Make like a marketing scout and be prepared….

Luck favors the prepared… a lesson I keep seeing illustrated over and over again.

For example, I joined LinkedIn because I needed to contact a gentlemen who has done PR work for a client of mine. When I Googled the gentleman, his LinkedIn account was the only reference to him so I joined so I cound contact him. I was wanting to contact him because in my November newsletter, I was writing about "Do your marketing goals include appearing on Oprah?" I have NO desire to begin consulting on PR and this gentleman did a great job with my client.

I contacted the PR guy and asked if he had a resource I could share with my readers. You know, a "The Top 10 Things you should do BEFORE you try to launch a PR campaign" type of piece. I view these kinds of partnerships as win/win/win. I provide a resource to my readers so they win. That makes them WANT to read my newsletter. (I win) He wins because he gets his services showcased to a new crop of potential prospects. Win -Win- Win.

However, there was a catch. He didn’t HAVE such a resource prepared. Could I give him until December to prepare one? Since I didn’t have a December issue prepared anyhow, I decided to move the Marketing Goals and Oprah piece to December and quickly pull together a new piece for November. The December deadline came and went. PR guy missed a showcase opportunity because he was not prepared.

The thing is, the piece I asked him to provide my readers was a piece he could use OVER AND OVER AGAIN! That’s what’s GREAT about planning ahead and being prepared. By responding to THAT opportunity, he would have had a piece prepared that no doubt would serve him well over the next months if not years.

Now to provide an example of a STARK contrast, allow me to introduce you to Tamar Weinberg. Tamar and I had connected via her techipedia blog and as a result, she’s in my gmail contacts list. When I joined LinkedIn, she got one of my global "invites" and now she and I are "linked" at Linkedin. AWESOME!

Today, I saw that Tamar had replied to a question on Internet Marketing. Smooth as silk, Tamar offered a quick link to her "list of the Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007."

Prepared on December 26, 2007…. Tamar created a post that will serve her well over the next year. Now, she’s leveraging that post. Instead of spending an hour or more composing a "personal " reply to a general question… she tosses out a well prepared piece and VIOLA! She’s a star for providing such a resource to a fellow LinkedIn member AND everyone in her extensive network is being directed to the post. Time spent: 15 minutes or less. (Assuming she didn’t get sucked into the LinkedIn vortex of social networking!)

(To be read in Napoleon Dynamite’s voice) "Gee, Tamar. You sure are lucky. You’ve got a great blog with a lot of traffic. Geesh…. You’re so LUCKY!"

It’s this kind of "preparation" that makes you "lucky"…. don’t ever forget it. That blog post took a lot of time and effort to prepare and now she’s "cashing in" on that preparation time. I have a feeling if I’d contacted Tamar for a resource for my newsletter, she’d have it to me as quick as lightning.

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