Influencing Thought Leadership | Becky Robinson

Peter Winick

Using Social Media to influence Thought Leadership

An interview with Becky Robinson about helping thought leaders publish their books and using social media to market it.

Today’s guest is Becky Robinson, the founder, and CEO of Weaving Influence, a company that helps authors and Thought Leaders build online influence. Her team helps authors and thought leader with creative and strategic ideas to market their books. Becky gives us tips on looking at the bigger picture when focusing your social media to promote a book. Also, she talks about investing time in marketing your message and how business online will create measurable results and impact. How you can leverage the larger platforms of people in your network, and why you should be giving your book away for free!

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:

How to measure the success of a Thought Leader’s book.
Why you might expect larger sales of a Thought Leadership book in year 2 than year 1.
Why you should focus on a single platform for your Thought Leadership.

New books should be strategically planned to generate leads, showcase your content, and promote your reputation. Do you want to launch an entire leadership platform? Check out what Thought Leadership Leverage can do to help you use the publication of the book to create that springboard.

Transcript

Peter Winick Welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Becky Robinson. She’s an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of a company called Weaving Influence, which is an online influence building company. They work with authors and thought leaders shopping, right, and help them to show up online in some powerful ways that show up in real life. So there’s much more to her bio than that. But I want to sort of keep it brief so we can get into the good stuff. So welcome aboard. Becky, thanks for joining us today.

Becky Robinson Thanks, Peter. It’s great to be here.

Peter Winick Cool. So we work with pretty much similar folks, right? So you’re working with authors and thought leaders. We’re working with authors and thought leaders. And I have envy as I look on the screen here and see all your books stacked all over and the titles and all that. But why don’t we start with briefly what it is you do for them? And then I want to get into a couple of other questions I’ve got.

Becky Robinson Sure. No problem. So, Peter, we are a full service digital marketing agency. So if you think about any type of marketing tactic that you could leverage online, we not only create strategy around it, we also implement and execute on behalf of our clients. So when I founded the company, Peter, my original vision was that authors might need some creative strategic ideas on how to market their business books. And so I thought I would merely serve as a consultant and get on the phone with folks and spitball ideas and give them a great plan to market their books. And what I very quickly found out is that most authors don’t have the time and energy to devote to the multiple tasks that are involved in orchestrating an effective book launch. And so we began adding services to support authors. And so we do everything from web design and development to social media implementation to email marketing support, content marketing support, and we also pitch media and land placements for our clients in business publications and podcasts. So very.

Peter Winick Cool. Good stuff, all critical and necessary things today. So let’s talk about now. When did you start the company?

Becky Robinson 2012. Peter Okay, so we just passed the eight-year mark, Yes.

Peter Winick Okay. So you’re an eight year old, your teacher about to follow?

Becky Robinson my. Yeah.

Peter Winick So, so let’s talk about even the difference between launching a book in 2012 and launching a book today. And I want to sort of set that up with all too often authors and speakers and thought leaders, they get overly obsessed with the book. Unless the book is critically important. They put their heart and soul the blood, sweat and tears into it. But the book can’t be the tail that wagging the dog, in my humble opinion, and it’s not the book is really representative of, in some instances, the launch of a business or new a new way of thinking. But nobody is in the, quote, book business, right? The authors are just making a living from that. So tell me sort of what you’ve seen change in the last eight years or so.

Becky Robinson Sure. Well, let me first address what you said, Peter, because I wholeheartedly agree with you. I don’t think there’s any thought leader out there who’s going to make a living based on book sales alone. So any time we partner with an author, we really want to be able to figure out, you know, what are the bigger picture goals that are fueling their desire to bring a book into the world. Or another way that I put it is, you know, what’s the job that this author wants the book to do for them? And in many cases, authors are acutely aware of the fact that their book is, you know, almost like a cheap, you know, business card that gives them immediate credibility to fuel their other services. But there are some cases where we encounter folks and really what they want more than anything else is just to get the message of the book out into the world. So it’s really important when we start to partner with an author to identify what those bigger picture goals are, to be sure that any tactics that we recommend really map to helping them achieve those goals. And especially when it comes to folks making a really big investment in book marketing, there has to be a way to tie the return on investment that they’re going to get by investing and marketing their book.

Peter Winick So actually, before you even go back to the 2012 question. Sure. I think you brought up a key point. There is goals, right? So it seems like glaringly obvious. But I can tell you and I’m sure you’ve had similar situations, the conversations I’ve had to have with clients on the front end of why are we writing this book? And if it’s a year from now when we achieve our objectives, what does that look like? What does that look like financially? What does it look like in terms of entry into places you haven’t been? Credibility like whatever those are. And a lot of times they should have an eyebrow. When I writing a book like Unicorns and Rainbows will magic will happen, you know whatever. But I think that goal piece is absolutely critical and essential. And too many people just sort of, la la la and just sort of dive over it.

Becky Robinson Well, you know, I think that is Peter. I think it’s because so many of us are so enmeshed in our dreams, and writing a book in some cases is such an emotional milestone for people and it represents to them some level of success that they just have. Have a difficult time unraveling that from there. Other business priorities in the world. So, you know, being able to help people really look at, you know, what is success with the book. For some authors, honestly, Peter, what I found is the fact that the book has been published and is available is the success that they’ve been looking for. It was a major milestone that they wanted to achieve. And seeing the book, either, you know, on a physical shelf, which is becoming increasingly, you know, diminished, difficult, or whether it’s just holding that book in their hands. There’s this, you know, emotional milestone that people are reaching. And while it’s wonderful to acknowledge that, you know, it doesn’t necessarily add up, then to spend ten, 20, $30,000 marketing the book if the whole deal was just a finished the book.

Peter Winick And there’s nothing wrong with that. By the way, if you said, you know, because, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and one of the primary reasons that person continues to write books is it’s a forcing mechanism to get them to think clearly. And I’m like, okay, that’s awesome. But it doesn’t need to be an overly expensive forcing mechanism to get your thoughts together where you’re going to spend, you know, a ton of money on the back end to do silly things that don’t don’t net a benefit.

Becky Robinson Yeah. You know, I think one of the most refreshing things I see is when authors are very realistic about that. And you know, we worked with an author a couple of years ago and he very much was an author who was in the place of, Hey, I have these thoughts that I’ve developed over my career. The clients that I’ve been coaching would love to be able to read the things I’ve learned. And he said to me, I don’t want marketing, you know, hey, help me produce my book. Which, by the way, we do that too. So, you know, we designed a beautiful cover. We designed a beautiful interior. We helped with editing. And that author achieved what he wanted because he had this asset to share with his clients, you know, done. And he’s happy and I’m happy. So like you said, it’s perfectly okay to have a goal to get your thoughts out to the world. It doesn’t have to be something that requires so much additional investment. And if authors can get clear about that ultimate outcome that they want to achieve, then we can support them a lot more effectively.

Peter Winick And calibrate the investments accordingly. Right? So if the goal is to get it out, great. If the goal is to get it out, but you’re launching a business, then it warrants significant investment. If there’s an all rely on that. So let’s go back to sort of the history question. So talk about what you’ve seen evolve, change new tips and tricks and tactics and strategies, etc.. That’s different today. Launching a book now versus only eight years ago, which is not that long ago.

Becky Robinson Sure. Well, I think, you know, one of the things that we’ve seen, Peter, is maybe focusing and clarifying as it relates to the use of social media. So back in 2012, if you had asked me for my advice, you know, I would have encouraged you to grow a Twitter account to put content on your Twitter account regularly. I would have encouraged you really to try to do all the things related to social media. And as time has gone on, we’ve gotten a lot more clear about the fact that not every author needs to use every social channel and really selecting and focusing energy and attention on one channel where your target audience is most likely to be reached. So while Twitter is still a valuable marketing tool to many people, particularly those who built traction on Twitter as early adopters, most times now we don’t recommend Twitter as a channel for folks who haven’t started there yet.

Peter Winick So that’s interesting. I want to push on that. So if they haven’t started yet, I’m assuming they mean that means they’re marginally active, they’ve got a handful of followers, etc.. So if they have to start from kind of ground zero, build a followership to push the content out, you’re saying that that mountain is too steep decline right now for most of your clients?

Becky Robinson Yes, that’s correct. And but, you know, for someone like me, I have 30 plus thousand other followers. We still leverage my channel on our author’s behalf. So that’s another kind of interesting consideration for authors. You know, there are times where authors have not necessarily done the work to build their own platform, and in many cases they may be hindered by reaching audiences for their book because they haven’t shown up online. And it’s not going to work for anyone to be on the path to publish a business book and say, okay, well, I have to build this all at once. It’s not going to work. So, you know, in most cases, it’s like that old proverb, you know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second best time is today for authors. You know, it’s better to find someone else who has a tree and climate than it is to try to plant your tree. Now, when the book’s coming out and there’s not really enough.

Peter Winick So I want to unpack a couple of the things that. Right. So most people think about these things too late, right? So I’m in book mode, meaning they finished writing the book, which might have been six months, six years of their life. Right? Then they get into, geez, I guess it has to be marketed. So they work with folks like you. They’re working folks like me, others, whatever. And. That’s when they start to think about those things. The reality is the time to build the platform. Like you said, there’s it’s always important to build a platform. You could always get it down there and it’s a little bit of the build it before you need it, right?

Becky Robinson It absolutely it’s completely build it before you need it. And it’s also offer value to others before you need to ask for their help.

Peter Winick Yeah, don’t be that guy that’s always calling and saying, you know, can I borrow the screwdriver? Don’t be that guy.

Becky Robinson Right, right, right. So, you know, I. I said this on my podcast recently, You know, I have not yet published a book in the world in terms of like a print book, but like, you think of a traditional book. But I believe from the day that I joined Facebook in 2009 until today, I have been building the platform that if I ever get to that emotional and closely held dream of publishing a book and holding it in my hands, I’ve been doing that work all along. So every day when you start to show up online and you have value to offer to people and you share your expertise or you’re generous about sharing your network, it’s like you’re banking up this possibility down the line that people want to hear what they say. They want to read what you write and they want to help when you ask for it.

Peter Winick So I want to touch on another great point I think that you made, which is, okay, so let’s say you didn’t do that. Let’s say you didn’t plan and whatever it is what it is, right? You’re not going to pause the publication of a book and say, I’ll come back in five years. I’m going to spend all my time building my social media. It’s not going to happen. Right?

Becky Robinson So it’s not going to happen.

Peter Winick Yeah, nobody’s going to do that. Right? But the point that you made is you could borrow, if you will, the followers of others. If you do it in a in a respectful and thoughtful way. So if you know, one of the things that I find really, really cool about this whole space is the amount of collaboration that goes on behind the scenes, right? So in most industries, if you know your Coke and Pepsi were, you know, whatever. But I think a lot of authors and publishers say, wait, we’re in the we’re in this space. And it’s like, you know, somebody could buy your book and my book, Right? It’s not it’s not a win lose, you know, piece. So therefore, if you’re writing about a subject that’s interesting to me, let’s be buds, you know, and let’s share things and let’s you know, that we might compete over a specific engagement with a client at some point in time, but whatever. But we could collaborate and compete and not be sort of gladiator competitors. And what that means is if you could recruit, you know, friends that are authors and thought leaders and speakers, I find this to be one of the cheapest, most cost effective ways to get some traction on a book is get the testimonials of people that have a bigger following than you. Right. And then when the time comes, you have to do all the work and the heavy lifting in terms of creating assets. Ask them to help you, I mean, and be and be deliberate and specific and say, What do I want you to help me? But the week of whatever, June the 17th, I’m watching this thing and these are the three things I really, really, really like you to do to get it out there, because they’ve already built their following. The propensity of their followers to buy your book is exponentially higher than the general public.

Becky Robinson Certainly so. And you know, being focused to know what to ask and who to ask for it, it’s helpful. And again, going back to that whole idea of, you know, being generous first, you know, offering to see where you can add value to others before you need to ask for anything different.

Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

So I want to talk for a moment about realistic expectations and I’ll give you just a real life example of I won’t give names, but a real plan. I was talking to this morning, they did a book launch six months ago. So they’re on the it’s, you know, belong to their post launch phase and now sort of surveying the landscape and figuring out what to do and get ready to do some work. And I said, give me your bookscan numbers because it’s just and it’s not the end all, be all for the work that we do. But I want to get a sense of his telling me how successful the book was and kudos it, God. And when you look online like, wow, lots of people did lots of things and the numbers were really, really, really, really, really depressing, like barely 4000 units. And then I did quickly did the math based on the investments I know this person made. And I’m like, my God. They spent literally over $100 per unit, sold probably closer to 150 to get it out there. And it’s just so sad to because, you know, not every book needs to be judged by the same standards of a good degreed or Malcolm Gladwell. There are plenty of books that could be wildly successful if you got the right thousand, 2000 copies in the right hands of the right people that you’re looking for. But I see that all too much where like people are throwing lots of money at things because it seems like the thing to do and the groups that they’re working with have the right credentials. But then six months later, they’re like in this postpartum depression.

Becky Robinson Yeah, you know, that’s really challenging. Peter And of course, any business book author who invest a lot of money in getting a book out and only sells a thousand copies in six months would be disappointed. Yeah, I mean, that is a lower number than what we would typically expect. You know, for some authors, what I want to do with them is reframe the value of the book in the world. And one of the things that I’ve noticed, which is a bit counterintuitive, is the more books an author can give away and get out into the world in some other means, the more opportunities that they can create with the work. So, you know, back to the whole tree analogy, book art books are seeds. Yeah. And so that seed broadly, you know, the returns that you might get can be more than you might expect. So the authors that we’ve worked with who have been the most successful in many cases are proactively thinking about that from the start and measuring success, not in terms of how many books did I sell and how much did it cost to sell them, but how many books they get out into the world? And what possibilities could I create? Because the book was there.

Peter Winick But let’s talk about that short term, long term thing, because one of the data points I came across fairly recently last couple of months was that most business books, first of all, not only do they not sell a lot, but the newer trend last two years or so is many are having better sales year two than year one, which is a little bit counterintuitive to the way sort of what I would call the book industrial complex reacts, right? Like the poor, poor, poor ton of resources. Get it out, move on to the next thing. But is that have you seen that as well?

Becky Robinson Well, I sure have. You know, I spoke to an author yesterday and again, not naming names, but this author has had multiple books in the leadership space. And he mentioned that he’s partnering with a large publisher. The book is likely to be in a New York Times bestseller. Now, I didn’t support him during the launch, so I’m not claiming that success myself. But the book’s likely to be a New York Times bestseller. But he’s coming to me saying, okay, While the book came out last week, my publisher has done supporting it. But I need to have a long term view of how to use this book, my business and how can you help? So Peter, before we started recording, we were talking about marathons and that that is by far my favorite analogy. Book marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. And so when publishers say, okay, we’re going to focus on this book for one week, in some ways they’re sending a message to the author that that’s also what the author needs to do. Like, okay, we launched, we’re done. But really, in my mind, the launch is just the beginning. So the same way a wedding is the beginning of a marriage. It’s an important signaling moment. It’s an important milestone. I say to people and by the way, this isn’t my quote, It came from a publisher whose name I’m not remembering right now. But you have to be married to the message. So the launch is the wedding. It’s the first mile of the marathon, whatever analogy you want to use. And you need to be committed to that message over the long haul. So if you’re going to invest, you have to believe in that book so deeply that over time you’re going to find ways to use it as an asset to others to incorporate it in your business, to keep it in the conversation, not in a way like you hammer and bug people, but in a way that you continue to share, you know, all the content that’s in the book so that you’re drawing in the people who need to read the book. And I think it’s shortsighted to think a book is six months or a year. A book is, you know, a decade.

Peter Winick No. And what I was going to say I mean, the other the other way I help my clients sort of understand that is okay, this is a lot. This is a capital investment. Let’s amortize that over 5 to 7 years, decade. Right. Because unless you’re writing a book about, you know, this year’s Super Bowl or this year’s elections or whatever, 99% of business books are only timeless. But whether I read that today or in six months or in 18 months should be equally valid. Again, there’s some caveats there if you’re writing about technology or social or whatever. But leadership management, sales, you’ve got to amortize that over 5 to 7 years. And I think two things happen. One is this misconception of a book as a seasonal item, you know, where we’re showing short skirts this spring in long skirts in the fall or whatever the fashion analogy is, and a little bit of the. So that coupled with the aid of the author, where, you know, if the book came out today, that means they were thinking about it three years ago and they’ve got ten of the things in their head and they haven’t done it justice yet by being that sort of servant authorship where they’ve got to continue, like you said, to be married to the message and be equally committed today, even though they may be bored with their own stuff because they’re headed somewhere else in a new research. But I couldn’t agree more with that.

Becky Robinson Well, and there’s no harm in thinking about the next book as your marketing, the first one. Quite often what we see is when an author puts out a second book or a third book, it brings new attention to that title. So there’s no harm in it. You know, I’ve had authors before ask me how long should I wait in between my books? And I have one author who puts out a book every single year. Now there’s a lot of. Value in that because he creates momentum where people are expecting it’s almost like a movie franchise, like, Well, when’s the next one? I’m waiting. But, you know, you do want to give time for each book to breathe and realize that the investment that you make in one can build on the other. It’s compound interest because every book you’re building your platform and people are waiting and interested if you’re providing value to them.

Peter Winick One I think there’s also a bit of an expectation of when you put out a book, whether that’s a year, which I would argue is probably too frequently 3 or 5 or whatever, you have to be adding to the conversation, right? So there are folks out there that I have 30, 40 books to their name. And I would also argue it’s sort of the same book regurgitated with, you know, 10% new filler. And, you know, that doesn’t really add much to the conversation. I think, you know, people’s most valuable resource still is their time. So when I look at why would I read a book or not, I don’t care about the 20 books, you know, for the book, but I’m looking at that, okay, five hours of my life. I’m a busy person. I’ve got lots of things to do. What am I getting first? Like, I have to enjoy it. I want to learn something. I want to be entertained. I want my expectations to be shaken up. And, you know, there’s not a lot of room for mediocrity in bed.

Becky Robinson That’s true. You have to start with a good book.

Peter Winick It’s glaringly obvious, but often overlooked as we start to wrap up here. This is fun. We can go for days on this stuff because this is just fun. Any final words of wisdom either framed as do not reduce like definitely don’t do that. That’s stupid. Or definitely consider doing that. Sure. But it could be make or break for folks. No purpose.

Becky Robinson yeah. Well, you know, I would say that anyone who is thinking about making a difference through creating content that adds value to the world, going back to that idea of generosity, first thinking about your book as a seed, and then also building that network of connections before you need it. Those are the things that stand out to me the most about the authors that I’ve known who have had the most success in terms of reaching bigger picture goals for their businesses related to a book.

Peter Winick And I think you’d be surprised at how approachable they are. You know, yes, when you reach out with intent, not as a taker in the Adam Grant sense, but, you know, when you go reach out in an honorable way and tell someone you admire their work, that’s flattering to anybody. So that’s her.

Becky Robinson As.

Peter Winick Well. I appreciate your time. I appreciate all the good stuff that you’re doing and thank you for spending the time with us today.

Becky Robinson Thanks, Peter. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk today.

Peter Winick Thanks. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.