Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin

I started Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? tonight and am enjoying it. But I can't believe I'm the only one that a) actually reads or b) received a damaged copy of this book. I have two sets of pages 9-40 and no pages 41-72. Amazon will take it back and send me a new one, of course.

But the irony of missing the section that was apparently talking about quality (from where it started on page 73) because you can't figure out who your "1 percent" of influential customers are was kind of amusing. And here I am blogging about it, but not really to gripe. But if you buy it in a bookstore and it's a first edition, you might want to check your page numbers! Still lots of good ideas, although I'm missing 30 pages of them.

I don't know. Maybe I should hang onto it and auction it off an eBay.

Sticky Ideas, Personas, and Web Writing

A while back I was lucky enough to attend a presentation by FutureNow that one of my clients hosted. Bryan Eisenberg had just picked up this book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. His enthusiasm made me go order it online at Amazon that evening, but it got lost in the ever-growing never-shrinking pile of books that seem worth reading.

Another client of mine recently started reading it and mentioned it to me so I brought it up top and center and started reading. It's really quite good, as I should have known. I've learned a ton from the FutureNow folks as various clients have engaged them. Bryan, next time you recommend a book to me I promise to put it at the TOP of the stack. No more of this FIFO bull. ;)

What six traits of a "sticky" idea can you apply to your own message to make your idea stick?

• simplicity
  
• unexpectedness
• concrete details
• credibility
• emotions
• story-like narrative

I'm in the midst of rewriting a client's web pages a la the personas we just created. Now I'm trying to figure out how to get some stickiness worked in there as well... My clients tend to have long sales cycles. I don't expect to close the sale on the first web page reading. So how do I build in that sticky idea to make them remember the client and come back later?

New York Times Launches Site for Small Businesses

The New York Times has launched a new section aimed at small businesses. There's a nice resource center, plus blogs and columns.

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

This book is just fantastic. I don't know how else to subscribe it.

If you long to grow an empire, have lots of employees, and work long hours to grow a successful business, don't buy this.

If, however, you've hesitated to start your own business because you do NOT want employees, if you define your goals in terms of lifestyle rather than money in the bank, and you have a fierce desire to do what you want to do AND make money at the same time, buy this book!

I've been sitting on a few ideas, not sure how to go about testing them--and this book had very specific, detailed ideas.

Even if you want to continue to work for someone else, you should at least read the sections on elimination and automation and make yourself way more valuable to your employer!

Duct Tape Marketing - Must Read

John Jantsch was kind enough to send me a copy of his book and I've been remiss in writing it up. That's partially his own fault though... There are so many good ideas in here you will likely be busy yourself for a quite a while after reading it!

If you own a small business, I'd put this one on your Must Read list. To give you a clue of the book's credentials, the foreword is by Michael Gerber and the afterword by Guy Kawasaki. Duct Tape Marketing gives you a systematic plan for developing a marketing strategy for your business, but don't panic!

The ideas are very practical and do-able. Each chapter ends with a clear list of action steps for you to take, which are clearly explained in each chapter. The beginning of the book teaches you his basic foundation, which is:

1. Identify your ideal client
2. Discover your core marketing message
3. Create an image to match the message
4. Create products and services for every stage of client development (I think this is great!)
5. Produce good marketing materials
6. Build (or rebuild) a good web site
7. Get your team involved

That's just the first 1/3 of the book. The next section cover contact and referrals, including advertising, media, building your rep as an expert, and create a sytematic referral system. The final section of the book is on feedback. You need to monitor your efforts and do more of what works and less of what doesn't.

If you don't already ready his blog, make your over there for further ongoing wisdom as well.

Persuasion

I just finished this book and it is fantastic! I liked that he started out by defining the difference between persuasion and manipulation. That's an issue I wrestle with periodically. As we measure every bloody aspect of what someone does on a web site, my current playing field, we can see more of what they want, what they don't like, and learn, if we pay attention, how to present what they're looking for, when they're looking for it, and make the calls to action appropriate.

This book is appropriate whether you are trying to persuade in person, in printed materials, or over the Internet. The ideas can be applied well to every medium. Shortly after finishing this book a client asked me to rewrite a set of pages aimed at getting more people who sign up for a free trial to actually USE the software, and then in follow up pages/emails, we want them to actually buy the product of course. But this book made me step back a bit before I started writing and think a bit differently than my normal approach. I'm still keeping the persona bit in mind that I learned from the good folks at FutureNow. But I'm adding to it with Lakhani's ideas of storytelling and much much more.

The pages will go live in just a couple of weeks and will be looked at and measured. Of course, they're getting a cosmetic overhaul at the same time and the process is changing somewhat. I really wish we could just throw the new copy up there first and see if it alone would have an impact. I think it would.

Little Things Piling Up

I was feeling overwhelmed today. Not really overwhelmed but just out of control. I know I can get all the work on my plate done. But just this month I suddenly seem to have more than one plate and they keep rotating in and out from under me like I'm sitting at a rotating table as priorities change, new projects are added, I decide to take a short vacation, and then I walk out in the yard to relax and see projects out there that need attention as well, including the two extra patio chairs I bought the other day that have "minor assembly required" stamped on the box.

When I get busy, it's really easy to turn down boring work. Even if pays better, I'll frankly take on the projects that are fun and let me learn new stuff rather than stuff I've done before and would rather not do again. It's also easy to turn down work when the client is trying to lowball you or raising red flags about how it would be to work together. But when all the work coming my way is fun, with an edge to it of something I want to learn, and I've worked with everyone before and have nothing but positive feelings about doing more work together...what do I do then?

I sit down and make lists.

First, on my white board in my office I listed each major client and then the hot project(s) under them. Some only have one right now, although I know more are coming. But I don't need to deal with them yet so I don't list them. I'm just looking at the next couple of weeks. When I narrow my focus that way, it suddenly becomes manageable. Two clients only have one immediate project under their name. The third has half a dozen, but some only require minor input from me and others I'm waiting on materials so I can't really get started.

When I lay stuff out like that in front of me, rather than feeling like there's something hidden that's going to bite me out of the blue, I feel back in control again. I came back from my morning meetings, picked one project to work on where I had everything I needed to get started and jumped in.

What do you do when you're feeling like things are beginning to get out of control?