There are many different ways to use your book to engage people, and today we're looking at a 'grab bag' of possibilities.

Your comfort with creating new 'things', the skills you have, and the audience you already with, will all influence how you choose to use your book, but by looking at many options today, we'll get to cover something for everyone. Something that when you hear us talk about it, you'll immediately see how you can use the idea to better engage potential customers.

Creating your book give you the flagship asset... the thing that encourages people to raise their hand, but to support that, you have the opportunity to create many smaller pieces that move the conversations forward.

The good news is, you've done all the hard work already. Now it's a case of amplifying your message in the simplest way possible.

There are some great, practical steps here that everyone should take.

Don't forget, you can see how your book idea stacks up against the Book Blueprint by going to BookBlueprintScore.com and, if you want to be a guest on the show to plan your successful book, just head over to 90MinuteBooks.com/guest

Lastly, here is a link to the other Book Blueprint Scorecard Episodes and to the Email Mastery book we mentioned.

 

Links:
Ready to get started: 90MinuteBooks.com/get-started
Mindset 8 (beyond your book) Episode: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/055
Be a Guest: 90MinuteBooks.com/guest
Your Book Blueprint Score: BookBlueprintScore.com
Titles Workshop: 90MinuteBooks.com/Workshops
Interview Shows: 90-Minute Books Author Interviews
Questions/Feedback: Send us an email
Extra Credit Listening: MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com 

Transcript: Book More Show 058

Stuart: Hi, welcome to the website of the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell with Betsey Vaughn. Betsey, how's it going?

Betsey: Fantastic. How are you Stuart?

Stuart: I'm very good. Pardon my voice, it's a bit croaky, so hopefully, it's going to make it through. I've got a bottle of water. Either my voice will give out first or I will drink all of this water and then we'll need to stop for a bathroom break.

Betsey: Right.

Stuart: This one, we are going to follow up from the last show where we were wrapping up on some of the follow up actions, the beyond the book actions, the book mindset actions of: now you have something creative, what are the best ways of getting it out there and in front of the people who are most likely to become your best prospects or best leads or best customers? Last time, we were talking about the email follow up sequence. If you're just joining us for this show, this is episode 58. Head back into the shows notes for episode 57. Over the last couple of weeks we've been going through the low hanging fruit, the things you should absolutely start with, through to the email sequence that you should definitely have in place to follow up after someone's opted in.

This week's show, we're going to run through the "grab bag," we were calling it, of some quick hits. We're not going to go into too much detail on any of these, but these are going to be some ideas that will resonate with you, some ideas that are going to be not relevant at all. There's something for everyone but not too much detail. Quite a few of them to get through, so it should be a nice, rapid fire show.

Betsey: Awesome. I feel this is good. I think the whole follow up from your book is... we hear that so often. People need it. I think with the follow ups, email follow up sequence, that was a lot of great, valuable information. I'm looking forward to seeing what we pull out of our hats this time.

Stuart: Yeah, I think this is going to be a great set of things that you can take one or two things from over time that you can just pick up as and when they're relevant. Show notes at 90minutebooks.com/podcast. As I mentioned, this is going to be episode 58. So we've got a screenshot of a couple of buying maps that we've got here, or a couple of sections of the main mind map that we've got here. If we come up with any links and shout outs, they're all going to be in the episode. This is probably going to be one of those where as you're listening to it, or if you think about it at a later date you want to dive back into it, then probably dive into the show notes and scroll through and find the bit that you're looking for.

Betsey: Cool. Very good.

Stuart: Alright, so let's dive in and get started.

Betsey: Alright.

Stuart: As we mentioned, book's complete, you've done some of the low hanging fruit, some of the easy options. You've dealt with or engaged with people who are already know "I can trust you." We've talked about referrals in the past. These are things looking at new audiences, audiences where you're not necessarily in at the moment, but an opportunity to refer to the book and refer to the book's content in ways that really gets it in front of more people. Or add value to people by referring to the book.

One of the first things you can think about doing is a press release. The value of a press release varies depending on how it's actually used, and there are many courses out there, YouTube videos or experts in the field, that can really dive into it. If, for whatever reason, this is something that you really want to use to amplify what you've created, then there's lot of other resources there. What we want to do here is really hit on two or three ideas that are low-cost or no-cost ways to get a good amount of bang for your buck, as it were, but not necessarily going into maximizing this element, or indeed any of these.

Press releases in 2008... 2009, maybe, were often used for SEO. They were a way of getting links back to the sites and there was a kind of mass production element to them just to get them out there. That isn't really that relevant anymore, but there is an opportunity to put a press release out there, as long as you craft it in such a way that it communicates value. Just putting a blurby bit of text to say, "I wrote a book. It's about this. Go read it. You can get a copy here," isn't really going to engage anyone. But writing it with a particular perspective, point of view, angle... At the end of the day, the people who are going to see this are potentially journalists or people who are searching through press releases to look for relevant content. Again, with the development of things, everything kind of trends down over time, to a certain degree, unfortunately. So there may be a lot of spammy, useless junk that comes from it.

What you're really trying to do is engage those people that are actively interested in what you're doing, and the way to do that is not just to create something, but to create something that is valuable and relevant and communicates a little bit more of the message. So rather than just "I wrote this book," really think about the human interest angle of why you wrote it. Not to go into the benefits cause it's not the sales page, but you really want to sell the benefits of the story. Again, not going to be relevant to everyone, not necessarily worth the effort for everyone. Just putting a press release out there that is just the statements of facts of "This is what we released."

If you can find some sources to do it that will do it for free, then to a certain degree, why not? But quite often for premium distribution in PRWeb and some of the other press release sites, you've got to pay. I think the last time I looked it was about $120 or so for an individual release, so you've really got to make sure that it's... what's the metaphor I'm looking for? Not the steak is worth the sizzle, but the effort's worth it, basically.

Some of the other things you can do, though, to take the same element but just to amplify a little bit, to get a little more bang for the buck. Let's assume that you've written a press release that's kind of in that middle ground. You haven't spent lots of time and money crafting the perfect press release , but you've put a little bit more attention in it than just "Hey, I've wrote a book. Go and get a copy of it here." There's a little bit of the reason behind it. There's a little bit of the setup, of the benefits of any human interest element of it, as I mentioned, or the outcomes why it was written. Once you have that created, regardless of whether you actually distribute it or not, you can use that thing, that press release to directly contact people.

If there are industry publications, if there are journalists in a particular field, if you know the other organizations putting on presentations or speaking engagements, or if you want to reinforce the point that you're relevant to a certain audience or a certain area, then you can use that press release to directly contact them. So yes, putting it on PRWeb or some of the wire based services that just distribute press releases can be beneficial because it'll get you in front of people that you don't necessarily know albeit it's a very crowded playing field. Using it manually, using it to follow up with people, using as a piece of reinforcing evidence or information is definitely an option.

There are services like... I'm blanking on the name. Haro, H-A-R-O, and... I want to call it Source Bottle, but I'm blanking on the name of that... I'll try and remember it and stick it in the show notes afterwards. Or Google it, basically. I think it you Google "Haro" then it's probably going to come up as a competitive search. These are sites where journalists proactively search for industry experts. A journalist will say, "I'm writing a story on such and such, if you are that person or you know of someone in that area, get them to get in touch with me." You can proactively do some of that searching for journalists who are writing on an area that you're looking for and be helpful to them by providing value. That press release can part of that overall outreach campaign.

Betsey: When I'm writing a press release, and I'm not familiar with it, I've never had to do. So I'm writing it and I've written this book and my specific target audience would be clients. I'm a dentist, say. I put this out there. Am I including information not just on how to get my book, but on how to get to me? Is that the information? Is it just my name? Are people going to have to come and Google me? Betsey Vaughan, dentist, Tampa, Florida? Because you're not sure who you're reaching. You're not gathering any information about people. So what is the important information? How much detail needs to go into that press release so that people might reach out? Are we putting contact information in there or just...? Help me out here.

Stuart: Yeah, so one of the easiest things to do is just Google "press release templates," because honestly, there are a million of them out there that might resonate for very slightly different industries or might resonate with you just for information. HubSpot have actually got a great article on one of their blog posts that talk about press release templates. I just Googled it as we were talking, so that was updated in 2017. There's usually a particular structure which starts off with when and where the press release is coming from. The introductory is a bit like writing a dissertation, the synopsis on a dissertation. Or if you see any of the PubMed full medical research papers, the synopsis piece on that is often written in the very same way.

Starting off with where it's from, who it's from, if there's a hold on the release date or whether it's for immediate release. The title of what it is, the description of what it is, and then finishing off with about the organization or about the person. Contact details, background information. There's also this thing where it typically finishes with three number symbols. What do you call them? Hashtags. I'm blanking on words.

Betsey: Pound signs.

Stuart: Pound signs, yeah.

Betsey: Back in the day.

Stuart: Yeah. Hashtags, I think, is global. Pound signs... In the UK, because the currency is the pound, you'd never call it a pound sign. It's like a bang.

Betsey: Oh, that's interesting.

Stuart: Yeah, it's like a bang for an exclamation mark. No one would ever refer to an exclamation mark as a bang across here. Anyway.

Betsey: The word's always called a hashtag?

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. Well, now that I'm saying it, now I'm questioning it. But yeah, I think so. I think that's where it came from in the first place. Because we never would have called it-

Betsey: A pound sign.

Stuart: Yeah. Or the number symbol. We would've called it a number symbol.

Betsey: A little off subject... but when you call places, you can take the fad if you want, but if you call a business they'll say, "Enter your credit card information followed by a pound sign." They still say "the pound sign." That's never been a thing that... They would always say in the UK, followed by the pound sign. So you would end your credit card information, let them know you were finished, you would hit the pound sign or the hashtag sign, in your case.

Stuart: Do you know, I've... would we call it hashtag or number symbol?

Betsey: Hash or number symbol.

Stuart: Because it... apart from my family, who live likely where I'd live, every single other person I speak to is American, and that's been the case for so many years now, that I really struggle to think back to what it was in the past. We are disappearing down a complete rabbit hole, rabbit warning.

Betsey: I'm sorry.

Stuart: I'm going to say that I don't know and we move back to press releases.

Betsey: Yeah, get back to press releases.

Stuart: Anyone that's listening and knows what the answer is, what we typically used to call pound signs in the UK, then write in and let us know.

Betsey: Yeah.

Stuart: Do a press release on it. So yeah, jumping back. Just to quickly recap, we've got name and address, contact details, company details, like a letter would be up in the top. The release date, whether that's today if it's for immediate release, or a date in the future. The title of what the headline is. The body, which really talks about what the thing is that's being released or talked about, and again, talk about it in terms of benefits, not just features. Then about the company at the end. I'll try to remember to link this blog post in the show notes and people can jump in on that.

Betsey: It's one of those things that you see press releases on a regular basis, but thinking about writing one, it... I Googled, and of course, four thousand templates popped up, and here's examples of how to do it, and it is pretty self-explanatory but when we're thinking about-

Stuart: Yeah, exactly, and as you're listening to this, there's always the issue of someone will have a better template or say that there's a better way of doing it, that there's a particular thing, like the nine word emails that we talk about in terms of engaging leads. People will say, "Oh, well, that's eight words," or "That's ten words." It's not... just doing it in the first place is a thousand times better than not doing it, so don't worry about it being perfect.

The reality is that it's probably a likely... Unless you've got a super big, zeitgeist-y, of the moment thing of why people would want to write about this, the likelihood of it getting picked up or people being interested in it is realistically pretty slim. Especially with what we're talking about. We're not talking about, as you're listening to this now, this isn't a press release for the technology product that you've just invented. This is the press release for the book that you're talking about it. We're not talking about New York Times bestsellers. This isn't a press release talking about how you're about to win an award for the book. This is just to get the message out there and to be able to use it in a slightly different way. So to have more background information, it just creates that bigger picture of things that people may come across if they're looking or that you can refer to later.

One of the better ways of doing it, I think, is look for a couple of examples out there. Templates. Write something that is broadly in line with the standard so that it looks close enough, that it makes sense, that it doesn't look completely out there. Write in a way that talks about benefits not features. The way, not just the what. And then start using it as an opportunity to reach out to other people. Use it as a backup piece to reaching out to individual journalists or individual speaking organizations. Use it as that backup piece rather than thinking that this piece in and of itself is going to make a fundamental difference.

Caveat as always at the end of it is that press releases and writing good press releases can make a fundamental difference, so if it's something that you think you've got a unique perspective on, a unique take, this is something that doesn't exist out there in the marketplace already, this has been making huge inroads into a particular... what do we always get stuck on? Florists. If this book, for some reason, is doing something completely different in the florist environment and it's a game changing book, then by all means, spend the additional energy and effort into making the press release outstanding. Because there might be some reason why it does get that traction.

Okay, that was the first one.

Betsey: Yeah.

Stuart: And we're way further in than I thought, as always.

Betsey: I know, yeah. Sorry.

Stuart: No, no, that's okay. A couple of these next ones are a little bit quicker. What we'll talk about doing is creating other assets to support the release of the book and give you assets that you can refer to in other places. Taking the hard work that you've done already to create the book and then recreating other things based on it that can be used in different formats. Another great example is a mind map.

I'm quite mind map driven. I use mind mapping for outlining quite a lot. Certainly in the early stages of a project, just to get the bigger picture and to see how it all connects together. I find mind maps very useful. I know not everyone's like that, but equally, a lot of people are. If you can take the outline of your book that you've created, even if it's just working from putting the title in the center, the next layer out putting the chapter headings, and the next layer out from that going sort of 1-2-3 layers deep just on the key salient points, it's almost reverse engineering how the book was created in the first place. Likewise, if you did it the other way round. A couple of the books that I've created for individual projects that we've done, I tend to do it the other way around. I start with a mind map and then create my outline from that. So the mind map already exists.

Betsey: Wow.

Stuart: And in fact, that's what we're doing here. The list that we're going through now is actually from a five by five project that we did to create a particular type of book, and a lot of the things that are on this mind map never actually made it into a finished version, but they're still super useful. It's just they ended up on the cutting room floor, as it were. Creating that mind map gives you a visual asset that you can use to back up some of the points that you're already making elsewhere.

We talked last week about the email sequence and following up with people. We talked about the five emails that you should have in place, and in the middle section, if people remember, we were talking about following up with a valued point, a salient point, to kind of amplify the content of the book to add more value and potentially deliver that along with another asset. This mind map could be another asset. On day one, people download a copy of the book. Send them email saying, "Thanks, here's the copy." Day two, follow up with them to ask the spear email, the spear question: short, personal, expecting a reply. Hey Betsey, you looking for a property to invest in or a home to live in? Hey Betsey, have you tried a nine word email yet? Just trying to think of the examples of ours. The 90 minute book one. Hey Betsey, have you dialed in the single target audience that you're working with?

The next email after that was then going back and adding a bit more additional value. That could be this mind map. Hey Betsey, I wanted to follow up and share this mind map with you. This is something we were working on in the early days of the project, but we've shared it with a couple of people and they've found it super valuable because it's got some additional content in there that didn't make it into the book. There are some bullet points that hopefully will give some more color to the project, some more depth, and also it's the visual representation of the book. Certainly, for me, it's sometimes easier just to see it all laid out before me rather than read it in the actual words. So because of the great feedback, I just wanted to make sure that you got a copy of it as well. By the way, have you done such and such? Again, an expecting a reply type question.

In a lot of these things, which are made just from the hard work that's done already, just being able to add additional assets to the arsenal of things that you've got to be able to share with people. A mind map is a super great way of visually being able to create something that looks very different but is actually the same core material. The same-

Betsey: Yeah.

Stuart: Sorry.

Betsey: No, no, that was just to say... I think that it is. There are so many people who are visually minded, and seeing that just reinforces what you're saying or you wanted to say. It's a great tool to use.

Stuart: Yeah, it's definitely all about that amplification, and really having done ninety units worth of effort to get the thing created in the first place, taking an additional five units of effort just to reformat it. Heck, you could even pass it out to outsource work on UpWork or... Sorry. Forgot to mute my phone, obviously, before we started. Yeah, passing out a resource that can take the existing chapter structure. Just give them a copy of the book and say, "Okay, from this book do a mind map, and the levels should be title in the center, chapter headings, then anything that's bold in the book. Or from every fifth paragraph, pick a work that stands out as being particularly important or salient. And create a mind map out of it." So this doesn't even have to be effort that's done by yourself, because you've done the effort already by creating it in the first place.

Likewise then, although this one's a little bit more complicated, is infographics. Two years ago, three years ago, maybe, infographics were very big. Everything had an infographic associated with it. That hotness, as it were, has kind of tailed off slightly, but they're still super valuable. Particularly if you've got something that's infographicable, for want of a better term. Depending on how the book's set up and what you're talking about, some of them are going to be more in tune to that, and I think that's the thing about this whole grab bag that we're talking about. Some of these things are going to be very relevant to you and you can think immediately, yeah, that's a quick and easy win. And some of them are not going to be relevant at all, so just skip forward a minute or two until we get to the next one.

Infographics, there's a stack of services out there of people that will do them for you. Just go onto Fiverr, even, for the real cost effective way of getting something created. You can imagine going from the outline of the book to a mind map to an infographic. It's pretty easy to see how, just from the mind map, you could get an infographic created, because again the layout and the relationships kind of create it for them. All it takes is someone with a design eye and access to some good looking clip art to pull it all together.

Again, there's a sliding scale of this. You could spend $5 on an infographic or you could spend $500 on an infographic. There's a company that I know in Belgium, some good friends across there, who... data visualization is their whole business, and they can spends tens of thousands of dollars creating. They also go into the data and do all the research, but tens of thousands of dollars on something that turns into an infographic. So a sliding scale, depending on how you're going to use it and how much time or budget or effort you've got, it's going to very. But just know that you can get something done on all of these things that we're going to talk about today. You can get something done at the $5 end of the spectrum. It doesn't have to be "I can't do that because it's too complicated or too much time or too much money." There really is a quick and easy way to start it.

Betsey: I think that's good. Good start.

Stuart: The new one, which is kind of related, is slide shares or presentations. From these things that we've just talked about, the infographic particularly... I didn't necessarily plan for it to go this way, but there is kind of a transition or a natural flow from a mind map to the infographic to the presentation. They're kind of the next layer of complexity. They take a little bit more of time and attention, or someone's time and attention, not necessarily yours. Creating the presentation deck, the slide deck, from the infographic or from the mind map, is another great way of adding another layer.

You can imagine having sent from this one piece of content, the book. You can now send someone the mind map. You can send someone the infographic. You can send someone the slide deck. All around the context of staying in email communication with someone, because what you're trying to do is start that conversation and get what we often refer to as the love letter back. When people finally respond and give the backstory to what they wanted to create, we see it with the books. People will very, very often eventually send us the big email that's got all of the details. The presentation, again, doesn't have to be you. You can find people online that will do this for you. Give them the source material and they'll create it.

But the slide share could be, "Hey Betsey, we've been talking over the last couple of weeks about this particular issue. I wanted to share now this slide deck with you that we used in a presentation recently. We got a lot of great feedback from the participants. Obviously it's not quite the same as being there, but again, because we're talking like this, I just wanted to share it. A lot of people have got some value from it, so here it is. By the way, whatever the engaging questions is."

There's a web service called SlideShare, which is a slide presentation repository where you can upload presentations, too. That does in and of itself get out an amount of traffic. It is a traffic source, so not only can you point people to that once you've got it up on SlideShare, but other people search for SlideShares. It's indexed in Google, obviously, so there is an opportunity to get traffic from that source. Creating a slide deck out of it, and then it's also something you can use later, as well. Don't just create it for the sake of creating and having it, but create it with the opportunity to use it at a presentation at a later date.

That then probably leads us on to that next one, which is kind of the partners type approach. Who are the partners that you can reach out to, add value to, from the things that you're creating? The book itself ultimately leading to wanting a speaking engagement. I think on the show a month or so ago I was talking about a guy called Mohammed that we were talking to in Canada. He does a lot of work with the... I forget what you call it. The federation of small business, the chamber of commerce type guys. He was doing a lot of the training for them based on their programs, so they've got a good partnership relationship. There's the opportunity to... Don't skip the opportunity to reach out to these guys with some of these assets that we're talking creating.

Let's say for example it was the florists. Let's stick with the florist example. From the book, we create the mind map that we've shared with people about how to plan wedding flowers in May and fall, because of all of these constraints around what flowers you can get and who's open and all that type of stuff. Create the infographic from that, which crystallizes the main points and adds a bit more visual elements to it than just the mind map.

That infographic can then be shared with these partner organizations to say, "Hey, I know that you're talking about this. This is important for your people," if you're a photographer. We talk a lot about complementary, non-competing organizations. So: "You're a photographer. I know that the people that you're working with are going to be talking about flowers a lot. We've actually created this guide, this infographic, that just gives a super high level overview of the particular things that are constraints in our particular area. I just wanted to give this to you so that you can give it to your people. They'll get a lot of value from it."

Using that as a door opener to then lead towards the book, to then lead towards customers, it's just another... I mentioned it before. It's another weapon in the arsenal. It's another little foot soldier out there. It's another door opener, a way in. From this original book, this thing that you've spent time and effort creating... Hopefully you've created it with us so it's less time and effort than doing it elsewhere, but still, it's something that's taken some time and effort to create. Adding in all these other elements, all these little foot soldiers that can be out there fighting individual battles so that overall, your campaign is more likely to be more and more successful.

Betsey: So when you really think about-

Stuart: I need to take a drink.

Betsey: No, yeah, go ahead. So when you think about reaching out to non-competing businesses, like we said, if we're talking about the florist. Maybe venues and photographers and those kinds of things. Bakeries. People that are all in that industry. I think about somebody who comes to me and says, "Oh, hey, I got this and this. We've never met, but would you promote me?" And I'm always hesitant when it's that kind of engagement, so I always think, "I wish we had a relationship before and it wasn't that one sided"... Not that I don't want to help people, but you also, you know, if I don't have a relationship you feel like "Oh gosh, I don't know."

Stuart: This ties in with everything we talk about throughout the whole process actually, not just today. One of the things that you just said, that I wish we had a relationship before. Well, depending on which side of the equation you're on, it's that old adage of "When's the best time to plant an oak tree? 275 years ago. When's the second best time to plant an oak tree? Today."

Betsey: Right, yeah.

Stuart: Because that's what it is. What're you going to do about it? You have today.

Betsey: Yeah.

Stuart: The other thing that you said that's more salient is... You said something along the lines of going and seeing the people at the bakery and giving them this thing and saying "Hey, can you promote me?" Or when people come to you and they say "Hey, we haven't met before, but can you promote me?" That's the problem, and that's the thing that doesn't work, and that's what too many people do. Not enough people do the opposite, which is positioning it as "Hey, I've got this thing that will help you," not "Can you promote me?" "I've got this thing that can help you." Not saying to them "Hey, I've got this thing that looks great, it's super valuable. If you give me their email address I'll send it to them." Because who wants to do that?

Not giving them a thing that's got your logo in huge print all over the top of it and overly says "The only way to solve this problem is to call me." But instead giving them the thing that's got a reference at the bottom of it as to where they can learn more. They can take the next step. The next step isn't, then, to engage you and do business with you. The next step is to learn more about that particular thing.

What it might be, sticking with the florist example, is "Here's the infographic we've created to fall wedding flowers in Maine. But that's what we've created. Because there are certain constraints within the area that means that a whole host of flowers that people think about traditionally aren't available and the majority of the city, the towns, are tourist based. You'd be surprised how many of them shut down over the winter." I'm sure that's not the case, but that would be a reason for doing this thing. Creating the infographic that gives the summary of all of that in a valuable way and highlights to people things to watch out for in a way that's not overly branded, but then says to them, blah blah blah. Here are all of the details. This is super useful. It looks good. It's interesting. Feel free to give this to your guys. They'll get a lot from it. And then at the bottom there's something relatively small and tasteful that says "By the way, if you want to learn even more, feel free to grab a free copy of the full Maine Wedding Flower Guide from fallmaineweddingflowerguide.com" at the bottom.

So there is a course of action. There is a next step, but the next step isn't a big emblazoned picture of you at the bottom holding a big bouquet and a sign saying "Come work with me." It's "Here's the next step that you can take." It's like we talk about the back of a copy. We often talk to people about the back of a copy should, where possible, achieve three things.

It should give people the opportunity to find out more if they're just curious and they're not really ready to pull the trigger. It should give them the opportunity to raise their hand and request something more that helps you identify either them at the very beginning, if they're seeing a copy of the book but you don't know who they are, so a physical copy, or if you do know who they are because they're requested a digital copy, but now they're identifying themselves as hotter prospects because they're asking for the next thing. Then the third thing that should be on there is the opportunity for "Hey, here's how you can get started now," and give them the opportunity so that the hottest ones can really get ready.

These assets that we're talking about now are then two, three, four levels farther back in the funnel, even further up than that. Or down in the funnel, depending on which way we're looking at it. But they're all things that just lead people to the next minimum viable commitment, the next little step. Yes, if you went out and said to people, "Hey, I've done this thing, it's great, can you promote me?" The uptake on that's going to be... you're not going to get the best response. But if it can really be positioned in a way that it gives that photographer, that baker, a way to... not up their game, but to deliver more value to their customers, then that response is going to be a lot more. And obviously, exactly as you said, if you'd had a relationship with these people already, then obviously that's going to be the best.

Betsey: Right, right. Okay. I gotcha.

Stuart: I'm going to group together these next four or five things. In fact, actually let's quickly do YouTube, because that's another one that's definitely worthwhile doing just because of the volume of traffic that it gets. You can take some of the content that you've already got and break down chapter by chapter into small segments. You don't need to put the whole thing. You don't need to read the whole book into a YouTube video and have it up there as a single video. Within the book, there's going to be fifty talking points that you've got underneath the five main chapters. There's going to be ten individual things that you can do a very short video on.

If anyone wants to see an example of this, you should check on Jim Hacking's website, at hackinglawpractice.com. There is... actually, let me just double check that as I said it out loud. Head across to Jim because their YouTube channel, which again I'll try and link in the show notes if I remember, is a great example of taking a whole load of topics around immigration and family-based law, and creating YouTube videos on those individual subjects. They've got a massive library now of subjects that gets a lot of traction. Jim does a lot of face to camera stuff, which is uncomfortable for a lot of people, so I'm not necessarily doing that. But if we jump back to the slide share example, you could just do a YouTube video that was talking through the slide share and amplifying and building up on some of the points that are talked about in the slides. You definitely don't have to do a two camera piece. That can be broken down across all of the different subjects, all of the different talking points within it. A lot of short videos.

Equally, talking about the partners thing that we mentioned before, or talking about the human interest angle that we were talking about before, it definitely is worthwhile in some cases creating a video specifically for one use case. If there was one type of flowers that were a particular issue, although the book's talking about everything in general, doing a YouTube video about one type of flower in one particular city or one area of the state, and using some of the assets that we've talked about, either the mind map or the slide share as the focus point. In talking about it, talk about it from the point of view of that particular channel, of that particular specialty niche. It's a way of creating things that are tailored to the audience, tailored to the purpose, because then you'll have in addition to the other things we were talking about, videos that you can point people to.

I just did a video on that, actually. If you head across there, you can check it out. I'll talk about that a little bit more in this next wrap up section. So YouTube's definitely one that's worthwhile doing. It doesn't have to be super high production value. It doesn't have to be blog type stuff. It doesn't have to be face to camera. It can literally just be the walkthrough of the screen share. The main thing is the words that you're saying underneath it, the value that you're giving to people that are reading it, and then the opportunity that you've got to share it with people in lots of different areas.

Betsey: Real fast. More and more of our clients are using videos, and we get approached about "Hey, I've done a series of 25 videos, and can I turn them into a book?" No. Let's just say no. But I'm hearing more and more that they're using the YouTube and I think some people, when I bring it up to others, they're trying to come up with ideas about how to get their book out there or how to get their business out there, learn about them, and we talk about YouTube. People are a little intimidated with that. I can't do that. But you said it. It doesn't have to be that high quality production. Most of the YouTube videos are not, you know? There's just somebody hitting record and speaking or singing or telling a joke or whatever it is. Just talking into it.

I think people shouldn't be afraid to... and I am afraid. That's not my comfort level, so I understand that, but it's such a valuable tool to use. I think that if you can put yourself, your picture out there, your face out there, looking at the camera, because it just gives people... people just start to trust you and they feel like there's a personal relationship when they're seeing that person on the screen. Yeah.

Stuart: I think it's like we say with a book. When people see a book, the benefit of it is that people often have a traditional publishing deal type mentality around it, and that's the benefit for us as marketers. We can take some of that kudos and expectation and the persuasion elements of that and benefit of doing it by creating something that is valuable but far more effective in a bigger funnel, by creating a 90 minute book rather than tens of thousands of dollars on a more traditional book. The same with YouTube. When you say YouTube, a lot of people think about the super high quality production value stuff of the likes of Casey Neistat or whatever these big channels are.

But the reality is that's right at the top of the spectrum and it really doesn't have to be that. Doing a screen share is the easiest way to get started, and then further down the track or if you've got a specific use case for it, then maybe look at expanding that into other things. But that's not where you should be starting, because you won't, basically, unless you're film production company doing that.

Betsey: You know, it's very similar to writing a 90 minute book. Content is key. As long as you've got valuable book content, then people don't care that your dog's barking in the background necessarily. They don't care that your hair's not perfect and you're not a makeup person. As long as what you're delivering to that audience is great content, people shouldn't worry about that.

Stuart: Yeah, exactly. It adds value and at the end of the day, they don't... in the nicest possible way, they don't care about you. They're just trying to move on-

Betsey: Exactly.

Stuart: And resolve whatever issue they're doing. And if you can provide that information that does it, fantastic.

Betsey: Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: Okay, I'm just going to quickly run through this last little group of things that we've got, because they're all the same thing. On the list, we've got forums, message boards, signatures, and profiles. These are all things where you're out in the world. And LinkedIn is on this list as well. All of these things are where you're out in the world and you've got the opportunity to intersect with people. Going back to the example we were talking about before with here someone just comes up to you and asks you to promote, that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Likewise if you were at a party and someone just suddenly walks up to you and starts talking about how good they are and all of these things that you should do, that doesn't go down very well. But if someone's been there talking for a while or if you know the person historically and they've added little bits of value here and there, then it builds up to a bigger picture.

With all of these things, forums, message boards, if you just do a fly by night thing and drop a promotion bomb in there, then that's not going to resonate very well. But if you're in there answering questions and adding value, and then saying to people, "Here's the answer to this question that you're looking for. By the way, I've actually written a whole book on this, so feel free to grab a copy and get a copy over there." Rather than kind of mansplaining to people why they should be doing this and then saying, "Well, I would tell you, but the only way I'll tell you is if you go and get a copy of the book."

All of these little assets, and there's hundreds of others that we haven't either thought of or covered, the objective is to have all of these little elements, all of these small, easy to create things, because you've done the hard work already. Just different ways of presenting the same information because it resonates with people in different ways and it's relevant to people in different ways. Creating some of these things so that they're there, waiting to be deployed in the most effective way possible, and it just amplifies the effort that you've already done in creating the book in the first place. It gives you more and more opportunities to get in front of people in the right place at the right time in a way that's going to resonate with them.

Hopefully there's something that's resonated with you as you've listened to this. I mentioned this is episode 58, so I'm going to put some show notes up with this and there'll be the transcript up shortly as well. Head over to 90minutebooks.com/podcast and episode 58 will be in the stream there.

If you want to get started, if you haven't written a book yet, if some of these ideas have fired up the juices a little bit to get it created so that you can go on to create some of these things, or equally, I guess, the other way around. If you've got a lot of these little things created already, turning those into the outline of a book and then working with us to record it and getting the book out there to give you a bigger asset, a bigger thing that you can point people towards so that the funnel's more effective, then of course just head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links.

We can have that asset created for you in the next couple of weeks, couple of months. Where are we now? End of April, so early summer a lot of these things can be in place and just be part of this funnel. That's got all of these little things leading people towards the next minimum viable commitment step that takes them on the journey towards eventually being customers.

Betsey: Very good. I think the last few seven or eight podcasts we've done, there's been such valuable information. An example: my partner in life, he follows us, he follows Dean, and he hears me all day long talking about our business and what we do. I give him advice because he's been a business owner for thirty years, and so I'm always sharing things. But it wasn't until he listened to the last podcast and he said, "You know what I think I'm going to do?" And he started talking about the five email follow up sequence. And I was like, "But that's my information. I've been saying this for four years. What do you mean? Why are you now thinking of doing it?" I think sometimes people just don't... people do sometimes need somebody else to say it or hear it more frequently.

There's just a lot of great information that's either free or very inexpensive, not time consuming. I'd love to hear from our listeners, their thoughts on what they're getting out of this and what they're using. We'd love to hear from you all about this. I think it's just great information, seeing where it hits right in my own house. It kind of dawns on him. Yeah. I would love to hear from people.

Stuart: Yeah, as you're listening to this, if you do have any feedback, then shoot us an email either to support@90minutebooks or podcasts@90minutesbooks and we'll be there to pick that up. If you've got any particular questions or points you want us to dive deeper on or other areas that we haven't covered that you want to bring us into... either A, make us aware of or B, want us to talk about it in the context of a book and the funnel afterwards, then definitely shoot us a note, and it'll be great to follow up with that.

What you were talking about with Mike there having heard things that you've said but it was only when he heard it in a different way or at a different time that it resonates, that highlights exactly what we're talking about here. The likelihood of you landing in front of someone's desk or email or landing in their ears at exactly the right time is pretty slim, so if you can create multiple things all based on the same thing that reinforce and amplify the point in a very slightly different way, the more check moves that you can put out there. The more opportunities that you've got to get in front of people, the more likely you are to get checkmate, to get that love letter email back, to get that engagement. I think that really highlights what we've actually been talking about.

Betsey: Yeah, for sure.

Stuart: Perfect. Okay, well thanks again for your time, Betsey, and thanks everyone for listening. We will catch you all on the next one.

Betsey: Very good. Take care.

Stuart: Take care. Bye!