031: Rusty Shelton on Authority Marketing and Writing Books

Rusty Shelton

Rusty Shelton has written 2 books, and his latest one, Authority Marketing: How to Leverage the 7 Pillars of Thought Leadership to Make Competition Irrelevant, is about using books to help spread your message and grow your business.

I sat down with Rusty in his Hill Country office to talk about media, authority, marketing, and more. In this interview, learn…

  • How Rusty got into the publishing world, and how he got started on his first book.
  • The “why?” behind writing a book– it’s not about getting rich from selling a lot of copies. (“The worst way to make money from a book is buy selling it.”)
  • Why every company is a media company.
  • Why books are different than other forms of media, and why writing one is different for your brand than other forms of content.
  • 3 types of media channels
    • Rented media (Facebook, etc)
    • Earned media (PR, speaking, referrals, etc)
    • Owned media (this is the new channel that didn’t exist for most of human history, at least not a global scale)
  • 3 types of audiences– the stadium analogy
    • your customer and partners
    • people who have a seat in the stadium, but haven’t bought yet.
    • outside the stadium
  • The big marketing mistake companies make with the stadium
  • How to set up compelling Lead Magnets.
  • How to convert earned media to owned media.
  • Content strategy as your personal newspaper
    • Don’t fill it with ads or op-eds
    • Think like the media, not a marketer– focus on the needs of the audience
  • Why personal brands can be more powerful than big corporate brands
  • How to use visuals to promote your personal brand
  • How your personal brand is important, even for referral-based work
  • 3 ways to publish
    • Traditional publishing with a major publisher, an advance, etc. Takes about a year. Getting harder and harder to get this if you don’t already have a big stadium.
    • Independent– you get the editor, design the cover, etc. You can sell these in bookstores, but there’s more work involved, and you shouldn’t expect to be on a lot of shelves.
    • Assisted self publishing, or hybrid (like Greenleaf Books, Advantage | Forbes Books)
  • Doesn’t matter as much as it used to, but, the book has to be good, and it can’t look like it was “self-published”.
    • You need to have an audio book if you’re trying to reach business audiences. (Joel Block here in Austin help us do our reading, which took 9 hours for 35,000 words, and yielded an 8 hour audio book.)
  • Do an online brand audit– type your name into Google. Are you there? Do the results line up with what you want your prospects to see?
  • What’s holding me back from writing a book?
    • How to “eat the elephant”, and why you don’t need to write a 100,000 words.
  • Sales for Nerds the book– it’s coming. What have I done?!?!?! What would you like to see covered in the book? Let me know on Twitter

Books

Authority Marketing Book CoverAuthority Marketing: How to Leverage the 7 Pillars of Thought Leadership to Make Competition Irrelevant

And Rusty’s previous book:

Mastering the New Media Landscape: Embrace the Micromedia Mindset

The wine

Monte Real RiojaMonte Real Rioja 2009 from Spain. Delicious, a bit of BBQ and smoke. Feels right at home in the Texas summer.

 

 

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Where to find Rusty:

Where you can find Reuben: @Sales4Nerds, @Mimiran, Mimiran.com (the easy CRM for people who are awesome at serving clients but would love some help getting more).

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You can also  listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on AndroidPlayer.fm.


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Published by

Reuben Swartz

Host and Chief Nerd.