A teacher affects eternity: He can never tell where his influence stops. – Henry Adams
Be like Mr. Miyagi - Teach your audience something.
I just finished reading 37signal’s new business book, Rework
.
At 288 pages it’s a quick read (about 3 hours). It’s about getting back to the basics, making things easier not harder, and focusing on what really matters (in a business).
I’ll publish a full review soon, but for now I want to focus on the idea of “out-teaching” (not out-competing) your competitors.
Specifically, the notion that you’re more likely to buy stuff from someone who teach you something rather than being influenced by traditional marketing tactics, which is one of the topics in the book.
Teaching vs Marketing
Personal experience has also shown me that teaching vs traditional marketing does produce better results when attempting to create a loyal audience.
Most businesses do the opposite.
They focus on selling or servicing, but rarely do they teach their audience something. Teaching shows you give a #*%@. It helps you stand out. As Fried puts it, it also helps you “out-maneuver” the competition.
There are lots of ways to put this idea into practice online. One way (but certainly not the only or best way for you) is to start a blog.
Here’s a few examples to get your creative juices flowing.
MBA Mondays
Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist, has a very popular (and at times, controversial) blog. Among other topics, each week he writes a post under the category MBA Monday, where he steps back and connects the dots for those wanting to develop their business acumen. It’s here that budding VCs, start-ups, and entrepreneurs have the opportunity to learn from a VC veteran.
As a result, Wilson is now recognized as a leading voice of the venture capital finance community. He also happens to be #60 on Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” list for 2010.
Oh, one more thing. His firm’s portfolio has swelled with some of the hottest tech start-ups, including Twitter, Foursquare, and Zynga.
What Wine Goes Better With Fish?
Gary Vaynerchuk, who owns a large wine store called Wine Library, probably spent hours answering this question (and many like it, I’m sure) on Internet forums while teaching people about wine on Wine Library TV, his daily video blog.
As a result, his video blog is watched by tens of thousands of people each day. Just as important, from 1997 to 2008, his wine business went from $4 million to $50 million. He’s also the author of Crush It!
a book detailing how he used social media to build his audience and business.
Stop and think about it.
If, like me, you consistently work to improve yourself (and your business) you probably consume content online in an effort to learn something. In some cases, this content might even come from a company or site that sells something.
QUESTION – Have you ever bought something from a company or site after you’ve consumed their content for some time? Have you ever purchased something in the hopes of learning something?
I have.
Sometimes even after a year later of being introduced to the company and their content.
Instead of trying to outspend or outsell your competition maybe its time you did something different. Maybe, it’s time you tried out-teaching them.
About the Author:
Mitch Fanning is an online marketing and social media practitioner. He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brand (NBC.com, Nestle) to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100, creating, selling, implementing both traditional and digital marketing opt-in strategies.
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