Podcast: Paul Lancaster, author, Small Business Marketing for Dummies

I caught up with Paul Lancaster this afternoon and recorded this podcast interview. Paul has spent his career helping entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized businesses market and sell.

We talked about his new book Small Business Marketing for Dummies. It’s a cracking volume packed with practical advice about new and traditional forms of marketing.

Paul is based in the north east of England and works as part of the marketing team for Sage One.

We talked about the genesis of the book and the challenge of writing content in the Dummies style.

Paul shares ideas for how small and medium sized business should engage with customers.

Social media is social first and foremost. He suggests finding your audiences online and using humour as a means of engagement.

Paddy Power, Waterstones and Virgin all market well via social according to Paul.

But social media marketing doesn’t necessary require big budgets. We’re both fans of Mmm (@mmm_newcastle), a deli in Newcastle. It does a superb job of engaging with its customers via Twitter.

Paul cites Brad Feld, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk and Wired magazine as his sources of inspiration.

You can connect with him Paul @lordlancaster or via his blog Plan Digital UK.

Podcasting is a new thing for me. I’ve taken part in other people’s shows but have only very occasionally recorded shows of my own.

Encouraged by people in my network such as Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz (For Immediate Release), James Whatley (The Voicemail), Kelvin Newman (Internet Marketing Podcast) and Minter Dial (The Myndset) it’s one of my personal development goals for 2014.

I’m fascinated at the moment by how technology has removed the barriers to creating and publishing content.

This interview was recorded on an iPhone and produced in the Cloud. It’s taken me longer to write this blog post than it did to produce the audio.

Let me know what you think.