“If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It’s one thing to write your book.  It’s another thing to publish it.   And yet It’s still another thing to market and promote your book or eBook.  While there is a lot of action and excitement and opportunity in the world of Publishing 2.0, the reality is that marketing your book can be tough, especially if you are taking the “Do-It-Yourself” path and you don’t have a roadmap.

If you’re an author or plan to be, this blog post might help you market your book with skill.  Unfortunately, the idea of, “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work when it comes to putting your book into the hands of everybody in the world who might need or want it.

Mapping Out Your Marketing Plan

The goal of this post is to give you a map of effective strategies and tactics to draw from to market and promote your book.   I won’t claim to have all the answer, but I’ll give you a place to start, or at least something you can check your plan against.   It’s based on my lessons learned from selling my book, Getting Results the Agile Way.

Sometimes just having a list of ideas can help you figure out what you need to do.   That’s what this list of marketing ideas is for.  Use them to inspire your own marketing plan for your book.

If you’ve taken the time to write your book, then I want you to have some of the best ideas at your fingertips to be successful.

Friction-Free + Free Stuff + Raving Fans

The big thing to keep in mind is that the more valuable your book is in terms of the problems you solve, the easier it will be to spread it.   Your case studies and testimonials will build momentum for Word-of-Mouth marketing.   Friends will tell friends what works for them.  Also keep in mind that the more you can make it friction-free to share your book, the better.   This includes giving away high-value free stuff that supports your book and creates a platform.   The most important thing is to build a tribe of raving fans that really benefit from your book.   This will amplify your marketing success.  Lastly, if you make it possible for people to make money from promoting your book, you create a win-win scenario.  One of the simplest ways to do this is to have your book available in affiliate programs so that affiliates can make money selling your book to their raving fans.  This is how you exponentially grow your sales force in a viral way.

The Short List of Ideas to Market Your Book

Here are some very basic things to do right off the bat …

1. Create a simple and effective landing page to point people to.
2. Write a press release.   PR Web is a common resource that people use for press releases.
3. Give your book away to people that will greatly benefit from your book.
4. Write guest posts on relevant blogs to share your best insights, tips and tricks from your book.
5. Inspire your blogger friends to announce your book and build the buzz.

This will at least get the ball rolling.

The Longer List of Ideas to Market Your Book

Here is a more comprehensive list of strategies and tactics for marketing your book or eBook:

Example of Marketing a Book in Action

Here are a few of the things I’ve done so far ….

• Press Release
• Video Testimonial on YouTube
• Web site (It’s very easy to share because it’s http://GettingResults.com )
• Landing Page
• Amazon Page for the Book
• Amazon Page for the Kindle
• Knowledge-Base (Free articles on focus, goals, motivation, time management, etc.)
• Testimonials
• Case Studies
• Free Getting Started Guide
• Free 30 Days of Getting Results Training

Keep in mind, I haven’t done all of the ideas in my marketing plan yet.  I’m sharing them as I go so you have ideas that you can test for yourself.  Mostly, I’ve been depending on Word-of-Mouth.   Also, I figure that I have more time ahead of me than behind me, so I’m plugging away at it with the idea that slow and steady wins the race.

If you have more ideas on how to successfully market a book or eBook, feel free to share.

This is my collection of Seth Godin quotes.  They’ll make you think and ponder as you wonder around from one idea to the next.

Seth’s sweet spot is marketing but his quotes easily span business, change, greatness, innovation, leadership, mediocrity, and strategy.  Seth’s quotes teach us that the individual is a powerful force, that multiplies when we dare to be different, take action, test our ideas, stay true to our authentic self, tell inspiring stories, make things meaningful, and lead tribes of like minds and shared values.

Perhaps the most important lesson we learn from Seth Godin is this:  Think and do great things.  And do the tough stuff, because it’s worth it.

Enjoy.

Top 10 Seth Godin Quotes

Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by Seth Godin:

1. “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.”
2. “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”
3. “Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what?”
4. “Expectations are the engines of our perceptions.”
5. “Go ahead, do something impossible. “
6. “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.”
7. “If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?”
8. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
9. “Why waste a sentence saying nothing? “
10. “You can’t shrink your way to greatness! “

Business

• “As an organization grows and succeeds, it sows the seeds of its own demise by getting boring.”
• “Choose your customers, choose your future.”
• “Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.”
• “Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential; otherwise you’re just a middleman. “
• “Don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new. “
• “Everyone is not your customer. “
• “Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a deal breaker.”
• “Give up control and give it away … The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth. “
• “If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. “
• “In a world of free, everyone can play.”
• “It’s better to make a decision, even the wrong one, than to be in limbo.”
• “Lack of resources (payroll), time and competing priorities are why so many nonprofits haven’t done well. It’s that simple.”
• “Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.”
• “Once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow.”
• “One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. “
• “Playing safe is very risky. “
• “The application process changes the list of who applies. Your applicants reflect your methods.”
• “The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset.”
• “The market and the consumer and idea trump the system.”
• “Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.”

Change

• “Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.”
• “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”
• “If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.”
• “Knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.”
• “Little changes cost you. Big changes benefit you by changing the game, but only if you go first.”
• “No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn’t okay now. Change, by definition, changes things”
• “Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.”

Choice

• “If religion comprises rules you follow, faith is demonstrated by the actions you take.”
• “If there’s time for an emergency, why isn’t there time for brilliance, generosity or learning? “
• “If you could do tomorrow over again, would you? “
• “If you’re not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. “
• “Just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.”
• “Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities. “
• “We notice what we choose to notice.”
• “Who gets to decide what you want?”

Greatness

• “Art is what we’re doing when we do our best work.”
• “Be personal. Be relevant. Be specific.”
• “Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work.”
• “Doing justice to the work is your task, not setting a world record. “
• “Go ahead, do something impossible.”
• “If there isn’t a good reason, go home. If there is, then do something … loud, now, and memorable.”
• “Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.”
• “Tribes makes our lives better, and leading a tribe is the best life of all. “
• “When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.”
• “When the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter.”
• “When the room brightens when you walk in, you matter.”
• “When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.”
• “You are not your resume, you are your work. “
• “You can’t shrink your way to greatness! “

Ideas

• “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person. “
• “Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon. “
• “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. “
• “No organization ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies.”
• “There’s no correlation between how good your idea is and how likely your organization will be to embrace it. “
• “You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.”

Leadership / Management

• “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person. “
• “If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader. “
• “Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.”
• “Leadership on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.”
• “’Teamwork’ is the word that bosses use when they actually mean ‘Do what I say’”
• “The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate. – When people ask you to tell them what to do, resist.”

Marketing

• “Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.”
• “Bullhorns are overrated: having ten times as many Twitter followers generates approximately zero times as much value. “
• “But this is a remarkable egg, an egg worth talking about, an egg worth crossing the street for, an egg worth writing about. “
• “Good marketers measure. “
• “Good marketers tell stories. “
• “If you can’t make money from attention, you should do something else for a living. “
• “If you can’t sell to 1 in 1000, why market to a million? “
• “If you’re a marketer who doesn’t know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you’re no longer a marketer. You’re deadwood.“
• “Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing though, that’s efficiency.”
• “Market-driven design builds the success of the product’s marketing into the product itself.”
• “Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your return policy.”
• “Marketing management is now tribal leadership. “
• “Most of the time, creative entrepreneurs lose interest long before their marketing message loses its power. “
• “People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. “
• “People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.”
• “Perhaps marketing is about to transition to a new kind of profession, one that requires insight, dedication and smarts. “
• “Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission–which is emotional connection.”
• “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t. “
• “The best marketing strategy is to destroy your industry before your competition does. “
• “The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about. “
• “Why waste a sentence saying nothing? “
• “You can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust.”

Mediocrity / Status Quo

• “’Good enough’ stopped being good enough a long time ago. so why not be great? “
• “If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved.”
• “It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.”
• “It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.”
• “In our desire to please everyone, it’s very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre.”
• “Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it’s a lot easier to launch work that matters.”
• “Successful people are the ones who are breaking the rules. “
• “The reason they want you to fit in… is that once you do, then they can ignore you.
• “The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly.”
• “You can raise the bar or you can wait for others to raise it, but it’s getting raised regardless. “
• “You don’t have to settle. It’s a choice you get to make every day.”

Passion

• “If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it.”
• “If you have no wish, how can it possibly come true? “

Relationships

• “A long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.”
• “Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.) Ignore everyone else.”
• “You can be right or you can have empathy. You can’t do both.”

Strategy

• “Don’t have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve. “
• “Put aside your need for a step-by-step manual and instead realize that analogies are your best friend.“
• “The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.”

Seth Godin Books
Here is a roundup of Seth Godin books you migh enjoy:

• All Marketers Tell Stories
• Free Prize Inside
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
• Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?
• Permission Marketing
• Poke the Box
• Purple Cow
• Small Is the New Big
• Survival Is Not Enough: Why Smart Companies Abandon Worry and Embrace Change
• The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better
• The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable
• The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
• Unleashing the Ideavirus
• We are All Weird

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from the Dip
• Lessons Learned from the Bootstrapper’s Bible

Photo by jurvetson.

“Passion is the genesis of genius.” — Tony Robbins

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from best selling author Shama Kabani on how to be a more effective entrepreneur. Shama is an award winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group, an international speaker, and author of The bestselling book, Zen of Social Media Marketing. I asked Shama to share her lessons learned on finding your spark, following your passion, and succeeding in business.  Here is what she had to say …

I was recently invited to speak to a group of young college students at The City University in Hong Kong on the topic on entrepreneurship. And, I was quite thrilled by the challenge. I believe that entrepreneurship is partly inherent, but everyone has a spark within them to make it happen. At 26, I’ve learned quite a few things about entrepreneurship first hand. My first business was at the age of 9. It was no astounding success. As it turns out, your parents will only buy so much gift wrap before they force you to retire. Since then, I’ve become a savvier entrepreneur. Today, I serve as CEO of The Marketing Zen Group –a full service web marketing firm with a staff of 27 and a global clientele.

Top 10 Lessons in Entrepreneurship

Here are my top ten lessons in entrepreneurship. These are the same lessons that I shared in my physical presentation with the students of City University.

1. Don’t be afraid. It can be scary to start a business. There are a lot of variables and unknowns, but it doesn’t have to be a frightening experience. Take the time to plan it out, do your research, get help, and learn from other people’s mistakes. Ask yourself, what is the worst that can happen? Often what scares us the most is our own judgment.
2. Get adopted. The younger you are, the better this works. I had a professor who once told me that the best thing about being a young entrepreneur is that you can get adopted! People want to mentor and guide you. Most see you as the future, not as a threat. I’ve found this to be very true, and have always been grateful for the support of my community –offline & online!
3. Leverage technology. Technology continues to get cheaper and more user friendly. It has removed barriers, and flattened the marketplace. You can compete with the biggest of companies by leveraging what is available out there for you in terms of technology.
4. Think globally. As an entrepreneur, you are no longer bound by physical boundaries. Even if your business is local, you can generate a global following. I recently learned about a business in Singapore called “Awfully Chocolate.” And, as a chocolate lover, it is on my list to visit when I go there! \
5. Your age is an asset. No matter your age, it is an asset, not a liability. If you are older, you are a seasoned professional. If you are younger, you have a unique perspective to bring to the table. When I first started my company, I did not disclose my age. I felt it would undermine our good work. But then I realized that clients were seeking us out exactly because they wanted to work with a “young & hip” company. They wanted someone who understood technology as a first language. I was amazed at this revelation.
6. Hire by trial. Perhaps the toughest part about being an entrepreneur is that you can’t do it alone. You have to eventually hire a team. I recommend hiring by trial. No resume, no cover letter, no interview can ever take the place of actually seeing someone in action.
7. Marry a lawyer. And, it really helps if you are in love with them. I never realized what a huge role legal plays in a business. And, I’ve been lucky enough to marry one of the smartest attorneys in the world. If you aren’t married to an attorney, no problem. Befriend one! Find a great business lawyer, and make then a true partner in your business. They are trained to see things that you can’t.
8. Listen to your marketplace. Perhaps the greatest lesson you will learn as an entrepreneur is the ability to listen and respond to your marketplace. When I first started The Marketing Zen Group, we only offered consulting services. But, very soon, we saw that our clients were frustrated when they didn’t have the right resources to implement our recommendations. We then offered to take over their web marketing for them, and business has been booming since.
9. Invest in what matters. Bootstrap the rest. Invest in bettering your services, hiring the best, and marketing. You don’t need a fancy office. You do need to know what you are doing, and a competent team to help you do it. Don’t negotiate with your vendors on price. Negotiate on value. Make them feel like a part of your team.
10. Less money is better than more money. This is contrarian advice, but it is true when starting out. As you grow your business, this changes. But, if you are just starting a business, it forces you to be more creative. And, at the end of the day, entrepreneurship is really an exercise in creativity.

“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera

I’ve put together a comprehensive list of marketing books that I’ve found to be insightful or useful in some way.  I see marketing as identifying needs, sizing and segmenting markets, surfacing value, differentiating, positioning in the mind and market, branding, sales, pricing, packaging, distribution, and relationship management.  Marketing is ultimately a blend of skills, capabilities, and focus across a variety of disciplines.

Personal Marketing is Everybody’s Business
In today’s "open and connected" world, I think personal marketing is even more crucial whether it’s selling yourself, selling your work, or creating a name for yourself among your peers … or becoming indispensible to your employer (… Linchpin, anyone?)  Simply put, learning marketing skills is a way to take care of your personal business … the business of you.

The Marchitecture of Business is Evolving …
I see social media transforming marketing in very deep and pervasive ways.  From relationship-marketing on Twitter and Facebook to micro-niches and highly-targeted, location-specific advertising to customer-connected product development, the game is changing.

Proven Practices and Timeless Principles
You can learn a lot about the patterns and practices of marketing from many amazing books.  For example, you can learn proven practices for influence from Robert B. Cialdini in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.   Claude C. Hopkins was an early pioneer in the art and science of advertising, and he was a big believer in sampling.  You can lean about his mindset and methods in his book, Scientific Advertising.  If you want to learn a set of timeless principles that help explain our changing world, you can read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, by Al Ries.  In Married to the Brand, William J. McEwen teaches you proven practices for measuring customer engagement and emotional connection.

Call to Action

1. Explore my list of insightful marketing books.
2. Tell me what books I need to know about.
3. Tell me *why* I need to know about them.

It’s a living library of marketing books.  I’m regularly expanding my library and I regularly recommend books to people, beyond the halls and walls of Microsoft.

* update – Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for suggesting I add The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited and Crossing the Chasm to the list.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

One of the best ways to deal with change is to anticipate it.  At the beginning of each year, I take a step back to see the forest for the trees.

This is my summary of key trends to watch for 2011. Putting it together is a time-consuming exercise, but it’s one of the most important things I do for the coming year. It helps me see the bigger map. With the bigger map, I have a simpler way to understand what’s going on, anticipate what to expect, respond more effectively, and most importantly – make better bets on where to spend my time.

Don’t read this as a definitive list. Draw from it to help you create your own lens to make sense of the landscape and find your path forward. It’s long, I tried to keep it as scannable as possible. I didn’t want to cut it short for the sake of simplicity. Instead, I wanted to provide a solid map with sources you can draw from as you plan your road ahead.

What’s a Trend

Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve describes trends in this way:

“Our Trends are not fads. Our Trends endure. Our Trends evolve. They represent underlying forces, first causes, basic human needs, attitudes, aspirations. They help us navigate the world, understand what’s happening and why, and prepare for what is yet to come.”

Key Questions I Ask to Find and Rationalize Trends

These are some of the basic questions I ask to find and rationalize key trends:

• Where are the investments? (e.g. Where are the CxOs betting?)
• Where’s the growth?
• Where’s the pain?
• Who are the pillars in the relevant niches and what are they saying?  … more importantly, what are they doing?
• What are the results?
• What’s the data say?
• What are consumers doing?
• Is it a real trend or just a fad? … and does it matter?

The Short List – 5 Keys to the Future

Before the longer list, I want to shine the light on 5 key things:

1. Clouds and Clients.  This is a key growth spot.  How else do you keep up in a rapidly changing world, deliver services. disrupt the game, and bring new game changers to market faster than ever before?  It’s the cloud.  It marks the commodization of IT and computing.   Companies can now innovate and disrupt at speeds and cycles we’ve never seen before.   One simple metric is how quickly you can reach a million users now with a new service or product, compared to five years ago.  If you want to stay relevant, you have to be thinking about your cloud and virtualization story.  The opportunities here are amazing from the one-man band code slinger who spins up a Web farm for their app that changes the world to businesses that expose new capabilities to the World and help build the programmable Web.  It’s also a way to simplify computing and move up the stack.
2. It’s a gamer’s world.   I don’t just mean Farmville.  It’s like Second Life meets the real world.  With virtual goods on the rise, and more people connecting and having fun through games online, it’s a sweet spot for innovation.  To fully appreciate why it’s a gamer’s world, check out Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk on how gaming can make a better world.   (Here’s the gist  — Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds and the incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems?)  BTW – way to go Activision Blizzard.  World of Warcraft: Cataclysm shattered previous sales records, by selling more than 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time.  I expect more lines to blur with work and fun and edutainment, as companies find ways to use gaming approaches to motivate today’s Web worker world.  It’s gamer + education + business + life.
3. NUI experiences.  NUI (Natural User Interface) is in.  Great user experiences are the differentiator that drive adoption and make things stick.  This is a great area for innovation, patterns, and practices.  Speaking of innovation, how cool is the Kinect for XBox 360?  It’s a hands-free controller.  Talk about a game changer (and talk about getting closer to interacting with computers Minority Report style.)   When you think about the possibilities of rich media, touch, speech, location-aware services, and “you-as-the-remote control” (think Wii and Kinect), the possibilities for amazing and immersive experiences are endless.  More importantly, we can finally start showing how software improves productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, and fun.   Have you also noticed the explosion of 3D into the cinema and living room?  What’s next … 3D gaming?
4. The Mobile Internet.  Take the Web wherever you go.  It’s a powerful platform and ecosystems that bring the power of software to everyday scenarios, anywhere and everywhere.  With Apple iPhone and iPad, Google Android, Windows Phone 7, the Web is truly in the palm of your hand, and the app story is just going to keep getting better,
5. The Year of the eBook.  This is THE year.  Earlier this year, Seth Godin said, “I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way.”  With the Apple iPad, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, and of course the Amazon Kindle, the game is on.  Oh, yeah, and Google has a shiny new Google eBookstore.   (You can read about the new Google eBookstore in Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices.)

One way to be thinking about changes is to put them into context.  You can think in terms of home, on the road, and at work.

Key Trends for 2011

Here is my summary of key trends for 2011:

1. Analytics / BI (Business intelligence).  Data-driven decisions win over guesswork.  It’s tough, especially when statistics lie and we want to trust our instincts over our indicators.  Start by asking, how do the great businesses drive their great decisions?  Between information markets and crowd sourced intelligence and social networking, the real issue is how you leverage the data and turn it into intelligent decisions and smart feedback loops, and how you learn and respond.
2. "Consumerization" of IT.  A while back, Gartner said Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years … I think we see that accelerating.
3. Cycles of change speed up even more.    Life cycles shift to warp speed and lines blur between versions, creating living, breathing products.  This creates pressure to master change management, adopt more Agile methods, figure out compliance and governance for the new landscape.
4. Digital Health.   This is where cloud, BI/analytics and diagnostics can seriously change the game.  There is also a shift to more user empowerment.  If you take a stroll through Best Buy, you might notice the expanding Digital Health shelf.  This is an area where more people may start to outsource their health to smart applications that can see patterns, provide monitoring, and alerts.
5. Education 2.0.   Have you met Bill Gate’s favorite teacher, Sal Khan?   Khan created Khan Academy.  The Khan Academy is the free classroom for the world with hundreds of free videos and exercises and it’s mission is to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
6. Global distributed development.  Competing in a global market means finding and using the best resources at the best price, anywhere in the world.
7. Location based services.   Talk about relevancy in action and just-in-time ads.  It’s all about specialization + location.  Location, location, location takes on new meaning and relevancy.  Jim Carroll says, “Consider the concept of a ‘location-intelligence professional.’ Today, this involves someone working within the insurance industry, learning how to link the extensive data-sets of geographic oriented information – think Google Maps – with existing insurance underwriting information, and with other statistical databases.”
8. Micropayments and virtual currencies.  Second Life really set the trend here a while back, but it’s becoming more important in today’s world.  This paves the way for real money for micro-transactions.  It also creates a model for reputation based systems, which is important in a reputation-based economy.
9. Private cloud.   The time is ripe for Enterprises to move to the cloud, and private clouds and integration will be key stepping stones.
10. Reputation based.   It’s reputations that cut through the clutter and rise to the top, helped by word-of-mouth marketing and raving fans.
11. Standards / open systems.  One of the way so win in today’s world is to build great experiences on top of open standards.  Optimize for open over closed.
12. Talent Economy / Skills-for-Hire Economy.   Specialization, market maturity and rapid cycles of change drive a demand for key skills.  The key is to balance “generalist” skills in business and technology, along with specialized skills that the market values.
13. The rise of Social media / social networking.   Between world-of-mouth marketing, raving fans, and real time information markets for customer feedback that can make you or break you, embrace and leverage the power of the people.
14. Tribes.  Tribes are who you’re making your products for.  Tribes are your network.  You’ll find your next job through your tribe, or you’ll help members in your tribe find their next job.
15. User empowerment.  It’s the rise of the spider and the fall of the starfish in a federated world.
16. User experiences.   This is where reputations are built and raving fans are won.  Think speed, simplicity, immersive experience, visualization, how you feel … etc.  Design working backward from the end experience in mind.  If the resulting experience suck will suck, don’t even start to build it.
17. Virtual goods.  Whether it’s eBooks or information products or rewards in game worlds, virtual goods have real-world potential.
18. Web TV.   Web TV is truly here.  Improvements in broadband have certainly helped.  Whether your box is  Roku, Playstation, X-Box, Wii, Apple TV, an internet-ready blue-ray, or an Internet-ready TV, and whether you stream from Amazon video-on-demand, NetFlix, or Hulu, video-on-demand has become a reality.  With Google TV on the scene, things really get interesting.

The Meta-Pattern for Trends

These are some of the patterns I’m noticing about the patterns of the trends:

• “Built to Change” Over “Built to Last.”  Again, this goes back to shifting from a static world, to a dynamic world and embracing change over fighting it.  Run with it.
• Consumer patterns drive Enterprise patterns.  At the end of the day, people are consumers and the patterns show up in the Enterprise.
• Decentralize and federate.   Think starfish and spider.
• Differentiate.  Differentiate by giving your best where you have your best to give.  Compete by dividing the niche and small is the new big (so you win with a portfolio that’s flexible and responsive to market demand.)
• Execution is king.  Operational efficiency and innovating in your product cycle is how you survive and thrive.
• Prosumer.  Think Consumer + Producer.  Get your customers into your production cycle earlier so they help you create and innovate in your product line.
• Pull vs. Push.  Know the mental model from push to pull.  In Push Me, Pull You–Dueling Business Models, Steve Bosserman says, “Through the three hundred-year reign of the Industrial Age, businesses “pushed” their products and services onto consumers. Limited choice accompanied by considerable marketing hype was enough to make the consumer buy. It was a sellers’ market. Now, thanks largely to the Information Age, consumers are evolving into customers who can select what they want from a variety of providers. It is becoming a buyers’ market.”
• Relevancy is king.  Google taught us this.
• Reputation and brand are king.   In a social networked world, it’s the network that says who the authority is and what works and what doesn’t.
• Simplicity.  Simplicity always win in the long run when it comes to adoption.  Find ways to reduce friction and make things simple out of the box.  Design for simplicity and keep things simple where you can.
• Social Value / Community Good.  Green is not optional.  In a green world, if you’re business doesn’t play well with green values, it’s not a sustainable path.
• Results are king.  Talk is cheap.  Results speak for themselves.

There are a lot of kings here.  In checkers, it’s easier to win when you have a lot of kings.

The Way Forword

What’s past is past and the future

• Absorb what is useful.  Do it Bruce Lee style — take what you need, adapt it, and throw out the rest.
• Agility. Stay adaptable.  Flexibility is your friend.  See The better adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be.
• Anticipate change.   Look ahead.  Build your anticipation skills.  Know the system.  Things don’t just happen.  The more you know the system and the ecosystem, the more you can anticipate what’s coming down the line.  Pay attention to market leaders, trend setters, patterns, and cycles.  Everything happens in cycles whether it’s growth or decline. best.
• Be the Best on the Web.  there’s no room for #2.  Be the best at what you’re the best at.  This is Good to Great in action.
• Build a firm foundation.  Know Maslow’s hierarchy and prioritize taking care of your basic needs.  Know your “monthly burn” and be mindful of your decisions to support your firm foundation.  The stronger your foundation is, the more you can help yourself and others when they need it most.
• Compete where it makes the most sense.  Compete on price, or quality or customer and don’t mix them up.  This depends on which stage of the maturity cycle you are in, what the state of the market is, and what you can be the best at.  For example, in a commodity market, don’t be the most expensive.  Turn competition into collaboration and find the win wins to really change your game and rock the world.
• If it doesn’t help you be your best, cut it out.   This means living your values, and playing to your strengths.  It also means giving your best where you have your best to give, as a person, and as a company.  It’s how your survive, and it’s how you go from surviving to thriving.   Any other way drains you in the long run and you get priced or pushed or competed out of the market.  It’s the sustainable path.
• Follow the Cycles.  Knowing the path from cradle to grave, gives you an edge.  It helps you anticipate what to expect and it helps you apply levers where they count.  At a meta-level, there is a pattern for market maturity cycles.  According to Alonso Martinez and Ronald Haddock, the 4 stages of market maturity are: 1) survival, 2) quality, 3) convenience, 4) customization.
• Follow the Data.   With all the usage data and analytics power of a Web world, you don’t need to guess at success.  It’s very easy to use surveys to figure out what your customers want.  It’s easy to provide options for customers to provide actionable feedback.  Drive your decisions with data and make informed decisions.  Do A/B testing and experiment your way forward.
• Follow the growth.  Follow your own growth, and follow the growth in the market.  For example, in the tech industry some growth areas are mobile and cloud.  Along these lines, create the growth.
• Follow the money.  Where there’s money, there’s growth.  You can look to where CxOs are investing, or even where you company is investing and making its bets.
• Follow the people.  Great people have track records for a reason.  Find the people who are connected and always seem to be ahead of the curve.   Great ideas flow from great people and this is an idea economy.
• Get back to the basics.  Practice the fundamentals.  They work.  Among the chaos, there are always core principles, patterns, and practices that you can bank on.
• Hone your personal brand.  Make the most of what you’ve got and make sure your differentiation is obvious.  For example, one of my differentiators is “getting results.”
• Invest in yourself.  Inner-engineering always pays off.
• It’s your network and what you know.  People sort and sift through people they know.  In a skills-for-hire economy, your network is how you find the opportunities.
• Know the cycles of things.  For example, know the Four Stages of Market Maturity, the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, and the Diffusion of Innovations.
• Lead yourself from the inside out.   Follow your values, play to your strengths, and follow your purpose.  It’s the sustainable path.
• Learn and respond.  Your ability to learn and respond will drive your best results.  Innovate in your process and your product.
• Model the best.   You can speed up your learning curves and avoid costly mistakes by modeling from best practices and working examples.  Whenever you think you’re faced with a new problem, first ask, who else might share this problem, and see if you can find three good examples of how this problem was solved.

Key Sources

I primarily draw from my own experience working with customers, and paying attention to what they’re paying attention to, as well as paying attention to my mentors and smarties across Microsoft, and whoever they tell me to pay attention to. One of the easiest ways to see where the action is and where the growth will be is to watch where companies put their best people and where they invest (I call it a “charter and bets check”). I also draw from the following:

• Jim Carroll – Jim helps me see the trends across industries and look to patterns. He’s also great at identifying where the growth and opportunities are, and more importantly how to frame the landscape in a way that makes it actionable instead of analysis paralysis.
• Trend Hunter – It’s effectively “crowd-sources insight” and it’s a great source for consumer trends. I’m a big believer that consumer trends pave the path for Enterprise trends. By watching consumer trends, I learn what to expect. I then watch how it shows up as I work with my customers. This pattern serves me well.
• Internet Trends by Morgan Stanley –  This is a data-driven view of the emerging trends.  What I like about this report is how the data is used to help identify and illustrate the patterns.
• C:Insights Trends – They focus on consumer trends and they specialize in research and advisory services.  I look to them for patterns and key words in consumer trends.
• Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft – Mundie has been in the business for more than 35 years, and he’s a forward thinker.   I pay attention to Mundie because he is in the center of a lot of action.  He’s also good at being able to see the forest from the trees.
• Faith Popcorn – I first heard about Faith from Tony Robbins and I can see why he looks to her for patterns and trends.  Her super skill is finding the more pervasive trends that shape the culture, consumers, and the community.  She specializes in turning the insight from trends into actions for business and weaving them into strategies and tactics for business.
• IBM Executive Exchange – The beauty of the IBM Executive Exchange is that it’s real insight from actual CIO, CFO, and CEOs.  If you want to know what kinds of things will be getting attention in the coming year, simply look to the CxOs.  The CxOs have an important vantage point in their company.  They know their company’s strategy, top pain points, and key investments.  You can expect ripple effects from their decision.
• IDC (International Data Corporation) — IDC is an analyst that specializes in analyzing the future.  I look to them to see what insights and trends they see across various sectors include energy, financial, government, health, manufacturaing, and retail.
• JWT Intelligence – JWT is all about finding trends and turning cultural shifts into opportunities.  I find their synthesis and the way they name their trends, insightful and compelling.   I cross-check them against the other consumer trends I see.

With that in mind, here is a quick roundup of key trends to watch for from these sources  …

C:Insights on Trends

20 Mobile Trends for 2011 — http://www.slideshare.net/CinsightsTrends/20-key-mobile-trends-201011

1. Trend 1 – Augmented Reality (AR)
2. Trend 2 – Social Search
3. Trend 3 – Social Gaining
4. Trend 4 – Mobile social Networks
5. Trend 5 – Mobile Discount Coupons
6. Trend 6 – QR Codes
7. Trend 7 – Micro Blogging
8. Trend 8 – Video Sharing
9. Trend 9 – Instant Networking
10. Trend 10 – Niche Networks
11. Trend 11 – Multitasking
12. Trend 12 – Virtual Personas
13. Trend 13 – Mobile IM
14. Trend 14 – Social Music
15. Trend 15 – Organic Technology
16. Trend 16 – Conversational Content
17. Trend 17 – Open Source Applications
18. Trend 18 – Peer Advertising
19. Trend 19 – Social Media Aggregators
20. Trend 20 – Mobile Apps

CIO Insight on Trends

Lundquist’s Top Tech Trends for 2011 – http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/IT-Management/Lundquists-Top-Tech-Trends-for-2011-656290/

1. The CIO as Services Maestro
2. IT Services
3. Reverse Consumerization
4. The Mobile Enterprise
5. Virtualization, Cloud Computing
6. Big Blue vs. Big Red
7. Remember PCs?
8. Tablets
9. Video
10. Apple Stores

Computer Economics on Trends

Technology Trends – 2010/2011 –- http://www.computereconomics.com/images/default/ISS2010/TechTrends2010sample.pdf

Computer Economics identifies 19 hot spots for focus and where the action is:

1. Application Consolidation
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
3. Data Center Consolidation
4. Desktop Virtualization
5. Enterprise Social Networking
6. Enterprise Resource Planning Software
7. Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) Systems
8. Help Desk Self-Support Systems
9. Infrastructure Cloud Computing
10. Legacy System Renewal
11. Microsoft Windows 7 Migration
12. Mobile Applications
13. Open Source Business Applications
14. Predictive Analytics
15. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems
16. Software as a Service
17. 10G Ethernet
18. Unified Communications
19. Video Conferencing Systems

Craig Mundie on Trends

Reimagining Microsoft’s Future, Financial Analyst Meeting, July 29, 2010 -

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Downloads/Events/Mundie_FAM_2010.docx

Mundie identifies three trends that are coming out of the labs and showing up in products:

1. Clients and Clouds – “The combination of the client and the cloud to create the new computing platform that will redefine both how people develop applications and ultimately how people consume them and what kind of things are possible to solve.”
2. Natural User Interface – “As the computer has become more and more powerful, and yet it’s more and more pervasive in our lives, we need ultimately to change the way in which we deal with the computer. There have been many technological trends that we’ve been studying in research for 10 or even 20 years, and they’re all starting to come together, enabled by this revolution in the microprocessor capability and networking, to some extent.”
3. Working on your behalf – “For time immemorial, computers have been a great tool, but increasingly, the world has so much stuff available to us that if we have to navigate it all by hand, it just becomes tedious. So, we’re now starting to turn a lot of the power of the computer to helping us get things done.”

IBM Executive Exchange on Trends

2010 IBM Global IT Risk Study – The Evolving Role of IT Managers and CIOs

The Evolving Role of IT Managers and CIOs

http://www-931.ibm.com/docs/vrmhost/GBE03365-USEN-00.pdf

Top 5 Emerging Technologies in terms of risk:

1. Social networking tools
2. Mobile platforms
3. Cloud computing
4. Virtualization
5. Service-oriented architecture

Additional insights …

• “IT risk management and compliance has remained largely immune from budget cuts or cost reductions.”
• Risk management helps defensively with business continuity, protecting reputation and proactively with a company’s agility, creating growth, and reducing costs.
• Business continuity is about building a “risk-aware culture” and baking into the tools, processes and methodologies.
• “IT security (vulnerability to hackers and unauthorized access/use of company systems) is the number-one concern among 78 percent of the IT professionals surveyed.”

Analytics: The new path to value

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ibv-embedding-analytics.html

• How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform insights into action. The success pattern is to use analytics over best guesses – “The tendency for top-performing organizations to apply analytics to particular activities across the organization, as compared to lower performers.”

Smarter Cities – Cities are getting smarter. Watch the trailer on Smarter Cities

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/thesmartercity/index_flash.html#/home/trailer/

• According to the video, cities around the world are tackling: “How to keep traffic flowing, cure a health care system, protect citizens while protecting their privacy, and how to demonstrate how one decision affects millions of people and involve them in making their city a better place to live.” Check out http://IBM.com/TheSmarterCity

IDC on Trends

Worldwide System Infrastructure Software 2011 Top 10 Predictions – http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=225895

1. Private Cloud Plans Will Mature, Dominate the Enterprise Infrastructure Software Agenda in 2011
2. Battle for Next-Generation Cloud Platforms Will Shift Focus from IaaS to PaaS
3. Microsoft Windows Azure Will Get the Respect It Deserves
4. New Enterprise Mainframe Will Create Integrated/Hybrid Solution Opportunities for Management Software Vendors, But MIPS Wars Will Continue
5. Server Virtualization Will Continue to Subsume High-Availability and Replication Functionality
6. Client Virtualization Will Become a Strategic, Mainstream Desktop Choice in 2011
7. Big 4 Will Become the Big 5 — Microsoft Will Displace HP as the Number 1 Global Distributed Systems Management Software Provider
8. Social Collaboration Will Force Shift in IT Service Management Support Best Practices
9. Enterprises Will Push for Broad ELA Subscription Pricing as ISVs Struggle to Accommodate Elastic Infrastructure and Cloud-Scale Operations
10. Novell Acquisition Will Be Catalyst for Linux Market Upheaval During 2011

IDC Predictions 2011: Welcome to the New Mainstream – http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=225878

1. Worldwide IT Spending Growth Will Be Solid, with Hardware Moderating and Rebounds in Software and Services
2. Emerging Markets Will Continue to Lead Global Growth in IT
3. Public and Private Cloud Adoption Will Surge, Two Cloud "Power Position" Battles Will Enter High Gear, and a Buzzword Will Get Ready to Fade
4. Cloud-Driven Datacenter Transformations Will Pick Up Speed
5. The Mobility Explosion Will Continue — with Huge Device Volumes, New Form Factors, and Billions of Mobile Apps
6. Broadband Networks Will Struggle — and Innovate — to Keep Up
7. Social Business Momentum Will Drive Consolidation, SMB Adoption
8. The Expanding Digital Universe Will Drive Cloud-Friendly Information Infrastructure and Real-Time Analytics for "Big Data"
9. "Intelligent Industries" Will Put Mobility, Social Networking to Work
10. Industry Positions for Customers Demanding "I Want My Web TV!"

2010 UtiliQ Rankings: Top 25 Intelligent Utilities

http://www.idc-ei.com/research/UtiliQ.jsp

In their “Looking Ahead” section, IDC provides a set of guidelines for strategies and investments for companies that want to improve their position:

1. Partner with the customer. “Recent customer backlash in some areas is in large part due to insufficient communication with the customer. Develop a b communications plan to make the customer aware of the long-run advantages of intelligent investments and use pilot programs as a testing ground for customer partnership.”
2. Drive company cultural change.” Becoming a more intelligent utility has a lot to do with people. Your employees need to understand your company’s vision, your strategy for getting there, why it’s important to all major stakeholders – including customers and regulators – and what this all means to your employees on a day-to-day basis.”
3. Improve processes for both "lean" and "green." “Efficient processes drive down the cost of maintaining the current environment and free up resources for innovation and growth.”
4. Make intelligent technology investments.” Find ways to get the best return from your technology investments by ensuring that your spending on information, communications, and energy technologies is in line with the business.”

Jim Carroll on Trends

Trending in 2011: 10 Major Trends to Start Thinking About Now!

http://www.jimcarroll.com/2010/10/trending-in-2011-10-major-trends-to-start-thinking-about-now/

1. The expectations gap. "Western society is defined by an increasing divergence between what people expect, and what they will get."
2. Industries blur. "The world of fashion and healthcare are going to merge. We are going to see an increasing number of bio-connectivity health care devices that will be used for the remote monitoring of health care conditions."
3. Energy gets smart. ".. Continued high-speed innovation with renewable energy sources, and velocity with grid-parity: the point in time at which the cost of producing renewable energy equals that of carbon based sources."
4. The collapse of attention spans. "If you don’t know how to think, market and promote at nano-speeds, you’re not ready for the future!"
5. Faster market evolution. "New products flood the market at ever increasing speeds, and fast-consumers snap them up in a moment and evolve their lifestyles quicker."
6. Innovation partnerships. Companies can’t keep up and just innnovate on their own … "enjoy greater success through open innovation and other external innovation partnerships."
7. The fight against workplace boredom. "Organizations are fighting back against boredom by trying to keep staff engaged."
8. American-Idolotry. People love heroes. "The future of workplace and partner renumeration is all about the red-carpet, the spotlight, and the celebration of success!"
9. The big impact of small incrementalism. "Everyone is learning that one way to win the future is by having a lot of small wins that add up to big gains."
10. Communities redefined. Community ergonomics will be a high growth industry. We have a growing senior population, which means communities need to be "rethought, re-designed, and reconstructed."

JWT Intelligence on Trends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtTk2J935Bg&feature=player_embedded

1. All the world’s a game
2. The urgency economy
3. Non-commitment culture
4. Eat, pray, tech
5. De-teching
6. Retail as the third space
7. Creative urban renewal
8. Worlds colliding
9. Hyper-personalization
10. Outsourcing self-control

Morgan Stanley on Trends

CM Summit, June 7, 2010

http://www.slideshare.net/CMSummit/ms-internet-trends060710final

1. Mobile Internet – Unprecedented Early Stage Growth
2. Innovation — Unprecedented Intensity?
3. Online Advertising — May Be Entering Golden Age, Finally
4. Online Commerce – Mobile Should Be Share Gain Accelerator
5. Communications — Share Shift to Sharing
6. Cloud Computing — Consumer First, Enterprise Next
7. Technology — What’s Next …
8. Beyond Technology — It’s Complicated …

Internet Trends, April 12, 2010

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/Internet_Trends_041210.pdf

Morgan Stanley on the “Mobile Internet” …

1. Wealth Creation / Destruction is Material in New computing Cycles — Now in Early Innings of Mobile Internet Cycle, the 5th Cycle of Last Half Century.
2. Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet Dic and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think — 5 Trends Converging (3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices).
3. Apple Leading in Mobile Innovation + Impact, for Now — Depth of App Ecosystems + User Experience + Pricing Will Determing Long-Term Winners.
4. Game-Changing Communications / Commerce Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Emerging Very Rapidly.
5. Massive Data Growth Driving Carrier / Equipment Transitions.
6. Growth / Monetization Roadmaps Provided by Japan Mobile + Desktop Internet.

Rudolf Melik on Trends

Ten Major Trends for 2011 and How They Impact Professional Services and Project Delivery

http://www.psvillage.com/pulse/ten-major-trends-2011-and-how-they-impact-professional

Rudolf, CEO of Tenrox, does a great job overlaying his experience and perspective against Jim Carroll’s map of 10 majory Trends for 2011. Check out his article, but here is a quick blurb from his take on how the workforce will shift to more project-based execution.

• Rudolf on Hollywood movie style execution — “More companies are also adopting a Hollywood movie style execution strategy by bringing people together to shoot the film (execute the project) and then disband the crew (the team) just as quickly as it came together once the film is completed (project is closed).”
• Rudolf on project history over employment history — “Project workers are increasingly giving more importance to the next project they will work on instead of the company they will work at. More and more personal profiles take the form of an individual’s project history rather than their employment history.”

Trend Hunter on Trends

2011 Trend Repor Samples

http://www.trendreports.com/2011-Trend-Report

1.  Interactive Retail – “Stores focus on customer engagement as primary business strategy.”
2. Social Shopping – “Shopaholics are using social media for networking and retail therapy.”
3. Perpetual Adaptation – “Obsessed with aesthetics, society embarks on the eternal makeover.”
4. Democratic Selling – “Online retailers rely on customer votes to push production.”
5. Radical Rebranding – “Pushing boundaries of reinvention to gain consumer attention.”
6. Hyperrealism – “Real life is simulated in photorealistic artworks that defy deception.”
7. Geriatric Couture – “Seniors become the anti-fashion inspiration for young people.”
8. Augmented Reality – “Augmented reality combines reality and virtuality, offering a new way to imagine.”
9. Half Formal – “Classed up business casual is a reflection of the new corporate attitude.”

What else is important that I should know about or have on my radar and heat map?

“You were born an original.  Don’t die a copy.” — John Mason

In a world that’s over-crowded and over-flowing with competition, what makes some brands stand out?   I’ve been trying to answer that question, and then I came across The Trouble with Brands, an article by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar.

It turns out, the answer is Energized Differentiation.  That’s the term Gerzema and Lebar use for brands that stand out in how they communicate excitement, dynamism, and creativity.

Why Does Energized Differentiation Matter
Why does that matter?    It’s actually a really big deal.  According to Gerzema and Lebar, “The unique measure of energized differentiation establishes a direct link between brand momentum and creativity, financial earnings, and stock performance. “  They also found that, “The more energy they have, the greater consideration, loyalty, pricing power, and brand value (as a percentage of firm value) they command.”

On the flip side, It’s also a big deal because it turns out that the classic way of measuring brand equity, by measuring 4 attributes (trust, awareness, regard, and esteem), just isn’t working anymore.

Whether you are a solo-preneur, a blogger, a company, or a corporate warrior, differentiation is the name of the game.  And Energized Differentiation is how you win.

3 Keys to a High Energy Brand
According to Gerzema and Lebar, the three keys to a high energy brand are:

1. Vision – how the company presents leadership, convictions, and reputation.
2. Invention – how consumers perceive innovation in the design or content of the product or service.
3. Dynamism – how the brand creates a persona, emotion, advocacy, and evangelism.

Some examples of high energy brands include Adida, iPhone, McDonald’s, Nike, Walmart, JetBlue, and Virgin Atlantic.

Energy is Where the Action Is
Gerzema and Lebar write:

“But energy is where the action is. It reflects the consumer’s perception of motion and direction. It sustains the brand’s advantages. High-energy brands create a constant sense of interest and excitement. Consumers sense that these brands move faster, see farther, and are more experiential and more responsive to their needs.”

I like the visionary, fluid and flexible picture this paints.

Differentiation is Offering, Uniqueness, and Distinction
According to Gerzema and Lebar, differentiation is how a consumer perceives three brand attributes:

1. Offering – the products, services, or content.
2. Uniqueness – the brand’s essence, positioning, and equity.
3. Distinction – the reputation of the brand.

You can take a look at your offering, uniqueness, and distinction in light of the three keys to a high energy brand.

Relevancy is Still King
Gerzema and Lebar write:

“Without relevance, the brand will languish. The brand may stand out with energy but have no meaning to consumers. Relevance is the pathway to strong consideration, trial, preference, and ultimately share of wallet. This is especially important in today’s downward-spiraling market.”

This makes perfect sense.  The way to stay connected is to stay relevant.

Photo by Fremlin.

“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” — Confucius

I’m testing my new tag line and taking it for a test drive.  It’s Insight and Action for Getting Results.  I’ll share my story and what I’ve learned since it might help others whether you’re branding you, your blog, or your business.  Keep in mind, I’m not a brand master and I don’t play one on T.V. (though Robert Redford stepped on my foot while filming The Quiz Show, but that’s another story for another day.)

Anyway, I’ve been revisiting my tag line since Annabel posed the question, “Lifestyle design sounds far sexier than self improvement, personal development or self help, doesn’t it?”  It’s a good question, and it’s worth exploring.  Personally, I think sexy is in the eye of the beholder.  For example, if you’re on a personal development mission, then sites that use those words, become the apples of your eye.

Tests for Success
Unfortunately, when I started cycling through potential tag lines, I didn’t have a great set of tests for success.  Now I do:

• What’s in the box?
• What works well on a t-shirt?
• What’s sticky in the halls?
• What can you say to another person live without feeling weird or sounding hokey?
• What can you say that promises a benefit in a nutshell?

Some tag lines passed the “pithy and precise” test, but didn’t resonate.  Some passed the technically accurate, but failed the “what works well on a T-shirt?” test.  For example, while I focus on personal effectiveness, that’s just a piece of the puzzle and some said it’s “cold.”  “Results” has sizzle (and sell the sizzle, not the steak.)

Approach
I’m a fan of asking the right people the right questions and testing results.  There’s plenty of people smarter than me that are more than happy to share their know-how and expertise.  I just have to ask.  I asked people far and wide from every Joe’s to engineers to marketing maestros.  However, until I had my tests for success, I couldn’t pick a winner.  It was the tests for success that helped me parse the feedback.

Breaking Some Rules
Sometimes you just have to break the rules.  I’m breaking a couple of golden branding rules.  For example, “results” isn’t a well-known category like “personal development.”  I’m also going against the rule that the specific is better than the general and that you win by narrowing your focus.  I agree that’s true, but for me, I’d rather go Renaissance Man and generalize over specialize — and leave getting results wide open.  One of my mentors echoed that point, saying that I help anybody do anything better, and that’s my super skill.

The Winner (for Now)
For now, I’m test-driving “Insight and Action for Getting Results.”  My previous manager said that I’m all about “getting results” and that he’s never seen anybody learn and improve in a shorter time.  “Insight” is fun little word, and coupled with “action” means we’re going to use this or apply it somehow.

Getting Results is pretty sticky and I bridge work and life.  I focus on mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships and fun, which I think are key hot spots for life.  If you flip through my past posts, you’ll find everything from lessons from Oprah, to improving decision making, to dealing with tough bosses, to skilled happiness, to using stress to be your best., to feeling good.  It’s an eclectic set of patterns and practices for success in work and life.

Why do I say, “for now”?  Because I’m a believer that branding is a journey of continuous learning and refinement … and sometimes it’s just a plain “do-over.”

Photo by Rene Ehrhardt.

“Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.” — Rudy Giuliani

You can hope for the best, or you can focus on effective strategies to improve your business or your life.  A Strategy Diamond is a crisp way to analyze, visualize, summarize, and share your strategy for your product or your business.

Donald Hambrick and James Fredrickson created the Strategy Diamond as a way to show what the actual bits and pieces of a strategy are and how they fit together.  Strategy is about making important choices, and the real power of a Strategy Diamond is that it integrates important choices into a bigger picture, instead of as a piecemeal approach.

We’ve used strategy diamonds successfully on our Microsoft patterns & practices team to think through strategy.  Simply by walking the diamond and asking and answering the tough questions, we shaped a better strategy.  The beauty of a Strategy Diamond is that you can apply it whether you’re a solopreneur, a corporate citizen, or just want to get a new lens on life for how to survive and thrive in today’s world.

The Five Major Elements of Strategy
The five key parts of a strategy are: arenas, vehicles, differentiation, staging, and economic value.  By answering key questions in each area, you paint a picture of your strategy with increasing clarity.

Arenas – “Where will we be active and with how much emphasis?”:

• Which core technologies?
• Which geographic areas?
• Which market segments?
• Which product categories?
• Which value-creation stages?

Vehicles – “How will we get there?”

• Acquisitions?
• Joint ventures?
• Internal development?
• Licensing/franchising?

Differentiation – “How will we win?”

• Customization?
• Image?
• Price?
• Product reliability?

Staging – “What will be our speed and sequence of moves?”

• Speed of expansion?
• Speed of initiatives?
• Economic Logic
• Economic logic answers the question, “How will we obtain our returns?”
• Lowest costs through scale advantages?
• Lowest costs through scope and replication advantages?
• Premium prices due to unmatchable service?
• Premium prices due to proprietary product features?

For more information on designing effective strategies and Strategy Diamonds, see the presentation, What is Strategy, by Marc Sniukas.

I think a Strategy Diamond dovetails nicely with a Future Picture, which is a technique the military uses for painting and communicating a clear picture of the future.  It’s a powerful technique to get clarity on your vision.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Dan Schawbel. Dan’s super skill is personal branding and he has an impressive set of credentials.

Dan is the bestselling author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, an award winning blogger at Personal Branding Blog, the publisher of Personal Branding Magazine, a national speaker and consultant on branding, and a BusinessWeek columnist. He’s been called a “Personal Branding Guru” by The New York Times and has been featured in over 150 media outlets.

In this guest post, Dan outlines some common mistakes when it comes to branding yourself online and what to do about them. Without further ado, here is Dan on the top 5 lessons learned in personal branding …

In the past three years, I’ve noticed a lot about how people behave online and how people are building their brands. Most of the time, people aren’t very self-aware of what they are publishing online and are actually hurting their brands in the long-term. Everyone has a personal brand whether they like it or not, so the focus should always be “how do I manage my brand.” In the online world, perception is much more important than reality, but if you don’t deliver on that brand promise offline, you will fail. There are five common mistakes that I’ve seen and that you should not only be aware of, but you shouldn’t make them.

1. Don’t over-promote.  Don’t over-promote by tweeting about your products and achievements all the time. Instead you should have a careful balance of value contribution and self-promotion, so that you are helping your followers, having them spread your message, while letting them know what you’re all about in the process.
2. Be mindful of your blog comments.  Be mindful of your blog comments, not only because bloggers moderate comments but because people will only click through to your blog if you’re added value to the post. Many people will cite their name, their company’s name, and multiple URL’s, when that subtracts from the comment and positions you as a spammer. You should add your opinion when commenting on blog posts and let interested readers click through to your blog.
3. Discover your brand before you communicate it. It’s very easy to start using social tools to communicate with the general public, but it’s not very effective unless you’ve discovered your brand first. By having a clear understanding on what you want to be known for, your positioning in the marketplace (taking a niche), and the overall design and message you want to communicate, you will be much more successful when you’re actually on social networks.
4. Use the same picture, name, and messaging .  Be consistent with everything you do, so people are viewing the same picture, name and messaging wherever they see you online or offline. Your Twitter avatar should be the same as your Facebook picture and the picture on your blog bio page. If you position yourself as the top salesman for baby boomers in Texas, then make sure that branding exists everywhere as well.
5. Get your name out there.  Don’t just pump out content on your blog and pray that people find it. If you build it, they probably won’t come, unless they know to come. You want to get your name out there by networking with the right people, not the entire world. Use services like Twellow.com to narrow down your search to people who would be interested in what you have to say. Comment and guest post on blogs to attract more attention and build readership. Put your blog or website URL on your business card, in your presentations, on your resume, and everywhere else.

Part of “standing on the shoulders of giants”, is finding the heroes to learn and model from.  Starting with the assumption that “everybody has flaws,” you can choose to focus on people’s super skills and insights.  Everybody brings something to the table.

In this post, I’m focusing on Guy Kawasaki.  His super skill is making Entrepreneurs more effective.  He’s also a master at the business of life.  He lives life in a sustainable way, living his mantra of “empower Entrepreneurs,” keeping things real, enjoying the ride, and staying authentic.

As a thought leader and a people leader in the startup space, Guy provides practical advice from being a more effective evangelist to helping Entrepreneurs pitch and test their ideas more effectively.  As a writer, speaker, and consultant, he’s a powerful force of good that you can draw from for insight, inspiration and results.  At a minimum, you can use his advice to improve your slide decks and pitch your ideas more effectively.

25 Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki
This collection of insights is based on drawing from Guy’s presentations, blog posts, and books.  I consolidated as much as possible, to paint a map of some of his best contributions.  You can use this as a launch pad for exploring his work.  At the end of this post, I’ve consolidated some resources you can use to continue your exploration.  Here are my 25 lessons learned from Guy Kawasaki:

1. Make a mantra, not a mission.  Mission statements are often too long or they don’t resonate.  You need something you can easily remember, easily say, and identify with.  Summarize your cause in 2 or 3 words.  According to Guy, some effective examples might be Nike – “authentic, athletic performance” and Wendy’s – “healthy, fast food.”  The key is to capture the essence in just a few words.  This helps remind you of your cause and reinforce it with your actions.
2. Make meaning over money.  According to Guy, “Evangelism starts with the desire to make meaning.”  When you focus on the money, you focus on the wrong thing.  You have to first make meaning.   You need to mean something to the world and to your customers.  “The root of great companies is make meaning vs. make money.” – Guy Kawasaki.
3. Know what you want your life to be about.  Know what you want your life to be about and live your mantra.  Guy lives his life, actualizing his mantra “empowering Entrepreneurs.”  I like this approach, and I’ve been thinking about refining mine.  It might be closer to “results by design” or “proven practices for results” or “empowering Underdogs.”  Whenever I think about my posts, I’m asking, is it helping lift people up or help them be their best in any situation.
4. Be unique and valuable.  This is the key to effective marketing.  If you’re not unique, you’re competing on price.  Eventually, you’ll be priced out of the market.  If you are unique, but you aren’t valuable, then you have no market.  The sweet spot is valuable to the market and unique.
5. The secret of evangelism is touch things that are gold. Don’t evangelize crap.  Evangelize great things.  “The secret of evangelism is Guy’s golden touch – whatever is gold, Guy touches.  That’s very different than saying whatever Guy touches turns gold.” – Guy Kawasaki
6. Remember DICEE to make great things.  This is how to be great out of the gate.  According to Guy, DICEE is an acronym to help remind you how to make things that are gold.  “D” is for Deep.  It has to have lots of power.  You don’t run out of power and you’re not waiting for a more powerful version.  It anticipated what you need to do.  “I” is for Intelligent.  It’s a smart solution to a problem.  “C” is for Complete.  Great products are complete.  Complete means the totality of what the product means   This means all the stuff around the product (the OEMs, the forums, the plug-ins, service, support … etc.) “E” is for Elegant.  When you look at it, you inherently know what to do.  You can kind of figure out without a manual.  “E” is for Emotive – great products have emotion.
7. Don’t worry, be crappy.   Ship, then test.  Don’t wait for the perfect world, or you’ll never ship.  As long as you are truly making meaning and you have a revolution, the market will accept elements of crap.  Ship something revolutionary with elements of crappiness to it.  You can then prioritize which crap to improve based on real usage and feedback.
8. Version it.  Think in terms of versions.  Ask, “what’s good enough for now?”  It’s not about slicing and dicing value and spreading it out over time.  Instead, it’s about being complete and good enough for now so that you don’t miss the market.  It’s also about continuous improvement over time.  Each version should be a useful, relevant, and marked improvement.  Guy thinks in terms of versions all the time.  In one example, he says, “My wife was in Beta with our second child … Shipped on time and no bugs.”  He also versioned his Alltop project. (see Alltop Version 2.0: The Art of Aggregation)  and he versioned, Entrepreneurship (See Entrepreneurship 2.0.)
9. Don’t let the Bozos grind you down.  Don’t listen to people that tell you that you’ll fail, because if you don’t try, then you definitely will fail.  According to Guy, there are two types of Bozos.  One type of bozo is a loser.  You don’t listen to them anyway, so that’s not the dangerous bozo.  The dangerous bozo is the rich, successful, well-known person.  Remember that rich, successful and well-know does not equal smart.  “Inoculate yourself from dangerous bozos.” – Guy Kawasaki.
10. Smile, it’s contagious.  Guy wears a smile often.  It’s easy to find pictures of him flashing his pearly whites and it’s contagious.  Take yourself seriously, but not too seriously.  “Life is good.” – Guy Kawasaki
11. Ask, “Is it defensible?” This is about evaluating startups against the following:  Proven team?  … Proven management?  … Proven technology?  … Proven business model?  These are some of the early warning flags that you don’t want to get in the way or that you have a good answer for.
12. Follow the 10-20-30 rule for content, length, and font.  Use a maximum of 10 slides.  Your presentation should be no more than 20 minutes, even if it’s an hour presentation.  Use a 30 point font.  It forces you to put the core text.  If you need to use a smaller font it’s because you don’t know your material.  If you start reading your material, your audience will read ahead and stop listening to you.  See The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint and Video: Guy Kawasaki 10-20-30 Presentation Rule.
13. Pitch your ideas in 10 slides.  Pitch your ideas more effectively.  Don’t be a solution looking for a problem, make meaning, and show how you’ll make money.  The idea is to communicate enough, not everything and stimulate interest, not seal the deal.  10 slides forces you to focus on the essentials and the fewer slides you need, the more compelling the idea.  According to Guy, here’s what those 10 slides should be:  1) Title and what you do slide 2) problem slide, 3) solution slide, 4) business model slide, 5) underlying magic (secret sauce) slide, 6) marketing and sales slide, 7) competitive landscape slide, management team slide, 9) financial projects and key metrics slide, 10) current status slide.  See The Art of Pitching MP3.
14. Ask, “So what? … Who gives a shiitake?” This is about asking, why does it matter, and who does it matter for.  According to Guy, you can do this by imagining a little guy on your shoulder that asks you, “so what?”  You can make this very effective by pairing up “so what?” with “for instance.”  After you answer, the “so what?” question, you can then give a real world, concrete example starting off with, “for instance …”
15. Make it personal. Personalize over generalize.   Instead of talking about paradigm shifts, make it real and make it relevant to the person.  What does it mean to them?
16. Success is a numbers game.  It’s a numbers game.  According to Guy, how venture capitalism really works is, that out of 20 – 30 bets, 1 or 2 succeed.  Of course, when your 1 or 2 bets succeed, you tell everybody how you knew it all along, and how it’s your partner that missed the other 18.  Guy readily admits he missed predicting the successes of Yahoo, Google, and YouTube.  See Gnomedex 2007 – Guy Kowasaki.
17. Be a straight shooter.  Keep it human.  Guy speaks in simple terms and keeps it real.  Whether you’re talking about your mantra or benefits of your product for people, don’t speak in lofty terms.  Keep it down to Earth.  Be authentic.  Be true to you.  Don’t be a suck up.  Guy’s a perfect blend of down to Earth, politically incorrect, and authentic, that we can model from.
18. Create very slippery slopes.  This is about creating glide paths for adoption.  Adoption shouldn’t be a pill that’s too big to swallow.  Create very slippery slopes.  This means thinking in terms of incremental buy-in and incremental adoption.
19. It’s a beautiful time for Entrepreneurs.   Now is a perfect time to be an Entrepreneur.  Test your ventures.  Ship something.  Show an adoption curve that’s growing.  Put something out and “prove the dogs are eating the food.”   You can test your ventures without depending on VC funding to start.  For example, instead of a million dollars in development and marketing costs to test an idea, it’s $12k.  This is how much it cost for Guy to spin up Truemors.  See By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09.
20. Align your interests.  This is about “alignment of interest” vs. “conflict of interest.”  Line up with the people, ideas, and things you believe in. See The Short Tale: Much Ado About Not Much.
21. It’s about the experience.   Make the most of every experience and live life to the fullest.  Guy has a way of creating and sharing engaging experiences.  See 26 Hours at Sea: The Longest Posting in the History of Blogging and BlogHer Pictures for examples of experiences.
22. Let 100 flowers blossom.   Find what works for you and your customers, then stand back and let your flowers bloom.  You can’t necessarily predict what will work and what won’t.  Instead, fan the flames of what works and get out of the way.
23. Find a coalition of the willing.   It’s way easier to sell to an existing customer or to somebody who is not already entrenched in a competing product or idea.  Build your raving fans, by building on your existing fan base and by winning over folks that are untainted.   According to Guy, it’s more effective to preach to the choir or focus on the agnostic, than try to convert the atheist.  Another way to put it is, focus on the market you’ve got, versus the one you don’t.
24. Know the real influencers.   Don’t spend all your energy on the CXO level.  Win over the front-lines and people in the trenches.  They’re the ones that will ultimately be your raving fans and will do your word-of-mouth marketing for you.  They will either be your resistance or your champions.  Create a tipping point with opinion leaders, such as the engineer’s engineer.
25. Be creative and productive.  Guy is life imitating art.  Being an Entrepreneur is all about creating something bigger than yourself.  To be effective, you need to be productive.  Guy regularly shares his life hacks on his blog, and Alltop is a great example of a creativity and productivity.

Top 10 Quotes
Between his books, blog, articles, and presentations, Guy is a flowing fountain of words of wisdom.  Here are my 10 favorite quotes from Guy:

1. A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.
2. Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap – but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.
3. Evangelism is selling a dream.
4. Evangelism starts with the desire to make meaning.
5. It’s a beautiful time for Entrepreneurs … Life is good.
6. Leverage your brand, … You shouldn’t let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.
7. Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.
8. Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across.
9. You have to start with the basic premise that you need to know what your competition is doing,
10. Shut up, take notes, summarize, regurgitate, and follow up.

I really like Guy’s point about making meaning.  I also like his focus on simple and to the point.

Where to Go from Here?
Guy is still in the game and you can learn more about him through his books, blog, and presentations.  I think his blog is a great starting point, rich with nuggets.  He’s shared many of his best nuggets from his books on his blog and in his videos and presentations.

I’ve created a browsable map below to help you explore some of the additional resources on Guy.  I’ve organized the map by key links, books, projects, popular posts, and videos.  Because he has a number of great posts and videos, I listed my top 3 favorites first, to help chunk up the lists.

Do you have a favorite lesson from Guy?  I’d like to hear about it.  Feel free to share it in the comments.

Photo by ShashiBellamkonda.

Photo by MIX2010.

Photo by leokoivulehto.