I did a fun thing last week. I attended the Big Omaha conference for creatives and entrepreneurs with Holy Cow Design Gal.
It was a sold out crowd of twenty and thirty somethings (they still let me in), and a fantastic lineup of tending-toward-geeky speakers such as Jason Fried of 37Signals, Micah Laaker from Yahoo!, Micah Baldwin from Lijit, Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless and the one-and-only Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library.
I think it was Jason Fried who mentioned the idea of sharing what you know as a way to grow your company. The example he gave was that of professional TV chefs.
If you think about it, these guys are totally transparent about what could be considered (in other industries) trade secrets. They not only tell you all the ingredients they use to create a dish, but they demonstrate how to make it step by step, and if that isn’t enough, they write it all down for you in a cookbook which you can purchase for $29.95 or whatever.
From a marketing standpoint, I think we have always had the idea to not show all your cards, save the best information for the paying customers, don’t blog about your process or your methods or your recipe for success.So this idea of sharing what you know is maybe a little foreign to many of us.
Jason went on to talk about Getting Real, the ebook he and his colleagues wrote about the process of creating web apps. All they did was write down what they learned about writing a web app. I bought a copy when it first came out and so did many others, in fact, that little ebook has made them about half a million dollars.
I’m not suggesting that your ebook will make you half a million dollars, but I think this social media thing creates an opportunity for you to share what you know, too. In fact, this is the perfect time for how-to’s and such like that.
So here are some questions for you to get the creativeness going.
- How do you like to share information, i.e. are you a speaker? A writer? Or do you like video?
- How could you use your speaking, writing or video casting to share what you know?
- What one thing do people continually ask you about that you could share?
- Do you know alot about one certain subject because you are passionate about it?
Sharing what you know builds the know, like and trust factor and because of that, methinks this will help you will grow your company.
What are your thoughts?
That’s a very encouraging thought, Beth. I love “process” — how to do things, and I would rather share HOW to do something than actually do it.
Because it takes so many contacts with a prospect before they buy from you (some say 7-9 and others say 13 or more), I think sharing what you know is the perfect way to keep them coming back.
When I do SEO work for a client, I would much rather let them know exactly what I’m doing than hide under a wizard’s hat. I’m almost as thrilled when they “get it” and decide to do it themselves as I am when they say, “Cool! But can you do it for me?” … Almost!
Thanks for the inspiration.
Susan