Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 35

Subscription Marketing: The Master Class Continues

You are living in a master class in subscription marketing. We all are. You can find ideas for connecting with and nurturing your customers all around you.

Here are a few things I’ve noticed recently in my own life.

REI’s #ForceOfNature Campaign

REI recently sent me a wonderful catalog filled with stories, photos, and inspiration about women in the outdoors. That’s how I learned about their Force of Nature campaign, encouraging women in the outdoors.

The catalog highlights stories of women guides, adventurers, and the women of REI who design the gear for women. (My REI backpack is the incredibly comfortable, so clearly they’re doing something right.)

The campaign is a terrific example of nurturing value by aligning with your customers’ deeper values. I feel better about being an REI member because of their support for women.

Subscribe With Amazon

Few companies are as committed to subscription marketing as Amazon. Now the giant has created a marketplace for digital subscriptions, called Subscribe with Amazon.

So now you can use Amazon to subscribe to other goods and services, from apps to games to subscription boxes.

Inbound Marketing, Delight and Value Nurturing

If you’re practice Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing Methodology, you may have noticed eery similarities between what value nurturing and the delight phase of the inbound methodology.

I spoke recently with the local San Jose Hubspot User Group about what happens if you make delight the starting point, rather than the ending point, of your focus. You can watch the Facebook video of the talk. The audio doesn’t come on until about 20 minutes in, so you miss the wonderful set-up talking about aliens and the movie Arrival. You’ll just have to trust me that it was great.

The video is below: fast forward to 20 minutes and wait for the audio to pop on.

Recommended reading: The Gray Rhino

I’ve just finished reading The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore by Michele Wucker. It’s a terrific book about the obvious, high-risk and high-impact events that we would prefer to ignore, at our own peril.

Reading it, I cannot help thinking that the subscription business model is a gray rhino for many industries. It will be disruptive, and the longer you ignore it, the greater your chances of being trampled.

Upcoming events related to subscriptions

May 17, 10am PST: “How to Make Your Company Customer Obsessed” – a Mindtouch webinar. (We talk about customer success and marketing working together.)

May 31-June 1, Austin Texas: The Subscription Summit – the conference for Subscription Box companies.

June 5-7 in San Francisco: Zuora Subscribed conference

 

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Outgrowing Your Outline

The last couple weeks, I’ve heard a chorus of authors struggling with their outlines.

“I’ve reluctantly concluded that my outline might need to be split into two books.”

“Now that I’ve written most of the draft, I realize that I should narrow the focus.”

The same thing happens to me regularly. I love outlines; they are an important part of my writing process. But when writing a book, I find it very difficult to stick to the outline. After getting partway through the ugly first draft, I realize that my carefully planned outline isn’t quite working. It needs shaping and rearranging.

I leave a trail of broken outlines in my wake, and I’m not alone.

What’s going on? Are we all terrible at outlining and planning? Not really.

We often don’t fully understand our topic until we’re in the midst of drafting.

Writing Is Part Of the Thought Process

René Descartes famously wrote “I think, therefore I am”(“je pense, donc je suis”) in his treatise on science and philosophy, Discourse on Method. For Descartes, the act of thought was sufficient proof of his existence.

Deep thought is elusive in our busy, interrupt-driven world.

Writing is a cure. We set aside a quiet time and place, and put all of our focus on the craft. The act of writing keeps our hands and eyes on the task at hand, rather than wandering off to check Facebook. The brain has permission to ruminate on one topic for a while.

I find deep thought through writing.

It isn’t until I am well into a draft that I really figure out what a book should look like, or understand the nuances of a topic. My follow-one to Descartes is: I write, therefore I think.

The sense of discovery is part of  the joy of writing.

The downside of discovery? Diverging from the plan of the outline.

Why Outline At All?

Writing for discovery is frightening. An outline provides gives us strength to start working. It sets out a path to travel. Outlines are statements of faith.

When drafting, we contemplate the reader’s perspective, which may change our own. The Muse may contribute interesting ideas worth exploring around the edges of the outline.

So that first outline is abandoned, reworked. We pull the existing draft apart and put it together better than before.

That’s okay.

An abandoned outline isn’t a failure. It’s a sign of a growth mindset and an author willing to serve the needs of the content and the reader.

 

Further Reading

Move the Starting Line

Does Loss Aversion Prevent You From Writing?

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Why Writing Is Good For Your Career

How much writing do you do in your job today? How much of it is seen outside your team or your company?

What might happen if you did more?

Here are five compelling reasons to stop dodging those writing-related projects and amp up your output.

Reason #1: Be a Hero

Modern marketing thrives on employee-generated content, and it always needs more. You could fill that need, earning recognition and, perhaps, the undying gratitude of the marketing team.

You might contribute in many ways. For example:

Create training materials or a customer success campaign to guide new customers over common hurdles
Contribute blog posts in your own name to gain visibility for your team’s efforts and put a human face on the business
Develop stories from encounters with existing customers, either to share internally or with prospects and other customers

Reason #2: Amplify Your Efforts

What do you do when someone comes to you with a problem or question at work? You answer them, even if it takes a bit of research or legwork.

You can amplify that effort through writing. Package the answer and make it available on a knowledge base. Or, create a blog post or article and share the insight more widely.

Rather than reaching a single person, you can reach dozens, hundreds, or thousands. Better yet, the written work stands on its own and persists over time.

The power of writing doesn’t stop there. Once you’ve created the content, you or someone else can repurpose it into multiple media, including:

Videos
Webinars (and their evergreen Slideshares)
Talks for speaking to gropus
Ebooks
Blog posts

Other people can take over the task of repurposing, so you can get back to doing the rest of your job.

Don’t forget about translation. You may not be able to speak directly to people in other countries, but your piece can speak for you, once it is translated.

Reason #3: Increase Your Visibility at Work

For your work to be valued (and funded) within your own organization, you must communicate effectively with people outside your team: management, sales people, potential partners, and investors.

Effective writing transmits your commitment to the work to others in the organization.

You will no longer be the nameless person shuffling past in the cafeteria. Instead, you will be the person who generated the thoughtful email, or the useful post, or the article in the industry journal.

Effective writing is even more vital for people working in distributed, virtual environments. The writing becomes a proxy for your thoughts and ideas, present when you are not.

In short, if you want to be valued at work, try creating valuable and effective written content.

Reason #4: Increase Your Visibility in the Larger World

How long have you been at your job, and how long do you expect to remain?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job tenure is shrinking. In 2016, the median tenure for employees was 4.2 years, down from 4.6 years in 2014. Older workers stayed longer than younger ones.

The mean tenure number also varies by industry. I live in Silicon Valley. In the technology sector, two years is the new four years.

No matter how much you love your job, the world is an uncertain place. When industries shift and transform, jobs often fall off the edges, even while new opportunities are created.

You might cringe at the phrase “personal branding,” but one way or another, we are all creating a digital identity that we may need later, if not now.

Writing and publishing in your own name is one way to take control of your online presence and identity. Consider writing:

LinkedIn posts
Corporate blog posts in your own name
Contributed posts and articles on industry sites and publications
Personal blog posts about professional topics

Posts that you contribute to a corporate blog under your own name do double duty: they meet business objectives while building your presence in the larger online world. Articles contributed to industry publications elevate the perception of your company’s expertise, while leaving a digital trail of your activities.

Reason #5: Deepen Your Expertise

When you write about work-related topics, you become more expert in them.

I’m not saying that you will be “perceived” as an expert, although that may certainly be the case. You will actually become more of an expert by writing about your job or related topics. You grow through writing in several ways:

Research. Whenever you search out supporting data or interview other experts, you learn something new.

Thought and consideration. To write effectively, you need to consider the audience’s perceptions and potential objections. Doing so deepens your understanding of the topic.

Personally, I only discover what I really think about a topic when write about it. Even if I know the topic well, writing takes me deeper into the subject and makes me question my assumptions.

Effective writing requires clarity of thought.

Publishing. Once you publish something, people will talk with you about it. You will defend your ideas and listen to those of others. You may even be asked to speak on the topic. You continue learning long after the published work is out in the world.

Have I encouraged you to step up and write? Let me know in the comments below.

Other resources

If you need help getting started, see the videos on the barriers to writing.

Work in an open office? Read Writing In the Workplace: The Open Office.

 

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The Key To Becoming a Better Writer

Want to be a better writer?

Inspiration is fickle. Talent is out of our control.

What’s left to us?

Our effort. Our actions. Those become our process.

Process is consistent and reliable. Process brings writing into the world.

What’s Your Writing Process?

That question surfaces in nearly every author interview: Tell us about your typical day. How do you write? What’s your writing process?

It’s as if we (the interviewer, the listener or reader) are waiting to hear some secret recipe that we might replicate.

It’s almost comforting when an author describes a schedule that we could not possible keep – waking early, retreating to a sun-filled office overlooking Central Park, watching the birds outside the window, and spending all day crafting a masterpiece.

Whew. We don’t have time for that. We live in the real world, and can be excused for not doing the same thing.

Process doesn’t have to be all-consuming or perfect. It only has to work for you, in the life you live today.

To become a better writer, follow a better process. 

You Already Have a Process – Can You Make It Better?

You already have a writing process, but it may not be serving you as well as it could.

Think carefully about how you write. Observe yourself:

How much time do you spend researching or outlining before drafting?
What happens if you skip those phases?
How does the work feel when it’s rushed? When you have a lot of time? Do you delay getting started, or work up until the last moment?
What does it feel like when the writing is fun and fluid? What did you do to get to this state?
How about those days it feels like pulling teeth? Did you do something different?
What do you do instead of writing, when you know you should be writing?

Start answering those questions, and your unique process will begin to emerge. You’ll spot the ways that you work best, and the times that you sabotage your efforts.

Invest In Your Own Process

Look at what you’re doing, and make sense of how you operate when writing, then find ways to make it better, or stick to what works.

Yes, I know, you’d rather spend the time actually writing than examining the way that you work. Perhaps you love the burst of creativity in drafting, but get bored with outlining and research.

The effort invested in understanding, tuning, and then following your best process pays off over the long run. Borrow some of the time you currently spend searching for the perfect word or brilliant post title, and try perfecting the way you work.

Polish the prose, and you have a better piece of written work.

Polish the process, and you become a better writer.

For the complete discussion of process, see the book The Writer’s Process.

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Subscription Marketing: April Newsletter

Thanks everyone for your support during the second edition launch of Subscription Marketing. For about a week after its launch, the book was the #1 New Release in Business Marketing on Amazon – and I’ve got the screenshot to prove it:

But like all good things in life, Amazon fame is fleeting, and someone else has that #1 spot. Now it’s back to enjoying the ever-changing subscription landscape.

Happily, there’s a lot going on.

Adding Value through Purpose

While Uber continues to have image issues, Lyft is kicking up its value nurturing a notch by announcing the “Round up and Donate” campaign. Acting on shared values with your subscribers is a powerful value nurturing tactic.

Once you opt in to the program, Lyft will round up fares to the nearest dollar and donate the difference to social good campaigns. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Plus, I love the wordplay involved, as they ask you to “Sit for something.” Read about it in the Lyft blog.

More Subscription Businesses

Subscription accommodations? Thanks to Subscription Insider for surfacing Stay Awhile, a membership, a self-described alternative to hotels and Airbnb.

Indie books! This one is near and dear to my heart: Indie Connect offers independently-published books (in this case, fiction) delivered via subscription box. You can simply order the books, or sign up for a recurring order.

Magazines, in an app: The Texture app aggregates and distributes magazine, via subscription. The company ran a full page ad in the New York Times recently highlighting its featured publications, with the headline “Build your own wall. And keep fake news out.”

Last Call for Content Marketing Awards 

The deadline is almost past for submitting your work to the Content Marketing Awards. I’m judging again this year, and love seeing the entries. There’s a “late” deadline of April 28th, so enter now.

Upcoming Events for Subscription Marketers

May 4th in Palo Alto: I’m talking at the San Jose Hubspot User Group (HUG). The title:What Happens When You Reverse Engineer Inbound Marketing and Start With Delight?

May 8 in New York: Subscription Insider Payment Bootcamp East

May 31-June 1, Austin Texas: The Subscription Summit – the conference for Subscription Box companies.

June 5-7 in San Francisco: Zuora Subscribed conference

If you’d like to get this monthly update by email, sign up below.

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Writing Challenges: Focusing on One Project

What’s the hardest part of writing a novel in a month?

April is Camp NaNoWriMo  – a variation on November’s “write a novel in a month” challenge. The month-long deadline presents many challenges: How will you make the time? Can you generate enough steam to do the work each day? Can you stick to the plan for a month?

For some writers, the biggest struggle happens before they start. In late March, a writer I know sent me the following question:

“I have two projects I am working on. It is actually stressing me knowing I might have to focus on just one. Any ideas?”

Facing the deadline, she had a hard time narrowing down her focus.

She’s not alone. I face a similar dilemma deciding which book idea to pursue, as publishing a book (for me) requires a singular focus bordering on the obsessive.

If your Muse sends you many ideas, selecting a single one to work on can be painful. It may feel like you’re giving up on the other ideas or shutting down creative impulses. Keeping your options open feels like a safe thing to do.

Who is more productive: the writer with ten works in progress or one published work? I vote for the published one.

Keeping your options open is one way to avoid the risk of commitment.

Maybe you love having multiple burners firing at once once. If so, perhaps that’s how you should work much of the time. But to get something out into the world quickly and take advantage of the power of a deadline, you need to know when to narrow your focus.

This is true whether you’re working on short blog posts or multiple novels. Sometimes you have to choose one to move forward. You don’t actually abandon the others if you change your juggling technique.

The Art of Juggling

The Writer’s Process describes seven different phases of the writing process. Whether your personal process involves more or fewer steps, the act of getting written works into the world entails work beyond drafting, including research, outlining, incubation, and revision.

Having multiple projects in progress can make you more productive and creative:

You can choose the project that fits your current mood and inspiration.
Your brain may make connections across the different projects, cross-pollinating and feeding creative associations.

But here’s the key to successful juggling: Only have one project in the drafting phase at any time.

How a Single Focus Makes You Faster

Drafting is the most intense part of the work, involving the delicate collaboration of the Scribe and the Muse. It requires focused concentration, and you only have so much of that available in any given day. If you go back and forth between projects during that time, you’ll lose steam. Switching imposes costs.

This principle applies in the workplace as well. You may be involved in many projects. But in that rare, uninterrupted time you have for drafting each day, choose one thing to write rather than doing a few hundred words on each.

For a long-term project like writing a book, focusing your drafting attention has another benefit: you train your mind to work on that book even when you’re not actually writing.

Your subconscious processes will keep working on that idea as you go about your life. You’ll think about that work when you drive home, walk the dog, or doze off. That subconscious processing makes you more productive when next you sit down to draft.

The Power of Incubation

You don’t have to abandon those other projects. Simply tell yourself that they are in different phases: research, revision, or incubation.

Projects that are incubating are not forgotten. You can remind yourself of their existence, making them available to the Muse when you’re doing other things. Ponder them, gather ideas, and let them simmer. If ideas pop up, open a file and write them down.

Productive writers are always incubating fresh ideas.

When you’re done with the intense drafting,you’ll be primed to start working on another project.

Have a Writing Challenge of Your Own?

Have a writing challenge of your own? Send it to me by email, in the comments, or using the Contact form.

Find insight on scheduling work and juggling different projects in The Writer’s Process.
Watch the writing challenge videos.

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What’s Your Biggest Workplace Writing Challenge?

 

Do you write as part of your job, in a workplace? If so, I need your help.

What’s the biggest problem or challenge that you face in the writing you do at work?

Is it finding the focus to write? Getting approvals? Working with editors?

What do you need help with, or what would you change if you could?

This is research for my next writing-related book. You might even have a starring role (if you want one).

You can leave comments, or contact me directly. I’ll try to respond promptly. And, thanks!

Anne

 

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What a Brewer Taught Me About Writing

If you’re paying attention, you can learn about writing in the most unlikely places. I got a lesson in communicating complicated topics in a crowded brew pub.

I was on a San Francisco brewery tour, run by Vantigo SF. (Great tour!)  One of our stops was Harmonic Brewing, a small, young brewery in the aptly-named Dogpatch area of the city. (There were almost as many dogs as people in the pub.)

About eight of us took a “tour” of the brewery, led by co-owner and brewer Eric. Although I call it a tour, do not imagine us walking through extensive facilities. We stood over to one side of a large, open room that included the bar as well as the brewing equipment. We could take in the entire sweep of the production area standing in one place, huddling close to hear the brewer over the din of music and voices.

These were not ideal conditions to learn about the chemical and biological process that is beermaking. Oh, and did I mention that we’d been sampling flights of the local ales? Perhaps, just perhaps, our concentration wasn’t quite as focused as it might be.

Yet in about ten minutes, Eric at Harmonic Brewing explained beer-making beautifully. He covered the general process in general, such as what happens with the complex carbohydrates when the grain is tricked into thinking it is sprouting.

All of the things I had heard before about beer-making fell into place and made sense. Plus, I had a better sense of this particular brewery’s operations and values, and how they focused on executing the basics very well.

Explaining complicated subjects is a valuable skill. I’ve spent my career in Silicon Valley trying to put uber-techie concepts into business terms, so this is something I’ve struggled with. When I see it done well, I take notice.

What did this brewer do that so many people struggle to accomplish? It wasn’t any one thing so much as a combination of factors that came together to create an effective communication of a technical topic.

In-depth knowledge

First, Eric knew what he was talking about. He knew the subject cold (and warm, during the “hot” phase of the process). As brewer an co-founder, he was expert. And clearly, he cared deeply about beer quality.

Despite his deep expertise, he managed to defeat the “Curse of Knowledge” and explain the brewing processes in a way that a slightly tipsy audience could understand.

Using jargon with care

Eric didn’t try to “impress” us with his expertise. There was no need. He was a brewer and a co-owner. He knew more about beer than any of us, had nothing to prove. I mention this because sometimes, when explaining complicated subjects, we instinctively to fortify our credentials by using jargon. He didn’t do this, nor did he need to.

Yes, he talked bout complex carbohydrates and fermentation. He used the term “wort” but only after defining it. Terms that I had heard before now made sense, as part of the story of the beer brewing all around us.

Stories

He told us the story of the beer, from its origin to its delivery to local bars and restaurants.

He also told personal stories. Until recently, he had delivered the beer to local restaurants in his own car. “I can fit six kegs in my Honda Fit.” That detail speaks volumes about the personal commitment required in starting a brewery.

Visual aids

Standing there among the equipment, we could see each of the stages and visualize what was going on inside the various tanks.

The activity of the yeast offered the most interesting visual aid. A hose snaked out out of one of the fermentation tanks into a bucket of water, and the water was bubbling wildly. The explanation for the bubbling: “That’s the carbon dioxide given off by the yeast in the tank as they digest the sugars.” The brewery controls the pace of that digestion by controlling the temperature of the tank. Makes sense.

The simple visual aid (the hose and bucket of water) made the abstract idea of yeast metabolism visible.

The take-aways

What can we learn from this process about communicating complicated technical topics?

Tell stories. They give us a way to make sense of and follow complicated processes.
Make it personal. Tell stories about yourself or other people.
Use visual support where possible.
Simplify, but don’t dumb it down.

And one more idea to try: Assuming your audience is a little tipsy might give you that extra bit of clarity.

Related Posts

Writing in the Workplace: Abstract Concepts

Creative Nonfiction is Not an Oxymoron

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Two Books to Build Your Writing Resilience

You know how sometimes you find just the right book when you need it, as if someone dropped it into your hands for a reason?

That happened to me recently with not one, but two books that turned out to be related to each other: Grit by Angela Duckworth, and Known by Mark Schaefer.

These books entered my life as I was in the final stages of revising and publishing the second edition of Subscription Marketing. During those final weeks, the mass of details can threaten to overwhelm the independently published author. So, a dose of bracing encouragement was welcome.

Reading these books reminded me of this essential truth:

Writing requires persistence and grit.

Neither book is targeted directly at writers and authors, but both offer powerful lessons for those who want to write and publish their work.

Writers: Read Grit for what it says about perseverance, purpose, and joy in the work.
Authors: Read Known for the realities of building that all-important “author platform”

The Foundation for Achievement: Grit

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Most of us have a tendency to put a great deal of faith in talent.  This belief lets us off the hook when we don’t achieve what we hoped. If we’re not as successful as someone else, they must have more talent, right?

Not so fast, writes Duckworth. In Grit, Angela Duckworth presents a compelling argument that talent is only one factor in achievement. She offers the following equations:

Talent x effort = skill

Skill x effort = achievement

Did you notice something? Effort appears twice – and it’s a multiplier. It’s time to get to work.

The highest achievers, according to Duckworth, tend to share the same quality, which she calls grit. It’s a combination of passion and perseverance that fuels achievement.

The good news is we can develop and enhance our personal grit at any stage of life. The book presents the psychology of grit, and its four main factors:

Interest
Capacity to practice
Purpose
Hope

Note that hope, in this context, is not the same thing as a passive, unfounded optimism. Rather, as Duckworth phrases it, hope is “the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future.”

The book explains each of these topics in great detail, and I highly recommend it. As you read, consider how these aspects of grit apply to writing.

Interest: To achieve something with your craft, you should be interested either in writing itself or your subject – ideally both.

Practice: You’ve heard it so many times: to write better, write and revise, then do it some more. You need the capacity to practice and refine your craft.

Purpose: A sense of purpose will help you through the tough patches and setbacks. Is there a message you want to share? Do you seek to communicate deeply with others through your writing? A purpose beyond yourself strengthens resilience.

Hope: Writing has its good days and bad days. On the bad ones, you need faith that if you keep persevering, you will make progress.

Hope gets us through the rough draft, confident that we can fix its imperfections in revision. Hope inspires us to publish our work, so that our message might find others. It keeps us working to build and refine our craft.

Hope is also particularly relevant to the work of building an author platform. That brings us to the next book.

Building the Author Platform: Known

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I’ve been a fan of Mark Schaefer for a while. So I was delighted to find his latest book, Known.

As Schaefer defines it, becoming known is about building authority and reputation, not necessarily fame. The subtitle is: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age.

Substitute author platform for personal brand in the subtitle, and the you’ll see why I included it in this review.

If you’re an author trying to build a platform, or looking to develop that elusive thought leadership quality, Known is a terrific guide, illustrated with fascinating stories. Schaefer offers his simple formula for building a platform:

Find your sustainable interest (your place)
Identify your audience (your space)
Produce consistent content

The last step is a doozie — produce, and produce, and produce. Keep listening, improving, and producing.

That’s where the idea of grit comes in. Schaefer refers to Duckworth’s book, so they make a great companion set for the writer. Approach the writing and publishing process with a fair measure of grit.

Writes Schaefer: “There’s no shortcut. To be known is a privilege to be earned.”

If you’re planning on pursuing a writing career and publishing your works, put both of these books on your reading list.

Other Book Reviews for Writers

How We Learn by Benedict Carey

Sell More Books with Less Social Media by Chris Syme

Productivity for Creative People, by Mark McGuinness

Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield

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Writing a Book and Thought Leadership

You hear this advice everywhere: If you want to be a thought leader in a subject, write a book about it.

It’s not bad advice, although writing a book is not the only option, nor is it right for everyone. It takes stamina to find success with this path.

But it may not play out like you imagine: you write the book, get on Oprah’s list, and become the go-to-expert.

Thought leadership: It’s about the thoughts

First, let me restate what Jay Baer says so wonderfully in this video: thought leadership is given, not taken. Watch the video – I love it.

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/podcasts/episodes/thought-leadership-is-given-not-taken/

You cannot claim “thought leadership.” However, you can develop expertise and opinions, express those thoughts in a way that resonates with others, and help others by sharing them.

Writing, publishing, and promoting a nonfiction book can help you develop and earn thought leadership in the following ways.

Researching: Expanding the depth of your expertise

Before you write a nonfiction book, you do a great deal of research. Even if the book is based on acquired experience in the field, you’ll talk to people and delve deeper.

By the time you’re done, you will know more than when you started.

Drafting: Expressing and refining those thoughts

Personally, I don’t know what I really think about a topic until I start writing about it. I discover new connections and angles while doing the hard work of writing and think of how to communicate with others.

When approached in this way (and with a growth mindset), the act of writing deepens your perspective on the topic.

Promoting the book: Sharing and expanding those thoughts

While many authors groan at the hard, ongoing work of book promotion, here’s another way to look at it:

Book promotion is the act of developing thought leadership

This is the phase in which you truly cement your expertise and earn any “thought leadership” credibility you may get from being an author.

It doesn’t matter whether you publish your book with a major publishing house, a small press,  or independently – you, as the author, are responsible for promoting your book.

Perhaps you’ll do podcast interviews. You may attend conferences and speak with people about the book and its topic area. People will bring up examples, question your assumptions, or otherwise put your ideas on trial.

In doing all of these activities, you’ll bend and stretch the ideas in the book for different audiences: defending the ideas in one situation, expanding them to cover a slightly different perspective in another.

This is where it gets interesting – and where you think even more deeply than before.

You keep developing those thoughts

In the two years that passed after publishing Subscription Marketing, I spoke with countless people. I heard their challenges, learned from them. And doing so, I forged stronger opinions about the topic.

These conversations strengthened my convictions about the evolving role of marketing in the Subscription Economy. They also led to a more nuanced understanding, and revealed different facets of the marketing situation.

So I decided to revisit the book and layer in some of those attitudes, stories, and ideas. Thus the second edition of Subscription Marketing was born.

The revision turned out to be much larger than initially planned. I admire people who undertake it regularly. David Meerman Scott revises the New Rules of Marketing and PR every two years. Every two years! I am in awe.

The second edition of Subscription Marketing (published this week) is 50 percent longer than the first, including updated data, additional stories and strategies, and more attitude. My opinions have strengthened and matured since the first version.

These concepts have been tested and proven in the real world. The thoughts have taken the leadership role – I’m simply helping them out into the world.

Who’s the thought leader in this story?

Writing and defending the book transformed and clarified my opinions and ideas. And that’s the point.

The real “thought leader” was the process of writing, publishing, and discussing the concepts with others. I’m just along for the ride.

There’s nothing like writing a book, and then defending what you have written, to reveal the true depth of your expertise, as well as its limits. It’s a wonderful journey filled with growth and discovery.

Now, back to writing and learning more about what I really think!

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