What do you mean by platform

Almost every author who writes a book should be thinking about speaking events, book signings/tours, conferences, and more. You want to build a way to not only promote your book, your brand, and your message, but build that fan base that can connects with you everyday. How can you do this? With the use of social media. By blogging your book and “crushing it” as Gary Vaynerchuk says (Yes, I know I am a bit of a fanboy). Learn some tactics from Gary, he is all over it! Creating videos, podcasts, blogging, tweeting, and not only interacting with his current fan base but by putting more content out there so he can reach even more people.

Are You Ready?

Michael Drew asks a lot from you if you want to be NYT #1, WSJ #1, USAToday #1, etc. Why should you care? Well Michael Drew is 50 for 50 on getting books on the #1 best seller list. With a track record like this you tend to listen. The problem for most is time and commitment. How much time and commitment you ask? Let’s lay it out in a step by step plan.

The Plan

In order to test and find your audiance the seminiar spend much of the time on personas. During the seminar everyone attending took a quick personality test. Everyone got to learn all of these fun letters and what Myers Briggs can teach us about people. I am an INTJ, so I tend to be fast, logical, and competitive. The plan Michael lays out is to write to each of the major personas (NT, NF, SP, SJ).

• Write out 16 categories for each part of your book
• Write 4 topics for each of the 16 categories
• Write a blog post on each topic to each of the major personas (NT,NF,SP,SJ) a total of 256 blog posts
• Create a video and a podcast for each blog post

So with all of this you are suppose to cover one topic in-depth each week including writing to each of the 4 personas for a blog posts, a videos based, and a podcast. This process should take 64 weeks to cover 4 topics in the 16 categories. During this time you will also need to maintain a 3 to 1 ratio. For each blog, video, and podcast you post you need to write 3 comments or responses with other bloggers/people online. This will allow you to build your platform by making a name for yourself and build your network of people and distributing content.

Distribution, Distribution, Distribution

To give you some idea of how many books you need to sell to reach bestseller status: 500,000. Just to help you along the way, you should have a network of at least 300,000 people who will buy your book. How many twitter followers do you have? Facebook Friends? LinkedIn? Blog eaders? Maybe 300K? 500k? 1MM?

You need to not only create enough content but interact with your audience and join in the conversation to reach all of these people. So the question I have for you is, are you really ready to create all of this content and put in the blood, sweat, and tears to getting your book on the #1 best seller or are you just looking to create a book. One other important fact is that book publishers see less of an appeal with authors who published a book and only got 1,000 or 4,000 copies sold then the unknown author of a book he is trying to put out. Sounds kinda of backwards, but remember It’s never about the book. Focus on build your brand and platform: speaking events, conferences, seminars, blogs, podcasts, TV show appearances, and more!

History,Trends, Repeat

The old saying goes “History repeats itself”. This is something anyone who is in marketing/PR or working as a social media expert needs to hear. Times are a changing and the way we marketed a product yesterday or even today needs to change. One of the biggest lessons I took away from Book Publishing 2.0 is how every 40 years the pendulum swings from an Idealist society to a Civic society. In the course of 80 years, history repeats itself. So what does that mean for us, it means we should be studying the 1930’s, FDR, and focusing on society as a whole rather then putting ourselves first. The idea of push marketing and grabbing a bullhorn to spread your message is dying. You need to focus on pull methods where you post your message that others share and spread the word for you. Think of twitter, if you are constantly saying “buy my product” no one will follow you. If you offer interesting tweets and join the conversation you will have a huge following.

Remember the goal is not to force people to buy, but get them wanting to buy that no matter how bad the product is, get people to be passionate about your product and love it. Can anyone say Apple?

Michael constantly said, it’s never about the book. Don’t lock yourself in a room to write a book instead focus on your platform and test what works and what doesn’t. Learn from your own blog history on what people want. Remember if you want to predict the future, you only need to look at the past.

Testing

A major part of this program was testing, which is something I spend why too much time with since I am such a geek. Everything in life you need to test. Things that you expect not to work sometimes work so well you are not only shocked but rich! Other things that you think are a sure bet, well you lose the farm and everything else. So with that you need to test everything you do with your book, blog, and platform. Learn about Google Analytics, A/B testing, and how you can extract data to really understand what you need to do and leverage it!

Just F$%& Do It!

The last step that I don’t think was emphasized enough was getting it done. Seeing a pile of work ahead of you and knowing that even under the best of conditions it’s a 64 week plan is very intimidating. The thing that I really enjoyed about this seminar is that everyone there kept saying here is the plan, it’s up to your timeframe on when you want to accomplish it. This is so true in life and a great way to view projects. You need to put in the time to get the results you want. Some people it will take a year, others 5 years, and maybe some an entire lifetime, it’s up to you on the timeframe…the plan is right in-front of you.

I really want to thank Michael Drew, Dave Young, Chris Maddock, Mark Effinger, and Will Braunstein for an amazing seminar of Book Publishing 2.0! I highly recommend it, especially for anyone looking to write a book!

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the Book Publishing 2.0 conference and what a conference it was. It was not only fun and exciting learning various strategies and tactics on promoting a book, but also very direct and kept you on your toes. Learning how to write your book from the ground up, but also market and test your content with different audiences to built a platform and reach your goals as fast as possible. Highly suggest attending an event like this, it just blew me away.

Meat Cards is just that, a business card that has your contact information sear on a piece of 100% beef jerky with the help of a 150 Watt CO2 Laser.

Yes, Freaking Lasers!

Since each piece of Jerky may contain some holes, the contact information may be a bit hard to read, but who cares? You are going to be able to offer your contact information in the form of a snack!

Now Meat Cards are still a prototype in the making, but looking to sell these 4″x11″ pieces of Jerky as future food business cards. Talk about an amazing way to build your personal brand.

Okay maybe that is too big of a question, but what type of startup would you WANT to start might be a better way to discuss the topic. In these tough times people are starting all sorts of startups. From selling t-shirts about the swine flu to building something awesome.

So today’s question for some of you would be what startup would you start today (since Today is a day for startups, why wait?) and/or what startup have you always wanted to create/build but never have.

To help you get started thinking about some possibilities here is a list of some ideas for a startup that I know have been kicking around in my head these past couple of weeks. Now feel free to take whatever from them and run with them as I am putting all my focus into my current startup project.

Startup Ideas for a Company

• Solar Installation Company
• Japanese Import/Export Company
• Clothes Line (Might throw up some ideas on cafepress and see if they sell.)
• Online Magazine (Think WebDesignermag – Remember you could startup with a PDF and offer print on demand for subscribers)
• Solution Firm – Focus on solving problems of Fortune 500’s
• Picture Frame Company – Was always hopeful about FrameMedia, but haven’t seen much
• Tea Shop – Yes, I think a Starbucks like chain that focused on high priced tea’s, free wifi, and a coworking space would do well. Charge for desk-area and offer free seats for staying customers. Even host events to bring entrepreneurs and VCs together
• Shoe Line – Even thought I am so NOT a shoe person, I think having a line of rocking kicks would be something that I would enjoy working on.

Okay, so that should be enough to get the juices flowing. What do you think, please let me know what startup you would like, are, or trying to start.

Key Points when Starting Your own Lemonade Stand

Supplies
Get Stuff for Cheap but high quality. With any business overhead is
tough, so focus on having a high margin and be sure to use
environmentally friendly cups. Remember Going Green can also make you
green. Use this to your advantage when selling your lemonade.

Marketing
Remember it’s about getting the word out as fast as possible. Leverage
online marketing for offline results. Focus on posting fliers on local community boards online such as Craigslist as well as offline such as
the Train station.

Location, Location, Location
If you want to make the most bang for your buck, focus on time and
location. Set up your stand near a park where a baseball or soccer
game is happening. Also look at setting up your stand on a busy
street, but be sure to use signs to attract customers. If your
location is not working, act fast and change it!

Good Luck!

The other day I was playing around with some of the settings on my iPhone when I realized that you can have different search engines as your default search for safari. I quickly noticed that you only have 2 options: Google or Yahoo.

I was a bit shocked and amazed since I have never noticed this nor heard any Microsoft people complain about this or any other search engine (Ask? Mahalo?)

I wonder if this was just a jab at Microsoft for all the past history between Microsoft and Apple.

So you have that idea for an iPhone application, now what? Well if you are developer, I would suggest checking out the iPhone Dev Center and start building it, but if you are a non-geek, well where does that leave you…it’s time to outsource.

Functional Requirement Document

A functional requirements document is a document that defines a list of inputs, outputs, and behaviors of a program. Now there are books written specifically on this topic, so rather then bore you to death about this process, I posted an example below using the weather app to help you get an idea of what you should be listing out to help with the function, usability, and use cases.

Now building any project that you outsource either to a firm, freelancer, or some person half way around the world, you need to layout a game plan. To get you moving in the right direction, start to think of some of the functions you will want your application to accomplish and list them out as a task. Also list out some of the use cases, like validation such as what is a zipcode (ie. 5 digital numeric number which references a specific cit/state in the USA) as well as some edge cases such as do you want to support world users (ie. What’s the weather in Akihabara, Japan?)

So to help with you wanting to build your own app, let’s take a look at the current weather app. I started to list out some of the common tasks this app accomplishes as well as some uses cases. Now FRD can become a heavy undertaking, so keep it simple and direct to help clarifying what you are imagine the application does or displays and list in this document. Remember this document is suppose to help bridge the gap of communication between you and the person/team/whoever building the iPhone App.

Display Weather Page

1. Display City Name
2. Display Current Temp
3. Display Current High and Low Temp
4. Display a picture showing the type of weather (ie. Rain, Sun, etc.)
5. Display the current day (ie. Wednesday) and the next 5 days
6. Display the high and low for each day listed
7. Display a link to configure page, when clicked the user processed to the configure page
8. Display a link to Yahoo weather, which opens Yahoo Weather in safari for the current city
9. Allow sliding between different cities
10. Display the number of cities as a series of dots, highlighting the current city being displayed as list

Configure Page

1. List Cities that were added to display weather
2. Allow user to remove a city listed individually
3. Allow for adding a new City
4. Button (F to C) which changes the temperature from fahrenheit to Celsius
5. Allow user to return to displaying weather

Add City Page

1. Allow user to type in city name or zipcode
2. Display a list of validate city names based on user input
3. Allow user to select city to be added to display weather list
4. Allow user to clear city input box
5. Allow user to cancel inputing a city name

Okay, so that was a quick FRD for the weather app. Now hopefully that hasn’t scared you away from building your idea. You just want to lay the ground work for your idea so that when you do work with a developer you can both be on the same page. Another way to help improve this list is to build it, visual. Complimenting the FRD should be some wireframes.

WireFrames

Wireframes are a visual model of the application. One way to get your point across of what your application does or looks like is to create a simple mockup of each screen. If you are a designer, you may just want to download a iPhone GUI and create all of your application pages. Once this is done, you can easily hire a developer to go and build the code around your design. This also fills in those gaps like, what happens if user…. or how do you get to this page.

Outsourcing

I am just posted a list of companies that I have found that do iPhone development. I do not endorse any of these companies, just wanted to help anyone with an idea get it built.

List of Companies you may want to contact

• ZapBangDone
• ArtLogic
• Sourcebits
• BrowserMedia
• eLance
• Iphone Software Roadmap
• Axmor
• IndiaNic
• EcmaSoft

For those of you who may not have the money to fund build an iphone app. Why not enter a contest with your idea and try and get it built and get 25% of the cut!

App Incubator

I posted a tweet looking for an iPhone app developer for a project I am doing and was contacted by Dave (@42DOH). The company (I am guessing he works for) is medlmobile who operatesAppIncubator.

It’s a place for crowd-sourcing iPhone applications where you submit your idea and if it’s good enough, the guys at Medlmobile will develop the iPhone app. So start submitting your idea to get a chance at have your idea become an iPhone app and get paid 25%! Not a bad way to make money just by signing up and submitting your idea. A great alternative for those entrepreneurs who aren’t developers or have a large bank roll. So get out there and start building your iPhone App!

If you are an entrepner or a 4 hour work week addict like myself, then you are constantly thinking about great passive income strategies. With in the past year the iTunes App store for the iPhone and iPod Touch have been booming. People are making over $10,000 a day with some useless apps like the iFart. Although this is just the begining. With Andriod as well as the soon to be relased Palm Pre, the idea of jumping on the mobile marke is a solid choose.

So what can you do to get in on this. For some one without a technology background, look to outsource it. You can hire a developer or a company to build your idea from a concept to an iPhone App. There is no question that $0.99 is a perfect price for people now a days, so where and how do you get started?

I will be covering some resources and information for building your own iPhone app as well as outsourcing the process in the new few days.

To help you digest this video, let’s think about it. You have this idea, which spawns off a bunch of other ideas, but after an hour of writing these ideas you really have NOTHING. A great example of going from idea to taking action was a great brunch meeting I had with Jim Hopkinson. The meeting mainly talked about one project, but during this talk spawned off a bunch of ideas and how you need not only an idea, but execution. This whole meeting just kept reminding me of the video and the need to get $%&T DONE! Just remember the nike slogan, just do it! Well rather then doing nothing with the idea we ended up taking the idea and creating a basic website that could now get easily updated using WordPress and go from an idea to a shell.

One thing that I have realized with projects is you need to focus on building shells. What are shells, shells are the basic structure you need to go from idea to prototype as fast as possible. Think about a shell as creating the smallest piece of an ideas to get others to either use it or understand what it is you are doing. Once the shell is built and live, you can constaly launch, iterate, launch, iterate, and go from a crapy version to a premium product.

So while rewatching the video I realize I am now that other guy who is on his next version of a product rather then dreaming about all those people clapping for ME!

So the point of all of this is that you need to get ideas out of your head and into the world, remember it’s the execution multiplier that makes the big bucks, do it!

I know personally I am trying to take more and more action each day to improve my passive income. I have too many ideas a minute and too many projects that are collecting dust to keep me from taking action. So each morning I write a list of 3 goals for the day that I need to get done. These goals can be as simple as creating a blog posts to something as complex as a WordPress theme.

Remember, taking action is hard. Like Thomas Edison, “one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”. So break an idea/project into small chunks and start with just the “shell” the smallest piece of an idea and launch, iterate, launch, iterate…

This concept of automatic lead generation is key, especially when people have a tight budget such as a bootstrapped startup. Depending on your product or niche, try and find places where people who would use these products hang out on line. This could be forums, blogs, or even market sites like sitepoint or craligslist. Take the time to scan blog posts and interact the users by a valuable blog comment or suggesting your product (maybe even your competitors too) or services on forums. Just don’t be that guy who is only talking about themselves or their own product, add value!

Remember you only have 24 hours in a day, so use them wisely. If you can only spend one hours a day on your marketing, work on spreading the word by posting to a website that is viewed by many people rather then targeting one individual at a time. Focus on building a system that generates only hot leads, so you don’t waste your time.