I’ve seen Jim Stengel speak many times and always enjoyed it.  For the past five+ years, the global marketing chief from Procter & Gamble seemed a regular on the advertising and marketing speaking circuit.  Now we know why.

It’s funny…the more our society focuses on the Internet, the more niche print books you tend to see.  Sounds counter intuitive, but the Long Tail has created opportunities in book publishing that were never before imaginable.

Since we have the ability to target the slimmest of customer segments, more companies are developing content to serve those niches and drive revenues. Yes, even books. From Amazon.com to LuLu, publishing has become easier from both a production and promotion standpoint.

This was one of the reasons why Newt Barrett and I launched our book Get Content. Get Customers., which revolves around the philosophy and execution of content marketing. We believed that we could develop a content marketing book, without a major publisher, that could get traction through the use of social media and the Internet. And we were right. (Note: Last month, Newt and I sold the book rights to McGraw-Hill. The marketing of the book was the major reason we were approached with this opportunity – that, and hopefully the fact that it’s a good book had something to do with it.)

We didn’t do everything perfect, but we did a lot right, and there are others out there doing some amazing things.  Below are six social media and online keys to promoting a book for yourself or your business.

NOTE: Remember, this is not a traditional book launch.  Thinking differently is the key.

1. It Starts with Relationships

This is less of a “way” than a philosophy.  The key to your online promotion success is having lots of conversations with lots of people online. Then, those people have more conversations and presto, you have a successful book launch.

Your online relationships need to be in place before you launch your book. Trying to create a movement at the same time you are trying to find influential business colleagues is difficult at best.

Get and stay active online by using social networking and communication tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and FriendFeed. Each one will give you the opportunity to grow your network and find your place.

But it’s not enough to just join…you have to do two things: get active and have something to say.

Look at it like this – if you are having a one-on-one conversation with someone and all you do is talk about yourself and how wonderful you are, how long will that relationship last?  Same thing goes for anything online. The more valuable information you communicate, the more people want to hang around you.

By doing this, you will build your base of followers that will make everything else on this list possible.

2. Why a Blog is so Important

First off, the blog can be where you actually start and finish the book.  A good portion of the chapters for our book originally came from popular posts from my blog. The same goes for authors like Seth Godin or Rohit Bhargava, both of whom have used their blogs to develop and promote their books.

But, the bigger point is that you need consistent, relevant and valuable content to continually communicate to your followers/colleagues from point #1. Nothing does that better or easier than a blog. I know with 100% certainty that I couldn’t have launched the book without the blog – in terms of both creating and cultivating a following.

Content marketing works because a valuable piece of content delivered to people who want it is still the best marketing on the planet. It positions you as a trusted content resource. Once you become a trusted resource, anything from a marketing perspective is possible. Possibly no one does that better than Seth.

3. Viral Marketing and the eBook

I’m a big David Meerman Scott fan. David’s books Cashing in with Content and The New Rules of Marketing & PR both discussed how content marketing can fuel a business and a brand.

Before Launching “The New Rules”, David created an ebook entitled The New Rules of PR that has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. By giving away this wonderful and free piece of content, David was setting the groundwork for the explosion of his best-selling book.

Newt and I flat out stole the same concept with the release of our free eBook, Get Content. Get Customers. We gave it away for free, placed it on LuLu, and promoted it on our blogs.  We actually used much of the feedback we received about the eBook as part of the printed book. It’s almost like sending a rough draft out to the world and seeing what sticks.

It really could have been anything…an article series, a white paper, a video, etc. But we’ve found, as David has shown, that an eBook serves as a good preview of the book, and is easy enough for people to link to and pass around.

4. Don’t Wait for Your Prospects to Find You

Yes, you should have a destination site that people can visit to get your information. That could be a website or a blog. That said, you can’t expect everyone to find you by getting to YOUR site.

There are plenty of sites that you need to leverage all that great content you are creating in anticipation of your book launch.

Use sites like Digg.com, SmallBusinessBrief and Junta42 to upload links and abstracts to your content. Get active in StumbleUpon. Upload to Facebook. Promote on Twitter. Upload full articles to MarcomProfessional.com.

Of course, the sites depend on who your target is (each industry has their own targeted content sites). You may also consider creating your own Squidoo page as I have. Guest blog as much as possible at relevant sites (bloggers are always looking to do Q&A’s or guest blogs). Place articles on sites such as EzineArticles.

Also, don’t forget to get involved in other communities that can help people find you as a resource.  Those include Yahoo! Answers, LinkedIn Questions and posting reviews on Amazon.com.

The point is that you want to create as many highways into your site as possible (what Hubspot calls Inbound Marketing) and be everywhere that makes sense with your target audience. Yes, it takes time, but done right, there may be no better way to market.

5. Building a Community First

Seth Godin’s release of his latest book, Tribes, was simply amazing.

Seth created an invitation-only community site called Triiibes.com, where leaders and students could learn and be inspired (the site uses Ning.com technology). Seth called for the movement initially on his blog, which is how I found out about it.

Seth did all the right things. In exchange for putting a little skin in the game (buying the book), Seth gave you access to people who really cared about marketing.  He also made it a limited proposition, made it viral (email to a friend), and made it easy to join.

The Triiibes.com community is pretty vibrant, and I check it out when I can.

Seth built a community of fans who are all working to promote Seth’s book.  By just getting a few passionate people involved in the beginning, Seth created something bigger than the book.

Something to aspire to…

6. Leverage Others to Organize a Movement

I can’t tell you how impressed I am with Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton. Drew and Gavin were the masterminds behind Age of Conversation 2, a book I recently co-authored with 236 others from 15 countries.

This was not a book project, this was a major social movement that Drew and Gavin worked to perfection for the second time (I wasn’t a part of the first book).

How do you get others to believe in something as much as you?  Make them a part of the process.

What does that mean for your book experience?  Whatever it is, if done right, you’ll create something that transcends the book, which is what Drew and Gavin have done.

And these six strategies just touch upon what can be done in this ever-changing online climate.  There is one constant though – none of this will work without the creation of valuable, consistent and compelling content. If you have that, you just need to find ways to get people to engage in that content. The six points above will help – go out and find more…

More reading at: 10 Keys to Writing a Book when You Have Absolutely No Time to Write a Book

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Almost every company in the world has some kind of customized magazine or newsletter. According to the Custom Publishing Council, there are more than 100,000 custom publications in the United States alone. Sadly, many companies don’t leverage their custom magazine to the fullest extent, while most don’t understand the distribution options available.

Especially in these tougher economic times, custom magazines, along with all marketing, is going to be even more scrutinized, so it’s important to leverage everything you can out of the content. If your magazine content is truly valuable, make sure it’s not being wasted by just delivering it in print and losing it forever (believe it or not, many companies and associations do that).

For the basic custom magazine project, here are some ways to get the most “bang for your buck” out of your content, and create multiple avenues for qualified prospects and customers to reach you:

1. Record audio and video of interviews for the magazine or newsletter for later repurposing. Most interviews are completed for the purpose of getting the magazine article, but content opportunities are everywhere.  Train your editorial team to make the most of their interviews.
2. Develop a news release schedule before the magazine comes out. Target three or four key topics that affect your customers and the industry (based on the magazine content). The release link should take them to the magazine subscription or digital magazine subscription page. An incentive could be a free subscription to the print magazine or newsletter.
3. Discuss the magazine on your corporate blog. Get your editor to post some of the key findings/issues. If you don’t have a corporate blog, create one on your magazine microsite (only if it makes sense and you can sustain it).
4. Sent out news releases through a keyword-optimized service such as PRWeb.
5. Post videos of interviews to YouTube and other targeted video portals specific to your industry. Upload audio to microsites. Research podcast directories that may be relevant to your industry. Look into creating a podcast RSS feed.
6. Send digital magazine version to the international audience or domestic audience you didn’t want to spend printing and postage on (or possibly a secondary customer target).
7. Make sure all articles have their own HTML pages on your microsite. Be sure each article has social media capabilities such as letting people add it to Facebook, Digg, or StumbleUpon, to name a few.
8. Be sure to Stumble! noteworthy articles and choose the proper category for the article. Say, for example, the article goes best in agriculture; those people who have tagged agriculture as a keyword may see your article when they use StumbleUpon.
9. If you have a Twitter account, run the RSS feed for your magazine articles through a service such as TwitterFox.
10. Provide something remarkable and different on your microsite for download. This does two things: 1) continues the conversation with your current customers, or 2) gives you information on prospects so you can begin a conversation with them. Something remarkable may be a free eBook about the 10 trends in your industry, or a free white paper on a new, cutting-edge technology. Keep the sales pitch out. Seek only to educate at this point.
11. Use pay-per-click, targeting specific keywords to drive people to your downloadable content offering. Your primary strategy should be organic results and inbound marketing, but a highly targeted pay-per-click campaign on long-tail keywords should be an option.
12. Be sure to make RSS feeds available for your web content.
13. Continue the news release program, pushing the audience to the videos, an eBook, or key articles. Remember, news releases aren’t for getting press; they are for building key links and for helping bloggers and influencers find your site. Industry bloggers can be key to your magazine effort.
14. Upload articles to key vertical and social bookmarking sites such as SmallBusinessBrief.com for small business, Sphinn for SEO/SEM, Junta42 for content marketing, or Digg.com for wider exposure.
15. And if you are really on the cutting edge, create a Facebook fan page or group around your magazine or your company and promote within that vehicle. Invite your key customers to join the Facebook group. Personally, I prefer the Facebook group we created over the fan page.  It seems to offer more opportunities for true interaction.

There is more that you can do, but this gives you an idea of how you should be marketing your relevant and valuable content. Think of it this way: How much valuable content have you or your organization created that has only been seen by one group of people—or worse yet, not engaged with at all? Marketing problem, not content problem.

Other Helpful Links

• Why Most Custom Publications Aren’t Measured
• Everything Custom Magazines at Junta42

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Just read this article by Steve Tobak on bnet entitled “What You Need to Know about Branding.” Very cool article and worth checking out.  In the article, Steve contends that there are five key points that every manager needs to know about branding, and IMO he is dead on.

As I was reading the final three points, I wanted to take out the word “branding” and replace it with “content marketing.” And so I did.  See below.

Content marketing strategy is not a one-off; it’s a component of your overall corporate strategy. Hopefully that begins with some sort of strategic planning process that defines your company’s vision, goals, and key strategies. Content marketing strategy is integrated and aligned with those.

Content marketing…is about using certain tools to achieve strategic and operating goals. For example, content marketing can be used to position similar or the same products in different market segments, typically at different pricing levels. That means changing perception without changing the product -a neat trick.

There are a myriad of decisions and tradeoffs involved in developing the right content marketing strategy for a company and its products and services. There is method to the madness. For example, a product line’s goals, market requirements, and value proposition will lead to a unique content marketing strategy. At least it should.

Key points:

1. Content marketing must be based on the company’s organizational goals, of which are based on fulfilling a customer need.
2. Each company brand and product line could/should have a different content and informational strategy.
3. Each company brand’s content marketing strategy is different because each product usually has different customer segments.  All customer groupings have their own informational needs, so the company must have different informational products and tactics as well.

Creating relevant, compelling and consisting content that works takes planning and investment. It’s much more challenging to develop content that creates a connection and fosters engagement than placing a TV spot or an ad (which is one of the reasons why more companies aren’t doing it more). It also can create an asset that has a much longer shelf life.

More companies are starting to realize this. As they do, it will even be more difficult to cut through the clutter. I have the feeling that we’ll look back on content marketing now with nostalgia as the good old days…when it was pretty easy to get content delivered and noticed by customers. Tomorrow we’ll have to be better…our customers deserve it.

Helpful Resources

• What is Content Marketing?
• The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing

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I have been hesitant to push this concept too much, but the evidence is just too vast to ignore anymore.  Those of you who are readers of this blog know that I’ve been talking about the push into content marketing from traditional media for years.

It’s not like that’s any big revelation.  We’ve been seeing traditional print and now even online display revenues take a beating at media companies. Layoffs and restructuring abound (even at Gawker and MySpace). Technology and consumer behavior has changed the landscape entirely and a new business model has emerged.Continue Reading

I’m a content guy.  I’m not a landscaper or outdoors man. I’ve tried a few times, but the results haven’t been pretty. That said, the cherry blossom tree in our front yard needed some major cleanup. There were many branches that were dead and the tree looked like it was getting choked to death. So, up the tree I went (btw, the picture on the right was taken by my five-year old son, Adam…not bad, huh?).

About five minutes after this picture was taken, I was doing my thing about 15 feet above the ground. Just then a 60-mile-an-hour wind gust came along (really, no kidding). I wouldn’t say that my life flashed before my eyes, but it did scare the crap out of me (While I was screaming for help, my wife was on the ground laughing uncontrollably).Continue Reading

I found this listing of expert and best business quotes in a presentation from Razorleaf’s Paul Gimbel at SolidWorks World 2008. (Razorleaf is one of the leaders in engineering and manufacturing process management.)

There are some gems in here for this must print out page!  Thanks to Paul for sharing his best business quotes of all-time.Continue Reading

Well, after nine months of hard labor, I received the pre-press version of my book (with co-author Newt Barrett) delivered UPS yesterday. The book is entitled Get Content. Get Customers. – How to use content marketing to deliver relevant, valuable, and compelling information that turns prospects into buyers (and is pictured here to the right).  Since we have just completed the book and while it was fresh in my mind, I thought I would offer some of the key steps we took to turn this little idea into a publishing reality. The book is now available for sale from the website at www.getcontentgetcustomers.com.

So here goes…my ten key steps to writing and publishing a book when you have absolutely no time to write or publish a book.

1. Find a Co-Author. This may not seem like a sound strategy to most, but finding another body takes 50% of the workload from you. When Newt and I first spoke about the book last summer, we were actually both in the process of starting our own individual books. As our conversation continued, it seemed obvious that our topics were so similar that it might make sense to team up.A couple notes if you decide to go this direction. First, pick someone who has a vested interest in your customer base or industry, but is not competitive. Newt and I are both entrepreneurs and own marketing consultancies, but the type of work we do is different enough that there were no competitive issues. Second, make sure you trust that person with your life. Newt and I worked together at Penton Media, Inc. for years and were friends, so no issue there. But, even with that, we created a thorough partnership agreement through my attorney. Even family members split sometimes, so we wanted to make sure that if some issue arose that we differed on, the agreement spelled out a solution.

   The final point to the co-author arrangement is that we both had expertise in different areas, which really helped.  Newt was much better than I at interviewing and case studies, while I was a bit more proficient on the industry and research behind branded content and custom publishing (which we call content marketing). Once we completed the table of contents, we could both work on our areas independently, hit key dates, and continue to always more forward.

2. Keep and Adhere to a Production Schedule. To be honest, our goal was to release the book in March of 2008. Didn’t happen. But we were always true to our production schedule. Even though we kept moving the dates back, the important part was that we kept dates. As you may be aware, most people that start writing a book never finish it.  Part of the reason may be that there are no hard dates to keep their eye on. I have a big white board in my office with the key book dates written in blue marker. Every morning I would see those dates.  Makes a difference.
3. Before You Start, Create the Table of Contents. Creating the table of contents for your book is like your business plan.  Understand full well that the original table of contents you create will look nothing like what you end up with, but you need the TOC in order to start and finish the book. I believe we had four or five significantly different TOCs by the time we finished. We even reworked the entire order of the book after our initial reviewers gave their feedback.Here’s the real importance of the table of contents: if you just start writing, how will you know if you are making progress.  If you write 100 pages, is that almost all of the book or 25% of the book? How do you know when to stop and move to the next section? Seems obvious, but I know quite a few people that just started to write with no idea where they were going.  Needless to say, those people still have not completed their book, and they most likely never will.
4. Work the Financials and Publishing Plan from the Beginning. Newt and I had the budget complete, and were well into finalizing the self-publishing details with our partner, Lightning Source, within the first month. We received quotes for the design, the copy writing, knew what our break even point would be, and both agreed to the financial terms. But more than anything, it made the process real and manageable. Writing a book is such a labor-intensive project, that you need as many tangible things as possible to keep you going.
5. Find a Review Team and a Great Copywriter.  The book draft was sent to two people, Mike Azzara and David Drickhamer. They were simply fantastic.  Their feedback uncovered some key gaps in our methodology.  We were able to develop a much better book with their honest expert opinion. Also, our copy writer, Lisa Murton Beets, is one of the best. She really brought it all together. So don’t think that you can write a book completely sheltered from the outside world. Find a team of reviewers and a copy writer that you can trust. Makes all the difference in the world.
6. Expert reviewers help you qualify and pitch the book…use them. We approached a number of marketing and publishing experts in the field for book reviews. This does two things. First, you’ll know if you have a bad book if they don’t want to give you a review. Fortunately, all but one of our reviewers made the date in time for publishing. The team included the father of integrated marketing Don Schultz, bestselling author David Meerman Scott, digital expert and author Rohit Bhargava, Mr. Magazine Samir Husni, leading marketing blogger Greg Verdino, post-advertising expert Simon Kelly, and the copyblogger himself, Brian Clark. Second, the “praise for” section of your book is a wonderful way to market the product. I don’t know about you, but I almost always read the testimonials before purchasing a book.  They’re priceless. We were overwhelmed with their reviews, and will be leveraging them for our marketing efforts.
7. Develop a System to Write during Off-Hours. If you have a real job and are not a full-time author, writing during the day is almost impossible.  Most of my writing was done between 10pm and 2am. Find what time suits you best, but probably not during regular work hours.
8. Tell People You Are Writing a Book.  This keeps you honest. Tell as many people as you can. They will start to ask you how the book is going (especially to see if you are one of those people who never finish a book). Use this as motivation to actually complete your book. There’s nothing better than showing a copy of your book to friends when many of them never thought you could do it. Ha.
9. Determine a Core Selling Strategy (If You Can) Before You Start Writing. Part of our strategy was to sell bulk copies to custom publishers and other organizations who would benefit from giving the book to their customers. Upfront bulk sales to other businesses may be a lot easier for you than selling individual copies.  Using both would be the ultimate goal, but if one falls through you have the other. Minimizes risk.  Find a strategy that makes sense to you so you can get off the ground running. Doing it from the start gives you a good focus on who your core audience should be.
10. Stop Somewhere and Realize that Perfection Is Unattainable. We could have kept writing the book forever if we wanted to.  At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand and publish it.  As soon as you finish it there will be some new research, some new story, or some new perspective that you should have covered.Don’t worry about it…just use it for your next book. 🙂
11. BONUS ADDITION – From Rohit Bhargava in Comments – Start Blogging First. “The benefit of being a blogger before writing a book is that my writing was “in shape” when I started my book. As a result, I feel like I was able to write much faster and make my points much more quickly. For anyone considering writing a book, I would highly suggest starting to blog at the very least so that you can start to flex your writing muscles in a consistent way. And you get the side benefit of starting to build your platform online too.”

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