The Grattons

Sarah-Jayne Gratton is an author, television presenter, and former theatre performer. She is a European correspondent for the television show You Are the Supermodel, where she hosts a weekly segment on personal branding.

Dr Dean Anthony Gratton is a bestselling author and columnist. Dean has worked extensively within the wireless telecommunications R&D industry and has an accomplished career in software engineering.

Q. Your greatly anticipated book entitled Zero to 100,000 is released in October 2011: Tell us, what is the book about and why did you both decide to write it?
Zero to 100,000 is a social media book that fills a very real need; that of the smaller businesses and solo-preneurs who want to build a fast and effective social media presence from scratch on a tiny budget. There are plenty of social media books out there geared at big businesses and large corporations, but nothing that reaches out directly to the smaller business in the way our book does. As a couple who are also a ‘brand’, we were keen to share our experiences and the secrets of our online success with others.

Zero to 100,000

Q. What did you find most enjoyable and challenging when writing Zero to 100,000?

We wanted to make the book something a reader would enjoy picking up and reading. After all, something as exciting as social media shouldn’t be a chore to discover and we wanted to make the experience fun. There are always challenges, of course, when writing a book on such a fast moving and evolving arena; the primary one being that of keeping it as fresh and relevant as possible. We overcame this by writing the book in such a way as to impart a philosophy that transcends basic platform functionality, giving the reader the confidence they need to ‘go with the flow’ of inevitable platform evolution and to do so in such a way that will enable them to sustain their online success.

Sarah-Jane Gratton

Q. You are both big personas on twitter under the names of @grattonboy and @grattongirl. Were you hesitant about sharing your secrets of success in the world of social media?

Not at all! There’s never been a tougher time for business and brands and yet there’s never been more opportunity to compete against the big boys. It’s very much a David and Goliath situation. We don’t want to dwell on issues of economy here but well, it’s difficult not to these days. The ironic thing is that social media opens the door for those of us who don’t have huge financial resources to fall back on or to support us on our journey. The small businesses and brands of today no longer need to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to put them in the public eye and make them sparkle. Social media provides them with the opportunity to do just that every day if it’s used correctly. Knowing how to use it can be the difference between success and failure, so we are more than happy to share our secrets and to help our readers’ brands be all they can be.

Q. What is your opinion on the publishing industry at present? Books or Kindle?

There’s a place for both. We’ve yet to find a Kindle that imparts the pure joy of holding a leather-bound classic in your hands or excites the senses with the wonderful aroma of a new book’s pages. Devices like the Kindle and the iPad, for that matter, offer a fabulous way of ‘taking your library with you’ daily. They have also opened up a whole new world for the visually impaired by allowing readers to select their print/font size – a functionality that has, and will, enrich the lives of so many.

Dean Gratton

Q. Describe an average day in the life of a Social Media expert. Does the day always start with a tweet?

A tweet and a coffee, but not necessarily in that order! We both rise early to ensure that our personal social media activities don’t eat into our day too much. We work to a daily schedule of time slots allocated to sending out and scheduling tweets, posts on our Facebook pages, video promotions and posts on LinkedIn, which are less frequent. You can’t be too rigid, as you need to engage with your social media audience so we regularly check in, to reply and comment on our followers’ content and questions. Fine-tuning this takes time and the book provides many helpful ways of ensuring that you get the most out of every day – we’ve learned through trial and error so that our readers don’t have to!

Lunchtime is when we normally brainstorm about new project ideas or current event promotions. When it comes to productive output, there’s something magical about the holy trinity of food, wine and conversation that surpasses any boardroom.

There’s no such thing as a short day when you’re working with social media and we are often at our desks past midnight but, then again, there’s no such thing as hard work if you love what you do – right?

Q. What have we got to look forward to next from the Grattons?

We have a number of exciting projects in the pipeline but nothing we can share with you just yet – We’ll save them for another interview …

You can find out more about Sarah-Jayne and Dean through their websites www.sarahjaynegratton.com and www.deananthonygratton.com, and you can follow them on Twitter @grattongirl & @grattonboy.

You can pre-order your copy right now:

Amazon – Zero to 100,000: Social Media Tips and Tricks for Small Businesses