Life Coaching Book? - Yeh, Put Me One Aside

I feel like modern technology is leaving me behind sometimes. Yes I know how to use a PC and run basic Windows programmes and fortunately I have a very patient and brilliant web guy to help me keep updated in that area, but every time I think I have caught up, something else springs up. First it was Blogs, then affiliate linking, then RSS feeds and Widgets and now it’s Web 2.0, video and viral marketing. I have this sickening feeling there are at least 2 really web savvy people reading this that are now chuckling at my naiveté and saying to themselves “What a loser, has he never heard of Webmeisterbuckydoodledangers and Kipperfishfetcher.com”

 

To be fair, viral marketing has been around some time now (years in fact) but it’s only now I’m getting into it so it’s new to me. The concept is simple and if you don’t know what it is, either check out Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin or maybe even on a slightly different tack, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. Simply put, viral marketing is the act of trying to spread your idea like a virus one person at a time. Of course it isn’t as simple as it sounds and to be really effective you have to make sure that each person isn’t just telling one other person or you’ll be waiting a heckuva long time before you get rich, unless of course you sell Space Shuttles or Retail Parks.

 

The reason I’m looking into this is to promote my book. I’m way to lazy to stand around at business luncheons, trying to shake hands with people who are concentrating more on avoiding spilling their drink and losing their food off the paper plate that is starting to bend in the middle because they haven’t got both hands on it, than they are on listening to me waffle on about life coaching. In any case when they realize I’m not a realtor, mortgage guy or circus clown their eyes mysteriously glaze over.

 

Trying to explain life coaching in 5 minutes to somebody that has one eye on their intended victim, er, I mean potential business acquaintance across the room, and the other on the guy that they think might get that last piece of smoked salmon before them, is problematical at best. I guess I should polish up my act and be able to deliver the kind of speech that doesn’t leave people wondering “Is he on drugs?” or “Why isn’t he wearing a whistle if he’s a real coach?” but I don’t want to. I used to feel like I should want to and when I first moved here I even forced myself to attend the kind of events that would have me jabbing tooth picks into my eye balls to keep me awake but no more.

 

So here I am trying to sell my book. I had the cunning idea of e-mailing all my friends both here and in the UK to announce this earth-shattering event. I knew that some would be logging on in seconds to buy and that would get the ball rolling. The exact percentage was a tad lower than I anticipated. I was thinking maybe 25% would rush to buy and another 10% would follow up when they realized they were missing out. In reality 0% rushed to buy and another 0% followed up. Impressive huh?

 

In the time that I tried this experiment I got orders from all over the US. Well maybe not all over the country but all over Florida and some from out of State. from people that don’t even know me, I’m very big in Ohio by the way. I tried to figure out what it means. Do they secretly hate me and only stay friendly because they like my wife and wonder what she is doing with me? Are they just lazy? Or more likely (I hope), are they just inundated with life? Is there so much going on that they can do this any time and really mean to do just that, but it just so happens that now is not the right time?

 

I hope it’s the latter although I guess if it isn’t I’ll save on Christmas cards.

 

In the meantime if you know somebody that has a huge mailing list or even a mediocre mailing list and can help me get my book ‘out there’ I’d love to hear from you via the e-mail address here on my website

Enjoyed this post? Please share it!

Digg it | Stumble it |

 

Post a Comment

Name

Mail (will not be published)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail