Platform

Michael Hyatt

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781595555045
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

How do you turn your social mediaaccounts into viable business opportunities?Michael Hyatt has the blueprint.

Michael Hyatt learned to use his social media platform as the foundation for his own successful writing, speaking, and business coaching practice. In this straightforward how-to, he offers down-to-earth guidance on crafting an effective and meaningful online platform.

In Platform, you will learn how to:

• Extend your influence, monetize it, and build a sustainable career.
• Get noticed and start earning money in an increasingly noisy world.
• Learn to amplify, update, polish, and organize your content forsuccess.

Platform goes behind the scenes into the world of social media success. You'll discover what bestselling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to gain contacts, connections, and followers and win customers in today's crowded marketplace.

With proven strategies, easy-to-replicate formulas, and practical tips, this book makes it easier, less expensive, and more possible than ever to stand out from the crowd and launch a business.

1

PART ONE

START WITH WOW

3

ONE

Create a Compelling Product

Now you know there are two critical parts of the success equation: a compelling product (the what) and a significant platform (the who). In this book you will find a wealth of information on the second element in the equation, but if you don’t slam-dunk the first element—the compelling product—you won’t win the game.

There is no sense in wasting your valuable time and resources trying to build a buzz about a ho-hum product. As one of my favorite marketing gurus, David Ogilvy, once wrote, “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.” How true.

For years I have argued, “It’s the product, stupid.” The secret to success in any business is to deliver a great, compelling product. And when I say product, I mean anything you are trying to say or sell. It may be yourself, if you’re a speaker or entertainer. It might be a stellar service you provide for profit or nonprofit. Perhaps it’s a cause you are championing, a message you are passionate about. Or it could be an actual physical product, like a book. Regardless of the form your product takes, no amount of marketing savvy, salesmanship, or operational excellence can overcome a weak product.

The purpose of marketing is to prime the pump. But if people don’t want to use your product and—more importantly—if they won’t recommend it to their friends, you’re hosed. You can’t spend enough money or be clever enough to overcome a lack of word-of-mouth marketing. It just won’t work.

4

In light of this, it was fascinating to watch how Apple first introduced the iPhone. Like millions of other Mac fans, I read all the articles and even worked my way through Apple’s slick, interactive website. I thought to myself, Very cool. I definitely want one of these. But I also thought, I can wait until the second generation. Let them work out the bugs first.

But then I watched Steve Job’s 2007 keynote presentation from MacWorld. If you are involved in any aspect of product development, this is a must-watch video.¹

I garnered three insights:

1. Create products you would personally use. Watching Steve, you get the sense he loves the product. He is so familiar with it, because he has been using it. He thinks it is “way cool,” and he’s not afraid to say so. He sprinkles words like awesome, incredible, and even magical throughout his speech. He exhibits the wonder of a five-year-old on Christmas morning. You really believe him. He’s not trying to sell you something. He’s simply sharing the experience.

What about the products you create? If you’re speaking about business, do you deliver exciting and powerful messages that you know can make a difference in people’s lives? If you’re in sales, do you even use the items you sell? Would you recommend them enthusiastically to a friend? Do you really love these products or are you only trying to meet some arbitrary quota or generate revenue?

2. Create products that solve problems in unexpected ways. It was interesting to watch some of the biggest cell phone manufacturers get hammered in the press the week before the iPhone was announced. They essentially said, “We’ve saturated the market. There’s nothing compelling left to build. Investors need to get used to the idea of slower revenue growth and tighter margins. From this point forward, competition is going to be brutal.”

Then Steve announced a new phone that essentially reinvented the category. Not surprisingly, Apple’s stock soared. Motorola’s, Nokia’s, and Samsung’s took a nosedive.

Apple wasn’t content to create a phone that just had additional features. It completely rethought the solution—from the ground up. Apple’s engineers put themselves in the user’s place and refused to be constrained by the past. They didn’t start with the technology. They started with the dream and then went in search of technology. This is a completely different way of doing business.

5

What about you? We too often think inside the box. We let the past constrain us. We don’t get in the consumers’ shoes and ask, “What would make this really cool? What would take this to a whole new level? What would we create if the limits of current technology weren’t an issue?” You have to get outside the box and learn to dream again.

3. Create products that exceed your customers’ expectations. As I watched Steve’s presentation, I couldn’t help but notice the crowd. It was like they were watching a master magician. As Steve demonstrated each new feature, the crowd erupted in applause. To my surprise, I found myself laughing with glee. I felt like a kid again. Most of all, I wanted one of those phones!

Part of the charm is that Apple seems to execute its product vision with such amazing simplicity and elegance. Every icon on the phone is understated but beautiful. Every feature is easy to use but not complex. Everything seems not only as good as Apple could make it but as good as Apple could imagine it.

What about your products or services? How often have you rushed something to market with a sigh and a collective, “Well, I guess that will have to do. It’s not great, but it’s good enough”?

Sadly, we don’t start with a lofty vision. I’m afraid we have become content with mediocrity; we aim low and execute even lower.

If you want to build a platform, it’s time to get the passion back. Push one another and yourself to deliver great products that you are delighted—yes, delighted!—to offer. If you don’t, then your attempt to build a platform is doomed to failure.

If you create outstanding products, everything else becomes much easier. Apple spends a fortune on product development. But relatively speaking, it doesn’t spend much on marketing. Nevertheless, when it introduced the iPhone, Apple got more press coverage than the entire Consumer Electronics Show that was going on simultaneously in Las Vegas. Apple has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that “it’s the product, stupid.”

6

Let’s take a lesson from the Apple playbook and get the first part of the success equation right: start with a wow product.

7

TWO

Bake in the Wow

Now I want to tell you about Blake Mycoskie, who creates wows of a different, but no less magical, kind than the late Steve Jobs.

In 2006, Mycoskie was traveling in Argentina and saw that many children there had no shoes. So when he returned home to America, he created a new company, TOMS Shoes. For every pair sold, TOMS matches it—one for one—with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. When he returned to Argentina with reinforcements the next year, they placed ten thousand pairs on little feet. And by September 2010, TOMS and its affiliated partners such as Feed The Children had given more than one million pairs to kids in need around the world.¹

Now, you may not think a pair of shoes is a wow product, but for many of these kids, TOMS shoes will be their very first pair. Without shoes they cannot go to school, and they are susceptible to soil-transmitted diseases that penetrate the skin. One child in Kenya said, “I’m excited because when I woke up in the morning, I did not know when I’ll have something like this.” And a teacher said, “I can tell you, these children will not sleep today. They will be talking about those shoes the whole night!”² Now that’s wow.

If you, like Steve Jobs or Blake Mycoskie, have a message to share, or a product or service to sell, I have significant news for you. We don’t need more messages or products or services. Instead, we need better messages, products, and services. Specifically, we need those that wow. This is the “compelling product” part of the success equation. But what is wow and how can we develop it? How can we make sure our message, product, or service creates a wow experience?

8

The first step is learning to recognize it. Most of us have experienced wow moments. We just haven’t taken time to think deeply about them.

For example, a few summers ago, I took my wife and youngest daughter to Scotland. It was our first visit. We rented a car and spent a week touring the western Highlands. We started in Edinburgh and drove north to Inverness. We then drove down the west side of Loch Ness to Fort Augusta and then headed west across the Highlands to the Isle of Skye. We took our time and savored every moment.

As we neared the town of Portree, the capital of Skye, we saw the Sound of Raasay f...