Wednesday 22 December 2010

Personality

If you are thinking about writing a book, or if you are indeed in the process of writing, pause for a moment and consider your book's personality.

Is it contained within the subject? Your style of writing? Perhaps the cover design or even the paper that the book is printed on?

You might take a dry, authoritative tone, a bright chatty tone or even an uplifting and inspiring tone. But this alone is not your book's personality.

When your reader picks up your book, they are entering into a relationship, a conversation with the author that transcends space and time. The connection is made in the here and now, regardless of how long ago you sat down in front of a keyboard.

The book's personality, then, is this. As the reader engages with the book, they create an imaginary narrator. That narrator is the personality of your book.

The personality of the book is made up of its title, cover design, size, format, paper weight, chapter headings, writing style and possibly more.

Don't worry though, getting it right isn't difficult. Just imagine that you are holding your book in your hand, and feeling just right about it. Perhaps proud, perhaps excited. How does it look? How does it sound? How do you feel about it?

Let all of those design elements come naturally out of the book's personality, and you'll ensure that you always create the right connection with your readers.

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Latest Fry results - Jungle celebrities versus Internet marketing experts

Following the interest in our introduction of 'The Fry' as the standard unit of Internet value, we have been researching who would be the best person to invest your social media marketing budget in.

We have compared the Fry ratings of the 13 celebrities to appear in this year's 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' with the top ten Internet marketing experts, according to Google's search results for that phrase.

You can click on the graphs to see a larger version.

I'm a Celebrity 2010
Internet marketing experts
To compare our experts and celebrities side by side, we have to use a logarithmic scale, because if we showed them on a normal geometric scale, you would see this:

Celebrities v Experts (Geometric scale)

Here's the logarithmic version, so each vertical line is ten times the value of the previous one.

Celebrities v Experts (Logarithmic scale)

So, there you have it. You would be better off investing in 11 out of 13 celebrities than even the most successful Internet marketing expert.

Our selection criteria for the experts is that they call themselves an expert and they are within the top ten names to appear. Interestingly, while there are fewer people calling themselves an 'Internet marketing guru', their performance is no better.

The highest rated 'guru' is still no better than the experts, and the lowest rated of the top three 'gurus' is actually the worst of all, although his rating is perhaps understandable when you see that his website boasts, "His true specialty is his mastery of the Internet as a complete tool".

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Introducing a new book from CGW and ABSEM

Following the interest in our research into Internet value, CGW and ABSEM have decided to collaborate on a new book.

It will be aimed at start-up business owners and entrepreneurs and will strip away all the hype of marketing, especially Internet marketing. It will give you the practical reality of how to give your business maximum exposure and still leave you time to deliver your service or sell your product.

Between us, we have unique experiences that you don't see anywhere else, simply because everyone else is just selling the hype. We have both built successful businesses and we're going to capture that unique combination in the new book.

We haven't chosen a snappy title yet, perhaps you can suggest one? Leave a comment...

Friday 3 December 2010

Announcing 'The Fry' as the unit of Internet marketing value

(Read more on the Fry, Twitter and internet marketing here)

As social networking becomes the latest battleground of the Internet marketers, the value of individuals will be measured and quantified from the amount of news and relevant information that they contribute to the world.

To counter the hype coming out of the Internet marketing guru's camp, we've developed a simple way for anyone to understand the truth about Internet marketing through social media and ensure trust and credibility are given to the right people.

In the summer of 2010, we were working on a new book for hopeful business authors called Write For You. In writing the chapter on marketing, we began to research the 'Internet marketing gurus' who advocate using sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as marketing tools, and what they found was startling. It turned out that the Internet experts had next to no value, while individuals who were traditionally newsworthy were very valuable.

Let's continue with the press release...

“This all started when we received a newsletter email from someone we know, a sales manager turned small business consultant and social media marketing expert', says Greenaway. “We knew that the image he portrayed bore no resemblance to the reality of his business, and so we started to look into what he was really up to”

Hartley adds, “We began to research Twitter, since this was the tool that the marketing experts seemed to be pushing most”. What she quickly found was that the Internet marketers were using a very simple and a very old trick to make it appear as if they were popular, when in fact they were extremely unpopular. In many cases, their real popularity was so low that they have a negative effect on the amount of information in the world.

“We live in the information age. We have twenty four hour a day news, advertisements pushed to our mobiles, advertising on just about every Internet page and TV program and possible more blogs, Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds than there are human beings on the planet. Socially, we have developed a thirst for knowledge, and therefore the marketers of the world have evolved to meet that need”, say Greenaway and Hartley as they expand on their idea. “In the information age, we value people for how much information they add. This isn't a new idea – we've always valued people who had news from the front line or gossip from the manager's office. Technology simply adds a new level of immediacy to the problem.”

Greenaway and Hartley continued to piece together the different pieces of this puzzle, and in July 2010, they developed a simple system that anyone can use to determine the true value of someone who purports to be an Internet marketing 'expert'

(See the chart at the bottom of this post for more Fry ratings)

In their book, Write For You, they tell the story of what happened next.

“The most popular British writer on Twitter, Stephen Fry, who on July 16th 2010 was following 53,497 people and was followed by 1,616,454 people. This meant that Stephen Fry generates 30 times more interesting thoughts than he consumes, so we decided to use Stephen Fry as a measure of newsworthiness and give him a value of 1 Fry.

In comparison, Jerry Springer, the American TV host, is worth 50 Frys. He contributes 50 times the amount of news as does Stephen Fry.

Oprah Winfrey, the American TV talk show host, is worth 6,625 Frys, or 6.6 KiloFrys.

Clearly, people who are traditionally popular carry more authority, because people want to hear what they have to say.

Paul O’Grady, the British comedian turned TV presenter and author, changes the picture quite significantly. He has only 13,340 followers, but he isn’t following anyone, so his value is infinite. But for the purposes of calculating a number, we must assume that he is somewhat interested in at least someone, so we added an arbitrary variable to our formula which gives him a value of 441 KiloFrys or 0.44 MegaFrys.

The singer David Bowie, by our formula, has a value of 1.54 MegaFrys. He contributes 1.54 Million times the news value of Stephen Fry.

At the other end of the scale, an Internet marketing guru in America, who has lectured at Harvard Business School on the value of Twitter to businesses, scores just 0.03 Frys or 30 MilliFrys.

She is followed by 59,427 people but is following 59,080 people, a difference of just 447. While Internet marketing ‘experts’ focus on the 59,427, what we need to look at is the 447, because this indicates the value that the person adds.

The Internet marketers try to convince us that having 59,427 people following you is good for publicity, but the fact that she needs to follow 59,080 people in order to attract her followers is very bad indeed.

The way that Twitter gurus advocate building a following is to say to each other, “Hey, if I follow you, will you follow me? It will be good for both of us!” No, it won’t.

If you're lost in a remote jungle, you won't survive any longer by saying, “Hey, if I eat your leg, you can eat mine!”

A British sales manager turned small business consultant and social media expert has 1,216 followers who enjoy reading about the fact that it’s sunny today. He is following 1,235 people, so he produces less news than he consumes. His news value is less than zero Frys at -0.02 Frys, or -20 MilliFrys. What’s worrying is that he advises businesses on the importance of social media marketing.

The smaller the number of Frys, the less interesting the person is. A negative number means that on top of being grossly uninteresting, the person actually detracts from the amount of news in the world.

An American Internet marketing guru who says that he “helps businesses to elevate their status in the online world to maximise their marketing exposure” as he “travels the world imparting his wisdom” is worth -0.05 Frys, or -50 MilliFrys.

His unnewsworthiness is surpassed only by the British singer and TV presenter, Cilla Black. She measures in at -1.76 Frys.

In fact, none of the Internet marketing gurus who we found advocating Twitter as the latest business marketing tool scored any higher than 9 MilliFrys, which is disappointing when you notice that Dick Van Dyke of “Cor blimey Mary Poppins!” fame scores just over 3 Frys.

A dancing chimney sweep is a factor of a thousand more important than the most successful Internet marketer.
This is especially disappointing if you have paid Internet marketing experts people a lot of money to build a social media marketing campaign for you. You would literally be better off spending your money with a man who dances with penguins.”

A simple calculation of the difference between creation and consumption, between import and export, immediately reveals who is actually creating value. And in any business, creating value is the way to make a living.

The key is to use these tools to create a genuine following. Don’t simply follow other people, concentrate on saying something of real value. If you're not already interesting, and let's face it, most people aren't, then having lots of people following you doesn't make you interesting. Remember, in the world of social media, they're not following you; they're stalking you.

CGW Publishing is a British independent publisher of business books, working with expert authors to create a service business around their intellectual property.

(Read more on the Fry, Twitter and internet marketing here)

Fry ratings chart: click on the the chart to see a full sized version