Tag Archive for: Book Reviews

Exclusive Interview with John Hayes – Author of “Becoming THE Expert”

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John: “Matt I’ve written a book”
Matt: “You’ve done what?”
John: “Written a book on thought leadership marketing”
Matt: “WTF is that? Can I have a read?”

That’s pretty much how the conversation went as John passed over the draft version of the book he had been writing for the past few months on Skype.

“It’s a draft mind Matt, it got spelling mistakes” John quickly added. Like that was going to bother myself, have you seen the appalling spelling and use of grammar (<= joke, honest) on this site?

I was more curious on John had been writing and what on earth is this “Thought Leadership Marketing” jazz.

“I couldn’t put it down and blitzed it that evening”

I think I finished around 2am, I couldn’t put it down and blitzed it that evening, that was about two months ago and I’m super excited that it’s now been published and you can read it too.

Below is a unique interview with John Hayes about his book, “Becoming THE Expert” that is published today.

“Oh my god” John, I’m so jealous, you book is coming out today and you can wear the label as an bonafide book “author”. Tell us, what inspired you to write your first book?

Thanks Matt. My main source of inspiration came from meeting so many great entrepreneurs over the years while working for companies like ChannelAdvisor and in my current role at iContact.

Many of these people are building amazing businesses but have complained to me about hitting a glass ceiling in terms of how far their traditional marketing could take them forward.

“I believe the one thing that holds them back is a lack of confidence in their ability to tell a good story about their product or service”

In many cases, I believe the one thing that holds them back is a lack of confidence in their ability to tell a good story about their product or service and position themselves as the go-to person or thought leader in their particular industry.

If they can learn to do this (and it is pretty much an exercise in believing in your own ability and drawing on your industry knowledge) they can enhance their existing marketing efforts, shorten sales cycles and reduce their reliance on old-school business techniques like cold calling and paid advertising to acquire new customers.

“a pipe dream for me to write a book since I was a small child”

It’s also been a bit of a pipe dream for me to write a book since I was a small child. I decided last year that dreaming wouldn’t get me published and set myself a goal of writing and publishing a book before my 40th birthday (September this year).

Originally I was going to self-publish but was fortunate enough to meet a publisher at an email marketing event I was speaking at and I took the opportunity to pitch the book. To my surprise, they liked the idea and contracts were quickly signed.

Working with a publisher has been a steep and at times frustrating learning curve – but I’m glad I went down this path as it gives the book greater credibility and thanks to my editor’s input, I think we have produced a much better book.

Can you tell us what “Thought Leadership Marketing” is and how we can use it to become “The Expert”?

Thought Leadership Marketing takes this insight and uses it to build brand, generate leads and ultimately drive sales. I believe any business can benefit from a little Thought Leadership Marketing.

“Thought Leaders position themselves as experts in a particular industry or discipline and share their insight with a wider community.”

When you see a reputed expert on a subject quoted in a news article, or a video on YouTube instructing you how to do a task, or a blog post offering insight into the latest trends or advances in a particular industry, this is very often part of a wider Thought Leadership Marketing strategy. They are positioning themselves as experts and hopefully setting themselves up as a potential business partner for interested parties.

If there is only one thing that you could tell us to do today using Thought Leadership Marketing, what would it be?

If you are only going to do one thing today using Thought Leadership, I would suggest you start blogging.

I believe a blog gives your business a pulse and makes it stand out from the millions of static websites that litter the Internet. Because Google loves fresh, original content, a good blog is SEO gold.

A well-maintained blog will also give you great content to populate your social media activity and email marketing campaigns. Finally, a short blog post can help you test thought leadership concepts which you can then develop into larger pieces of work such as detailed white papers, videos or even your own book.

So where can we purchase a copy John?

Becoming THE ExpertThe book is currently available in eBook format from Amazon (for Kindle) and the Apple iBookstore (for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch).

You can try before you buy from either of these sites by downloading a sample of the book first.

Direct Links:

Your Feedback

Have you come across “Thought Leadership Marketing” before? Have you, like myself been doing  this all along and not realising it (well at least attempting to anyway)?

Let us know in the comments box below.

Time for a Site Redesign & to Refocus

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I watched an amazing video over on ProBlogger a few days ago (its 30mins long) and three simple questions were asked, these were:

  • Can you tell me what your blog stands for?
  • … and what problems it solves for people?
  • … and how do you solve them?

Frankly I was dumbstruck by the entire video. Up until now I have not even considered the majority of the parts of the mind map and have taken it as a kick up the ass to get things in order.

Again, as with a few of the recent posts published, this is about myself and me working out what is going on and where to focus. By publishing this, I am intending for a couple of things to happen:

  1. You gain a better understanding of where this blog is going and what to expect
  2. I understand the above more fully

Site logo & design

The site design has carried me along up until now, however “is a dead fly with blood drips really the right impression that I wish to give readers?” Probably not… is the honest answer. The design came from the urgency to just get on and get writing almost a year ago and whether right or wrong, its been the header & logo since then.

The logo nor header area really reflect the new image that I wish to portray and I’ve pulled in the assistance of a good friend and design expert Rob Cubbon.

Working from experience and also looking for some assistance for a discounted rate, saying “I need a logo designed” wasn’t going to be particularly helpful to Rob or myself for that matter and after a few doodles in the note pad, I came up with a rough outline, which I’ve included below:

Yes this is pretty basic, however incorporates the key elements that I am aiming for, which is more control over the font being used, an actual logo, ink splatters, although I’m aiming for these to be coloured ink splats like found in this image so that I can increase the colour palette used on the site and some form of digital aspect, either through the use of a barcode or pixelation.

I’ve been quiet taken with the use of the author faces in the header area after reading this article on the 13 best and most powerful blog header designs on the internet, although I’m not sure if you’ll be seeing my face in this sites header just yet, or at least past the stock image I use for most sites currently.

Also, we’re playing with a “ripped paper”cross section to the site to separate the header & navigation menu from the content area. Not entirely sure what the finished version is going to look like and probably by the time you read this article, it’ll be live & I’m sure you’ll agree, it’ll be a marked improvement on the old design.

Who is the audience?

A screen shot from the video is below showing the mind map which is discussed:

problogger-mindmapWhile several of the parts I’m not going to discuss publicly, one part in particular I’m going to share as it defines what you’re going to find on this site from now on and crucially when.

In a brainstorm, I came to the conclusion that the following are the audience types & persona’s that vist this site:

  1. eCommerce business owners
  2. People looking for help with eBay & Amazon
  3. Current clients
  4. Former clients
  5. Potential clients
  6. Colleagues from former roles I’ve held
  7. Friends
  8. Head hunters
  9. CEO’s & Directors of products & services in the eCommerce arena
  10. PR firms

There really is quite a mixture from what I can tell from the interactions through email, comments, calls and the web statistics. However I feel that I’m failing them all and I’ll cover that in more detail shortly.

What problems do these have?

A really interesting brainstorming exercise was work out and detail the different problems each of these persona’s have and where they fit with the content that I have been producing up until now.

Again, these are results from the brainstorming exercise:

  1. Problems using eSellerPro
  2. Understanding eSellerPro
  3. Making best use of eSellerPro
  4. Selecting the right backend tool to help their business
  5. Checking up to see if I have posted something defamatory
  6. Looking for help with eBay
  7. ” ” ” ” ”  with Amazon
  8. ” ” ” ” ” with eCommerce
  9. Making the best use of the online marketplaces
  10. Marketing their businesses
  11. Making their businesses more efficient

Whether it is users with general questions or stemming by their desire to use the application more effectively, after three years with the team at eSellerPro, I suppose such a weighting is to be expected. There were one or two others that I’ve not included, however this was the general jist of the problems that I could come up with the the visitors that arrive here.

Note: If you can suggest any other types or reasons, I’d value you help, either in the comments at the bottom or directly via the Contact Matthew page

Frequency

Predictably IrrationalI just finished reading an excellent book called “Predictably Irrational“, it was recommended by Rick, the head of a US based PPC company called “CPC Strategy“. Actually I’ve not spoken to Rick in a while now and as its not a bank holiday for him, I’ll drop him a line when he gets in. I’m not sure how we met, but we spoke and hit it off, really nice chap.

Back on topic, one of the differences to this book was Dan’s actual inclusion of the data from the experiments that she performed, this was sometimes lacking in other books on a similar topic, like “Why we Buy” and “Inside the mind of the shopper”. I used to think that psychology was a load of bollocks, how wrong was I and eagerly learned about the “Skinner Box” created by a graduate student at Havard, called “B. F. Skinner“.

This box, used to condition animals (oh don’t feel bad about this, the next bit is or rather was a revelation to me) through reward/punishment mechanisms. What was found that rats that performed the “correct” action and were rewarded would carry out the action required when they felt like it (as it was generally food, although I suspect punishment was used here as well), however the most interesting part was when the subject was not rewarded for the action and the reward happened randomly. Oh how this hit home.

Dan used a couple of brilliant examples in her book, the first was a fruit machine, if you knew that you’d win 9 out of 10 times, would you continue to play? When was the last time you played bingo? Did you win? When was the last time you checked your iPhone or Android for email, knowing full well there is no email because it makes a sound to notify you of a new message?

SKINNER BOX!

Which leads me to my original point, frequency. Frequency of posting here has been hap-hazard, sometimes I’d skip whole weeks and not post anything. With the full dive-into #ProjectE and the desire to improve my own brand and that of the new project I’ve committed to, the sources of content are abound, however I was considering setting up a routine for posting here, to let you know exactly when I would be posting and dividing it into two or three post types, however you (as I) can be the subject to the same process.

Now will this be the only post you’ll find here this week?

Back to the original questions

I identified several key audiences and also some of the problems that the audience have or experience, which allowed me to answer the original three questions. One of them was quite concerning and I’m looking forward to working on this one specifically in the next few weeks to try and amend some scorched bridges.

I do have an overlap between the content that I create here and that I have been creating for #ProjectE, as this becomes more public you’ll see why, however it’ll be fun crossing the two over.

New site layout

I started writing this article yesterday, since then you’ll have noticed that the site has now been altered. For one a new logo has been added and I have redesigned the header area completely. The homepage article layouts were tweaked and the footer is more substantial.

I’ve also realised that I am failing badly on numerous of the key pages on the site, I’m working on these today, so expect a couple of new video’s to be added.

Summary

I’ve just been back through and re-read this article, while I do ramble, it was what helped me refocus on what this blog means and where its going. I’ve got a lot of work to complete on the site if I want it to take me where I want it to go.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the new look, however what do you think?

 

 

The Book Responsible for Where I am Now

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“I owe everything to this book and if I can learn its contents in a week, in a caravan with no computer, you can too.“

I’m going to share with you the book that is solely responsible for where I am today and it just might have the same effect for you too. However before I spill-the-beans on the name of the actual book, I’d like to share the events that happened after reading the book.

After reading this book, I ended up going back to college, now this wasn’t “I’ll do a course on…” this was “I’ll do EVERY course that interests me” and I promptly did. I did a dozen or more short courses at Bristol College, from HTML to Visual Basic, from graphic design to Java, I even did two courses on ASP and three courses on C++.

At one point I was spending four nights a week on these and still found room to start the revision needed to set myself on the way of studying for a MCSE through self revision. I still remember punching the air and that thrill of passing all those exams. They weren’t cheap and I failed a few but I got through a fair amount of them in a relatively short time. One set of books cost me over a £130 and contained 12 or so books and I still have a romance with Windows 2000.

This book also provoked me to make a computer, I wasn’t going to buy a computer I was going to make a computer, by pure fluke the latest copy of PC Advisor was covering this and over the next two issues I built my first computer. I still have it in my roof!

With the new computer, the first thing I wanted to do was get on the “Internet”, I had spent so much time at Uni covering the fundamentals (a HND in Electrical & Electronic Communications Engineering apparently) but had spent so little time actually working out how this[the Internet] could help me.

With the combination of the book that promoted me to go on a education bender, I ended up finding eBay, starting a business on eBay, quitting my (what was well paid) job, burning myself out, working for two SaaS companies and now starting a new business, that encompasses everything I’ve learned along the way.

So what was the book?

Learn HTML in a weekend. Ironically I did not learn it in a weekend with a computer, no I learnt it in a CARAVAN in a week with no computer. I can still write HTML without editors and enjoying playing with it today.

Of course, there are other distractions, such as PHP, Pyhon, CSS and so on that follow similar structures, but they all end up back at HTML and I sincerely do not believe for one moment that I’d be where I am without this book.

I checked this morning and you can pick this book up on Amazon for 1p, well 1p plus £2.80 postage (make sure you pick a UK seller if possible, the delivery time sucks from the US). Seems somewhat a bargain now considering the changes it made to me.

Have you had a similar experience with a single book before? If so what was it?

Your Marketing Sucks – Book Review

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“Your Marketing Sucks” is a brilliant book written by Mark Stevens and really hammers home the hum-drum sucky marketing out there.

While on my way back from a relaxing few hours in the coffee shop where I finished off a different book called Consumerology that takes a psychological approach to why we buy I spotted this sign. I had to stop, I immediately realised it sucked:

your-marketing-sucks

This sucks

Mark highlights why there is a high turn over of Marketing managers out there, its because they have become accountable. Not only does he point out how people camouflage spending as marketing, but also how to implement a plan to make sure that your marketing does not also suck.

A brilliant quote from the book is below:

The only way to gauge marketing is to ask if it generates a significant return on investment and in turn helps to grow your business.

Its only a 200 page read and I’ve re-read it twice now, this is a must read for anyone with a small business.

Your Feedback

Read a great book recently? Add a comment or shoot me an email I’ve picked up some outstanding books on personal recommendations and would like to hear from you.

E-myth Revisited Book Review

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Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Review

e-Myth RevisitedI’ve just sent a copy of this to a client, my copy is out on loan currently!

I just love how it reads, I enjoy how Sarah actually takes what Michael is describing and transforms it into her picture of how ‘All About Pies’ business will become, I even think regularly of the orchard is to nurture.

The part where Michael describes the hotel owners game is brilliant, you don’t actually meet the owner, but you meet his amazing ‘game’ and the people that play his game. Its extremely inspiring.

In realising that there any several parts to play in a business and ‘technician’ is only a small part, getting your butt out and working ON your business rather than IN your business is a revelation to all (well it was to me!).

I don’t just recommend this book, I categorically state you should read it, its THAT good.

You can pick the E-myth Revisited on Amazon for around £6 here, a tip here is to go careful with the non Amazon sellers, the first six or so are from the US & Canada and the last book I picked up from bookcloseout took three weeks to arrive, my point is, the extra pennies spent in this case are well worth it for massive increase in speed of delivery.

PS: Don’t just take my word for it, check the reviews out for this book, steal yours today.