Positively Promoting Your Business with Booklets

OK, so I got on a little alliteration kick there :-) Reviewing a prospective client's manuscript this week brought to mind two different approaches marketers use to reach their audience:

* pain

* pleasure

The manuscript I read focused more on the first approach. It was about mistakes not to make, things to avoid, what not to do, and, well, you get the idea. I had to remind myself while reading it that most of the items started with "not," which became confusing for me, and not helpful at all. "People make these mistakes by not doing..." That takes a lot of mental work to re-frame that into what TO do. And the person told me it's not his typical approach to life, either, so it was not particularly an authentic way for him to write.

On the pleasure side, if you tell me what TO do, and I get the results I want, well, you've been helpful and I want more of what you're about. You've created a level of pleasure in my life, and it's going to be a pleasure for me to do business with you.

No doubt someone could readily build a case for providing solutions that take away someone's pain. Personally, I'd rather do that from a positive perspective than any other way. It's why I teach you to write the tips in your booklet starting with a positive verb, telling your reader what TO do.

How about you? What do you prefer, both as the provider of information and the recipient of it?

Until next time,

Paulette - focusing on the positive and sharing it with you

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklets a Great Small Business Promotion Tool for Associations, Too

When was the last time a professional association you belong to offered you the chance to market your business and have a new product simultaneously by your participation in a collaborative tips booklets with other members?

Probably never.

There are very few membership associations that can live on dues alone. It just doesn't happen. Member services to attract and retain members usually cost more than what can be generated by dues that must be kept at a price members will pay. And associations are like any other business, small or large. They need income to operate. That income is comprised of both dues and non-dues income.

Non-dues income typically comes as sponsorships from vendors, special events that bring in a surge of new money to add to the dues income, or related products the association sells.

What if your association had a product that both marketed its members, was a source of income for the association, and generated business for its members' companies at the same time - one thing that accomplished multiple functions for the associations and its members? Seems pretty attractive doesn't it?

That's exactly what several associations are now realizing as new titles are being offered through www.CollectionOfExperts.com One booklet was recently completed for the Orange County (California) chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. Another is about to be launched for a state eldercare providers association. This is so easy for everyone to have an instant product and an instant marketing team that it becomes a no-brainer.

It's an easy, inexpensive small business promotion tool for the business owner and the association. We're in conversation now with several associations as well as individual business owners.

There is also a Collection of Experts booklet that is unrelated to any association that is about half full at the moment - Tips, Tools, and Resources for the Second Half of Life. If that suits you or anyone you know, apply to grab a spot in that before it fills completely. Those places are going fast, especially since it just became available this week!

And what about those associations you belong to, what about bringing this concept to them? It's a great small business promotion tool for you and your colleagues. Let's create one for you and 13 people you want to easily, effortlessly, and enjoyably promote each other.

Until next time,

Paulette - thinking back on how this started with an association of Professional Organizers, in the pre-Internet Dark Ages!

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Join New Free LinkedIn Discussion Group

Booklets and Guarantees

Watching the Winter Olympics, there are so many life lessons to learn, whether about business or personal life, booklets or anything else you do. Consider the years and years it's taken for the athletes to hone their skills so they can reliably repeat their success. And one little misstep throws years of effort away in a split second. Some start again and others decide it's the end of their journey. There are no guarantees.

Every athlete has their pace, regardless of the sport. There is no guarantee that a certain amount of effort over a certain period of time will produce a certain result.

The same is true with tips booklets. You can write yours overnight as some have done, or you can take 10 years to complete yours as others have done. You can diligently approach every logical and reasonable prospective client and still come out with less than the goal you set for yourself.

Or, everything can line up like clockwork, all falling into place, with your results surpassing everything you ever imagined and more. Yes, it's important to set your sites high. However, there are so many variables in who you are and in who you deal with. The best you can do is to keep doing and keep being. What you're likely to find are wonderful surprises beyond anything you ever considered.

Until next time,
Paulette - whose crystal ball has been in the shop for years

www.tipsbooklets.com
Join the new free tipsbooklets.com discussion at LinkedIn.com

Booklets Promote Small Business

Booklets promote small business and big business alike, whether it's a printed booklet or an ebooklet. The big difference is how far a reach you get. Many people like to start by selling a single copy directly to the reader. Note, I mentioned that's a starting point. While that brings you some income and promotes your business, it's a much slower process than necessary.

Imagine your booklet being a tool to promote small business (yours!) and big business (your buyers') at the same time. Your buyer is a company or an association who buys thousands or even millions of copies from you, with you imprinting their company logo and contact information, while keeping your company's contact info there, too. You just got paid for someone else to market you and their own company at the same time. How much better does it get than that?

And the people who receive your booklet from your big business buyer want more of what you offer. That is all a different sales calculation on your end than determining how many booklets you need to sell at $5 apiece in order to get the return on your investment of the materials that took you step by step through the process of how to sell those large quantities.

A single large-quantity sale can bring you thousands of dollars in one transaction and untold income from the companies who received a copy of your booklet from the big business buyer who used it to promote their company.

Yes, single copy $5 sales of your booklet are a good place to start. But why would you want to stay there?

Until next time,
Paulette - encouraging you to build a bigger bottom line for your business

www.tipsbooklets.com

NOTE: Have you joined the new lively Tipsbooklets.com Discussion Group yet at LinkedIn?

Talking About Booklets Someplace Else

This week a new place was created to discuss tips booklets. I formed a no-cost discussion group on www.LinkedIn.com You can get there by going to http://ping.fm/0XmJA

Within two days, 71 people registered for it and several people have already posed questions and responses about tips booklets. Go see what I mean.

Here are some reasons why I did this:

* It was quick and easy to set up and to announce, and is no cost to anyone.
* It provides yet one more venue for providing people the chance to connect about tips booklets.
* It's at a social networking site that is more in line with the professionalism of the tips booklets brand.

There are probably other reasons, though that's what immediately comes to mind.

So, given that there is this blog you are reading, which also gets posted to Facebook both of which provide opportunities for comments, and there is a weekly transmission of Booklet Tips from Paulette ezine each Monday, and a Facebook and a Twitter account, and a well-established site at www.tipsbooklets. com , why would I create yet one more place at www.LinkedIn.com ?

71 people in less than two days so far have proven why. It's a place and mechanism that works for them. Years ago I had a very active discussion board on my site where people talked about tips booklets throughout the week from all over the world. Discussion boards of that nature ran their course with many of them ultimately dying out. Mine was among them. Yet people have continued asking where they can network with other booklet authors. So the need is there, and apparently an easy solution is, too.

All of this reinforces the concept presented earlier this week of providing your expertise in the formats your buyers want. Well, here we are again. Many people regularly (or irregularly) follow my work on my site, blog, ezine, Facebook, Twitter, and other places, yet LinkedIn also appealed to them.

Included among those 71 people are folks whose names are unfamiliar to me, thanks in part to other people I know passing along news of the new group. And so far, there are people from the US, Canada, England, Germany, and Denmark that I know about for sure. That makes for excellent conversation and marketing opportunities. The topics represented among the tips booklets authors and would-be tips booklets authors are about as wide-reaching as you can imagine. There are people who are very well established in self-publishing and traditional publishing, and people who are just getting started.

Come join the party if you haven't already. And if you have, then post some questions and/or replies. And be sure to let other people know about it so everyone benefits from the collective contributions of resources and ideas. http://ping.fm/0XmJA

Until next time,
Paulette - who loves seeing how experiments like these evolve

www.tipsbooklets.com
www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com

Booklets, Books, and Square Watermelons

Yesterday's email brought the twice-monthly ezine that Brian Jud publishes. You've seen and heard me talk about Brian to you over the past several years because he's an excellent resource for booklet and book authors. Brian has given permission to reprint the following article. It was the accompanying photo that first captured my attention. Read on.
===================================

Square watermelons? Impractical? Perhaps, but what if people wanted them because they fit better in a cooler? Or, what if they want to carve a face in them and place them on their front porches on National Watermelon Day (August 3)? Or use them as a side dish for a square meal? The point I want to make is that the form of the product could be as important as its content - and that concept is critical to successful book marketing. People don't purchase a book per se, but what the book does for them. The form in which you deliver your content is important, particularly in special-sales marketing. Corporate buyers want to know, "How can your information help my business more than that of some other marketing tool?" The primary reason companies are interested in using a book as a marketing tool is to re-purpose its content. And they may do that in the form of a book, booklet, 3-ring binder, DVD, etc. Sell your content in the form most desired by your target customers and watch your revenue increase to the point of last year's revenue, squared.

Brian Jud now offers commission-only sales to buyers in special markets and several other programs to contact prospective buyers in special markets for you through personal sales calls, customized mailings and telephone calls. There is a program for any budget. www.premiumbookcompany.com

==================

Until next time,
Paulette - who has often wondered about the shape of many things
www.tipsbooklets.com
www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com

Branding Your Business and Booklets

There are so many things to share with you after the past weekend with 20 solopreneurs talking about collaboration. It was tough to know which to talk about today.

As some of us from the weekend have been in touch with each other since then, one thing has become very clear while looking at ways to interact: it's vital to protect a long-established brand. That's not to say there aren't ways to embellish and expand it. It must be honored and maintained though.

A specific example of it is that my company has been known for tips booklets. That's been my brand that I've consistently reinforced since 1991. That means a certain writing style and a certain physical format and layout. There are other kinds of booklets written in a more narrative writing style, and maybe with many more graphics. There is no question they have their place. However, they are not tips booklets and they are not part of my brand.

An example of how the tips booklet brand has been expanded is with the Collection of Experts booklets in the past several years. Those are still written as tips and done in a similar layout to the tips booklets done by a solo author. The difference is that those booklets are jointly written by 14 people. It is definitely an appropriate tips booklet brand extension.

One of the people who impressed me greatly last weekend is Samantha Hartley. She has programs (action group with a limited number of people and sessions, as well as a one to one customized program) and products (a monthly self-guided e-course about attracting perfect clients) all about branding. Samantha is bright, beautiful, and has done a bungee jump! I can forgive her that last one, although I once did a rock climb and a ropes course, all quite dramatically I might add. But we don't need to go there.

Instead, go to Samantha's site to see what she has that suits your style and helps you define and maintain your brand. Be sure to let her know I sent you. Samantha and I will be doing numerous joint ventures in the next few months and will be thanking each other in a variety of ways.

How clear are you with your brand and how well is that working for you? Go talk to Samantha now! I have every confidence that she can improve your results no matter where you are on that clarity scale.

Until next time,
Paulette - who is crystal clear about her brand 99.999% of the time and expects to learn more from Samantha for even greater results

www.tipsbooklets.com
www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com

Booklets and Joint Ventures

This past weekend I happily attended a small gathering of about 20 independent business owners from around the US and Canada from Friday dinner until Sunday after lunch. It was held at a hotel just south of San Francisco, a quick plane trip from San Diego where I live. It was specifically designed for the sole purpose of exploring collaborations amongst us. There were people there whose names I'd known and others who were completely new to me. Some have been clients. I had only ever met one of them in person before, yet among the group as a whole, we formed fast friendships that were made that much easier by being face to face and breaking bread together.

The brain power and resources in that room were electrifying. Every one of the solopreneurs there "got it," regardless of their area of expertise, personality style, or any other defining elements. The common thread was that each of us was interviewed by Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing for his club in the past year or so. There were 6-8 more people who were not present this weekend, for one reason or another.

I will be bringing many of these people to you in the coming months, through guest blog posts here, guest interviews on the phone, and in other ways that bring you value with your booklets and your overall business. In the past two days since getting home from this event, there have already been some excellent introductions amongst the group and conversations about what and how we can have 1 + 1 = 3.

As an aside, the part about meeting people face to face, well, there is truly no substitute for it. Nancy Juetten,whose Bye Bye Boring Bio I recently brought you, has been a client of mine for about four years. I've talked with her a lot. We've emailed plenty. In my mind and in what I thought I saw of her photo, I pegged her as being about 5 foot 2 inches. It turns out she's almost 6 feet tall. It was a totally different experience of her. Who knew and why does this matter? Well, it forged an inexplicably different kind of bond once we met in person. I don't know why. It just did.

You can expect to be introduced to more people in the upcoming months who can help you leverage your booklet contents and your skills and interests beyond anything I could offer you on my own, just as we did with PublishingProsperity this past year, though it will not be as a membership club. I'll always connect the dots for you as to how your tips booklets can benefit by what someone else can do with and for you. Some will be a match for you now or later, and others will not resonate with you at all.

Who can you approach for joint venturing in ways that work for all involved, where 1 + 1 = at least 3?

Until next time,
Paulette - pacing my overflowing enthusiasm at the moment
www.tipsbooklets.com
www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com