This is the core driving value of 24PageBooks: Our time is too valuable to waste with filler.

BTW, if you’re not familiar with HARO, check it out. He is reinventing the PR business. And watch for an upcoming 24 book called Fire Your PR Agency: Required Reading For PR Professionals.

The reasons it stood out include:

• I could see the entire structure in front of me, made clear by the changes in the eBook world, driven by Apple and Amazon, in particular their generous terms for indie publishers.
• It leverages my core faculty- the ability to explain things succinctly in a compelling way, in writing
• I could partner with someone I’ve done a lot of projects with whose skills are a great fit with mine, Mike Johnson.
• The company could be run from anywhere with no employees, no distribution or inventory and no need for any infrastructure
• It has the potential of being very profitable while remaining manageable
• The products I’m making add value to people’s lives

The last bullet goes to Chris’s point. Whether I’m helping people make new connections, learn business skills, understand emerging networks or use a charcoal grill like a master, in each case I’m adding value to their lives and I’m not requiring a lot of their valuable time to do it. Knowing this makes building the business a completely exciting non-job, which what any start-up should be.

This, understandably, set off a lightbulb moment. Bulk sales of eBooks could be pretty profitable even at low prices. Later that same day I was getting motivated by looking at the Dummies’ book site (I am fascinated by the success they’ve had selling 400 page books on practically anything whether the subject requires 400 pages or not- 200 million copies sold!) and noticed they prominently feature the fact they they sell white-labeled or privately branded versions of their books in bulk. Yikes! I’m all over that.

This whole thing has a lot of potential…

I’ve been working on a 24PageBook called Learn To Market, Fast. It’s my distillation of what I’ve learned about marketing in the past three years or so. My grandiose vision is that you throw out everything you think you know about marketing and focus on two things: your reputation and reaching out to people who are publicly seeking a solution for a problem that you can fix. Your reputation gets you in the door and your response to their problem gets you the business. Simplistic? Yes, when compared to the arcane brand strategy mumbo-jumbo marketing and ad agencies are pitching. They offer secret sauce in a world where nothing is secret.

The best thing about this 24PageBooks project is the discovery that subjects like this, which have had millions of words written about them over the years, can be distilled down to a brief format without really losing much, if anything. My approach is to show a business owner exactly how to do marketing in a socially connected world, regardless of the size or kind of business they have. And I’ve discovered a measurement for the success of that marketing, a very concise measurement based on some serious research by a guy named Frederick Reichheld. More about that shortly. The book should be out in a few weeks if I can pull my business partner Mike out of the sea of work he is swimming in.

Franke is a designer who started out blogging a few years ago when she and her husband decided to sell their SUV and go carless. Her blog posts combine great illustrations with an almost comic-like personal story backed by the facts. The blog started to get a lot of attention which led to a book, Bothered By My Green Conscience (New Society Publishers 2009) and a growing reputation as an environmentalist.

Franke’s use of personal experience to tell stories and distribute them via social media demonstrates the power of viral story telling to drive change on a global basis. As I write this, Franke is in Copenhagen for the World Climate Summit.

A prominent college professor interrupts one of his doctoral students three times during his first major presentation at a prestigious conference, effectively bullying him in public. The professor’s behavior makes many participants angry and/or uncomfortable.

Prior to social media this professor, who is a leading expert in his field, might have pissed some people off but it would probably not have affected his overall professional reputation. This time, however, those angry observers are Twittering their anger in real time. Bloggers who cover his subject matter Retweet and Post about the incident. Others who have been the subjects of this person’s arrogant behavior recount their experiences and the word spreads.

This is where it gets interesting. All of this chatter is on the ‘permanent, public record’, and it is searchable forever. Anyone considering working with this guy is going to Google him and get a sense that he has a reputation for being a cretin. His true reputation is revealed.

This is a true story. The individual, who was a Director of a prominent program in his field, was recently asked to step down. I doubt he has any idea why his reputation has suffered.

Back to marketing. Your brand can be that individual. If there are problems with your product or the way you treat your customers, your brand reputation will be tarnished permanently (unless you address those problems meaningfully and in as close to real time as possible).

Note three things implied in that last paragraph:

• Marketing no longer controls the message
• Product development and quality are integral to marketing (reputation)
  
• Customer experience is integral to marketing (reputation)
  

In social media product development, customer service and communication are inextricably bound up with each other. Companies should no longer run these as separate business functions. The only way to ensure that your brand reputation is respected is to be holistic about every aspect of the public response to your brand and products.