Know Your Industry

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."

- Aristotle

Inspiring People who Know their Industry
I get inspired by people regularly...particularly people with vision who can also execute.  As an author, you are an entrprenuer, and it's important to find and surround yourself with people (virtually or phsyically) who inspire you to keep pushing forward.  For me, Dave Williams is definitely one of those people who "knows his industry."  One of his recent articles is a super example of knowing your industry.  When you read his article on Facebook Advertising, you realize very quickly just how much Dave knows about Facebook and advertising.  Heck, I feel like I need to read this article 20 times just to learn everything that is mentioned in here.  If they haven't already, someone will probably write a 200 page book on the same information in the article...it's packed!

Knowing Your Industry
As Larry (my dad) and I have started the marketing planning work for marketing "the book," we have been doing a lot of research on what is going on in the publishing industry.  We are reading 100s of pieces of information about the market, the industry players, how money flows, what innovative authors are doing, the profile of our target market, book reviewers, etc.  There is a knowledge threshold you really need to clear to understand an industry and how to market yourself in that industry - know the book industry in addition to the industry of the market your book is going to go into (e.g. consumer entertainment, motivation, business, finance, psychology, etc.).  Meeting a knowledge threshold is important...and it takes time...but really costs nothing...the cost is a commitment to learn...and some spare time.  Musicians often fail in this area...they love music but they don't pay attention to business.  Music may be their passion, but if they want to make a living at it, they better understand the business side...I am willing to bet that any musician who has more than one platinum hit over the course of a decade has really learned the biz.  Authors...know the industry.

Why is Knowing Your Industry Important?
Because when you are making decisions about where to spend your time and energy, you are trying to optimize the ROI on your efforts (unless you are just writing as a non-profit).  Whether you know it consciously or not, you are constantly processing inputs that direct your energy...you are in a feedback loop.  And, the market is sending some feedback information to you.  Seeing and understanding what is going on in the book industry will help influence and improve your decisions...and ultimately your ROI.

Perhaps I am stating the obvious, but I am just sharing what is going on in our journey of taking a book to market.  As always, feedback, comments, criticism, etc. is welcomed and appreciated.  As well, let me know what ideas or topics you might want to see me cover.  Thank you for reading!

So, Let's Talk strategy! (Part 1)

"Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things." - Miyamoto Musashi (1584 - 1645), Japanese Swordsman

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." - Michael Porter

NOTE: This is part one of this article, and parts 2 and 3 will eventually provide more detail.

Strategy Foundations
LJB and I had a super strategy session this morning...and I plan to share a specific info about it in the very near future...but first, I want to provide some foundational thoughts to strategy. At the end of the day, authors want to connect with people and share something of value with the them. In return, profit-oriented authors make money. So, how do we devise a strategy for your work to make money?

Betalkaboutable Strategy #1 - Know Your Freakin' Customer!
Aside from stealing or counterfeiting, the ONLY way to make money is to help people...and get paid for your product or service that helped them. So, you need to know how your work is helping your fellow human. If you've failed to figure this out, keep failing and don't stop...but make sure you learn from each failure! Know your customer better than they know themselves!



Betalkaboutable Strategy #2 - No Sucky Content!
There are a million things you can do to try and make money as "an author," but your content CANNOT SUCK! You have to have a great, talkaboutable product if you are an author (or an artist or musician for that matter). CC and Ann wrote contentrulesbook.com, and it covers a lot of this type of info about content. To disclose, CC is a friend, and he totally knows what he is talking about. Other than that book, I would study any other great authors and any good content out there on the internizzle...study it.



Now, I believe firmly in a concept (and am pretty sure I came up with the concept) called "Return on Content." This is based on the marketing operations measurement work I've done...for example, we invested in white papers at Siebel. Those papers took time/money to make...and some produced way more leads and business than others! The same rule applies to media companies who will shut off a TV show that doesn't have enough audience (as audience = ad dollars). Authors, marketers, media companies, and software companies create a TON of content...it's endless. Where do you focus? How do you maximize the return on the investment in content? Well, first...it really helps to think of your investment of time and/or money in content as something that needs to maximize a return. Then, you manufacture content, measure the return, and optimize it. So, that means you need to get a feedback loop in place ASAP...that way, you know when you are creating good content and you know what metrics you are moving the needle on. If you don't know where to start, you gotta start somewhere! Take a an educated risk.

betalkaboutable Strategy #3 - betalkaboutable!
This should be obvious, but if people don't want to talk about your content, it sucks. If people aren't talking about your content/media/work, refer to rule #1 and #2. In the world of social media, people are in a constant state of talking, liking, twitching, and talking about content as noted here. It's now part of human behavior...if you have great content, people will talk about it...and being talkaboutable leads to sales!

That's it for now! Feedback always appreciated!

My Interview with Rabble, #5 Developer at Twitter

Interview at RAILSCONF 2010 in conjunction with Hashrocket.com and Workbeast.com. Also, hear the story about how a VC backed out of funding Twitter!


Featured Interview: Evan “Rabble” from Hashrocket on Vimeo.