Ian Miller, Founder and CEO, Brand Practice, Author, "Rocket Branding"

Rocket Branding has helped grow billion-dollar product and company brands in just three years but can the thinking also help a book take off?

Absolutely. First, let’s acknowledge that a book is a brand in every sense. It is a product, has a label, and has a message and competes for attention and preference on the shelf, online and in the public discourse. Moreover, a book has the stuff of great, fast acting brands…emotional involvement. Regardless of whether it is fiction or non-fiction, personal or professional, a successful book just like a successful brand provides an emotional reward of one kind or another.

So if you think of your book as a brand then here are the steps you should take to rocket it.

This is all about the three principles of Rocket Branding…grow, focus and simplify:

1. Establish an aggressive, but real, rocket growth goal…how many books to be sold in three years?
2. Focus on the key source of business targets that will propel that growth…who are the key book buyers and their influencers and what is the emotional reward for them?
3. Design every aspect of the book and its marketing to propel this target to act immediately… What should the book title, cover and internal design, writing style, story organization and launch marketing plan be to get the target to buy the book ASAP?

Easier said than done particularly for those not trained in marketing or branding strategy but well worth the attempt. Rocket Branding specialists are on board and ready to help at anytime.

Related articles

• Branding Growth Expert Ian Miller Says Companies Can Grow Rapidly with Ideas in “Rocket Branding” Book
• Why Brands Matters More Than Ever In the 21st Century
• The Rise of Pinterest: How companies are using it as part of their brand strategy

The Father

William Randolph Hearst [From Wikipedia] (April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher.^[1] Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer‘s New York World which led to the creation of yellow journalism—sensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world.

He was twice elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives, but ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1905 and 1909, for Governor of New York in 1906, and for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1910. Nonetheless, through his newspapers and magazines, he exercised enormous political influence, and is sometimes credited with pushing public opinion in the United States into a war with Spain in 1898.

His life story was a source of inspiration for the development of the lead character in Orson Welles‘ classic film Citizen Kane.^[2] His mansion, Hearst Castle, near San Simeon, California, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was donated by the Hearst Corporation to the state of California in 1957, and is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark, open for public tours. Hearst formally named the estate La Cuesta Encantada (“The Enchanted Slope”), but he usually just called it “the ranch”.

The Son

William Randolph Hearst Jr., [From Wikipedia] attended the University of California, Berkeley and was a member of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity.

He was instrumental in restoring some measure of family control to the Hearst Corporation, which under his father’s will is (and will continue to be while any grandchild alive at William Randolph Hearst Sr.’s death in 1951 is still living) controlled by a board of thirteen trustees, five from the Hearst family and eight Hearst executives. When tax laws changed to prevent the foundations his father had established from continuing to own the corporation, he arranged for the family trust (with the same trustees) to buy the shares and for longtime chief executive Richard E. Berlin, who was going senile, to be eased out to become chairman of the trustees for a period. Later William Randolph Hearst Jr. himself headed the trust and served as chairman of the executive committee of the corporation. Today his branch of the family is represented on the trustees by his son William Randolph Hearst III.

The Grandson

William Randolph Hearst III [From Wikipedia] (born June 18, 1949) became president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in early 2003. Son of William Randolph Hearst, Jr. and grandson of William Randolph Hearst, Hearst is also director of the Hearst Corporation.

Hearst has a son, William Dedalus Hearst, and three daughters, Adelaide, Caroline and Eliza.

Hearst graduated from Harvard University in 1972 with an AB degree in mathematics. He spent years as an employee of the Hearst Corporation, eventually as editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. His grandfather had also headed that paper, though his father had been publisher of the New York Journal American. In some television commercials Hearst III was shown having a conversation with his grandfather’s portrait. (In fact, he was only two when his grandfather died.)

In 1976 he left the company to become the managing editor of Outside magazine which was then being started by the Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner. Hearst returned to the company and newspaper work in 1980.

In 1992 he again left his job at the company, remaining on the board of directors. The following year he succeeded his father as a trustee of the trust that controls the company and chooses the directors.

In 1996 Hearst was a co-founder of the @Home Network Broadband Internet service with Milo Medin, cable companies TCI, Comcast and Cox Cable where he served as the company’s first Chief Executive Officer.^[1]

In 1995 Hearst was named partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,^[2] where he continues to serve today. He sits on several Boards of Directors of companies in which the firm has investments, including Hearst-Argyle Television.^[3] He served as a member of the Board of Directors of Juniper Networks until May 2008.

Summary

So what do you think when you look at this interesting lineage? Lines like “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” springs to my mind. By looking at the influence each father had on his son you can see the possibility of a future for William Dedalus Hearst, born 05 02 1979, William Randolph Hearst III’s son . . . or not. Will he follow in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great grandfather? Only time will tell, but just looking at the network for these “men of words” I believe we will continue to see the Hearsts connected to digital networks.

Related articles

• Hearst Lives (possil.wordpress.com)
• Hearst Acts Like Venture Capitalist in New Media Marketplace (nyconvergence.com)
• Tea for Two: Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California (photographerwilltravel.wordpress.com)

STEP NUMBER 1:

Create Your Values Foundation.

We all have values, but what are your top four and, if you can, what are they in level of priority?

Carol had been what we call in Networlding “baseline networking” for years. She was at the top of her game working as Director of HR for a large organization. However, the long hours and an intense travel schedule left Carol feeling that her personal life lacked balance. From layoffs and career changes to being sought out for competitive executive positions, Carol had been through all of the ups and downs of corporate life.

As she began thinking about what she wanted her future to look like she thought more about her childhood dream of being a physiologist. Carol appreciated valued-based business and aspired to start an individual psychology practice of her own.

With these goals in mind Carol took the first step in Networlding and identified her top four values:

• Spirituality
• Connection
• Making a difference
• Achievement

With these values in mind, Carol decided to leave her six-figure salary and return to graduate school. By understanding her values Carol will not lose sight of them through her process. With her values in mind she is more apt to meet others with similar values and build a network of people around her that will help maintain these values. She will also vocalize her values more often and make requests to be introduced to people who hold similar and complimentary values.

Following is an overview of these tools:

Website Grader – Useful tool for measuring the marketing effectiveness of your
website, get a free custom report in seconds with advice for your website

MarketingProfs – A great resource for case studies, insights, and best practices from
peers and experts in marketing

HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog – Articles about business strategy and inbound Internet
marketing

Web ink now – Online thought leadership and viral marketing strategies from award-
winning author David Meerman Scott

HubSpot – Internet marketing software that helps you get found by more prospects and
generate more qualified leads and sales

CrowdSpring – A site offering custom designs that you choose from actual custom designs, not bids. The average project gets
a whopping 80 entries. They have a money back guarantee
25 entries or a full refund, including the small fee for the services. The site boast over 46,000 creatives.

Zmags – The next generation in online publishing. The site is great. Take a look at my ZMag! For more information, view the zmags blog.

What do you think? What are your top ten or fewer favorites of the year?

I. Chapter One – November 11, 2011.  Reminiscing about our beginning days in the Innovation Center that opened the year before on October 10, 2010…  What did we set out to accomplish?  What were our motivations?  What resistance did we encounter?  Who encouraged us?  What people were instrumental to our early success?  What role did networlding play? What was it about the Innovation Center concept that truly caught people’s interest and passion?  How did we leverage outside ideas and our blogosphere community to help enhance our vision and accelerate our progress?

II. Chapter Two – A day in the life of the center as it is “today” (11-11-11) – The user experience.  What are the key differentiating attributes of the user experience?  How are people using the Center?  What value are they generating/receiving?  What makes the Center so successful?  How has this changed over the last year?

III. Chapter Three – Opening Day October 10, 2010.  What did the beginning structure look like the day it opened?  Did we have all 30 kiosks in there?  What was our business and revenue model?  What initial mistakes did we make? What fortuitous events helped make it happen?  What was the initial public reaction?  What near-disasters did we finesse?

IV. Chapter Four – The first week.  What happened during that first week of the center being opened?  What did we learn?  What did we commit to fix?  How did it change our assumptions or operating models?  What would we have done differently from the beginning of only we’d known…

V. Chapter Five – The early months.  What happened within the first 90 days?  What were our first 3 major initiatives?  How were they germinated?   how did we get them to the stage of moving to engagement with design engineers from a couple of the companies in the center (check out www.inventright.com or www.edisonnation.com for examples of companies).  Who were our first corporate sponsors?  What made them decide to participate?

VI. Chapter Six – Crisis!  What unexpected event happened ~ 4-6 months later that nearly caused the Center to collapse?  (A little dramatic effect that occurs in every good story…)  How did we rescue it?  What help did we get from an entirely unexpected source?  What sacrifices were we forced to make that turned out to pay huge dividends later?  What seemingly unrelated sub-plot first mentioned in the prologue and carried along at a low level of intensity in Chapters I-V suddenly emerges as an unexpected, vital component of our success?

VII. Chapter Seven – The Center – 2nd Generation.  How did the Center emerge better, stronger and with more innovative impact as a result of the events in Chapter Five?  How did we know that the Center was now completely out of danger and would be an extraordinary success?

VIII. Chapter Eight – Events in the Center.  What kinds of things went on during that first year – especially those that could only have taken place in the unique environment of the Center?

IX. Chapter Nine – Impact of the Center.  What tangible, measurable results has the Center produced in its first year?  What additional kinds of activities are there underway that will yield even greater impacts an dividends.  Where did we create unexpected value?  What didn’t we expect that happened?

X. Chapter Ten – What’s Next?  Having spent the first nine chapters in reflection mode, now we pivot and look to the future.  Sister Centers are now in various stages of opening in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, London, Prague and Milan.  Interest has been expressed from unexpected sources – DARPA, DOE and other leading-edge US government agencies want to develop a similar concept to help drive early-stage innovation on government projects.  NASA wants to build a Center dedicated to establishing a manned base on Mars.  The World Bank and Gates Foundation want to fund the establishment of local Innovation Centers across Africa to help foster self-help solutions to the daunting problems of Aids, energy, food and tribal feuding — from the same people that these challenges affect the most.

———————————————————–
So, beginning with Chapter One, what ten companies do you think should be part of the center?  Would you choose any of the companies from this list of the twenty-five most innovative companies identified most recently by Business Week? Who would be your ten and why? Please comment and get your colleagues to comment. We’ll let the majority rule and off we go! Check out Business Week’s 50 Most Innovative Company list for 2009 to help with your choices.

Fortune 500 Series: FedEx delivers success through social media …
By Jennifer Leggio

Blogger, Jennifer Leggio showcases The FedEx Citizenship blog that provides insights from their employees into FedEx global citizenship programs and the The FedEx Cares Week blog is an internal blog that chronicles the annual global philanthropy event by having team members share their stories about the community service projects. …

Hill and Knowlton’s New Blogging Code of Conduct

Hill and Knowlton publish their blogging “Code of Conduct.” This is a nice model for other organizations to use.

The Top Six Reasons Companies are Still Scared of Social Media

This article showcases the reasons why companies are afraid of social media. Whereas they are typical reasons that make sense, the article is good at aggregating the most common reasons. The hurdles for companies are getting lowered by organizations like SAS who take on the risk, trusting and encouraging their employees to blog and prove that it is still better to be “out there” than to hide behind corporate walls.

My Take

I spoke with a couple of social media experts this week and found that, once again, myopia is still alive, well and living in peoples’ minds still. By this I mean that many see social networking as their ticket to great success. They think that because there are so are confused how to make social networking work that there is a huge market out there and that they can just put a shingle out that states they are social media experts overnight. Recently someone shared they had a construction worker friend who is now teaching LinkedIn.

I’ve been teaching people social networking for more than a decade and up until last year many still didn’t understand the basics of business networking. Now there are five times the number of experts on the subject than there were even three months ago. What a strange time this is! It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out in the next couple of years. I remember when I use to hold networking events and there was an over abundance of bankers; then came the plethora of coaches. Now everyone is a social networking and new media expert. Hmmmmm.

What does it look like to build trust online? Maybe showing rather than telling will be more helpful. Let me start with an actual campaign I am currently implementing.

Event: A live event in Chicago teaching social media

Target market: Lawyers

Date scheduled: Last two weeks in October

1.  I started by going through my network on LinkedIn
2. I limited my search to those in my network
3.  I discovered I had 318 lawyers in my network
4. I created what I call a two-step email–first a query to find out if there was interest, and
second, if interested, an email to present the workshop offering.

I have used this approach, again and again, to connect with people that I know as well as those I don’t. My approach is to ALWAYS be as authentic as I can be and to create a connection.

What else? I also really work on my emails to these new connections making sure I make my request simple and short. So a script might look like this:

Dear X,

I am currently in your network and wanted to reach out and ask if you might be interested in a social media workshop I will be hosting in Chicago at the end of October? I have over seven years of experience helping thousands learn to leverage social media tools like LinkedIn. Please let me know if you would like me to send more information.

Best,

Melissa Giovagnoli

—————————————————————

But, of course, each campaign you create is unique and should be as tailored as possible to create the best “first impression.” That takes some time and thoughtfulness, but, if you build a network of connections, one good first connection conversation, at a time, you will go a long way toward starting a “trust continuum” that will have a long-term payback.

I was just recently reading about a Twitter conference that served up the following set of promises that included:

1. building communities
2. providing customer service
3. changing brand perceptions
4. and increasing revenue

Now of course there could be more promises but let’s just take these and really think about all the stories you are hearing that deliver the promises set forth above. Weighing in on these promises are a lot of people who are not getting results. Why?

Could it be because they are pushing their way into communities, not delivering on customer service and plain, just not listening to the models being shared for effective social networking? Check out this great video and then come back to this question, “What can you do today to start a more effective social media campaign?”

I think that social media is a “layering” process. In my talks I share that it is like Baklava, one sweet layer after another. It keeps adding up and, as it does, the layers create a great result. So I am not going to go into great detail offering case studies that prove that social media marketing is effective. I’ll save that for future blog entries. Today, I just want to offer up a metaphor that will, hopefully, get you thinking and, if you will, just try a bite of this dessert!

Open the Door of Opportunity

I have been training people on LinkedIn now for more than six years and I keep hearing the same question,”Now that I am LinkedIn what do I do?” Following is a list of 10 things (this is Part I) you can be doing that are can really make a difference in your results. Currently I get about 40% of my business from LinkedIn. Maybe this will help you? Weigh in on your best strategies and if I use them I will be sure to acknowledge your idea!

1. Join a variety of LinkedIn Groups. Start by joining three to five groups. There are so many great groups on LinkedIn that it would be hard to give you a short list. There are literally thousands of groups. But the best advice I can give here is to join a local group. For instance, we have a LinkedIn Chicago group. Also consider joining alumni groups. Then join a couple of groups that are targeted to your industry. If you have a company and are a thought leader and speak, consider joining a professional speakers group. Joining diverse groups will help you grow your network faster as there won’t be as much cross over in your groups which means you will meet new people rather than experience what is called in the science of networks a “redundant network.”
2. Observe who the leaders are in each group for a couple of weeks and invite these people into your network. It won’t take you long to see you the leaders are in each group. They are actively posting great questions, getting other group members responding with great answers and complimentary comments. These are also people who have the most comments in response to their questions. Now look at these peoples’ profiles. Observe what other groups they are in. Look for patterns. You will see that these top leaders join similar groups. Either join those other groups as LinkedIn allows you to be in 50 groups (don’t worry as you can always remove yourself from a group whenever you choose) or just put the group name on a list you are growing for later when you want to join more groups.
3. Observe the type of entries that contain the most comments. As you start to observe the entries that contain the most comments by the other group members you will start seeing the types of questions that are of top current interest by that community. Of course these questions and the topics they are related to will also be great topics for you to be blogging about and researching and talking wth prospects or networking referral sources about which will help you grow your presence as a thought leader in your market.
4. Start creating a list of great questions that relate to your business. The questions that receive the most comments should have you thinking about other great questions that could be of value. For example you might ask what is the best advice you were ever given about social networking. An add-on question could be something like what is the worst advice you were ever given and why?
5. Post your questions and in your post share that you will provide additional insights you get from other replies you get. People love to get an aggregation of good ideas from a wide variety of people–the wisdom of crowds at work. Take the type to harvest your answers and then store them in a word document or somewhere like a private Google site (I love these sites and they are free!) where you can get copy and paste them later onto your blog when you have a significant number.

What other strategies have you seen working well?  What is missing that no one is currently addressing? Please share your insights or comments.

They will affect how individuals, communities, and companies organize themselves, where companies and communities stop and start, how individuals balance their different identities as consumers, employees, shareholders, and citizens, how people define themselves politically, and what role government plays in managing all of this flux.”

Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat

It was just a couple of years ago when I went to networking events that people would walk up to me and say, “I hear your name everywhere. But what surprises me is that I hear it from different people I know–people who I know, don’t know one another. What are the chances of that happening?” Today that statement would probably not come out many peoples’ mouths do to the rapid learning we have had around social networking. Now we know that six degrees of separation have now, when done right, turned into, rather, “Two Degrees of Connection.”

So what are some things around branding that if you leverage you can make useful for you and your organization? Here are just three to start with:

1. You are now more the brand than your employer–if you choose to be. Today employees, whether they realize it or not, are their companies brands even if they are no longer employees. Why? Well, if you are one of the millions who have a profile on LinkedIn your name can pull up along with your company’s name as readily as any article on your company–even if you are no longer employeed by your company. Remember that LinkedIn asks you in your profile to list past employers. Now that listing is part of Google or any other search engine search and stays there, for the most part, forever. 
    
2. With the combination of “Brand You” and company brand organizations can grow brand equity and loyalty exponentially. I was recently working with one of the top construction companies in Chicago. I was hosting a social media workshop and shared that if they rallied their fifty current employees and had them focus on the good things they were doing in the community already, potential clients would see that the organization was dedicated to making a difference and would stand out from their competitors. It gave their employees a focus for their social activities–one that would also grow each employee’s career as they got recognition for their good work.
    
3. Brand is now becoming a much bigger topic that companies and individuals MUST pay attention to daily. Two weeks ago I was at a talk for senior vice presidents of leadership at companies like UPS, Home Depot and Marriott. These were HR executives wondering about how to effectively build internal networks within their organizations. My team and I had done about six months of research on the growing interest but slow moving implementation compared to marketing departments, HR departments had around social networking. What our research showed was that there is a strong need for organizations to realize the convergence of marketing and HR. Why?What is happening is that companies are attracting or repelling new hires based on their social capital score if you will. Why would new hires want to work at a company that they can easily see has hundreds of communication bottlenecks and walls? All an employee has to do now is listen to one of the grapevines on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. and know which companies have more open networks. Also, you can easily look on any of the company pages on LinkedIn and compare a company with any of their competitors. You can tell a lot from the levels of individuals who have many connections on LinkedIn which organizations have the better networkers. Why wouldn’t you want to be at those organizations? Wouldn’t you want to go to a live networking event  where is higher level management present? Now you can tell which companies have the best networks and join those organizations. So, now, with the science of networks as I call it staring us straight in the face, playing out every day inside and outside of companies–it is very self evident that companies need to take a look at their branding and realize just as the saying used often was, “Everyone in an organization is a sales person.” Now it will be, “Everyone in an organization is active in branding.” The best thing organizations large and small can do is to realize that you must involve not just the marketing department but sales, human resources, IT, accounting and so on and so on.  

Do you have something more to add?  What other questions to you have?