Entrepreneurs must not only be able to invent the next new thing, they must be able to communicate about their innovation to the world. Otherwise, as marketing guru Robert Middleton says, no-one will even know you exist.

Many people underestimate the difficulty of communicating about a new idea or product. In an age of instant gratification and shortened attention spans, we measure our successes and failures on ever-shorter time scales. In large corporations the life-span of a Chief Marketing Office averages less than two years. The temptation is to market nanotechnology in nanotime.

This was not always the case.

Consider the case of Robert Chesebrough. Who? Read what Luke Johnson’s excellent Entrepreneur column in today’s Financial Times has to say:

Take the case of Robert Chesebrough. He was a British-born chemist who patented petroleum jelly, which he discovered in 1859 at the age of 22 in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It took him 10 more years to perfect the compound, and even then no one wanted to buy it. So he became a travelling salesman, giving away free samples of his product, which he named Vaseline. He even used to inflict burns on himself to demonstrate the soothing powers of his miracle gel. Eventually the public took to his invention, and he became a wealthy industrialist, with operations in dozens of countries. His persistence, self-belief and positive thinking paid off.

Do you have what it takes to market your product? Are you ready to feel the burn?

I spent the weekend at the annual ‘Camp NSA’ training program held at the headquarters of the National Speakers Association in Tempe, Arizona. This workshop takes future Presidents of the regional Chapters in the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia through an intensive consideration of what’s involved in serving as President of the Board of Directors of a Chapter. I’ll be the 2008-09 President of the Northern California Chapter. It’s been fascinating to hear discussions on subjects such as financial planning; fundraising; program development; membership building and retention; conflict resolution and the mechanics of holding successful Board meetings.

One of the skills a good Chapter President cultivates is communicating the value of joining this organization to potential members interested in the business of speaking.

I realized I had a unique opportunity to ask my fellow Chapter Presidents-in-waiting at the event what attracted them to NSA, what’s the value in being a member and why, in fact, someone who is involved in the speaking, training, workshop facilitation or speechwriting business should consider joining the National Speakers Association.

The voices on the podcast are, in order, those of Naomi Rhode, CSP, CPAE who is the Chair of the Camp NSA program and a past National President of NSA; Manny Diotte, NSA Heart of Texas; Jennifer Powers, NSA Oregon; Glenn Ray, NSA Ohio; Ria Botzler, NSA New Mexico; Steve Mertz, NSA Colorado; Jeanette Nyden, NSA Northwest; Alex Ramsey, NSA North Texas; Myra Corrello, NSA New Orleans; Debra Burrell, NSA New York City; Ted Rogers, NSA Phoenix and – last but not least – the irrepressible Vinny Verelli, NSA Georgia.

To hear their comments, click on the podcast icon below.

If you’re inspired to join the National Speakers Association, or just want to find out more, contact your local Chapter or click here.

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I spent the day at a Forrester Analyst workshop on Web 2.0 Fundamentals for the B2B Marketer. The workshop covered a wide range of topics: Online Video, Podcasting, Blogging, Wikis, RSS and Social Networks.

It was apparent that the Fortune 500 companies who Forrester surveys have their own unique set of problems when it comes to fully embracing these new marketing tools. Something about teaching the elephant to dance comes to mind.

After the day was over I asked Forrester’s Brian Haven to comment on the contrast between the way solo entrepreneurs are using blogging and podcasts and how the large corporations are implementing solutions. I asked him if there were opportunities for independent consultants to help larger corporations learn the best uses for the Web 2.0 tools which are available for minimal cost.

To hear a top analyst’s opinion of the Web 2.0 phenomena, click on the podcast icon below.

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Thoughtful article in today’s Financial Times (subscribers only) quotes 49-year-old Yolanda Barnes, a research director at an estate agency who attends 20 conferences annually. This veteran of the conference circuit prefers attending smaller conferences. She finds it easier to gather specialized information.

Larger events are better for networking.

Example: many experienced speakers attend the big National Speakers Association Convention purely for networking.

Yolanda prefers halls with natural light (note: avoid underground venues such as the San Francisco Moscone Center) and dislikes stage-managed ‘live’ discussions which “lack intellectual repartee and the spark of real debate”.

She concludes by sharing her tips on attending conferences:

“Listen imaginatively. Even if the speaker’s area is not relevant to you you will find a way of translating it to your particular speciality. And it’s always better to attend a few good sessions than to try to cram everything in,” she says.

“As a researcher I might want quite different things from a meeting or conference to other delegates. But you should always stock up with business cards and leave enough time for chatting with other professionals and asking questions.”

Other resources for you to check if you are conference-bound include:

• Bill Lampton’s Ten Tips on Attending a Conference

My favorite – Tip #8:

Buy the tapes and audio CDs recorded during the sessions.

• Stephen Abram’s Conference Tips

I love his measure of value for attending:

I met at least one new person every day.
I learned at least one useful thing I didn’t know in a session every day.
I had at least one substantive discussion with a vendor about a new product that I might need.
I had fun, every day.

• This summary of a discussion among graduate-students on tips and tricks for conferences.

My favorite bit of advice:

If you are giving a talk, do not read your paper. Do not fight with the organizer over time. Do not be convinced that the audience will be enthralled if only you can get this one last point in. Do not edit out whole sections on the fly as you notice time running out. If you find yourself falling in love with your own prose, exercise caution.

• Finally, this insightful article from lifehack.org gives some ideas on how to attend a conference without being there!

The trick, of course, is to use the web to capture content, example:

For tech conferences, I’ve found that IT Conversations, part of the Gigavox Media network, have some GREAT coverage. I should also mention PodTech, another really great source for interesting conference coverage.

What are your tips for attending conferences?

John Kremer spoke at the afternoon session of the NSA Northern California meeting. He exposed the manipulations behind “best seller” lists such as the New York Times and Amazon.com rankings.

John has a proven system for taking your book from nowhere all the way to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

John says The New York Times doesn’t want him teaching this system. “They like to think that no one can influence their bestsellers list, but the truth is that the big publishers do it all the time. The system I teach doesn’t require that you be a big publisher, but it does require an integrated marketing plan, some additional cash, and time to do it right.”

Appropriately enough, John’s book 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, ranks in the top 50 in Amazon’s list for the topic of Book Marketing.

After the meeting ended, I asked John to explain how podcasting can work as a marketing tool for authors. He also explains how to actually sit down and write a book. To hear what he says, click on the icon below…

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Hard on the wisdom Robert shared, here’s a pretty stunning list from Andy Beal of 10 things any professional speaker should do to improve their on-line marketing and boost their reputation – which these days means claiming territory on the first page of the organic Google rankings.

My favorite suggestions: #2 and #4. Yours?

Robert Middleton drove down to the airport hotel from his home in the Santa Cruz mountains on Saturday to ask the National Speakers Association of Northern California if there was anyone in the room whose friends and acquaintances could answer three simple questions about our businesses:

1. Who is our ideal client?
2. What is the main problem we solve for our clients?
3. What outcome do we deliver to our clients?

No one in the room had confidence that our own friends knew what we did well enough to answer these questions. No one in the room therefore had solved the fundamental marketing problem: that people just plain don’t know what we do or see in the value in what we offer.

Middleton took us through the solutions to the four biggest marketing problems: how to get people’s attention; deliver the information they need; provide an experience of the solutions we offer and, finally, submit a proposal asking for business.

It’s critical that we can articulate these messages according the correct marketing syntax. Syntax honors the order in which information is presented. Most small businesses (and many large ones) mix up the syntax and unknowingly communicate a different meaning. The letters that spell A-R-T are mixed up to spell R-A-T.

A rat first tells people all about their solutions without communicating basic information about who they work with, the challenges customers face, what outcomes delivered and what action steps people can take to engage with us. The artful know what to say first.

The beauty of Middleton’s methodology is that these principles can be learned and applied to the way we discuss our business when we first meet people (engaging them conversationally rather than delivering a stilted ‘elevator pitch’) as well as to our website design, written proposals, sales letters or even – Lordy sakes! – to the way a local Chapter of a Speakers Association might recruit new members. Now there’s an idea.

I caught up with Robert after lunch and asked him to explain how his methods are used by communications professionals. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

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Writing in the UK Guardian, speechwriter Philip Collins argues that there is a lack of “grand causes” in developed nations to match those which formed the backdrop to the oratory of Churchill, King, Havel and Mandela. A drab political landscape gives rise to dull speeches. The lack of commonly accepted touchstones such as the Bible or Dickens limits the ability of British politicians to match the assumptions of their audience to the language of their speeches.

Collins’s challenge to speechwriters is to not let this become an insurmountable obstacle:

But, for all that, it is still possible to write well rather than badly. Some things are axiomatic no matter what the countervailing forces: strive to be clear, avoid anything you suspect of being a cliché. Don’t use the phrases community, fast-changing world, agenda, stakeholders, hard-working families, unless you really do have a gun to your head. Remember that you have to answer why they should care before you regale them with a list of your achievements. Don’t write for yourself and people like you; they already agree. Don’t caricature the opposing view: the audience can tell.

Solid advice.

And as the wheel of life turns, coming crises will undoubtedly become grist for the mill for stirring speeches of the near future. All change!

I’m sitting here in Nantwich Library with my Mum & Dad. Showing my Dad how to write a blog entry which will be published on the Internet for anyone in the world to read.

So this is the message I have composed on Friday November 2, 2007. This weekend it is Bonfire Night in England when everyone celebrates Guy Fawkes trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

My third and final interview at the ANZAtechnet Conference was with Raphe Patmore of Perth-based Buzka.

His product blew me away!

If you are a subject matter expert, information marketeer, frustrated blogger looking for a quick way to snarf content or otherwise interested in building a vibrant online community of clients by offering structured access to information, then you really must check out Buzka.

But wait! There’s more! As well as being a handy-dandy way of collating content from the far reaches of the internet the Buzka “Spot” you create (for free!) will drive your Google rankings sky-high. Check it out. Search on ‘Chinese Stuff’ and in the top 10 listings you’ll see Wei’s Chinese Stuff Spot – a Buzka site.

Other examples of Buzka sites can be found by using the ‘Search’ button or browsing this listing of Interests. A couple I liked were this Guide to London and this guide to Learning French.

Don’t make the mistake of dismissing Buzka as a simple ‘bookmark publishing’ app or another Digg.

I was recently impressed by the flexible social networking aspects of Ning – which allow information brokers to build a client base. But it seems small scale and somewhat walled off. Not so Buzka.

The true power of the product (listen up, NSA members) is by investing a couple of grand for a private label version, like this very cool surfing site. Nice, huh? Look at all the user generated content on ‘Your stories’, and the extensive catalogs on ‘Clothing and Accessories’. I can imagine many niche markets responding well to filtered, organized information on a Buzka Spot – who knows, they might well value the expertize of the person delivering this information enough to stick around and see what else you have to offer.

Enough of my rambling. To hear Raphe discuss his product, well, you know what to do…

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