How to Win Friends and Influence People

First published in 1937 this book is the foundation of all marketing and PR today.  If you’ve not read it where have you been! Dale Carnegie published the latest version in 1994 and it costs £5, I’d highly recommend you get a copy. Amazon is the best place…..How to Win Friends and Influence People.

So what’s it about?  Well the title is a giveaway but in essence it’s a book about people.  Remember people, they are the ones we used to meet and talk to before email, texts, games consoles, blogs, web sites, Skype, virtual lives, and the digital world in general.  I can almost hear my children going “whatever” in the background.

Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due to just 15 percent professional knowledge with the other 85 percent being “the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership and to arouse enthusiasm among people.”

So here’s the big question “Does your online presence express ideas, assume leadership and arouse enthusiasm among people?” If not are you just part of the online noise?

Now no one is saying that achieving any of these things is easy, if it was everyone would be doing it and then we’d be back to noise.  The good news is that although this takes a fair amount of time and effort the rewards can be the exponentially greater than staying part of the crowd.

Think about what influences you online, is it expert advice, is it honesty, is it transparency, is it low prices, what about reviews or feedback, what about comments on blogs?  The reality for me is EVERYTHING influences me, and not just online.  Every contact I have with a person or company influences how I feel about them and therefore my propensity to thrust them and buy their products or services.  When I phone them, if indeed I can, how am I treated?  Do they respond to emails quickly or in many of my experiences, at all!

So here’s a thought… what can you do to now to express ideas, assume leadership and arouse enthusiasm among your potential customers?

Over the coming weeks I am going to give you some simple ideas on how you can do exactly that.  Stay tuned and if you’re not already subscribed to this blog then please do so.  If you are not sure how then follow this link for a simple guide on how to keep up to date with your favourite blogs and web sites.

Catch you soon.