When computers talk to each other, 200 is the HTTP response status code equivalent of ‘Got it, thanks.’ It means the connection, the information request, has been successful. It’s expressed simply as ‘200 OK’. No fanfare. No drama. Just business as usual, nothing to see here, everything’s fine, move along. And that’s pretty much how […]
Continue readingAfter I posted yesterday’s blog singing the praises of connection and collaboration, I realised the topical irony: here we are, about to sever ties with Europe and ‘make Britain great again/take back control of our borders/secure our freedom’ – there are a variety of ways of expressing the general idea of plucky little Britain standing […]
Continue readingOne of the most wonderfully unexpected things about the 10-day Busines Book Proposal Challenge is that people within the group connect not just with me, but with each other. Who knew? Three great examples today: 1. One second-time challenger posted her marketing plan, which included a joint venture with someone who was on the previous […]
Continue readingWhenever I train or coach on content marketing, the second big step – the first is figuring out your WHY, as always: what is it you’re wanting to achieve? – is identifying exactly who it is you’re trying to reach (or whom if you’re a stickler for these things). But as I was working with […]
Continue readingThe great promise of e-ink is the way it can hook up our physical and digital worlds so effectively. I’ve been complaining at the universe in general for several years now that my digital calendar in all its multifaceted ever-changing compexity bears only a passing resemblance to the calender hung up on our living room […]
Continue readingPutting my full Table of Contents online for comment felt terrifying at the time – like standing naked in Tesco – but has proved more helpful than I dared hoped for lots of reasons: accountability, visibility, content development and engagement to name just a few. (The Tesco gig would be effective in terms of visibility […]
Continue readingAn exchange in the 10-day business book proposal challenge that made me laugh out loud today (we’re working on author biography): ‘I’m loving how this challenge is making me do stuff I would’ve spent AGES procrastinating over.’ ‘Yeah, it’s great isn’t it? It’s really given me the kick up the a**e I needed to lay […]
Continue readingThis morning I took part in Bryony Thomas’s Watertight Marketing conference, which was itself a masterclass in running an event. I hugely admire Bryony’s joined-up thinking and her incredible attention to detail, and today’s online conference was testament to that. Bryony asked me to talk about building community, with particular reference to The Extraordinary Business […]
Continue readingThis week’s blog is over at BookMachine, and draws out the lessons for authors from my interview with Andrian Zackheim, one of the world’s leading business book publishers and the founder of Portfolio Penguin. https://bookmachine.org/2017/03/22/author-platform-matters-publishers/
Continue readingDay 2 of the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge, and today we’re focusing on target reader. This is perhaps the most fundamental of all the bits of thinking the challengers will be doing over the course of the challenge – the synopsis, selling points, contents, marketing plans, EVERYTHING falls out of that understanding. I was […]
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