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Seven Reasons to Create eBooks For Your Business in 2020

November 15, 2019 by Tom Pick

Guest post by Mathew Jade.

Self-publishing isn’t just for seasonal authors. When you create eBooks, you’re using one of the most efficient and productive formats for content marketing. You’re missing a great tactic for converting website visitors to leads if you’re not using ebooks to market your brand, products, or services.

Smartphone and tablet users have increased their use of eReaders in the last five years. The eBook industry now brings an astonishing $8.69 billion and it is still ballooning.

Given the potential return, you may be wondering:

Why isn’t every business creating eBooks?
Is it really worth the effort?
How can eBooks help my business?

To answer those questions (and more), here are seven benefits of publishing an eBook (or more than one) for your business. eBooks can help you…
[Read more…]

Book Review: Content Rules

June 24, 2013 by Tom Pick

The phrase “content marketing” may well disappear at some point in the not-too-distant future. Not because the concept will fade away, but because it will be seen as redundant; there won’t be any marketing without content.

According to recent research, nearly 80% of CMOs see custom content as the future of marketing. And it’s not only marketing executives who are excited about content. The same study also showed that:

• 90% of companies are already doing some form of content marketing.
• 70% of customers said they “felt closer to a company as a result of content marketing.”
• 70% of buyers would rather learn about a company through articles than through an advertisement.
• 60% of people say they have been “inspired to seek out a product” after reading content about it.

And so it is that Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business has arrived at at opportune time. Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman have written the definitive guide to creating nearly any type of content, as well as adding life to traditional formats like customer case studies and FAQ pages. Content Rules is a must-read for anyone who wants to create compelling, useful information for their target audiences.

Creating relevant, quality, original content within a web presence optimization (WPO) strategy has become critical to marketing success because, as the authors note, “overwhelmingly, consumers depend on search engines to help them shop online.” They cite research showing that “three out of five shoppers said they always or often use search engines when shopping online…more consumers use search engines than they do coupon sites, retailer emails, consumer reviews, or shopping comparison sites.” The figure is even higher for b2b and high-value, considered-purchase consumer goods.

The book works well on several levels, and though it’s most valuable to practitioners—those who actually envision, specify, create, repurpose, and promote business content— it’s also helpful for senior executives charged with developing content strategy and coordinating creative efforts.

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As the previous post here noted, Amazon.com has announced it will shut down its affiliate program in Minnesota at the end of this month. If this review, or any of the other book reviews here, inspire you to buy the book, please click on any of the book’s links within the post today to buy the book on Amazon. Thank you!

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Divided into four sections, the book opens with the case for content (though that’s increasingly superfluous), the basic “rules” of content creation, and wisdom such as the importance of giving content both “roots” (ground it “solidly in your unique perspective, voice, and point of view”) and “wings” (distributed, promoted and shared across the social web).

It proceeds through sections devoted to the “how to” of content creation, success stories (“with ideas you can steal”), and finally a brief closing section with next steps and a helpful checklist to help content creators follow the “rules.”

Among the authors’ insights:

• The benefits of content marketing compound over time. Jay Baer uses the phrase “information annuity” while Marcus Sheridan of River Pools calls content “the ultimate gift that keeps on giving.” This echoes the message that social media and content transform marketing from an expense to an investment.
• “The more valuable the information you can give to others, the more you will become viewed as an expert and therefore gain their trust…the person with the abundance mentality wins.”
• Stuck for a subject to write about? “Know your customers…and what keeps them up at night. What are their concerns and objectives? What do they care about? How will your brand help them in their daily lives?”
• Getting high-quality backlinks to your website is crucial to achieving high rankings in search. But traditional link building is all but dead; so how do you get those links? “By creating compelling content. Every time someone shares a link to your site in some fashion (by blogging about you or sharing a link on Twitter, for example), it boosts your search ranking. Make a video that everyone is raving about or write a blog post that people can’t stop talking about, and you’ll see your site start appearing much higher on the results page when search for…the things you sell.” Which is pretty much what WPO is.
• To differentiate their content, and companies, in a crowded market, content creators must “expand their traditional notions of corporate identity to include language, the words a company uses, and tone of voice. Branding, after all, is about differentiation. And describing a brand begins with words. Don’t rely on…worn-to-the-bone words and phrases and bland corporate tone.” Companies often struggle with this internally, particularly if the team has been in place for a while, but any decent consumer or b2b marketing agency should be able to assist in this effort.
• A bit more on tone (love this): “In business, it’s tempting (and easier) to use the same boring words everyone else uses. But you’ll be far more approachable (and a whole lot more engaging) if you lighten up a little. I’d worry less about shocking customers than I would about boring them.”
• “Literally speak the language of your customers. You want to appeal to them, certainly, but you also want your content to appear in search results when your would-be customers are looking for what you have to offer. How do your customers describe your product or service? What words do they use?” This is vital. Do keyword research, ask your sales force, and talk to your customers.

There’s much, much more on topics ranging from over-used buzzwords to avoid and methods for repurposing and re-using content to the six characteristics of great business storytelling and how to capitalize on events for content creation.

The authors provide such an effective and comprehensive overview of content development that it’s difficult to find fault with the book. A couple of minor quibbles regarding metrics though:

• In the section titled “Set Your Metrics: What Does Success Look Like?,” the authors mention number of subscribers, inbound links, comments and “social validation” as key metrics, but don’t mention two other key measures to track: number of blog visitors who then visit other key areas on your website (such as product pages) and the number who take some conversion action (e.g., registering for a webinar, downloading a white paper, or subscribing to your newsletter). (One of our clients was generating, on average, 10% of all leads via referral traffic from their blog within one year of launching it.)
• Similarly, on metrics for Ebooks and white papers, the authors cite number of downloads as a key metric—which it certainly is—but I’d add sources of traffic leading to these downloads as another vital piece of data to track.

All in all, this is an outstanding guide to creating, optimizing and sharing compelling, customer-focused information. Even if you’re an experienced content marketer, Content Rules will help you produce better content, produce content better, or both.

Book Review: The B2B Social Media Book

September 4, 2012 by Tom Pick

With The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More, authors Kipp Bodnar of HubSpot and Jeffrey L. Cohen of Salesforce Radian6 have literally written the book on social media best practices for B2B marketers.

Unlike the multitude of other social media marketing books, this one isn’t about how celebrities build a huge Twitter following or how big consumer brands use coupons and contests to attract massive “likes” on Facebook; it’s focused on the content-centric, information-hungry world of B2B marketing.

The book is divided into three main sections: The Fundamentals of Social Media Lead Generation, Social Media Lead Generation in Action, and Taking Social Media Lead Generation to the next level. As those headings suggest, this isn’t a book about “engagement,” conversations, shares, likes, followers or any other soft measures of social media success, but rather is focused on using social media to generate a high volume of qualified leads, the top priority of B2B marketers.

The opening chapter, “Why B2B is Better at Social Media than B2C,” helpfully lays the groundwork for the book with two key sections. First, five reasons B2B companies are a better fit for social media marketing than their B2 counterparts:

• Clear understanding of customers (“B2B marketers go far past demographic data”)
• Depth of subject matter expertise
• Need for generating higher revenue with lower marketing budgets
• Relationship-based sales
• Already have practice doing it (“long before the social web, [B2B marketers] were publishing newsletters, quarterly magazines and [using] other marketing tactics that map to many key social media marketing methods”)

All of which should sound familiar to B2B marketers. Still, that said, the authors point out that there are situations where social media isn’t right for B2B firms:

• Very small, concentrated market
• Purchasing decision makers are behind strong firewalls (e.g., the military, power utilities)
• No internal advocate for social media (i.e., lack of executive support)
• Need to generate a high volume of short-term sales
• Lack of resources to be successful (“you will always need more time and money than you expect for executing your social media tactics”)

The book also points out that social media marketing takes time to produce results, as it more of a long-term investment than an immediate expense with a quick payback. “With the hurdles into publishing and information sharing now so low, it is harder than ever before for a company to stand out. A great CMO needs to take risks an try new things, while also ensuring that the entire marketing team understands that risk and polarization are accepted and encouraged for the success of the business.” Fortunately, CMOs have a bit more luxury of time today than in the recent past, as the average tenure for a CMO has increased from just 23 months in 2006 to 43 months now.

After laying the foundation, the book steps through best practices for developing eBooks and webinars; business blogging; marketing through LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook; making email social; B2B social mobile marketing; and integrating tradeshows with social efforts. Along the way, the authors share numerous bits of marketing wisdom and findings such as:

Content really is exploding. “According to Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, more information is created on the Internet in 48 hours today than was created by all humankind from the beginning of time until 2003.”

You have to ask for leads. “The lack of conversion opportunities is the single biggest mistake that we see when speaking with B2B marketers working to leverage social media.”

“Emulate the best, not your competitors.” “The people who sign your multimillion dollar purchase orders read the New York Times, buy digital goods from iTunes, and order shoes from Zappos.” Yes, you need to do a better job with search and social than your direct competitors, but for inspiration, set your sites higher.

Social media marketing isn’t a campaign, it’s a reorientation. “The only way to get more time back for new marketing strategies, such as social media, is to stop strategies and tactics that don’t work. Stop now. This simple idea of stopping tactics that don’t work will instantly make you a better marketer.”

Search and social are inseparable. Given that the number of Google+ and Facebook shares that a piece of content gets impacts its search ranking, “SEO is the number one reason a B2B company should be using social media marketing” according to the authors. “Social media isn’t the first thing a business should focus on to improve search traffic, but it is certainly part of long-term SEO success.”

Content is core to social media marketing success… “Getting found on the web is a lot like winning the lottery. A person who has 100 tickets has a much better chance of winning the lottery than a person with only one ticket. In the world of social media, content is the equivalent of lottery tickets.”

…but it has to be high-quality content. “The biggest secret in B2B social media marketing is that those companies that create great content consistently over time are the ones that succeed.”

eBooks and white papers are complementary. Too often, these terms are used as synonyms, but there are important differences between the two formats which the book explains simply and concisely. “Traditionally, white papers have been more academic in tone and style. Although an eBook may strive to educate on the same topic, it would do so in a more entertaining tone, accompanied by images to help illustrate its points…Go for the eBook instead of the white paper when talking to nontechnical audiences.” The authors also include an excellent “10-Step Blueprint to eBook Awesomeness.”

Improve your webinar presentations with a live audience. Among the helpful tips in “Five Steps for an Engaging Webinar” is the suggestion to use a live audience: “Even if it is only one person, have someone else in the room with you while presenting a webinar. As speakers, we all use feedback from the audience to adjust our presentation. Since you can’t see the people listening to you on a webinar, having a co-worker sit in as an audience to provide feedback is invaluable.”

Keep videos short. “Perfection in B2B video is not when there is nothing left to add in, but instead when there is nothing left to remove…three minutes is an eternity on the Web.”

And there’s much more, including how often you should aim to publish new posts on a business blog, the best time to send b2b emails, and how to promote your company on Twitter without overdoing it.

The book has its minor flaws. Rank is not “dead” as the authors claim; true, with Google experimenting more with image results, additional ad placements, personalized search, and even displaying email results on SERPs, rank doesn’t have quite the unique value that it once did. But it still matters; ranking at #1 or #2 will virtually always result in more clicks than ranking at #8, or #18, or #28.

The analogy used on page 65 is of questionable appropriateness for a business book, but it does get the point across. (No, I won’t tell you what it is, you’ll need to buy the book to find out.)

And the most significant criticism I’ve heard of the book is that it covers too much old ground. But in defense of the authors, given the wide range of social media knowledge in the marketplace (from newbie to expert), it’s challenging to appropriately balance the risks of stating the obvious versus leaving out crucial detail. In truth, those who are relatively new to B2B social media will find the book an essential primer, while even seasoned experts are likely to discover useful tidbits.

Quibbles aside, Jeff Cohen and Kipp Bodnar have done an outstanding job of producing a B2B social media book with enough practical substance mixed with higher level theory to meet the needs of virtually anyone involved in this area, from entry-level practitioners as well as senior B2B marketing executives. The B2B Social Media Book deserves to be read, highlighted, dog-eared, Post-It noted and referred back to often by pretty much anyone whose role is impacted by B2B social media.

The Two Core Elements of B2B Social Media Marketing Success

February 21, 2012 by Tom Pick

There have been numerous models proposed for social media and content marketing (including the Four C’s of Social Media Marketing model previously published here), but when all of the complexity is stripped away, social media marketing success comes down to two core elements: content and amplification.

Content is like singing a song. Amplification (done well) is like singing that song into a microphone. On American Idol. Late in the season.

Content can be produced in a wide variety of formats:

• White papers
• Case studies
• Video
• Podcasts
• Presentations
• Product data sheets / brochures
• eBooks / digital magazines
• Blog posts
• Webinars / webcasts
• Checklists
• Infographics
• Research reports / briefs
• Product reviews
• News releases
• Newsletters
• Online tools / apps
• FAQs
• Guides / toolkits
• Tutorials
• Microsites
• Bylined articles
• Virtual events
• Buyer’s guides
• Product comparison grids
• ROI / TCO calculators

But regardless of the format, the first key to getting your content amplified by others is to produce high-quality, share-worthy content. Of course, in the B2B realm, your content should be targeted at addressing a specific question or concern of a specific type of buyer at a specific stage of the buying cycle (e.g. research reports at the top of the funnel; webinars at mid-funnel; product comparisons near the bottom).

Truly “social” content will go beyond those basics, and also be:

• Optimized: content is more likely to be found and spread if it contains the words and phrases your buyers are using, rather than jargon or internal company terminology. These can be discovered by using keyword research tools or by talking to your customer-facing employees. The use of keywords in content should never be forced; content that’s truly written for your target prospects will incorporate these words and phrases in a natural manner.
• Remarkable: ask yourself—if I were on a buying team that was evaluating my product or service, is this a piece of content that I would feel inspired to pass along to other members of the team? To my boss?
• Unique: people are most likely to pass along content that is new or different—information, a point of view, or a collection / presentation of data that they haven’t seen before. According to Google, there have been 77,400 blog posts, articles and guides written that contain “SEO basics” in the title tag. The world probably doesn’t need another article on SEO basics, and such a piece would be unlikely to be shared, unless it somehow stood out from the previous 77,400 writeups on the topic. Not easy.
• Compelling: to be shareworthy from your standpoint, the content should compel the reader to take some sort of next step—download a white paper, register for a webinar, subscribe to your newsletter, contact your sales team—some type of action that makes the effort of developing the content worthwhile. Otherwise, it’s just entertainment.
• Easy to share: encourage sharing and make it easy by including social sharing buttons on your content whenever practical. Recent research shows that incorporating social sharing buttons increases email sharing by 115% (and helps with all sorts of other content as well).

Amplification is the process of getting influential voices in your market to share your content with their friends and followers. It is not about creating a “viral video” or some such thing. What kind of videos go viral? Funny videos. Videos featuring animals doing cute things tend to do well also. Create a funny video of animals doing cute things and you’ve got an almost sure-fire viral hit. But unless you sell pet supplies, the value of drawing that traffic to your site will be virtually zilch.

The amplification process has three essential steps:

1. Build a network of influencers. There are several ways to find the key influencers in any industry. On LinkedIn, search for relevant groups, then connect with members of those groups. On Twitter, search for hashtags relevant to your industry, or peruse Twitter directories like Twellow and WeFollow. Identify the top blogs in any segment using AllTop, then note who those bloggers include in their blogrolls. If you’ve got the budget, search for influencers using a social media monitoring or PR management tool.

2. Develop relationships with those influencers. Follow them on Twitter. “Like” their Facebook pages. Join the same groups on LinkedIn. Read their blogs and leave thoughtful, value-added comments. Tweet / retweet their posts and other content, and ask questions. Take an interest in them and they’ll be likely to take an interest in your content as well.

3. Produce content that those influencers will want to share with their friends, fans and followers. Key influencers get into that position by staying on top of trends in their industries, and sharing valuable, interesting, relevant content with their followers. Help them to do that and you’ll end up helping everyone involved: those influencers will become even more influential, they will amplify your content (because of its high quality), and—most importantly—your prospective buyers will be more likely to see and respond to your helpful and informative content.

The bottom line? “Build it and they will come” only worked in Field of Dreams. Success in social media marketing requires both “building” it (creating great content that showcases your unique expertise and compels buyers to act) and amplifying it through a network of the key influencers in your particular industry segment or market niche.

Seven Reasons to Create eBooks For Your Business in 2020

Book Review: Content Rules

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