all, or only in a flurry of activity every few months!

On top of this challenge, unless you are paying a really good SEO company to push you up the rankings (as well as maintain great, fresh and relevant content), then yours is only one website out of many millions that are being indexed.

A few years back the web was reinvented when Web 2.0 came along; bringing with it a new wave of tools, sites and applications that made it far easier for anyone to publish material on the web, and the most significant of these is currently blogging. The activity on blogs is always fresh, even on those blogs that are updated monthly the content is still largely more up to date than an organisation’s main website.

Blogs aren’t the answer for everyone. Not everyone is a writer! However, most people can comment, most people have a point of view and a reply to a blog only needs to be a few lines. By scouring the web for blogs and news sites where your field of expertise / products are discussed, you have a chance to read about views from writers that could comprise competitors, customers, prospects and people from related sectors.

But does this deliver more than just research and profile? Yes – because while web pages are only re-indexed by search engines infrequently, blog entries are considered new data, so affect the search results much more quickly, often within a few hours.

Cynical? Well, carry out this simple test:

- Search in Google for your company name, your name or a key product you sell and see if it appears on the first few pages of the search results.

- Scroll to the bottom of the blog and add a comment on the post (on some blogs you will need to register, but not here). Ensure that the comment includes a mention of your name, your company name or one of your products or services, i.e. that it includes the words that you used to search initially.

- Wait for a few hours and carry out the same Google search that you did at the beginning. Almost always you will see that you have moved up the rankings already.

This is just one example of a simple strategy to drive sales though the smart use of online tools. Post on other peoples’ blogs about your expertise, your point of view, even if it is to agree with them, or emphasise a point. You then start to raise your digital profile, putting you in front of more potential customers.

There are many other similar low-cost opportunities that may be right, or even more appropriate, for your business. From instant alerts of special offers to reaching that big company buyer you can never get in to see. Even if you are not yet active, issues concerning your markets and possibly even your own firm are being discussed online now. So as a starting point, are you at least understanding how you can take advantage of this?

The extra-ordinary growth of internet and mobile technology usage in the home and in business would be enough in itself to make this a pressing issue. But add to that the fact much of the technology has been developed for self-use by consumers, and so is comparatively low cost, means that under-pressure marketing budgets can also go much further.

Social media is all about sharing information with other people, making it ideal for professionals. The term refers to a basket of different tools, but in a business context, these essentially perform three functions:

1) Making it easy to publish material on the web (e.g. blogs, podcasts, YouTube);
2) Alerting interested parties that you have something new to say, ensuring you get as wide an audience as possible (e.g. search, RSS feeds and Twitter); and
3) Reaching and building relationships with new prospects

Space does not allow us to consider too many of the tools you could use, but a brief example from each of these three headings will highlight the possibilities for your marketing and business development.

1) Getting Your Expertise In Front Of More Potential Clients
Blogs are excellent tools for putting your expertise in front of a wide audience of interested people – without needing to translate technical issues for a journalist or distil important messages into a few lines of advertising copy. The key difference from a trade magazine or client newsletter is that readers can respond by posting comments or asking questions. This enables you to start dialogue with potential clients very quickly, shortening the time-lag from marketing to income.

Another crucial aspect of social media marketing is the facility for readers to share information they think useful with others. By forwarding links or mentioning your article in other areas online, your expertise can be passed quickly on to a wider audience of potentially interested people, rather than just a number of magazine readers, most of whom may only be interested in certain parts of a publication.

Other tools to communicate your expertise on line include podcasts and video. As with blogs, these do not need to be open to all, and strategies to protect your intellectual property can be put in place. However, the more you restrict access, the more you dilute the very advantages of the medium.

2) Alerting Your Audience
Readers of this article will have some familiarity with blogs, even if you have never dipped a toe in the water. Twitter, on the other hand, is less well known.

Twitter enables you to broadcast short messages to your own group of contacts who have elected to receive information from you by signing up as “followers”. Designed to work on a mobile phone or Blackberry, as well as on a computer, this tool is excellent for professionals dealing with information that is immediately actionable by clients or their own teams.

Using Twitter via, for example, your Blackberry, you can easily highlight the link between a topical issue you may be hearing about or reading and information on your web site that may help clients understand the issue and seek your advice immediately. The time lost in getting back to the office and arranging for a mailing or email to go out is by-passed and your client service speed dramatically improved.

Other very different alerting tools include RSS feeds – invaluable in automatically notifying your contacts of new information or events on your web site – and Google Alerts are great for tracking what others are saying about you on line.

3. Social Networking Web Sites
Web sites such as Facebook and more usefully the professionally focussed LinkedIn allow users to find, connect to and communicate with people who share similar interests. By completing a personal profile you categorise yourself within a database such that others can find you. You can usually establish a link to contacts or friends and through this be able to see and gain access to others your contacts know. Users can also join specific interest groups.

Why is this useful?

Firstly, using the friends of friends principle you can establish a close network of contacts interested in your field and build a rapport with them in exactly the same way as traditional networking, but accessing a far wider pool of people.

Secondly, by joining relevant groups you can “meet” and communicate with people who you know have a specific interest. Whether that is trading in China or employees of a particular company, you can reach a target audience and build a reputation.

Finally, they are great business development research tools. Personal profiles on such sites often yield far more information about a prospect than their company web site will and quite possibly help you understand who else you know who may be able to introduce you.

For businesses of all kinds social media marketing can provide market feedback at a speed no research agency can. Get it right and you can spread word of mouth referrals faster and further than almost any traditional networking approach can achieve.

Whether you love new technology or loathe it, social media tools are developing a significant following in the business world. Even if you are not yet active, issues concerning your markets and possibly even your own firm are being discussed on line now. So as a starting point, are you at least understanding what’s being said?

Marketing is often seen as one of the easy areas to cut spending when trading conditions become difficult and cash is tighter. So if you’re faced with tough budget decisions where should you start? And how can you squeeze more value out of your marketing spend? Here are our top twelve tips:

Change The Tactics Not The Fundamental Strategy
Customers remember who was there for them when they were struggling and who changes with the seasons. Don’t throw over years of investment in creating a brand and reputation lightly. You can’t just revert to plan A when things pick up.

How Is Behaviour changing
What impact has the credit crunch had on demand and the timing of that? Have the “buying triggers” changed? What issues and pain points do you know that your customers will face this year? Can you anticipate crunch points and get you message across at the right time? Can you be seen to help clients through their problems? Communicate other uses for your product. Share knowledge you have in your business that could help your customers. This may cost you little and but add value to your brand in customers’ eyes.

Spending On Brand v. Generating Opportunities
If much of your marketing spend is currently general brand building support can you move the focus of spending to generating more sales opportunities or improving conversion rates? Be aware of how long you can do this for, however, before perceptions of your brand deteriorate.

Pick Your Targets Carefully
Which customers will ride out the recession best? Which competitors are vulnerable? How can you address these markets specifically?

Keep Communications Flowing With Customers And Add Value
Customers will be poorer or feel poorer. They will be more frugal and cautious in their expenditure. They’ll be focused on value for money. Others will be targeting them. Reassuring customers about the value your products or service delivers becomes more important in this environment. If you are a premium brand, justify why it makes sense for customers to pay that premium.

Don’t Miss A Trick In Selling To Existing Customers
In most industries acquiring new customers costs more than achieving the same value sale to an existing client. In difficult times this is even truer, as creditworthiness of new, unfamiliar customers is more of an issue, as is the growth of “bargain hunters” who will never become loyal customers.

Target Not Scattergun
Review your spend. If you need to make savings cut out entire activities rather than spreading the budget too thinly to be effective anywhere. Are there areas where you are paying to reach large number of people when only a few can ever be buyers? Can you focus on better prospects? Look in particular at spend where the justification is “we always done that” or “we do that every year”. Are these still good habits?

Build Once, Use Often
If a special offer worked before, it might well work again and save you inventing a new process internally to manage the take-up. It’s certainly worth re-visiting past promotional successes in the current environment rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Value Analysis – Savings Customers Won’t Notice Or May Even Appreciate!
Understanding what the customer truly values in your product or service many enable you to cut out the unnecessary costs of features they don’t value. Value analysis is simply about breaking your product or service down to all of its component parts and asking which really add value to customers and which don’t. The golden rule is, don’t cut what adds value, but look for what doesn’t, or no longer does.

Consider Moving More Towards On-Line Marketing
Don’t believe the evangelist techies who tell you that this is the answer to everything, is always cheaper and must now be the focus of your spend. However, if you sell expertise, through services or products, using social media tools as part of your marketing programme needs serious consideration.

Cultivate Your Advocates When money is tight customers are even less likely to take risks and trust is an even more important component of decisions. Identify and arm your advocates to spread the message about you or your products – this sometimes costs no more than thought and effort. On-line tools can help you spread the message far and wide very cost-effectively.

Don’t Slash Price But Offer Deals
Research shows that, on average, only 10 percent of consumers in a category are exclusively motivated by price. Most buyers will look for ways to continue getting their favourite “brand”, to use suppliers they trust. They may watch for opportunities to buy on deal, or buy a larger, more economical package, or, in the case of retail, seek out the outlet that offers the brand at the best price.

Above all, during a recession you need to remind people why your brand is worth the price by focusing on and delivering on functional advantages – and incentivising trial and purchase more.

However, the usual thing I get is “yeah, I looked at Twitter, but I just don’t have time for any more social stuff” or “ok, but what’s in it for me, there’s no revenue I can earn, is there?”

Others use it, but don’t have a clear justification as to why – they just “do”.

Me? I used it initially to keep friends and family up to date with my activities, filling a useful, non-invasory, more personal space where they can look if they want, or ignore if not.

I’ve expanded on that to keep up to date with other people whose work or profile I am interested in, and hopefully vice versa. I have definitely gained leverage, and here’s a good example:

There was someone whose blog I used to read from time to time, that I then followed on Twitter, got to understand the real them a little more, then entered into infrequent dialogue. Then I was able to connect to them on LinkedIn, and a while later, when I was looking for a contact at a particular organisation, I found that I was connected via this original individual, so was easily able to effect an introduction. Fantastic!

There are lots of ways to use Twitter to engage, or to disseminate useful information, and I have blogged before (and again) about some, but I found out recently that some enterprising soul (Tom Morris) has set up a London Underground Twitter tracker to spread service information on the lines – its starting to catch on, what would you rather have – an SMS every 10 minutes, 90% of which you don’t want to receive (as you are already at work?!), or a feed that you can look at at your leisure, whilst en route to a station?

I think this is another great example of an application for the Twitter tool, just think how easy it would be to do the same if you were a small courier company, with the drivers texting back the last delivery they made, the traffic situation and so forth to a central operator, with the other drivers able to find that information via SMS or WAP; a really simple, non-invasive and time-saving business tool. what do you think?

There’s a whole load of tools, tips and advice on how best to use Twitter, which Connie Benson has kindly recently summarised here.

At the very least I recommend visiting these (my favourites):

Twitter in plain English (well, American, anyway) on YouTube

A Bloggers guide to how to use Twitter

Rather than aim for a follower profile in Twitter of thousands and have no real strategy for it, there are many ways you can use it effectively in a small scale; I’d love to hear more examples.

Nick on Nick
I am passionate about engaging with people using appropriate and relevant media, using branding and design to communicate a message effectively. I am fascinated by new world marketing (including social media) and finding new and relevant ways to engage with customers, prospects.. and other people! I started the full-service design agency Preview in ‘94, a specialist livery company, PVL, in ‘99 and am a Hyde Marketing Associate.

Read Nick’s personal blog at http://nickbroom.blogspot.com.