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Start a Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign by Giving Away a Free Ebook

One of the proven methods for building your brand and reputation is releasing a free ebook.

Basically, you write about a relevant topic in your industry. You don’t even have to come up with something new. Many bloggers take their best blog posts and use them as the basis of their ebook. Also, you don’t have to make your ebook long. I know of a popular ebook that was less than 20 pages. I think you should aim for at least 15 pages. If you can write more, that’s great.

The Advantages of an Ebook over a Blog Post

If you’re going to base your ebook on blog posts, what is the advantage of repackaging your content in ebook format?

First, an ebook has a higher perceived value than a blog post. This is especially true if you make your ebook look professional. You can do this by getting a nice looking ebook cover, adding images where appropriate, and using other design elements like fonts, eye catching formatting, headers, footers, and icons. If you don’t have design skills, find a professional designer. Check out ChangeThis for examples of well-designed ebooks.

Second, some people like to print out what they read. Sure, they can print out your blog posts but your ebook will be formatted much better for print.

Third, free ebooks are relatively scarce in many niches. It will be a big deal whenever you release your ebook. You can accompany your ebook launch with a press release. And if you tell other bloggers and website owners about your ebook, you’ll probably get a lot of links and traffic, since you’re provided a ton of value to your industry. Because of its uniqueness and perceived value, the potential for a free ebook to spread widely and rapidly through word of mouth is much greater than a blog post.

How to Give Away Your Free Ebook

There’s some debate over the method to give away ebooks. Some people say you should get email addresses or RSS subscriptions in exchange for the ebook while others say you should give it away with no strings attached.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the pros and cons of each method.

Over to You

Have you ever created and give away an ebook? Have you ever read a free ebook?

Get Free Links and Traffic From This Little Known Site

I recently learned about HelpAReporter.com from my sister. I co-own an online dress store with her. I don’t know anything about fashion so she creates the dresses and writes the blog while I do the promotion and marketing.

I was surprised when she told me that our dresses were going to be covered on a popular site for women. She doesn’t like to do marketing so I asked her how she got this great buzz. She told me she found the lead through HelpAReporter.com.

How Does HelpAReporter.com Work?

HelpAReporter.com works very simply. Basically, you sign up with your email address and then you’re added to a mailing list. You’ll get 1-3 emails a day with queries from reporters.

Many of these reporters are website owners looking for content. If your content fits what they are looking for, your content will be published on their site and you’ll also get a link back. Some of the website owners are even looking for products to feature.

Here are a couple queries from a recent email:

A major news company is looking for a story about regional banks.
A career site geared for women wants business people to share their opinion regarding women’s fashion in the corporate office world.
A blog about moms is looking for tips and products that can help families get control of their finances in 2009.
A mainstream health magazine is looking for anecdotes about yoga and fitness.
A health care site wants to interview a networking expert about common networking mistakes.
A regional publication wants your opinion on the play of a high-profile college basketball team.
A city magazine is looking for recommendations on local art galleries.
A foodie podcaster wants to interview professional cooks, chefs, cookbook authors or food industry insiders.

As you can tell, each email will cover many different industries. Unless you’re in a totally obscure niche, you should be able to find a query (or two) that fits your business within a week.

Who Will Benefit From HelpAReporter.com?

I think any business can benefit from HelpAReporter.com. It’s especially a great tool for business owners that don’t like to do marketing. Marketing is usually all about getting out there and promoting your site. However, HelpAReporter.com is different because the reporters are coming to you with their requests.

Relevant Details

You’ll get up to three emails a day. Each email will have around 15-30 queries. The title of the emails will start with “[shankman.com]” so you can easily tell which emails are from HelpAReporter.com.

Over to You

Have you used HelpAReporter.com before? If you have, what did you think of it? If you haven’t and want another channel for promoting your site, check it out and please let me know what you think. Thanks!

How to Never Run Out of Things to Say

question-mark-writers-block

One fear many business bloggers seem to have is running out of stuff to say. They know blogs are supposed to be updated on a regular basis, so their fear is definitely legitimate.

When blogging expert, Chris Garrett, tackled this issue on Blog Herald, I took notice. He’s a prolific blogger with over 500 blog posts this year so he knows what he’s talking about. He basically gives two principles.

Be truly interested in your topic.
Talk to other people about your topic.

I’ve found that most business bloggers are passionate about their topic so the number #1 principle doesn’t seem to be a problem. However, many bloggers don’t do the number #2 principle.

Interacting with other people is great idea if you get a bad case of writer’s block. Chris writes:

Most of my best ideas come from just talking to people. I am mainly in niches where I have a real fascination with the subject so I love to discuss them, and inevitably something inspires a post so I note down the ideas I have.

So, where can you interact with others? Chris gives five places:

Twitter
Forums
Chat
Real life
Skype

There’s another great benefit from talking with others. If you’re writing about something other people are willing to talk about, chances are your blog readers will also be interested in that topic.

Why You Shouldn’t Wait to Start Business Blogging

time-for-2009

With 2009 right around the corner, it’s really time to start blogging if you haven’t already.

One of the things I’ve noticed is how blogging is getting more and more mainstream. Blogs are starting up where I least expected it. I work in a couple industries and know friends that work in other industries. One trend we’ve been seeing recently is the proliferation of blogs in industries that didn’t use to have a lot of blogs.

In social media and blogging, the first mover advantage is very real especially with blogging becoming the norm. If you’re one of the first ones in your niche to start blogging, you’ll probably earn a great reputation within your industry.

Blogging has changed the tech and political landscape. It will only be a matter of time until blogging affects all the other industries.

Also, you might think, it’s only the younger crowd that really does social media, but if you look at many of the blogs out there, a lot of them are written by people over 30 years old. Also, a quick check into Facebook, MySpace, and even Twitter shows that many of the participants on those sites are also over 30 years old.

I believe in the next couple of years most online businesses will have blogs. Internet users are becoming more savvy. They are realizing that they can easily participate online instead of just consuming information. So, they’re creating blogs and joining social media sites. I think many online business owners are seeing this. They’re starting to realize that social media users are more likely to buy from companies that also join the social media movement.

Got Writer’s Block in the Middle of a Blog Post? Take a Break.

tea-break

I don’t usually post on Sundays especially during NFL season 🙂 I’ve pretty much obsessed with American football and today has a lot of big games.

However, I have this simple but effective blogging tip that just came to me and it shouldn’t take too long to write.

Getting writer’s block while you’re in the middle of writing a blog post can be frustrating. You started with a great idea and you’ve knocked out a couple of paragraphs. However, somewhere during the writing process you get stuck and can’t think of anything else to write. Still, you know the post is incomplete.

If this happens to you, try taking a break. Take a tea break, coffee break, or whatever kind of break you like to take. Basically, step away from the keyboard for a couple minutes and don’t think about your post.

When your break is done, you’ll usually have new inspiration to complete your blog post or at least, improve on it.

This tactic seems counter intuitive but it actually works because it allows your subconscious “to work on the post”. Let’s face it, much of our great post ideas come from seemingly random flashes of insight when were not even thinking about blogging.

You can focus too closely on your post that it becomes hard to think creatively (or “outside the box”). However, by taking a break, you can often jar your brain into a new perspective that leads to great ideas to add to your blog post.

Also, it can be hard to see the big picture of where your post should be going. This is especially true for longer posts. While you’re trying to get that one sentence just right, you may be losing the big picture. Oftentimes, a break is just what is needed to get that big picture perspective again.

This principle works with longer breaks too. Some of my best work has come from half-written blog posts that I didn’t look at for days – even weeks. But when I finally looked over the posts again, I was able to turn them into high quality posts.

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