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Let’s be honest here.
Despite what the marketing experts tell us. Some of us cannot write. Not a Newyork best seller nor a sick note for the boss. Putting interesting words together into a coherent attractive whole has never been a core skill.

I have something to tell you. It doesn’t matter.

Sheepstealer Clothing is a small sports clothing brand in Ireland. It is a personal project where I get to have fun designing t-shirts for passionate fans. It has become my playground to try out different types of marketing. But I have a small issue. I do not know enough about the sport to write about it.
The sport(s) in question are unique to Ireland. Gaelic football, Hurling and Handball. (Read here for a great American perspective of Hurling). It is fast, skilful and great fun to watch with a crowd. I am simply not a sporty person.

What do you do when you cannot write about your market? What I did with sheepstealers is use one of my own core skills. I drew it.
The important thing about content is that it is interesting and adds value for a reader.
I took existing information on the sport and created new interesting visuals around it.
Great, funny quotes from the sport, a guide to the game of hurling or combining other crossover interests.
Infographics are a prime example of this technique. They take existing information, statistics and other data and create a new visual representation of it to help the reader better understand.

The result is new content, updated often, of interest to the market and very sharable. The added bonus is this content now appears in Google image search as well and can be posted on sites like flickr. And it all came about because I couldn’t write.

You can’t write.
So what other skills do you have that can add new value to existing content?

Before you add the subject line to your next email have a look at this.

Update.
The above video is a remake of this:

I think the English one benefits from tighter editing.

To jump start your marketing we have updated the wonderfully simple online marketing plan for you for the year. It is put together as a checklist and it has the basics filled in with space for you to add your own twist and cross them off each month. It also includes few tips on what holidays and events you can use each month. It is based on one I have been using last year and I can tell you it helped me focused and on track. Go ahead and download, print it off and hang it over your desk. This year you are going to be ahead with your marketing!

Keep us posted and let us know how the plan helped your business and let us know how we can improve it. We will showcase replies right here on the blog.

In this post I will not be covering how to present like Steve Jobs or how to make your content riveting. Other people have covered that very well. Instead, I will reveal a few simple and effective strategies that I have developed by speaking at various conferences and events over the years.

It is very easy to get a speaking slot talking to a willing, captive audience for an hour. What you don’t want, is thinking was it worth your time a week later. Since then, you have heard nothing more about it. No one came back to you with feedback. You received no sales leads. So what exactly did you get for your time and effort? Leads, press, feel good factor, made more contacts … Nope? Then read on and become a conference ninja.
Even if you do not get the keynote or the biggest standing ovation, you can come away with more value than those guys if you follow these steps.

Below you will find 3 simple steps to ensure you get the most from your speaking event

1. People talking about your presentation online and off
2. Capture your audiences’ contact details to follow up with them later and keep them in your marketing loop
3. Attract new readers and prospects by spreading your talk to all four corners of the globe.

1. Make it Tweetable

Dan Zarrella in Hubspot did some interesting research on this. Chris Penn does it well. On each presentation screen condense your key point into a 140 character long tweet.
Example “@alanorourke says 68% of men snore in bed compared to 20% of women. Who are the remaining 12%? #conferencetag”
And tell the audience TweetThis:
Not only will you have your audience sharing and talking about you but it helps condense your key points to take away with them.

2. Capture the listener

When I started out I was so proud that I managed to get up and talk in front of an audience.
But I would get back to the office and my business partner would ask was it worth it and I would struggle to say yes. Realistically, it is very rare for an audience member to leave a talk and immediately call your company to buy your product or service. Most likely they will write down a few things and make a mental note to look at your website and follow up with you later. Then they get back to the office to catch up on the work they missed. Consequently that mental note to call you slips further and further down the priority list until it is forgotten completely.
This is where you need to take the initiative and maintain that contact. But how do you get their details in the first place?

Here are a few ideas I have tried in the past:
I have put resources online such as a downloadable ebook, report, planner, calculator, even a free graphic template. Anything you think would be useful to your audience. Mention these resources in your talk and tell your audience where to download them for free. In return they must provide an name and email address to complete the download.
One example that has really worked well for me is offering an ebook, that ‘normally’ costs $39, free for conference attendees.
Not everyone will go online so take a few printed copies of your eBook with you and tell the audience to come up afterwards to get one. Then ask for their business card to email them in future. If you have nothing to offer then offer a copy of your presentation itself. Ask them for an email address and you will send them a copy of the slides and audio after the event.

3. Talk once publish EVERYWHERE

I love squeezing additional value out of work I have already done. It is very satisfying.
So what else can you do with your presentation? A quick list:

1. Record the audio (I have used the voice recorder in my iphone for this)
2. Record the video (more work but can be worth it)
3. Send the audio for transcription (I have used Odesk for this)
4. Upload the audio, transcription and presentation to slideshare.net
5. Then embed it on your website.
6. Upload the video and transcription to YouTube (and other websites)
7. Turn the transcription into a blog post
8. Turn the blog post into an eBook
9. Distribute your eBook to through sites like Amazon etc.
10. Send links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn every time one of the resources above is published.

Related reading: Save $180,000 on your next tradeshow and beat Microsoft.

Photo: Alastair McDermott

Fantastic email from LinkedIn today.
Terrifically personalised, relevant, interesting and social.
It also plugs nicely into one of the top driving forces of social media reported by a Harvard study (Sorry I cannot find the link again). The top use of sites like Facebook is people like looking at photos of those in and out of their network. I must say what a good looking bunch of people you are.

Can you use more customer photos and profiles in your emails?

If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn you can find me here. Let me know you are connecting because of Toddle.

There is so much meeting and conference space around the city today. Each competing on price, location and extras.

What if one of the extras included a ready made audience…. I would pay extra to book that venue.

If you are a Venue letting space it is pretty easy. Ask every person through your door for their details and permission to contact them about similar events in the future. Ask them what else they might be interested in.

Pretty soon you have a high quality database of people who have shown they will pay for a conference and have told you what they are interested in.

You want to hold a conference on Email marketing solutions? We have 5000 people in the local area interested in Email Marketing Solution conferences. Would you like pay by credit card or cash?

While staying with my wife’s family over the holidays I heard a great story about a very canny business man.

Old Mr Feeney ran Feeney’s bar for over 30 years in the small village of Williamstown in the west of Ireland. While various pubs in the area would move in and out of popularity over the years, or even within a single year, his bar always attracted a good crowd.

Old Feeney knew what made a great bar.
It was not the great product; every where served the same beer.
It was not the interior design. He would describe it as a country pub, no more special then any other.
And he would laugh if you suggested it was the great staff. As a widower he ran it himself and no one expected a quick pint as his years advanced.

Mr Feeney knew it was the people that made a bar great. Which brings us to the vicious circle that all pubs have. Without people in your bar, you cannot attract people to your bar.
If you were first into his bar, you were unlikely to walk in and walk straight back out again in case you appeared rude. Feeney would chat to you, find out how your day was and before you knew it you had a drink in front of you and it was on the house. That immediately meant you would stick around for a second you could pay for yourself. And he would keep you there until someone else arrives.
The next person in would be sure to be introduced to the first one and Old Mr Feeney would be sure to find some common interest to start the conversation flowing.
And before you know it the bar is full, conversation is flowing and the craic is great.
He may have lost (a little) money at the start of the night but more then made it back by the end.
It is the original freemium business model.

Old Mr Feeney eventually sold the bar and retired with a very tidy sum. The new owners kept the bar, the location and the product but do not seem to be doing that well. I wonder what they are missing.

Lessons Learned:
Your business is more then your product.
Look at the lifetime value of your customer, not just the immediate transaction.
Can you facilitate your customers getting more value from each other?

Image: John Picken

Guerrilla marketing: an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.

-Wikipedia

Mashable pulled together a great set of videos showcasing some really innovative and clever campaigns.
Watch them here and look for ideas that you can use for your business.

Two that stood out for me are below:

SIXT

What do you do if advertising is expensive and there is no physical room for any more ads?
Advertise via Wi-fi and target the right business people who use it.
Car rental company SIXT made use of an existing and very affordable platform at their disposal. What i especially like is that people do not need to connect with the network to see the advertising message.
This is thinking outside of the box.

VrijVerzekerd.nl

Novocortex used guerrilla marketing tactics to build brand awareness for an online insurance company. They placed stickers with huge scratches on expensive cars. Stickers could be easily removed, because they were printed on Static Paper. This paper has no glue on it and sticks due to static electricity.
What i really liked is how they then offered the stickers for free for friends to put on mates cars. Essentially creating a huge viral distribution team at a tiny cost.
As well as the real word distribution of their ad i am sure they also captured the details of people ordering the stickers add to their marketing loop and turn into potential sales leads.
Total cost €1000

View the rest on Mashable and think about what you can do.