The Truth about Marketing

From Here.

1. Do all the thinking for them

The worst mistake you can make when asking anyone for anything is telling them to “Think it over.”
Here’s why: people already have too much to think about.

And so the best strategy is to not ask them to think.

Be specific. Explain your reasoning. Offer proof. Tell them what to do next and why.
If you do it right, it won’t feel like asking at all. It’ll be more like advising.
And they’ll say yes. Not because of magical powers of persuasion, but because you’ve thought through everything, and it’s a no-brainer.

2. Start an avalanche

Pushing over a small rock is easier than pushing over a boulder, but the boulder is a lot more likely to cause an avalanche. So while it’s more work in the beginning to get top people to help you, it’s actually less work in the long run, and the results are far, far greater.

3. Ask for an inch, take a mile

Whenever you’re asking for anything, never start by asking for everything upfront. Instead, start small. Make it easy to get started. Reduce the risk if it flops. Let them see the results for themselves. And when it goes well, ask for more. And more. And more.
You might think that’s unethical, but if everything is going well, why not push for more? It’s not manipulation. It’s common sense.
For instance:

If you want to write a guest post for a popular blog, start by pitching the idea in one or two paragraphs, and then send them an outline, and then write the full draft of the post

If you want do a JV promotion with a leader in your field, start by asking them to email your launch content to only 10% of their list, and than 50% of their list, and then 100%, and then a direct mail campaign

If you want your customers to give you case studies, start by asking for a 1-3 sentence blurb, and then ask for a half-page testimonial, and then talk about doing a two-hour webinar going in depth about their success

No one likes to risk everything upfront, and by offering progressive levels of commitment, your chances of getting them to say yes go through the roof.

4. Always have a real deadline

The keyword is “real.”
 

Real urgency is easy to create. With a little thought, you can build it into your marketing. For example:

• Instead of leaving a free report on your blog forever, tell everyone it will only be available for seven days, and then you’re going to start charging $7 for it. Not only will you get a lot more downloads, but other bloggers will be a lot more likely to promote it during the window
• Instead of letting JV partners dictate when they will promote your product, schedule a launch, announce it to your list, and then forward partners the announcement, inviting them to participate
• Instead of asking customers for testimonials whenever they get around to it, show them the timeline for an upcoming launch, including a specific date to send out testimonials. You need it by then, or you won’t be able to include it

Will some of them bow out, saying they are too busy right now, and they’ll catch you next time?
Sure, but it’s better than never getting started it all. And if you let other people dictate timelines, that’s exactly what will happen.

5. Give ten times more than you take

It’s about generosity so overwhelming they can’t say no.

6. Stand for something greater than yourself

That’s the power of standing for something bigger than yourself. It makes people care.
And it applies to everything:

• Instead of writing yet another how-to post, take a stand on an important issue, arguing with both passion and unassailable logic
• Instead of starting yet another me-too consulting business, create a movement, working tirelessly to change the lives of your customers
• Instead of selling yet another step-by-step manual, sell a philosophy, filled with heroic examples to inspire your customers

Those are the types of things people want to talk about. They feel grateful just for having the chance to help you spread the word.

7. Be completely and utterly shameless

You want to know what separates a great marketer from a mediocre one?
Shamelessness.

By shamelessness, I mean this:An unshakable belief that what you are doing is good for the world and the willingness to do anything to bring it into being.
When you believe in your content, you don’t publish it and forget it. You promote it day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, working tirelessly to spread the message to everyone who needs to hear it, and refusing to rest until they do.
When you believe in your product, you don’t balk at sales. You revel in it. Not because you’re greedy or desperate or egotistical, but because you know your product will help them, and so it’s your duty to get them to buy. Whatever it takes.
When you believe in your charity, you don’t beg for donations. You demand them. You grab people by the shoulders and look them in the eyes and tell them what you’re doing is changing the world, and it’s time for them to step up and do their part.
It’s not about money. It’s not about glory. It’s not even about legacy.
It’s about falling in love. It’s about being enchanted. It’s about seeing a vision so beautiful you can’t help but fight to make it real.
Do you have a vision like that? Something worth getting up every day and fighting for?
If you do, you can accomplish damn near anything.

Elmore Leonard's Rules of Writing

From: http://www.kabedford.com/archives/000013.html

In keeping with recent posts featuring prominent authors' tips for writers, here's Elmore Leonard's famous Ten Rules of Writing. Leonard is a crime writer, and quite possibly among my top three favourite writers ever. Looking over these rules, I can see I've got a lot of trimming to do in my own work. Too much "hooptedoodle", it would appear. Link.

Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle

from the New York Times, Writers on Writing Series.

By ELMORE LEONARD

These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday,” but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character—the one whose view best brings the scene to life—I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in “Sweet Thursday” was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.”

“Sweet Thursday” came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.