The Clean and Green Club

Another Recommended Book: Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur’s guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work (Chelsea Green, 2008)

This is a book aimed largely at those who are unhappy in a job that doesn’t advance their life’s purpose, looking for something in greater alignment with their core values–and their skills and talents and interests.

Part 1 focuses on finding the right pursuit, and also on finding the right partners to work with. Late in the first chapter, you’ll find a number of excellent processes to go through in finding work that is not only meaningful to you and to the world, but that fills a crucial need. That chapter contains some excellent advice.

Chapter 2 expresses Pollard’s strong belief that heart-centered enterprises and solpreneurship don’t mix. As a successful solopeneur, I take this with a grain of salt. Of course, I don’t try to do everything in my business, and I outsource those tasks that others can do better than me, or seek their guidance in setting up systems for myself. But that doesn’t mean I have to take them on as business partners. Still, if you <i>are</i> seeking partners, you’ll find great advice.

Parts 2 and 3 cover setting up your “Natural Enterprise” as a viable and sustainable operation that offers innovative solutions to real problems, and draws on the power of commuity collaboration to create something resilient and powerful. His section on identifying needs is excellent, and he discusses using biomimicry and other enormously powerful methods to turn those needs into products and markets. He offers 22 attributes of Natural Enterprises, six steps to building a viral marketing buzz, and four keys to successful collaboration.

Two insights I found particularly cogent, both on the same page (178): Relationships are more important than credentials. And because partnerships are based on an equal relationship grounded in mutual trust, when you form partnerships, you predispose others outside the partnership to trust you more, because they understand that’s how you work. These insights reinforce the relationship-based marketing approaches I discuss in my own award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

In today’s instant world, the faster you can get attention when a story breaks, the better your chance of being covered. If you can get a pitch letter or press release in when the ink is still drying on the new develiopment, you’re very likely to be quoted.

A few ways to get into position:

• Sign up for free alerts at HARO – you’ll get three alerts per weekday, each with about 40 leads from journalists actively looking for story sources. Also the occasional speaking lead and on Fridays, opportunities to get your swag into gift bags.
• Also sign up for PR Leads. This is a similar service, but because it costs $99 per month, there’s far less competition in answering the queries (HARO now has over 50,000 members, so reporters tend to get deluged. PR Leads and its big sister Profnet reach only a fraction of that number.) Note that there is a fair amount of overlap, but there are still quite a few reporters who prefer to use the less crowded service.
• Follow Skydiver (HARO) and ProfNet (PR Leads) on Twitter for last-minute journo requests that don’t make it into the feeds.
• Set up automatic Twitter searches at one of the many 3rd-party Twitter utilities such as TweetDeck or Twellow for your name, your product and company names, and your key topics.
  Create similar searches in Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts (categories: breaking news, daily news, keyword news). Note that there may be significant time lag, so don’t rely on these services as your main source of breaking news. I find my Google alerts are usually about a day after the story is released.
• Check in for a quick headline crawl several times a day on any of the major news services.

Next month: What to do with the leads when you find them.

When an organization buys your book, in quantity, there are many advantages to you beyond the dollars in your pocket. Not that those dollars aren’t a good thing; they most certainly are. But the cash in your pocket may not be worth as much as the massive marketing benefit you can get from it:

• Third-party validation. When an organization buys your book, it’s the highest kind of endorsement. The movers and shakers of that organization are telling their members that your work contributes valuable knowledge in the field where they’re the recognized experts. Is that cool or what?
• Access to the organization’s members. Depending on how the group plans to use your book (we’ll talk about some of the possibilities next month), it may tell its members about you through newsletters, web sites, member events that feature you as a speaker, presenter, consultant, or visiting celebrity. The group could even bring you in as a paid spokesperson!
• Ability to mention this relationship in your other marketing. If, for example, you’re approaching a journalist to pitch your heart-disease recovery book, or talking to a medical book club about carrying your title, don’t you think you’ll get more attention if you can say honestly that you’re partnering with the American Heart Association?
• Potentially, you could even get access to the organization’s other partners, including for-profit businesses that might also buy your book in quantity, sponsor appearances, etc.
• If the arrangement is made before you go to print, you can lower your print costs by increasing volume to supply the organization’s purchase.

For all these reasons, it’s worth coming to a deal. Unless it’s a very small purchase, don’t be afraid to discount. If you can do better than break even, that’s terrific. But if you at least cover your costs, the deal still works in your favor, long-term.
Part 2 of this series suggests several types of organizations that might work for you. Part 3 will look at ways organizations might use your books, part 4 on the types of books that can work (you may be pleasantly surprised), and part 5, how to approach the organizations. And as a bonus, part 6 will apply what you’ve learned to bulk purchases in the corporate sector.

If you don’t want to wait 6 months for all this information, you can buy copies of my award-winning books, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers. Use this link to get the paperback editions at the discounted price of $41.95, combined (plus shipping), or this link for the e-book editions at just $34.95 (no shipping charge). Between those two books, you’ll get lots of ideas on how to form win-win partnerships that move quantities of your book.

One of the better websites I’ve seen for Green products is https://www.greenhome.com

As its CEO describes it, this cheerful and well-laid out site features “the most hand-made products from small green businesses, making us a bit like a Farmers Market for green products.”

And we’re talking some very cool stuff: compostable cups and even tote bags” smart surge protectors (I learned about these in this month’s book; they shut off power to peripherals when the main unit is turned off–great, for example, if you have a printer with no on/off switch), solar and energy-efficient lights, natural-fiber
clothing and bedding, vegan shoes (HARD to find!), and lots more.

Even better, the site has a gazillion helpful articles: how to go Green, news. sustainable gardening, and all sorts of other stuff. Warning: you could spend quite a bit of time exploring it all. I know I’ll be back to look again.

Greening Your Business: The Hands-on Guide to Crdating a Successful and Sustainable Business, by Daniel Sitarz (Carbondale, IL: Earthpress, 2008)

For all those who think being more Green means spending a ton of money, go out and get this book. The larger your enterprise, the more money you’ll save. Managers at a large manufacturing facility might save millions of dollars per year–particularly if you haven’t gone after the low-hanging fruit already. The owner of a small retail store might save several thousand, and a home-based solopreneurs will likely save a few hundred. And it should be required reading before building a new facility or retrofitting an old one. No matter what kind of business or nonprofit you run, follow the advice in this book and you’ll be Greener, and you’ll save money.

Want examples? Sitarz documents that General Electric slashed its energy consumption by nine percent, saving $100 million (p. 56). Wal-Mart retrofitted its truck cabs with heating and cooling units, so the big diesels didn’t need to run just to keep the cab comfortable at a truck stop, saving $22 million in the first 16 months (p. 156).

It’s full of specific tools and resources to lower the cost and the environmental impact of energy, transportation, construction, water use (though it leaves out some obvious stuff–see this article I wrote a few years ago for those tips), office equipment and appliances, supply chain issues, and more. And to my pleasant surprise, even though the book covers some pretty technical material, it’s written in a very accessible style. There are also many weblinks, spreadsheets, and checklists, conveniently included in both an enclosed CD and in the actual text.

And while this book doesn’t discuss the marketing benefits of a Greener approach, you’ll be well-placed to take advantage of that (for how to harness the full benefits of your Green investments in your marketing, I recommend my own book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First).

This is my entry for Eban Pagan’s how-to-use social-media contest. Even though I’ve covered social media within the year, I think this nice succinct summary stands well as a Frugal Marketing Tip–and is maybe easier to deal with than the four-part series I ran last spring.

Besides, repurposing content is a great marketing strategy, so you get to see me put that into action too. 🙂

The key to success with social media–and I’ve built my business on it since 1995–is to interact with others the way you’d like to be interacted with. Call it the Golden Rule of Cyberspace–it’s not so different from the Golden Rule of every major religion.

This means…
* Provide lots of helpful and useful information, especially if you expect to ask questions
* Say thank-you when people help you (but DON’T fill your public profiles with endless thank-you notes, especially on Twitter)
* Look for opportunities to connect others who should know each other, even if you don’t directly benefit
* Remember that it’s a conversation, not an e-blast
* Pitch subtly and relevantly (is that a word? It is now)
* It’s about relationships, not about numbers

As for which social media to participate on… Four musts would be Twitter, Facebook, your own blog, and (gasp! how retro!) Yahoogroups. Yeah, Yahoogroups lacks all the interface niceties of Facebook, Plaxo, etc., but it has hundreds of thousands of tightly niched communities, and I’m living proof that it’s quite possible to market there.

For myself, I also have benefited from participating on CollectiveX, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Ning–mostly by joining groups.

I have been using social media marketing for over a decade, and writing about it all the way back to 1991. Most of my books cover the basic concepts, and I recently completed an e-book specifically covering the Web 2.0 sites–which I throw in as a bonus with either of my Grassroots Marketing books. And relationship marketing can exist outside of social media, or even the Web–I write about that in detail in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Shel Horowitz, marketing strategist and copywriter
https://www.frugalmarketing.com

Today’s Book Marketing Tip is a guest article form Susan Kendrick, of Book Cover Quick Start, discussing (among other things) the important distinction between readers and buyers, and how that affects your book. And by the way, if you order a copy of my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, directly from me, one of the two free e-books you get is “How to Write and Publish a Marketable Book”-which includes a full chapter on covers.

Take it away, Susan!

-Shel

Does Your Book Cover Have a Hidden Target Market?

One Book–Multiple Target Markets?
Discover the Hidden Buyers for Your Book
(That Can More Than Double Your Sales!)

By Susan Kendrick

By now you must have heard or read at least once that you should narrow
your niche, know your target audience and market exclusively to them on
your book cover. I’m going to tell you to forget all that for a few
minutes, because I want to help you see the hidden sales opportunities you
could be missing.

For the next few minutes, I want you to think about your book in terms of
readers and buyers, two often separate target markets you need to make an
impact on with your book cover.

But aren’t readers and buyers the same person?

Not always. Keep reading. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s book for review includes considerable mention of companies that have often been criticized for environmental, labor, or social behavior that is the opposite of good citizenship, but have started to change their behavior. It also points out the importance of social responsiblity initiatives that are congruent with the company’s core identity. So it’s only fitting that this month’s Positive Power Spotlight highlights a company that does both those things.

Occasionally in this space, I’ve profiled companies like that. Wal-Mart made the list for its amazing humanitarian response after the U.S. government left the people of New Orleans to drown in the wake of Katrina, and could make it again some time for its enormous initiatives on the environment–despite its abysmal record on labor, supplier relations, community impact, and a bunch of other areas. BP got profiled for the huge shift in environmental consciousness under its former chair (I’m afraid there may have been some backsliding since he stepped down). In other words, I’m a believer in acknowledging and thanking companies when they start to do things right, even if they could still be criticized.

This month, I’m saying thank-you to Tyson Foods. Most of what I know about Tyson is not pretty; the company has often been named as an organizing target by labor groups who have been extremely unhappy with orking conditions at its chicken processing plants.

It’s been several years since I heard that criticism, though, and meanwhile, someone Twittered about a remarkable and extremely positive initiative from Tyson: For every comment made on the blog page about it, the company would donate 100 pounds of food to the Food Bank of Greater Boston, up to two full tractor trailer loads, or 70,000 pounds of food. The original offer was one trailer load, but when it took only a few hours to fill their quota, the company added a second one–which also filled instantly.

Tyson execs actually read every comment. I know this because after I made my comment, I received this little e-mail (the link to my blog was not in the original, of course):

Won’t spam you, but noticed your comment about blogging about it. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. This is the third of these efforts we’ve done; the others being in Austin and the Bay Area.
Regards,
Ed

Ed Nicholson
Director of Community and Public Relations
Tyson Foods, Inc.
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/eenicholson>https://www.linkedin.com/in/eenicholson
<https://twitter.com/TysonFoods>https://twitter.com/TysonFoods
<https://twitter.com/ederdn>https://twitter.com/ederdn
<https://hungerrelief.tyson.com>https://hungerrelief.tyson.com

He included his direct phone number, which I’ve removed. I have to say, the note was effective. I hadn’t known about the two similar initiatives (I had wondered why they picked Boston since their plants are mostly in the South). I was impressed with the initiative itself, but also that someone pretty high up the ladder was reading the blog comments and very quickly contacted me, and that he’s tapped in to LinkedIn and Twitter.  I do think that when you’re using social media effectively, it pretty much forces you to behave in a more outwardly-focused way. Twitter, in particular, is briliantly designed to be more-or-less spam-proof: if all someone does is blab about how great they are, nobody will follow them and they only spam themseles. People will take one look at their profile and leave without following.

Ed is using this Twitter page solely to promote hunger and social justice initiatives (not just Tyson’s either), and is being very transparent.

I noticed, for instance, this post:

@jowyang This account started as 2) and moved to 3) after perceiving the need for more transparency. We also have 4).

The original post he was responding to was from a very prolific Twitterer, and it’s been buried under hundreds of posts, so I won’t quote it here. But I can guess it was in response to some post about using Twitter appropriately for business.

At the time I’m writing this (12/15, 7 a.m. Eastern), his most recent Tweet is

Great 60 Min. story on Pete Carroll & efforts to reduce gang violence in LA. You gotta give props to someone trying to make a difference.

So, I’ll give my “props” to Ed: Thank you for being a voice of conscience at this company. And to Tyson. Thank you for hiring a community relations director who really gets it, and for giving him the resources to make a diffeence.

Another Recommended Book: Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand, by Kellie A. McElhaney (Berrett-Koehler, 2008)

McElhaney’s key point: It’s not enough to have CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives in place; they have to be strategic, thorough, and properly marketed:

Strategic: aligned with–and actually fostering–the company’s overall goals. CSR initiatives need to be consistent with other branding, add to the bottom line (or at least not subtract from it), and demonstrate benefit not only to the community but to the company itself (not hard to do, as I point out in my own book, Principled Profit)

Thorough: able to withstand accusations/investigations of “greenwashing”

Properly marketed: Once you’ve got the initiatives in place, tell the story to all your stakeholders: top brass, line employees, customers, suppliers, neighbors, etc. Even better: get your nonprofit partners to tell your story for you, and give them the support they need to develop and disseminate those marketing messages.

The effects can be astonishing. She shares two stories from a cell phone company called Digicell whose success and not only doing but communicating CSR had a clear positive impact on profitability:
During the 2008 food riots in Haiti, local residents protected their stores through community policing efforts, even as stores on either side were burned and looted
When the CEO, Denis O’Brien, was one of several cell phone providers chosen to make a 10-minute pitch to the Nicaraguan government, President Daniel Ortega interrupted his presentation and told him, “Listen, I know wheat you have done for the people and the communities of Jamaica and Haiti. We would be honored to have your company serve not only our mobile telecommunications needs but also the needs of our communities.” WOW!

She frequently cites Pedigree dog food as a company that understands the power of thoroughly incorporating CSR into its core mission AND its branding. Visit that company’s website and you can’t miss the attention to adopting homeless dogs: a perfect message for a dog food maker, and a strong creator of consumer loyalty.

Interestingly, she spends a lot of energy discussing companies that have not always been perceived as good corporate citizens, including Wal-Mart and Dow Chemical. Perhaps, she seems to imply, those companies cans how their sincerity and turn public opinion to their favor, much as Nike did.

The book winds up with action steps, a comprehensive (if somewhat repetitive) section on measuring the results of CSR on profitability, and a look at the CSR big picture and future trends.

Highly recommended.

1. The blah-blah press release is dead.

2. The story-behind-the-story press release is very much alive.

Example: When hired to write a press release for a new book about electronic privacy, I did *not* write “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book” (snore). Instead, I wrote
“It’s 10 O’Clock–Do You Know where Your Credit History Is?”

3. It is dangerous to blow off non-traditional media (e.g., blogs, podcasts).

4. It is extremely useful to have some presence on at least a few of the social media networks, especially Twitter.

5. The best key to PR (and marketing in general) is relationships.  They enable coverage, testimonials, JVs, and much more–not to mention repeat and referral business.

6. Strong ethics helps build those relationships.

7. If you’re not on the web, in many people’s eyes, you simply don’t exist.

8. A web presence doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated–but it needs to be much more than a converted brochure.

9. Pitch letters answering reporter queries, while more labor-intensive than press releases, will have a much higher batting average (two sources: HARO (no charge, but with its huge circulation, reporters get inundated very quickly) and PRLeads ($99/month).

10. The faster you get your response in, the better your chance of appearing in the story.

There’s a lot more information on this in my books, especially Apex Award winner Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. Remember–if you live in the US, this month you can get free shipping, even if you’re taking advantage of the discount you get when ordering more than one title–just put FREESHIP in the promo code on the order form at https://www.frugalmarketing.com/cart (All three of my current books, PrinProfit as well as Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World and Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, make fabulous gifts, too–especially if you ask me to autograph them.)