subject: Books Speak Volumes When Creating Relationships - Part 1 [print this page] How Writing Your Own Book Makes You the Center of Conversation
In The Relationship Age, its sometimes really difficult to be heard. Everyone else is texting and Facebooking, not to mention IM-ing and emailing, and sometimes it seems the longest you can get someones attention is for 140 characters or less.
Talking in Twitter-sized bites, however, doesnt really help you get a lot of meaningful ideas across. For example, heres how Honest Abe Lincolns Gettysburg Address would have gone if he had tried to Tweet it from an iPhone
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the propositi
Never really was able to get even close to the point, was he? Hey, I even took out two commas, and I still couldnt get to the end of proposition.
Lincoln wouldnt have been the only one caught in mid-sentence. Heres how far baseball great Lou Gehrigs famous Yankee Stadium goodbye speech would have gotten through Twitter:
Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the
On the face of the what? The clock on the wall?
To be fair, lets get away from the speeches they always have way too much set-up anyway. Lets try Tweeting the 23rd Psalm thats a little more direct:
The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures he leadeth me beside the still waters he restore
Wow, thats a letdown. Were all set up to relax in the pasture and by the still watersready for the great, good thing thats going to happenand bam! Were left bereft of restoration of whatever was going to be restored (in this case, your soul kind of an important detail).
Its kind of interesting to put the Twitter 140 character limit on all kinds of things famous songs, poems, jokes, whatever but Im not doing this just to play a game. Im also doing it to make a very important point: that is, today, in our constantly-communicating ADD society, its hard to really put your ideas out there in a meaningful way.
We see this in politics the constant repetition of out-of-context sound bites that often trivialize a candidates viewpoint and we see this in movies and TV shows, which keep being edited faster and faster in an attempt to retain a viewers interest. The pace of all of our social interaction keeps accelerating to faster and faster speeds that make it increasingly difficult to make anything stick beyond catch phrases and slick slogans.
So how do you have the kind of lengthy conversation you need to have in order to build your circle of influence and establish your nameto build a relationship with a potential client or customer? How do you communicate who you are and what you have to say in a way that has lasting impact and in a way that has a long marketing afterlife?
The answer lies in something basic that existed way before our current electronic age a book.
THE OLDEST FORM OF SOCIAL MEDIA
I quoted the Bible before and that wasnt a random choice. Books like the Bible were the original form of Social Media. Would Christianity have grown to the size it is today without having the Bible as a cornerstone of the religion a book with all the religions philosophy contained in it that could easily be passed around? It would have been a lot more difficult, at the very least. And consider the fact that, in its time, the Bible was even interactive, as prophets and apostles of the time added on to it as events kept occurring.
Books have usually been the basis of any major movement and that fact still holds true today. Major motivational speakers like Anthony Robbins and Jack Canfield depend on regular book releases to continue to grow their base. And superstars in sports, politics and entertainment make it a point to get a book out, even though its usually ghostwritten, to expand their brand and put out their side of the story, without a reporter or interviewer beside them ready to instantly poke holes in it.
Thats why I say books are the oldest form of social media. Social media is anything that starts a conversation and builds a relationship and for hundreds of years, books have prompted millions of hours of discussion, have created relationships between writer and reader, and still do. Thats why thousands of people participate in social book groups all around the world theres even this woman named Oprah who happens to have a very famous book club of her own, dont know if youve heard of her
At the same time, authors are also seen as unique and smart. Its a hard, time-consuming task to finish a tome of your own especially when most of us really dont like to write. It just feels like leftover homework from English class in high school. Thats why most people would never think of attempting to write a book and anyone who actually does finish one, let alone have it published, is instantly held in higher regard.
And thats always a good thing.
HOW A BOOK BOLSTERS YOUR BRAND
Lets return to what we talked about at the beginning of this chapter how hard it is to impart your ideas to an audience when everyone is chattering away in tiny texts and status updates on their electronic gadgets.
A book is the ideal base for you to have the conversation you want to have with people. It gives you the opportunity to craft your message and have it delivered without any interruptions. When somebody reads your book, you get to go inside their head for hours and hours, so you can make your case in the most impactful way possible and again, no ones there to argue against you, except the reader. Youre no longer just a sound bite or a one-liner youre someone who has a fully realized vision of how something should workyou now have a platform. And again, that brings you instant respect.
Of course, the argument to all that iswho has time to read anymore? People dont want to be bogged down with a book, they want to watch what they have recorded on their DVRs, play videogames or hang out on their favorite websites, however they like to spend their leisure time.
Well, this is the best part. It doesnt matter if people read your book or not.
Some will, some wontbut keep in mind that I said the book was the ideal base for your conversation with people. But its certainly not the be-all and end-all. As a matter of fact its really only the starting step to a whole world of marketing opportunities.
I always like to use Donald Trump as an example of a guy who knows what to do with a book. The Donald puts out a new book one, two, sometimes even three times a year. He certainly doesnt need to for the money no, he does it for his brand.
Think about it when you see him on Larry King Live or The View or a late night talk show, its usually because hes got a new book out. It gives the show a reason to book him, it gives him something new to talk about and it continually refreshes his brand. He will also then usually spin off other products from the book a motivational CD, an online sales course, speaking engagements, etc.
His main business may be property development, but Donald Trump does the best at selling Donald Trump and he uses his books as the platform to do it. If he just came on talk shows and discussed his latest condo projectwell, lets just say hes sharp enough not to be dull.
THE POWER OF THE BOOK PLATFORM
Of course, there arent many Donald Trumps out there and odds are youre not going to get yourself booked on Larry King (at least not right away!) simply because youre not that kind of media celebrity. Again, this is not a problem.
So how do you leverage a book that youve written and published?
