Entrepreneurs and small business owners understand that the product, the performance, the end-game – whatever you wish to call it, requires a well planned back-stage effort.
This is the one of the greatest challenges with social media marketing. Before the audience or customer can enjoy the performance, which is the delivery of your product or service, a lot of diverse skills must be organized and properly orchestrated. This is work, and it is the rare individual who can provide the necessary creative ideas, the technical skills, and a sustained effort to bring everything to its desired completion. I know I am trying, but I am certainly getting a lot of help from my friends.
Social media networking and marketing teaches us to build relationships. It encourages us to make friends. And the best friends are the ones who can not only help us, but that we can help in return. That is my simple formula for a great relationship – in life and business.
Today I was not able to apply my creative skills to writing my book because I was busy working on the back-stage publishing details. I started the day as I usually do, getting the shape of my ideas together through my process of thinking, writing, and visualizing, and then meditating on all of that before I get to work. This consumes the better part of an hour or more of my day, however, it helps me get to plan and shape the day for a great performance.
As you know, it is tough to get your creative work done if you have a lot of little things to take care of, so that's where I focused my efforts on this eleventh day of my book writing project. Think about it, how can you go on stage to perform if someone hasn't done a sound check? You have to sweat the details if you expect to deliver the goods. This is usually best accomplished as a team, and that is my recommendation. I'm still building my team, which is 100% outsourced, so I did a lot of that back-stage work today to make tomorrow more productive.
Now, here's the thing – it is possible to take this too far. As legendary sales trainer and speaker Zig Ziglar has said, "If you wait until all of the lights are green before you head to town, you'll probably never get out of the driveway." So, clean up the messes that need your attention and get on with it. Today this involved a conversation with my publisher, which is Booksurge, and another conversation with my friend Chris Heiler, who is also within a whisper of publishing his first book. Chris is approaching his book much differently than I am, yet the sharing of ideas with a trusted friend is indeed a valuable exercise.
The work of developing and sustaining friendships is an investment that takes time. It is a necessary investment. If you plan to develop a social media presence that will build and grow your business into a sustainable enterprise, you should give it its due. While I am tempted to look at today as a wasted effort because I only manged to write 500 words, I am now ready for a great performance tomorrow.
Take some time today to be thankful for those friends that help to make your performance great. This is your back-stage crew. You can get by with a little help from your friends, but you can accomplish great things if you give them support too. By my count I had help today from eleven friends. When I lay it out like that, I realize today was one hell of a productive day!
Photo Credit: Ben Sutherland
What you call the “back-stage publishing details” have taken up much more of my time than I anticipated when writing my book.
Per your recommendation, I looked into SmashWords for producing my ebook. It looks like it could be a very good option.
Glad to hear Smashwords looks good for your book. I have drafted the next post and it will recapitulate most of those back-stage lessons that prevented me from achieving my goal as scheduled. But no worries, I’m half done with plenty of momentum moving forward!