Weekend Favs July 8 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week. I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an […] The 4 Commitments To Grow Your Reach Online written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Becky Robinson In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Becky Robinson. She is the Founder and CEO of Weaving Influence. This full-service marketing agency specializes in digital and integrated marketing services and public relations for book authors, including business leaders, coaches, trainers, speakers, and thought leaders. In April 2022, Becky published her first book, Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause. This book provides a structured approach to creating a successful online presence that will generate a big impact on any message. Becky shares a framework to cultivate followers based on four commitments: value, consistency, endurance, and generosity. Key Takeaway: Building a successful online brand and thought leadership requires 4 commitments. The first one is delivering value and establishing meaningful connections to attract and retain followers. The second one is being consistent in the content shared and messaging to build trust and a strong presence. While it may be tempting to chase quick success, longevity is the third commitment, and being able to create a long-term commitment that generates sustainable growth. It’s important to set realistic expectations and understand that building something meaningful takes time. Finally, being generous: with ideas, time, and support to attract interest and engagement. Becky emphasizes that sharing ideas freely and supporting others can contribute to your personal thought leadership growth. Questions I ask Becky Robinson: [01:54] Based on the title of your book, creating reach starts way before selling or marketing a new book right? [02:35] Would you put the things you mention in your book as a must? [05:48] Can you explain a little bit about self-publishing as a more accessible and streamlined option when someone writes a book? [09:20] Talk a little bit about your journey of creating Reach that led to a publishing deal for you. [13:16] In your book you mention four commitments: value, consistency, longevity, and generosity. Can you explain each one of them? [17:53] Talking about longevity, how do you balance that when everybody wants quick results? [21:52] What’s your relationship with goal setting? More About Becky Robinson: Get your copy or audiobook of Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause. More about Becky and Weaving Influence. Connect with Becky. More About The Agency Certification Intensive Training: Learn more about the Agency Certification Intensive Training here Take The Marketing Assessment: Marketingassessment.co Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please! Duct Tape Transcript Email Download New Tab John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by HubSpot. Look, AI is literally eating the web ChatGPT is more searched than I don’t know, Taylor Swift. Check out HubSpot’s AI powered tools, content assistant and chat spott. They both run on open AI’s G P T model, and both are designed to help you get more done and to grow your business faster. HubSpot’s AI powered content assistant helps you brainstorm, create, and share content in a flash, and it’s all inside a super easy to use CRM now. Chat Spott automates all the manual tasks inside HubSpot to help you arrange more customers close more deals, and scale your business faster. Find out more about how to use AI to grow your business at hubspot.com/artificial-intelligence. That’s hubspot.com/artificial-intelligence. (01:14): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Becky Robinson. She’s the founder and CEO of weaving influence, a full service marketing agency that specializes in digital and integrated marketing services and public relations for book offerers, including business leaders, coaches, trainers, speakers, and thought leaders. In April of 2022, she finished her first book with Barrett Kohler publishers titled Reach: Create the Biggest Possible Audience for Your Message, Book, or Cause. So Becky, welcome to the show. Becky Robinson (01:51): Thank you, John. It’s so great to be with you today. John Jantsch (01:54): So I have, because I’ve written a few books myself, I get a lot of people that reach out to me and say, okay, I’ve written my book, how do I market it now? Uh, how do I sell books? ? I sell more books. I’m gonna suggest based on the title of your book that it starts way before that, doesn’t it? Becky Robinson (02:12): Oh, it sure does, John. And you know, I think it starts, hopefully it starts before you even have an idea for a book. If you’re talking about a prescriptive nonfiction book, if you desire to write a prescriptive nonfiction book, you likely should be building an audience and community around your work for years before, John Jantsch (02:31): Yeah, Becky Robinson (02:32): Maybe a decade before John Jantsch (02:34): . So, I mean, are you, I know a lot of people have ideas that they want to write a book and a few of ’em actually get around to doing it. Would you say that this is, I you would put this out there as a must? I mean, you must do the things in your book if you’re going to even consider having somebody look at your book. Becky Robinson (02:53): Well, certainly if you want to attract a traditional publisher, right? You need to build an audience before you go to a traditional publisher because they’re making a business decision. They want to know that if they take a chance on your book and publish you, that you’re gonna be able to drive interest in sales. So, you know, if you dream of traditional publishing, yes, you must attend to growing an online presence to be able to support your book marketing. Now, if you’re interested in, you know, some people come to me and they wanna write a book just because it’s a bucket list item or Yeah, yeah. You know, maybe they wanna use it as a glorified business card in their business and give to potential customers. Now, in that case, you might have a choice about whether or not to build an online presence, but in the book, one of the things I talk about, John, is what I call the influence gap. (03:36): And for anyone who has great real world expertise that they could bring to a nonfiction business book, but they haven’t adequately represented that thought leadership online, then they’re experiencing what I call the influence gap. And that happens when there’s a disconnect between who we are in real life and who we are online. If we want to set ourselves up for success, to have the biggest possible reach for our work, we have to choose to invest in both that kind of offline real world, you know, knowing something about our topics, experience with real life people and work. And we have to translate that and share that journey online as well. John Jantsch (04:14): Yeah. If I can be completely cynical, I would suggest that the traditional publisher is, that’s the first thing they care about. What’s the size of your audience? What’s the size of your reach? Oh, you got a nice topic. Great, we’ll get to that later. It’s more like, can you guarantee us that you can sell 25,000 copies? I mean, I think that’s almost the, the calculus today, isn’t it? Becky Robinson (04:31): It is. And that’s why people who are already famous get book deals. Right. You know, I have, I took a screenshot the day that Barack Obama’s book came out. He sold 887,000 books on the day his book was released . So of course, you know, people who have that kind of existing fame and fortune already are the ones who are gonna get the book deals. You know, that’s why, you know, you see kind of a, a viral sensation happen and someone has a big following. Then quite often what follows after that is a book deal. And that’s an easy decision when the outcome of the success of the publisher’s work is that they sell books. The reality is they may publish a lot of books that don’t sell to that level, and they’re using those huge sale selling books to offset the ones who aren’t. But for people who are not known, you have to be able to prove that you can drive sales. Yeah. John Jantsch (05:24): And it’s probably 90 to 95% of their books, you know, are not, maybe they’re break even or, you know, maybe they make a little money, but you’re absolutely right. They bank on, you know, that top 10. And then of course, years of back list. I mean, but Duct Tape Marketing came out in 2007, and I’m still getting, you know, royalty checks, you know, for that, because that back list of 600 or 6,000, I don’t have many books, you know, is where they actually make their money. Let’s talk a little bit about self-publishing then. You talked about the glorified business card as it sort of called, but it, there’s no question it can be, uh, an effective marketing tactic and that whole world has gotten a lot easier and you know, much more streamlined. Talk a little bit about that as an option. Becky Robinson (06:03): Sure, I’d be glad to. So there are lots of folks who, you know, have a point of view to share, but they don’t necessarily aspire to getting a lot of sales. Uh, in that case, obviously self-publishing can be a viable option and, uh, like even at my company, we support authors who want to self-publish their books, uh, with what I call a book production service. We are not a publisher. Uh, what I would say is that quality still matters. Yeah. So you wanna write a book worth reading because if you’re using a book in that way, those who read it will be using that book to decide if you’re credible and if you’re worth hiring. And so you don’t wanna skimp on a professional cover, you don’t wanna skimp on a professional edit, you don’t wanna skip skimp on a professional interior design. You want to create the best product possible, because obviously
