Being Smarter

It’s been a real delight getting involved with my son’s local school recently. We’ve been building their new website which I’ll talk about in another post and which will go live in September. I’m really excited about getting the pupils blogging and the parents more involved in what goes on.

Whilst that’s been going on, we’ve also produced a video prospectus for the school – 4 mins 31 seconds of a day in the life. Not too long, not too short. Narrated mainly by the headmaster – the fabulous Richard Jarrett, and produced quite brilliantly by a colleague of mine.

The beauty of having an asset like this – is that it started life as a DVD rotating on the plasma screen in the school foyer. It’s now going to be available online for anyone who wants it, as well as available on DVD for prospective parents. It will also be the start of a collection of video assets available on the school website, which will tell the story of the school year for parents and extended family, who can’t always get to events and see their children participating.

After yesterday’s post about a case study on getting noticed, I thought it would be fascinating to publish a series of case studies, featuring the latest and greatest innovative ways people have got their content noticed.

I’m interested in hearing about:

• Viral campaigns people can learn from
• Great link bait stories
• Great results in reaching ‘market leaders’ to spread a message
• SEO successes
• And any other category of ‘getting noticed’ story – whether yours or links to great case studies.

As a thank you and an incentive, I’m going to give away a copy of a book from one of the world’s experts on viral campaigns – David Meerman Scott. His book World Wide Rave is a must read for anyone in marketing today. You can have a copy sent to you anywhere in the world if your story is the best one… (as received by 1 July 2010).

If you’d like to submit a story, brief or otherwise (there are no rules here)… please email my colleague bruce@the845club.com

Everyone will then benefit from the stories submitted as I will make sure they’re shared on this site.

Thank you!

Image courtesy of oaklandish

I wanted to share a simple idea with you around how to get your ‘stuff’ noticed.

Stage 1: Create a site, a blog, an article, an ebook, a video… something of real value which is related to your ‘stuff’. Something which doesn’t sell, doesn’t capture emails, doesn’t advertise, just something which is going to have genuine community interest. If you’re struggling on how to create content like this, you could do worse than checking this out. (Yes I have a vested interest).

Case study: www.watchusgettingreal.com

Stage 2: Develop it fully, promote it yourself as best you can, get it established. Road test it with friends and colleagues. Really make sure it’s fit for purpose and will stand up to scrutiny. Let it sit.

Case study: The site was built for around a month, we’d had a couple of hundred visitors and had written 6 posts and were well on the way to telling our story.

Stage 3: Find the sneezers in your community – people who can help you to spread your word. (This is why stage 1 is so important) and write to them. Use Email, paper, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. But make it short, sharp, personal and relevant.

Case study: http://twitter.com/mark_copeman/status/15838905789

Stage 4: Assuming they’re happy to spread your word, thank them, keep them in the loop, keep them involved in what you’re doing.

Case study: http://twitter.com/mark_copeman/status/15853098651

Stage 5: Find other sneezers, rinse and repeat. BUT keep adding to Stage 1. Keep adding value to the asset you’ve created and develop your community.

Case study result: Dozens of thank you emails, 4,000+ visitors in 5 days, dozens of RSS subscriptions, feedback on the project, multiple retweets…

Not rocket science I know – but a fascinating exercise. It’s amazing what you can achieve in a week and it’s only possible thanks to people who have become Market Leaders in their niche. They hold the power today and it’s what we should all be aiming to be.

Thank you once again to @jasonfried

The Being Smarter team is pretty excited at the moment. With our various ventures all swimming along nicely, we’ve decided now is the right time to dip our toe in the water of the web applications world. We’ve been asked whether we’d like to build an online service which we believe will be a real winner.

There are many ways of building a new online web business. One of them is to get funding, staff up, spend months developing, launch, figure out how to monetize, always be in beta and close the service after a year because you couldn’t make money.

OR you can do it the smart way. We’ve decided to do it the smart way and are going to use the amazing Getting Real as our guide to doing it. If you’ve not heard of the book – check out the 37 Signals web business. It’s the results of their first few years in business and we think it’s going to be invaluable to us.

As we like to do things differently, we thought it would be helpful to others as well as ourselves (when we write the book in a few years time) to document our experiences as we go from first meeting to launch and beyond.

Play Big Brother and watch our new business develop in our online diary www.watchusgettingreal.com

Please do forward this on!

If you’ve recently signed up as a Being Smarter affiliate and many dozens of you have, and are looking forward to earning an income from our 8.45 Club courses, I thought it was a good time to show you just how simple it is to take a banner or text link and display it on your website or blog and start earning money by targeting your niche visitors.

We use the Post Affiliate Pro system and if you’ve never been an affiliate before, it may be a little overwhelming. I hope the video below shows you that it’s actually pretty straightforward. So sit back, make yourself a cuppa and get started. If you’ve got any questions, leave a comment below.

Hit the full screen button for greater clarity.

By the way, if you’re not already an affiliate and would like to become one, click here to sign up.

Not much going on at Being Smarter at the moment you may be thinking in that the blog has been quiet for a month. In truth we’ve been busy delivering for clients and launching courses for partners!

Whilst that’s all been going on, we’ve also been tweaking the business too and will be shifting our focus ever to slightly over the coming weeks…

We’ve got some great ideas to help your business with both free and paid for services and are looking forward to getting our messages out there.

Watch this space…

We’re proud to announce our next online training course with Ed Dale called Starting from Scratch, which teaches you how to start a business with no money. This article gives you our thinking behind it.

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I’ve been in this online industry full time for about two years now and let me tell you one thing – it’s certainly not easy. It takes hours and hours of effort to be successful and so much of it is completely wasted, because you never know which hours are going to pay back.

I talk to a lot of people who are really interested in going it alone either online or in the ‘real world’ and the most common question is always how do you start a business with no money? People either have time or resources available to them and more often than not, it’s just time and very little capital. But that’s OK and it’s certainly not a reason not to start a business.

One of my mentors is a guy called Ed Dale. You may have heard of him – he runs a programme called The Thirty Day Challenge, which teaches you how to make your first $1 online. He is passionate about online marketing but he’s equally as passionate about helping people to start a business with no money. He calls his methodology ‘starting from scratch and has done it himself many times. I’ve enjoyed learning from him because he talks sense.

He has given me (at least) 5 valuable pieces of advice, which I’d like to share with you when it comes to starting from scratch in the online space.

1. Don’t give up your day job – Giving up the day job with a business plan (a what?!) and a standing start is guaranteed to see your savings disappear quickly. There’s a better way.  Spend the bare minimum on your day job, bring in your salary and then spend every other waking hour preparing foryour next move.
2. Today’s economic climate can be an advantage – 10 years ago, online marketing was easy. Cost per click was cheap and few people were in the online business. Today it’s much harder to succeed, yet the tools make your life easier if you know how to use them. You just need a laser guided focus and a will to succeed.
3. You need to build a bank of cash – When you start a business with no money, accept it isn’t going to be straight forward – you need to build a small bank of cash which can then go onto fund the bare essential tools you need to invest in, such as domain names and webhosting. There are a number of strategies for doing this whilst you’re still doing #1.
4. There is no excuse not to research your market – So many people start their business, create a product and then spend months trying to sell it without ever considering if there’s a market for it. With the Google Keyword tool and other tools such as Market Samurai, there is no excuse not to find out about the market place before you start… again making it so much easier to get the business off the ground without funding.
5. It’s not for everyone - Accept that when you start a business with no money it’s a huge uphill struggle. Unless you’re passionate about what you do, have the support of your family and friends, then you’re always going to struggle…

If you want to know more about how to start a business with no money, Ed’s course with The 8.45 Club is now live and will teach you how to start from scratch in the online marketing world. Click the link to see the first module for free! It’s a tried and tested philosophy as you’ll see from the two case studies within the course.

Today is quite the momentous occasion… my 1000th Tweet after a year or so of taking Twitter seriously. I felt that this particular Tweet needed to be profound (everything’s relative) – and so I’ve decided to use it to refer to this post and write a few words about what I’ve learnt from this bizarre social media application and explain why I use it and what it’s actually done for me.

Maybe my wife, parents, friends and anyone else who just ‘doesn’t get it it’ will have a little more of a clue as to what it’s all about if they get round to reading this.

1. Like every tool ever invented – how you use Twitter will change what you get from it.
2. Like every tool ever invented – it’s your choice as to how you use it.
3. Some people use Twitter for talking about what they had for breakfast. That’s fine. I don’t, because it’s not going to further me or anyone else in a business sense and that’s my primary reason for using the tool. Your reason maybe different and that’s fine.
4. I use Twitter to further myself (and I hope others) in business. Business however can be made up of many different things.
5. Entertainment, education, friendship, humour and knowledge transfer have all been essential parts of my 1000 tweets.
6. As of the time of writing I’ve 245 followers (thank you). I only follow 40 people. I only follow people I’m interested in understanding or hearing more from.
7. I’ve had people complain I don’t follow them or hassle me to follow them. Guess what – that’s not the way to do it people.
8. Part of the reason I use Twitter is for ‘legal stalking’. It’s not as sinister as it sounds. If I want to do business with someone, I follow them. If I am doing business with someone I follow them.
9. Who wouldn’t want to get closer to a prospect or a customer to find out what they are thinking? What’s the perfect way to understand what makes them tick and to find out what they are interested in? Following them of course.
10. I like communicating with people – I can’t help myself. If I find out something I think might be of interest to someone, I will share it with them. I used to do this using newspaper clippings (I still do). Twitter makes this a much easier process.
11. I like the fact I have virtual colleagues in Tasmania, Australia (hi @michellef) I also like the fact I’ve met them in real life too.
12. I like the fact I get to hear about the latest things happening in the world of WordPress (@woothemes) and get discounts off the latest themes.
13. I like the fact that I won a signed set of books from one of my favourite business authors (@dmscott)
14. 11,12 and 13 I did on Twitter in the last week and no point did I tell anyone what I had for breakfast, nor did they tell me.
15. I admit I have Tweetdeck open on one of my screens for most of the day (unless I’m focusing on getting stuff done, in which case I switch it off). That’s not a good thing – it should be turned on at certain times of the day and I’m working on my addiction there.
16. I happily paid $2.99 for Twittelator on my iPhone and use it every day (thanks @ed_dale). Why wouldn’t you absorb yourself in other people’s wisdom whilst sitting on a train/standing in a supermarket/waiting for your wife to try on clothes eh @ed?)
17. Do I still interact with real live human beings? Yes of course I do. Do I also benefit massively most days from other people’s wisdom via Twitter? Yes definitely.
18. Do other people benefit from my twittering? I’d hope so.
19. Would I ever follow hundreds or thousands of people – no… following others to get followers makes very little sense in my book. I’d prefer people to follow me who are interested in what I have to bang on about.
20. Do I recommend every person in business to at least consider using Twitter as a tool – yes I do. Is it right for everyone? No…
21. I try to make Tweets less than 110 characters to allow easy retweeting.
22. I like occasional random conversations with people I don’t know – it adds to the rich tapestry of life. #bbcquestiontime is a great example.
23. Be interesting and others will be interested in you. Isn’t that right @lesleyeverett?
24. So how will I change my use of Twitter over the next 1000 tweets? I need to turn off Tweetdeck more. It is distracting, and I need no help in that department. I want to get better at explaining the phenomenon in a simple way to people who don’t get it so that they can benefit too. I also want to find more interesting, relevant people in my niches and sphere of interest to follow to get even more tuned into my markets. That’s hard to do, so I need to listen even harder.

There. I’d like to think I’ve made the most of my 1000th tweet. But maybe you disagree…. comments are open below.