“Publish or Perish!” - Publishing Vital to Business Growth?

They say, “Publish or perish!” and yes, frequent publications are one of the most powerful methods to demonstrate competence to potential clients. 

Publications bring attention to people or their companies and decision-makers frequently use the number of publications to an individual's credit, as a sign of competence. Those who publish infrequently may find themselves out of contention for well-rewarded positions or contracts. 

This builds pressure to publish. Publish or perish, has become a reality as publications have become vital to business growth and career progression.

But who has the time to publish frequently, if you aren’t a pro blogger? Decision-makers are busy and need to focus on running their companies, their departments, their teams. 

Despite having not enough time, information is now growing exponentially and it is hard to keep up with the developments in one’s industry: there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace, and that speed is only accelerating. Over the last two years alone, 90% of the data in the world was generated! (Forbes, Ben Marr) and the average American consumes 100,000 words, or about 34 gigabytes of information, every day, (ZDNET, A. Nusca).

So, how can we manage all this information effectively?

To help with information overflow, we offer article summaries for clients. We summarize articles in their industry sector and publish them ‘daily’ on their blog and social media accounts. 

This demonstrates to their visitors that they know their industry (sector) well and helps their readers to save a ton of time, easily staying on top of what is going on in their industry. They then can use the time running their businesses instead.

It is a true win-win. A win for our clients and a win for their readers. 

Publishing regularly establishes our clients as an authority in their industry and this authority creates trust. The trust necessary to be able to get in touch with potential clients.

Our LinkedIn Individual-Based Marketing (LIBM) system uses this publishing stream and its authority to help our clients to contact prospects - potential clients directly.

Potential clients who usually are welcoming you contacting them. Why are they welcoming you contacting them?

• First of all because what you publish about the potential client is embedded in your consistent stream of publications (article summaries) in your industry sector. This demonstrates to the potential client that you are an authority in the field and they will be honoured to have been included in your publication stream.
• And secondly, potential clients will be happy about you contacting them because you use a personalized message to connect with them.

Note: if you want to generate leads on LinkedIn, always use a personalized message when you connect with potential clients or anyone, really. So many use templated messages that get sent to you, immediately once you accepted their connection request. Instead, take the time and find out what the person, you want to approach, published recently. This can be a business-post or a personal message. Mention this in your connection request and people will respond more favourably.

This works well as you talk to the decision-maker directly, quickly understanding their needs and whether the timing is right.

Does the LinkedIn Individual-Based Marketing (LIBM) system work in your industry sector? It has worked in other sectors before and it is not really about the sector. The LIBM system works with individuals. If your potential clients are on LinkedIn, then LIBM can be effective for you.

The ‘Individual’ is the key here as many businesses are getting this wrong: they focus their publishing activity on their company pages and show the entire service or product variety of what they offer.

Instead, they could achieve more with less effort if they would focus their publishing on certain specific services or products at a time: "If you want to start a fire put the logs in one place."

Consistently publishing on an individual LinkedIn account demonstrates this person’s authority in the field. And who wants to buy from a company anyway? People buy from people because they like and trust them.

Why then do you want to talk to us? 

First of all, this new LinkedIn Individual-Based Marketing (LIBM) is our proprietary system, meaning we see results with clients in different industry sectors and can advise what might work best in your industry. We certainly can write content for you, ‘daily’, and put articles, article summaries and thought leadership pieces on your blog and social accounts. We can optimize your website blog posts and help you to turn post readers into email subscribers. 

Secondly, we do all the execution work for you: we write (and train our writers at copywriting), we set up posts on your blog and your social media accounts, we optimize post formats on your blog and on LinkedIn, we choose relevant hashtags, set up links - so your LinkedIn profile does not get penalized (many get this wrong), comment on the post and share the post to at least 3 LinkedIn groups. We monitor engagement and progress, advise on how to proceed with the greatest effect and build out content, based on ‘best-sellers’ to increase the ROI of your campaigns further.  

Thirdly, you do not need to spend time onboarding or training us. Instead, it is possible to see results after 3-4 weeks of publishing, nor do you need to pay social security expenses for us and you get an entire team (copywriters, social media manager, LinkedIn marketing specialist, conversion expert) for the low investment of only one of these.

What do others say?

"...We certainly benefited greatly from Karl's (Karl zu Ortenburg) strategic social media publishing and his knowledge of how to use LinkedIn to attract and approach new clients was invaluable." Franco Schiannini, Owner, Nubilaria Srl

"Karl zu Ortenburg has over-delivered for us! Not only has he published top quality articles for our industry sector consistently, he showed us a new way to use LinkedIn to contact potential clients. We would certainly work with Karl again and can highly recommend him to anyone." Erich Cavicchiolo, business developer, EDC/eTMF expert

"Karl's professional working style makes it easy to work with him and his method of using LinkedIn has shown us a very effective way to get in contact with potential clients in our industry." Roel Crooijmans, Strategy and Business Development

What do I say?

I have been running A-M-I, a specialized digital marketing agency for over 10 years now. I have worked with a wide range of clients, several big firms, such as Bertelsmann BMG, Random House, Deutsche Bank, Philips, Dow Chemicals, some smaller firms, and entrepreneurs who made over $200 million. I published a 300 pages handbook on SEO and used to write in the wee hours of the day.

Contact me via the LinkedIn messenger (Karl zu Ortenburg - CEO - A-M-I-Ltd | LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ortenburg) or via mail, if you have a question or would like to know how this could work for you.

P.S. “When you are not embarrassed publishing your piece, then you worked for too long on it!” 

Regular posts are more important as they expand your presence, building your authority and trust in your industry sector. Consistent publishing is far more important than feeling slightly embarrassed about something you published and which might not be perfect. 

Authenticity in ‘real people’ is what your audience wants to see these days rather than perfection and highly polished.

Potential clients will more likely engage with people they know, like and trust. This engagement helps your post to travel further (see https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/3main-factors-determine-how-many-potential-clients-see-zu-ortenburg) and to get you new clients. People prefer to buy from people rather than from companies.

Re the perfect style: I got ‘accused’ by my dear friend Charles at London Business School that I write as I talk ( I even published a 300 pages handbook about SEO ;-) and that is probably true and considered a flaw for anyone using the full breadth of the English vocabulary.

As you might know, I am German and the English language has 500,000 words (according to Steven Frank, the author of The Pen Commandments), while German having about 135,000 but in my posts, simple language is not really a disadvantage. 

In fact, and that might come as a surprise, it can even be an advantage: Over the past 50 years, both US Democrats and Republicans have been simplifying their language, often using less complex sentences in their speeches than previous generations. Even highly educated online readers crave information that is easy to scan, just like everyone else. 

Authentic people, raw content, easy to comprehend language, create trust these days and win the business.

I believe the current COVID-19 pandemic has made a big difference in that sense as you can see in the video conferences what the background of the person talking so smartly looks like.

In my opinion, things don't have to be so perfect anymore. It's (almost :-) ok when toddlers crash into your live financial markets overview, getting chased by mummy. 

It is far more important to get your message out, to offer value, to serve, to show who you are. And less dramatic, if you don’t publish, people whom you could help, will simply not see you, know of you.

Plus, as Oprah Winfrey recently quoted her mentor Maya Angelou: “You have no idea!”, meaning, you have no idea whom you will help with your message, your wisdom, your knowledge, because of the big majority you will never hear back. But some of them might become your long-standing clients, some may even become friends.

Therefore simply publish (more) or you will never know whom you could have helped.