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: How to Leverage the 7 Pillars of Thought Leadership to Make Competition IrrelevantAnd Rusty’s previous book:
Mastering the New Media Landscape: Embrace the Micromedia Mindset
The wine
Monte Real Rioja 2009 from Spain. Delicious, a bit of BBQ and smoke. Feels right at home in the Texas summer.
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).
You can also listen on Overcast, or Subscribe on Android, Player.fm.
