Have you become an expert without realising it?
No email down here
I was recently at a small conference in Brisbane that was organised by the internal communications team of Queensland Rail. They were frustrated with paying $4,000 to go to conferences where everything was aimed at their peers in white-collar companies like banks and law firms. Their challenge is reaching blue collar workers who aren't conveniently located in one building with ready access to computers. Their audiences are field workers out and about all day repairing power lines or miners working in 12-hour shifts on remote mine sites (and I mean remote).
The team from Queensland Rail suspected they weren't the only ones who felt this way about the conferences on offer so they asked around other companies with blue collar workforces. Would anyone be interested in an informal get-together to share? They certainly were. On the day there were about 60 attendees from all over Australia, (and Australia, as you might know, is a big country).
With a couple of exceptions the speakers were all drawn from the attendees who talked about their challenges and the — often superbly innovative — ways they had overcome them.
It was fascinating. One team has to get posters delivered to mine sites that are two-hours by plane from Perth. Then they have to find someone on the ground who is willing to drive around the site putting up the posters, a major ask when some of these sites would take 45 minutes just to drive straight across. That round-trip with a roll of tape and a backseat full of posters has to be a three hour chunk out of anyone's day.
What's my point?
Why am I telling you this? Because these guys know something that other people don't know. They are experts in communicating with a particular group of people who are exceptionally difficult to reach. They don't want to (and sometimes can't) read memos and they're geographically incredibly hard to reach. Train drivers are, you know, driving during the working day. Nonetheless all these workers must be reached, especially with safety messages.
They don't have degrees in "blue collar communication" and they haven't published books on communicating with the working man. What they do have is hard-won experience that's invaluable to others trying to do the same thing.
When you're thinking about promoting your book ask yourself whether you might actually have become an expert without realising it. Do you have something to share with likeminded people?
If you've self-published, bingo. There will be groups of writers within a rock's throw of your house who would love to hear how you did it. Those are writers who are also readers and might buy your book. They might also mention you on their blogs and in their Twitter feeds. Those links will lead to other readers… (Oh, and people still just talk to each other about cool things they learn so that works, too.)
An expert is just someone who knows more than you do. I bet when it comes to writing there's something you know more about than anyone and it's time to think about how to get out and share it.
I know some of you have given talks or are part of writers' groups. What do you think?
