I’ve been publishing content online for 3 years now – regularly. This blog is starting to prove popular, but I guess a lot of my publishing has been through training video production for and on behalf of other clients. It’s more recently I’ve started to produce video for my own purposes, based on the knowledge I’ve picked up over this time.

Last Thursday (5 days ago) I spent 20 minutes putting a video together, shortly after I’d implemented a technique for myself and I couldn’t help but think, for the ‘man in the street’ who isn’t overly technically literate, this might be a confusing and tricky thing to do.

That ‘thing’ was syncing Outlook with iCloud.

iCloud and iOS5 was released on Wednesday 12th October 2011. I produced the video the following day. If I’m honest with myself, it was a bit rushed, however I knew I had to ‘ship’ so out it went – it was a lot more than was out there at the time. I worked out a new technique for explaining a concept, to save me time (slides would have taken longer) and I wrote the post and published the video on YouTube.

Stats as of 10pm on 18th October

[UPDATE: 8 November 2011 - 4,380 views now]

Before I produced the video I did something I don’t always do – and will do from now on. I did a search for various phrases around the subject and found nothing. Hardly surprising – iCloud had been out for less than 24 hours. It suddenly occurred to me that being first at something might be a good idea – so it’ would be worth investing the time in producing this. As it turned out, 20 minutes wasn’t much of an investment! That said, when you produce videos as often as I do you’d expect to do them quickly.

Within a couple of hours – I was amazed. The searches hitting the site (as opposed to being from an email promotion for example, where you’d expect a barrage of traffic) were extraordinary… visitors to the site shot up and within 4 days – through search alone, the video stat looked like this:

A couple of other by products occurred – I was suddenly seen as the global expert in syncing Outlook with iCloud (despite the fact that I’m certainly not!) I’ve had emails from the far corner of the earth asking me questions… not perhaps what I wanted, but nice to be asked nonetheless. In addition, visitors to this site and as a result affiliate clicks and revenue have shot right up and show no signs of falling – the searches are consistent in both hitting this site and YouTubedirectly.

So – the moral of the story – if you want to get known in your niche, publish great content whilst reacting to real time events.

What you should you, the lone consultant be doing about this?

I’m not an IT consultant, however, if you are, you should be kicking yourself. IT consultants across the land should have been producing content on the day iCloud and iOS5 was released. Remember this, publish early. It’s called first mover’s advantage. Get known for being an expert.

If you’re a finance consultant or a small accounting firm – find out what new legislation and rules are coming online in your country / state and become expert. Publish your thoughts, show people what to do. Be seen as an expert and people will call you up and ask you to work with them. It’s just a fact of life.

If you’re an HR consultant, legislation changes seemingly hourly here in the UK. I suspect it does throughout the rest of the world. If there’s a big change coming, build up to it, write about it, explain what effect it will have on your potential customers. The press will pick up on you, interview and before you know it, your phone will ring.

[UPDATE: Thanks to @newyork0605 - legislation changes in the UK have standardised - 1 October and 1 April - so get planning for next year!]

I could go on, but I know you know what I’m saying. Are you doing it though?

Further reading

If you’d like further reading – one of my favourite authors, David Meerman Scott has devoted a whole book to real time marketing which is a great read. There’s a stack of examples inside of this technique working as well as a discussion on why it’s such an important concept.

There have been many influences on my business and personal life over the last 24 months – I will be writing to you separately to thank you and to let you know you’re included in this book.

One of those influences is David Meerman Scott and David, in line with your thinking – there’s no email capture on this page!

If you’d rather just grab the headlines – they’re below.

With that – it’s onwards and upwards – into year 3. *blows out candles.

The lessons – in no particular order.

1. Get things right on paper before you go anywhere near a keyboard.
2. Don’t work when your son’s making a giant snowball outside with another dad. Even if you have a deadline. You’ll regret it.
3. Data isn’t data unless it’s in two places. Back up. Regularly. Don’t put it off until tomorrow.
4. The Challenge is an inspiration.
5. Visions and missions can only be developed when in transit – evolve yours over time by mainly doing as opposed to mainly thinking.
6. Twitter is a serious business tool.
7. Seth Godin is a genius. His writing is short and to the point and that suits me (and 000?s of others) down to the ground.
8. Once you’ve cracked a process or system, record it and don’t fiddle with it.”
9. Networking is still one of the most important skills ever and should be taught at school. Without it, I wouldn’t have met the wonderful Lesley Everett.
10. Choose who you work with (if you can). And yes, you really do have a choice.
11. Learn when to switch the PC off – it will still be there in the morning.
12. I’ve been inspired working in subject areas I knew nothing about. You could be too. Thanks Graeme.
13. WordPress is so often the answer, what’s the question.
14. A green screen studio inc lights, cameras and mics can be bought for £1,500. And carried around the world.
15. Have a VERY understanding and supportive wife or partner. (Thanks Suz)
16. I appear to have created 170,659 files in the last 24 months. Develop an electronic filing system that works and use it.
17. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” (c) My Dad 1945 – current day.
18. When was the last time you put a real newspaper clipping into a real envelope and sent it to a real person? They’ll remember you.
19. Google Reader is an essential business tool. Learn how to use it.
20. Never start a business without an online component. You’d be missing a trick.
21. As the E-Myth states, focus on making your business scalable from day 1.
22. Learn how to find out what people are searching for in Google – it’s the single best market research tool on the planet.
23. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.
24. Don’t say “I can’t believe I can’t work today because it’s a Bank Holiday” out loud. Keep it to yourself – people will think you are nuts and won’t get it.
25. Only work with exceptional people.
26. Figure out what buyer personas are.
27. Go out of your way to THANK people. It seems to be unusual these days.
28. Seek advice actively from people you trust. Create an advisory board of people around you. You DON’T have all the answers.
29. Write your eulogy in bulletpoints. Then live your business and personal life like you want to be remembered. This isn’t as weird as it sounds.
30. Don’t get so caught up in your endeavours you forget birthdays. Use Moonpig.com.
31. The software you want is already built. You may have to tweak it but for goodness sake don’t reinvent the wheel.
32. Learn new stuff. All the time. Or what’s the point?
33. ‘Tell stories and solve people’s problems’ is good advice.
34. Become a connector – find ways to introduce people.
35. Personalised web pages (which can be produced in 15 seconds) with a prospect’s name in the URL get 100% clickthrough
36. Only have 5 email folders. Inbox, Sent mail, Hold, Follow up and Archive. Gina Trapani is a legend.
37. Tim Ferris has done it and got the t-shirt. I’m a living breathing case study who’s aiming to get there.
38. It will always take longer than you think.
39. Today, projects should take weeks and cost 00?s. If yours is going to take months and cost 000?s you may want to think again.
40. Firefox every time. Bye bye Internet explorer.
41. 10 minutes a day. After 8 months of testing – it resonates. Find something that resonates.
42. Drink beer from time to time with people who inspire. Andy Palmer – Thank you.
43. You’ll never get every ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’ crossed. Sometimes, you’ll just need to make a decision without all the facts.
44. SEO is bloody hard unless you follow a process. Position #10 will give you 1/14th of the traffic of position #1. Only the top 4 positions really count.
45. It is possible to have a $10,000 day on the Internet.
46. Working in partnership with people you trust and respect is much easier than working on your own.
47. Some books need to be read twice – they are more relevant second time round.
48. I may have been the last person to read Purple Cow, but I’m still glad I read it.
49. Don’t think you know better than people who’ve already done it in a big way. Learn from them, emulate them but be original.
50. Follow your heart, not your to do list when turning things down.
51. Know when to turn off Twitter…
52. You always have a choice.
53. When middle managers say ‘yes’ in large corporations, they probably don’t mean yes.
54. Personalised videos get results.
55. A laser beam focus on a niche is so much more effective than floodlights on a marketplace.
56. Meetings are toxic and other such phrases. This book is my bible.
57. Never, ever, EVER ignore a gut feeling.
58. Either do ‘it’ for free of for full price and accept the consequences either way.
59. Nobody cares about your products or services, except you.
60. Channels to market are vital to success.
61. Learn to recognise time wasters.
62. Be patient.
63. Embrace your constraints.

Being Smarter Ltd is proud to annouce today a brand new online course from its training video production company – The 8.45 Club.

Office 2007 training for teachers is a course which has been written and devised by teacher training experts over the last six months. It’s been presented and produced by The 8.45 Club team, led by Mark Copeman. Never before has an online course for Microsoft’s Office 2007 ever been written by teachers for teachers, using their language and giving examples pertinent to their working day.

It’s been devised in response to a constant need for schools to reduce costs and an ongoing requirement for teaching staff to work smarter by getting the most out of the software they use on a day to day basis.

Mark Copeman, course producer said,

The course is made up of 40+ bite-sized video modules, totalling five hours of learning. Teachers can dip in and out to suit them – learning when they need to and not being limited to when a trainer is in a classroom after school. It is structured so that staff can learn at the pace they want to, or jump straight to a particular topic.

“We’ve already got our first 500 teachers signed up to use the course – and currently, the most popular module is on shortcuts” said Mark. “The really great thing about the course website, is that users can track the time they spend learning and submit a certificate towards their Continuous Professional Development time for that school year.”

The course has already won a warm response from its users.

Anna Deacon, Head of Department at a school in Gloucestershire, UK

This online video course  is available through the UK’s Training and Development Agency for Schools CPD database. You can also watch a sample module and apply for volume discounts at the course website – Office 2007 training for teachers.

ENDS.

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.

Case study: www.watchusgettingreal.com

Image courtesy of oaklandish

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

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!

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.

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…

______________________

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.

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.