For the savvy business owner blogging has become an integral part of any integrated marketing strategy. Not to mention a way for businesses to grow and enhance their brands, harnessing the power of both the Internet and social media.
And corporate blogging that is driven by strategy and tied to metrics … goodness, but that makes me swoon. At V3, we are all about metrics. Read Jason Falls’ post on the importance of metrics and SEO in your corporate blogging strategy – you’ll be glad you did.
Pardon me while I sound all cheeseball-ish, but if you want a sure fire way of adding value to your corporate blog (or website), you seriously need to consider publishing an eBook. And by the way, I’m working on mine, which is part of the reason this is top of mind. And the reasons to do it are really ridiculously simple. Efficiently use your resources, drive traffic, add value, build your mailing list, keep your readers coming back for more. Need more convincing?
Efficiently Use Your Resources. You’ve probably already written a lot of GREAT content and re-purposing that in as many different ways as you can only makes sense. Pick a topic, look through what you’ve already written, decide what else you need to include to make it better and package it into an eBook. Easy as pie. Not to mention smart.
Drive Traffic. People love resources. Provide them, traffic will come. Period.
Add Value. Blogs (and businesses) that add value and resources to their readers’ lives thrive. Their communities grow, their stature builds, their brand is enhanced, their influence grows. And we haven’t even talked about what that does for your traffic, your click-through rates and the leads that are inevitably generated.
Think about the places you go for your resources. An example: I love cooking. When I want to find some great culinary resources, I head immediately to Epicurious.com. Wouldn’t it be awesome if your corporate blog provided such great resources that you became the Epicurious of someone’s world? And every time they needed something, they looked to you for an answer? Me – I’d be dancing a jiggety-jig-jig if that happened with my business.
Building Your List. The importance of list building is often overlooked, but oh-so-important. Providing great resources (like eBooks) and then asking readers to register before downloading allows you to build your list and market to those people in the future. That doesn’t make list building spammy (as long as you treat those people with respect), it makes it simply a part of good business practices.
The Crack Cocaine Factor. This is a phrase we often use with our clients – and while they look surprised when we do, it only takes a minute before they get it. And the concept is really quite simple: What’s the crack cocaine that you provide? What’s the impossible to resist draw that you offer your clients and prospects that keeps them coming back for more, more, more? eBooks is yet another way of making sure your business provides The Crack Cocaine Factor.
And, once you’ve written your eBook, for maximum effectiveness, PIMP IT OUT. Or, in layman’s terms, register it on a variety of different sites and you’ll be amazed at the results (and the traffic) that it will drive and brand awareness that’ll result. Here are a few eBook registration sites that we like:
ebook88.com
thefreesite.com
getfreebooks.com
ebookjunkie.com
ebooksubmit.com
ideamarketers.com/bookpr.com
mind-like-water.com
changethis.com
Convinced? Common sense will do that surprisingly often. Now, what are you waiting for, get cracking on that eBook! And if I’ve left anything off the list, please be sure and let me know!
PS And if you want a great value and a perfect example of how to effectively market an eBook, look no farther than my friend Danny Brown and his 7 Ways to Market Your Business on Facebook.