I'm going to take a break from hassling you about following up to talk about something I think is probably second only to follow-up in terms of its importance to your success at marketing.

It's coming up with valuable ideas.

They don't all have to be completely new, just different to what your clients are already doing.

And the best way to think of new ideas or to clarify and improve the quality of your existing ideas is to write them down.

Publish them.

Doesn't matter whether it's writing, audio, video.

Publishing is the best way of creating new ideas.

Years ago the chief editor at Gemini Consulting Sid Seamans introduced me to a book called “Thinking on Paper” by Howard and Barton, two researchers at Harvard.

The concept behind the book is something I've found to be 100% true time and time again.

The book talks about how our common conception of writing is all wrong.

We tend to think of writing as taking the ideas in our head and getting them out on paper.

But actually, the ideas in our head are only half-formed at best.

Our working memory simply isn't big enough to hold the entirety and subtlety of complex concepts.

So we think we have a good idea, but in truth, we just have the germ of one.

It's only by writing down our idea that we're able to fully examine and explore it in all its glory.

When we see it in writing we spot the flaws. We see what needs to be improved. What can be dropped and what can be enhanced. What's the core of the idea and what's the fluff around it.

In other words, at least half our thinking is done during or after we write down the idea. Hence “Thinking on Paper”.

And, of course, once we publish something, others can review it, criticise, give feedback, build on it.

The idea becomes so much more powerful than the little germ we held in our head

The trouble is most of us don't publish.

We keep our ideas in our head.

Perhaps afraid we'll be giving away our secrets. Perhaps afraid they won't be received well. Perhaps a bit lazy, or perhaps just not realising the value of writing our ideas down.

So instead we use the ideas raw with clients.

And frankly, we're short-changing them.

We're giving them 20% of what they could get if we wrote our ideas down, worked them, got feedback, improved them.

Let alone the marketing value we could get from making our ideas visible. 

So in addition to establishing the habit of follow-up, I'd urge you to establish the habit of publishing your ideas.

Be a little bit brave.

The rewards are worth it.