Get Slightly Famous

Steven van Yoder: Slightly famous or getting slightly famous is actually a very commonsense concept and it really is expressed in this promise, that the best clients and customers are those that seek you out because they've already heard of you. So a slightly famous businessperson, entrepreneur and even employee or professional within a company is a person or entity that's developed a reputation as a trustworthy, authentic resource to its best clients and customers and it does that in a variety of ways. It does that in the traditional media; it does that on the internet; it does that by getting out and connecting with its prospects, but it's a business that's viewed as a partner, as an ally in prospects, purchasing buying decisions.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned several groups of people there from entrepreneurs to professionals in organizations can they all use the same types of techniques to build their reputations?

Steven van Yoder: Yeah, I'm finding that we're living in a world, a business world that is, where it's expected that companies, and this can be the people within companies, or people who own companies from solo entrepreneurs up through the Executives that run them, are increasingly expected to be positioned as trusted known entities in prospect markets. There's been a big shift that's happened in the last – especially the last ten years, with the rise of the internet and what it's done to empower consumers to take purchasing matters into their own hands, and that shift has been one from the old model of companies and advertising and what used to work, and that used to be that companies controlled the message. Companies, for example, who embraced advertising oriented types of marketing, whether you found your prospects, created a pitch, bought the space or the time on the air, or in the magazine, and put that in front of them and then waited for sales to come in. That's been flipped around, really turned upside down. Now, consumers are in charge. They put up barriers against that type of marketing. On television, they record and zap through the commercials through TiVo, for example. In newspapers and magazines, people increasingly don't read the ads; they don't even pay attention to them, let alone trust them. And the internet has become really the first place that consumers of all stripes, and this could be an individual consumer, this could be a corporate purchasing department, they turn to the internet to find, evaluate and validate people, products and services that they're considering buying, so this is really a massive paradigm shift, and the idea of getting slightly famous, as I mentioned earlier, is that companies that position themselves as resources, as partnering agents in the purchasing and evaluation process of any product or service, are the ones that win in this new environment.

Rachel Salaman: You've been helping people get slightly famous for many years. Can you tell us some examples of how well this can work?

Steven van Yoder: Well, here's a perfect example: several years ago, a client of mine, Mary Godina, she is, or was, rather, a San Francisco-based attorney and she went out on her own and what she did, she had a unique market niche and a unique solution, and she had taken her experience as an Attorney, and she'd got particularly good at solving very difficult corporate red tape type problems. Common problems were: you took a trip and the airline lost your luggage, and it had many valuables in it and you struggled to get proper insurance compensation. It ended up getting caught up in paperwork and various other things and it was hard for consumers to deal with, very time consuming. Or, another one: a piece of erroneous information made it onto your credit report and you were having a hard time getting it off. Mary was very, very good at being able to solve these types of problems, and she did this as an Attorney. So she went and turned this into a business, and her business focused on solving these problems for people, so she had some great success stories, but what she did not have was any particular focused target market to aim her solutions at. So even though, for example, she got a feature story written about her in the San Francisco Chronicle about her unique business, because her customer base had no focus, it was very dispersed, she had a hard time really even knowing where to aim her marketing adverts. She was doing a little networking at the Chamber of Commerce or, you know, speaking to a particular women's group, but she was finding that she spent more time marketing and looking for prospects, than actually clocking billable hours. So when I started working with Mary, what we did immediately was look at the types of business that she had, and we looked to focus on a particular subset of her clients and customers, that she could call today a slightly famous reputation within, in their particular community. We found that some of her best repeat clients were Mortgage Brokers. Mortgage Brokers had an ongoing need for her service, because their clients were the people sitting across the desk that very often had credit issues that did not exist in reality, but it was erroneously noted on their credit reports and this could stop them from getting a home loan. Mortgage Brokers were on the frontline; they always knew when this was a problem and they were in a position to refer Mary business, so she aimed her entire business at getting known among the Mortgage Brokers. We started identifying trade publications that these professionals read. They belonged to trade associations as well, and networked at their meetings, so we started there, and we wrote a simple pitch for an article, to the trade media, Mortgage Broker trade media, about simple, ethical effective ways to repair credit reports that were erroneously noting information and we pitched this to a couple of Mortgage Broker magazines. Within a couple of days, the Editors took her up on this article. They were very excited. They said, "We've been looking for this kind of information, from someone who knew their stuff for a long, long time, our readers desperately need this information," so she wrote and lined up to publish a couple of articles about this. She also approached trade associations and offered herself as a speaker on the subject. Also had very good response and was taken up to speak at a couple of statewide Mortgage Broker trade associations and to do a webinar to their members. Within about three months' time, she went from wondering where her next client, customer, would come from, to becoming a virtual celebrity in the Mortgage Broker market. Her phone rang, enquiries came in, she met people face-to-face; when she spoke they came up afterwards. They wanted her card. They wanted to do business with her, and in six months' time, she transformed her business into a very focused, slightly famous entity in the Mortgage Broker market, and she didn't have to struggle anymore for her clients. That would be an example that really encapsulates the whole 'get slightly famous' formula. Target a market of your best prospects, position your business as the best solution; brand your business as a trusted resource to members of your target market and then you maintain your visibility and your credibility and your branded reputation attract your best prospects consistently.

Rachel Salaman: Well that's a great example of how identifying a niche can really help you get slightly famous and build your business, but isn't there a danger that you might choose a niche that's too small to yield anything that can grow your business?

Steven van Yoder: You know, that's an excellent question, and the danger would be that you don't go into this with your eyes wide open. You don't leave this to chance and you don't flip a coin. This is something you do deliberately. So, in Mary's case, let's circle back to her example, she'd already tested the market. She'd already marketed her business out into a nondescript community of basically everybody, and what she noticed was a pattern and the pattern was Mortgage Brokers were great clients, why don't I go after more of them? It was very easy to see – this is where Google is very much your friend here, you can validate anything on the internet now, so we did a search and there were all kinds of Mortgage Broker Associations. Every State had one, or many, or a region and so there were plenty of places where Mortgage Brokers congregated and there were several Mortgage Broker trade media. This was even several years ago, and I'm guessing you'd find probably many more Mortgage Broker websites as well, and we'll talk about this a little later on, about how you can put the internet to work to build your reputation, but you don't leave it to chance. If you've been in business for any amount of time, you should look at where you're getting most of your positive results, and who are your best clients and customers? Who do you like to work with? That's important too. It's not just about who has the money to hire you or buy what you're selling. It's about who do you really enjoy working with, because if you can aim in that direction, to a group of people that you can focus your business around, and that you enjoy working with, you can really embrace this whole get slightly famous formula with an authentic energy and passion that will also work in your advantage to bring people to your business.

Rachel Salaman: Now what about if you're building a career within a large corporation? Should you also be thinking in terms of niches in creating a name for yourself?

Steven van Yoder: I would say increasingly we're – well, we're living in a time where jobs for life are rare, that even exist at all, so people are going to move around in their career several times throughout, you know, the course of their life, so I think it's very important that people think of themselves as a brand. The way you invest in yourself and think of yourself as a brand is to create a branded reputation that precedes you. Your reputation is portable. It's just like creating a resume and showing a potential employer over the years what you've accomplished for other people. This is a way to take it a step further. It's not a stretch. If your company supports your efforts to go out and develop a special reputation around your expertise, from within the company, in a way that showcases what you know and reflects well on your employer, I think that's a very positive strategy. In fact, I have an example of a recent client, Booz Allen Hamilton, which is a large – one of the largest, most successful management consulting firms in the world, had me work with one of their Executives that had a particular focus in corporate diversity. Now he was an employee of the company, but as an Executive, he had a particular skill set and a particular level of accomplishments, that he could speak to his peers around corporate diversity through magazine articles, talks and a blog that he eventually created, in a way that boosted his reputation and also reflected well on the company, because the work he did in diversity was a commitment that Booz Allen Hamilton had and still has to this day, and by him doing – essentially his strategy was to look at his group of professional peers, so the field of corporate diversity spreads across all industries and it's something that's growing. It's about breaking the glass ceiling as far as people advancing up the corporate ladder. It's about hiring a diverse workforce and in a global economy, it is about – where companies are increasingly multinational and its home office is in one country and satellite offices in other countries. It's about hiring and advancing your talent in such a way that reflects the culture that you exist within, at home and abroad. So he had plenty of ample territory to talk about, and he did this through articles that were published in management publications, through a blog that he launched and published called Leadership and Diversity. All of this actually, in about a year's time of working with him, ended up bringing him a book deal, with a major publisher, just by getting out there and getting slightly famous around corporate diversity, and it was something that reflected extremely well on his employer, so yes, motivated employees of companies, and those can be people who are frontline salespeople, up through VPs of any department or Executives, should take the lead. Executive branding, as I call it, is increasingly a secret weapon for companies that embrace it.

Rachel Salaman: In both those examples you use, the media is obviously a very important factor in getting slightly famous. What do people need to know about creating a media strategy?

Steven van Yoder: Well the first thing they need to know, and we're going to make a distinction between traditional or offline media, and online media, which we'll talk about shortly, but traditional offline media, and this would be newspapers, trade magazines, newsletters that reach groups of people, they want to give you publicity. They want to quote you as an expert if you know something; they want to publish articles by you, if you have something to say to their readers; they want to give you free media coverage. Most people don't realize that, especially in the traditional media that are published to reach business audiences. They are driven by and depend on outside experts that have deep knowledge in their particular subject areas, and these can be consultants and they can be companies that produce a particular product; they can be somebody like Mary Godina, who's an Attorney that understood the needs and challenges of Mortgage Brokers, people, Editors, Producers want to know that you exist and they want to give you coverage. That's the first place to start. Once you realize that, it's really identifying the media that reach members of your target media and there are several ways to do that. A trip to a good library business section will yield many directories that are free, and they're on the reference shelf, that you can go and find the magazines that people are reading in your industry. You can find the newsletters and trade associations that people belong to in key industries, and you can build a house media list, and from there, you can begin considering how you can approach them and package up your expertise in a way that solves problems and helps Editors give you free media coverage.

Rachel Salaman: So what tips do you have in your book about how people can start along that road to approach the media?

Steven van Yoder: Well, there are two that I'm going to focus on right now, because they're the most accessible and anybody who's taking this advice that I'm providing to heart, it's a place you can start. So we've already said this is a local library business reference section. You're going to find the best resources in urban libraries, so if you have a city or if you live in a city, great, and if you have one nearby, spend a Saturday, go there and make friends with the Business Reference Librarian. There are a couple of places you're going to look. Bacon's Media Source is a several decades old directory of all the print media, radio, TV, that's organized by particular industries or focus areas, so for people in the United States, Bacon's is a good reference point, and I'm sure there are equivalent reference materials at any library around the world, so make friends with your Business Librarian and ask them the reference materials they have on hand for building media lists, so that's number one. Number two, is position yourself as a resource that can be quoted or interviewed as somebody that can supplement articles that are being written by the publication. I operated for many years as a Journalist, and I wrote about a variety of subjects, mostly business, and the Editors of business trade magazines are very plugged in to all of the people that contribute to an industry. They know who to go to for expert advice, whenever they do a story and many of the people on their rolodex are people in business who've raised their hand and said, "I have something to contribute when you do a story about my subject area." So with your media list in hand, you can introduce yourself to the Editors of the magazines that cover your industry, and it's very easy to do. You can send them a quick email; let them know that you're familiar with their publication and you would like to be a resource when a story is done about your particular area. Describe what you know, describe your business, and do this in a way that is not selling your company, but is selling the expertise you can bring to the table to help their readers make an informed decision about your particular area. You'll be surprised many Editors will keep your information. They'll file it, and they'll retrieve it later, when they do a story about it. Many of the stories I wrote as a Journalist, the sources were handed to me by the Editors that said, "This person, I know him, I met him at a trade show, or she sent me information and I kept it on file, interview them when you write this story." So get to know the media, introduce yourself to the Editors virtually, send your materials, get on their file, it will come back to benefit you. Number two and this is very, very important, commit to publishing articles in your own name in these media. This is surprisingly easy to do and not enough people do it. Trade publications rely on outside experts giving them professionally written or objectively written articles about areas of expertise, much like Mary did with the Mortgage Broker magazines. This is because business media have limited budgets. Many of these trade publications, and there are thousands and thousands of them out there; every industry has at least one trade publication, almost without exception. And they have tight budgets, small staff, and anybody that can give them, for free, this is the deal, they will take articles by you about your expertise. They won't pay you for them, but they will run the article many times, three full magazine pages, give you credit, give you a bio-box or a bio-space at the end to describe yourself, your company, you know, any special offerings you may have, so it's a way to get potentially tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising space, devoted to your company, without paying for it, in a way that actually gets readers engaged in what you have to say. If you bought paper ads, they glance at it. If you write an article, they'll read it, clip it and often go right to your website to learn more about you. Those are the two top ways to get exposure in traditional media; anybody listening to this podcast can take advantage of these.

Rachel Salaman: Some fantastic tips there for offline media. Let's move online now, how can people use the web to get slightly famous?

Steven van Yoder: I think it's very important to note that what the internet has become in our lives and what it will continue to become, and I'm talking in the realm of business and how people make decisions and how companies market themselves cannot be understated. I just read a statistic the other day that by 2011, so just four years out, the majority of companies' advertising budgets are going to shift online, away from print media. Now, this tells you that the internet is not an afterthought, it's a forethought it is really where business is going and it's where you will build most of your reputation in the future. It's how you will interact with your customers, your clients, and your prospects, and in effect consumers are using the internet to become empowered to take purchasing decisions entirely into their own hands, so it's, for example, it's harder to get into big companies as a salesperson. Typically, the internet is where people who used to welcome cold calls or cold appointments from salespeople are going to get information. They're going to learn about what is valid for their particular needs in their industry. They are seeking third party validation online, in discussion rooms and chat rooms, so the internet really needs to be planned and it's a central part of your marketing strategy. Now, some of the developments that are really driving this, and actually can be leveraged by anybody listening to this podcast, are falling under the heading of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a catchall phrase for the next evolution of internet, the internet experience and internet technologies, and simply stated, the first generation of the internet tended to be very much like traditional media. People put up a website, it was an online brochure, you couldn't, as a consumer, interact with it. The message was very much one directional, and it came from the business to the viewer. What the web is enabling through Web 2.0 is a participatory experience where consumers, and example blogs, a blog is a website to provide the two-way conversation. The blog, which, essentially for people that aren't completely comfortable yet with what a blog does and how it works, it's a website that is frequently updated and can be updated by someone with no technical knowledge, so it can be changed daily. It can provide very relevant, quick, up to date information, but what it does from the consumer perspective, the visitor, is enables that person to post comments about particular blog entries and have a dialog with the business that hosts the blog, so Web 2.0 is about two-way discussions with websites. It's about joining and forming and seeking validation from your peers about businesses, products and services in online discussion forums. MySpace is growing; many people know MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, these are just a few of the top social online networking sites that are growing, and people are going there to form communities of likeminded individuals and to research, ask about and validate companies they're considering doing business with. Another element of Web 2.0 is multimedia, podcasting, right here. We're living Web 2.0 on this podcast and it's a way of providing information in different formats. YouTube also, the popular site just acquired by Google that host videos, is increasingly where business is beginning to move, where it's not just about the written word, it's about marketing on the web, in a Web 2.0 world, it's about embracing multimedia, audio, video, and using Web 2.0 is a way to pursue educational marketing, as opposed to promotional marketing. So it's about embracing the media to be a resource, to provide useful, honest information in a variety of formats, to have a two-way discussion with prospects at any stage of the buying cycle; this is also important. It's about growing lists and communities of people that might need your service in the future, and not just looking for somebody who needs it immediately, right now.

Rachel Salaman: And presumably you use it to build your reputation and credibility at the same time?

Steven van Yoder: That's right. There's a concept that I've developed and it captures what you're talking about. It's called Your Virtual First Impression, and increasingly, people are being Googled. This can be somebody in a company, an employee that's being evaluated as a hire, and it can be a business that's being considered and evaluated for its products or services, but people, we all do this, go to Google, pull up a browser and they go to see what an individual or a business is all about. They see what comes back in the search results, so your virtual first impression relies on – and this is something within your control, and it needs to be built and cultivated and taken seriously. Businesses or employees need to think about what comes up in those first few seconds when somebody Google's your name or your business. If you don't come up at all, you don't exist, and this can be for people that have heard about you, that are validating you or checking you out, or it can be about some prospect that you don't even know exists that is going and looking for your particular product or service. If you don't come up in the results, but your competitor does, you know who's going to get the business, so you need to anticipate people checking you out online, and you need to build a positive first impression that people are going to get of your business in those crucial first few seconds.

Rachel Salaman: A lot of the techniques you've talked about may seem a bit daunting for many people, do you have any key tips for listeners who want to become a minor celebrity in their field, but they're a bit scared that they don't have what it takes, they don't have the confidence?

Steven van Yoder: You know, if anybody listening to this podcast has reservations about this, I think it's a matter of approaching it from the wrong perspective. Marketing, we all need to market ourselves; we all need to brand ourselves, that's the world we live in. This is a way to tap in to what you know, what you're good at, what you're expert at, and to not push yourself on people. This is about being an expert resource in what you already know, and helping people solve problems, and, you know, that's how you get business these days. It's not by being a used car salesman, or, you know, that's the cliché that many people associate with selling and marketing. That's gone. That doesn't work anymore, and most people didn't enjoy it anyway when they had to take that approach. Cold calling, it does not work like it used to, at least in the same way. You can't barge in on people and push yourself on them anymore, and I don't think very many people enjoyed that approach to marketing anyway. So this is about, if you just look at what you can do with the internet, you can start a blog, and blog about your expertise, your profession, what you know, you can blog about what you're passionate about, and people will find it, read it, and trust you, because you're authentic, you're putting their needs first and you're helping them solve problems, you're helping them understand issues, you'll earn their trust and credibility, and that's how you market yourself these days. It's a very, very enjoyable way to market yourself.

Rachel Salaman: Steven van Yoder thanks very much for joining us today.

Steven van Yoder: Thank you for having me, I've enjoyed it.

The second edition of Steven's groundbreaking book, Get Slightly Famous, was published in July, with new insights and tips about thought leadership, succeeding in a Web 2.0 world and much more. You can find out more about that and about Steven's work in general at www.getslightlyfamous.com.

Join me next month for another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.