I baked a new bread yesterday morning: a brown, honey loaf.
It was supposed to be lavender and honey but Tesco in Edenderry or Kinnegad did not have lavender on a November Saturday morning so I had to do with honey only.
However, I love honey and have no idea what sort of taste lavender would give so it was a small price to pay.
The bread turned out well, albeit I have had more aesthetically pleasing loaves. But the taste was beautiful with a lovely soft, wholemeal crumb and a healthy taste of honey.
But I videod the whole process, too, and it took quite a bit of time. I have a lot of footage in my camera which I will now have to draw together into a video which I will upload to YouTube.
Why would I do this? Why would any solicitor, or professional, or small business owner think spending time making a video about baking bread is a good use of his/her time?
Two reasons: fascination and connection.
I read a book last year about marketing and the role that fascination can play in your brand building and marketing. Sally Hogshead is the author of Fascinate, Revised and Updated: How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist
I won’t go into the particulars today but it is a book I would strongly recommend. The central thesis of the book is “In an oversaturated culture defined by limited time and focus, how do we draw attention to our messages, our ideas, and our products when we have only seconds to compete?”
You can do this by fascinating.
I know this works from the number of comments I receive from persons who come to me for a consultation or engage my services. A surprisingly large number ask me about my baking and the birds I feed around my home and have featured in much of my online marketing efforts-for example in my Instagram story posts.
Fascinating is a much underused marketing tool which only a tiny number of professionals employ in their small business marketing efforts.
And the brown loaf with honey?