What does every good marketer really do? He creates relationships. She make friends. When you begin to think of marketing in this way, everything about marketing becomes more fun. Suddenly there is no foreignness, no fear, no feelings of inadequacy. We can all make friends. It's a talent we've had since we were little children. Use it.
The following article is excerpted from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media But Were Afraid to Ask by Hillary J.M. Topper
BusinessWeek Exchange is one of the most inventive, creative ideas to come along in a long time. It takes the idea of user in user-generated content and does something really interesting with it. It brings companies into the fold as users – presenting a unique and potentially controversial way of looking at contributed content. I believe we won’t see the full impact of what BusinessWeek Exchange - and others to come - will have for at least the next year and probably the next 2 to 3 years. I factor blog networks from Fast Company, Wired and the like into this, too.
They’re allowing CEOs (and other, usually C-level company people) to contribute to the dialogue as though they’re reporters under the guise of a blog. Again, authority and influence changes with the title of the person writing. That is, when and if the user - meaning reader - realizes it, which they inevitably will.
-- Jennifer Lindsay, Director of Digital Services and Social Media Evangelist
BusinessWeek magazine has the right approach. Since they know the value of social networking, they created Business Exchange where business people can connect with one another. Interestingly, when logging into Business Exchange, visitors can also view the top news stories on BusinessWeek, the magazine. You can save news stories to your home page along with interesting relevant news articles. This makes the site quite useful and helps BusinessWeek build a loyal following.
Business Exchange is arranged by topics. Topics are sorted by functional areas such as Business Law, Small Business Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. There are also more specific or timely areas such as the fall of Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve bailout of Bear Stearns and even the latest business strategies of Starbucks.
Business Exchange lets you bookmark business news, blog articles, tools and additional online resources to share with others. You can bookmark just about any format of online content including videos, tools and white papers. Readers can also comment on news items submitted.
Upon registering Business Exchange you set up a profile. Those who belong to the social networking site, LinkedIn, can import their LinkedIn profile sparing duplicate efforts of filling out yet another profile.
My 2 Cents via the author
I like that this site suggests people that I may want to include in my network. Through this feature, I actually met a business owner in India, with whom I regularly correspond. My connections are networked to people who post interesting articles attached to their sites.
Business Exchange also has links to Twitter, which is very helpful, especially when I seek to connect with reporters or business development people to grow my business.
I like that the site offers news feeds to interesting articles and blog sites that prompt lively conversations. You can also post an article or a blog entry as well. There are only business people on this site and it is relatively easy to network with people who you may not otherwise meet.
The only problem I see with the site is that it doesn’t have many active participants. It would benefit the site to promote to business owners on Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and Twitter.
John's Comments:
Business Exchange is a great place to connect with other business leaders. My guess is that this site will become more active as business people discover it AND BusinessWeek promotes it.
With a little adaptation, you could create other signs besides church signs. Perhaps something to advertise an upcoming seminar, teleseminar, or other event.
Here's an example I created:
And here's another sign I created to advertise my publishing company's address:
Join John Kremer, Jack Canfield, Arielle Ford, Mike Koenigs, Dan Poynter, Peggy McColl, Penny Sansevieri, Dan Hollings, Rick Frishman, Mari Smith, Joel Elad, Russell Bishop, Mallika Chopra, and many others at this incredible book marketing event.
I don't know how they're going to fit all the good info into 2 short days, but I know they will. Join us at the Catamaran Resort in San Diego on October 10th and October 11th. You'll be glad you did.
To sign up for the 21st Century Book Marketing Event at the beautiful Catamaran Resort in San Diego, go to http://www.mixiv.com/vp/60394/1917
(Save $200 by entering 200offspecial in the coupon code box.)
Here are 21 amazing things you will learn at this event:
1. How to use email bestseller campaigns to sell tons of books. 2. How to design a powerful social media strategy. 3. How to get others to promote you even when you are completely unknown! 4. The biggest mistakes publishers find in book proposals. 5. The types of authors publishers are currently looking for. 6. Why you MUST be on YouTube. 7. The important and vital role blogs play in book promotion. 8. How to find bloggers and contact them (and why!). 9. The most effective ways to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. 10. How to plan and promote speaking events outside bookstores. 11. How to network with bloggers, publicists, and Internet marketers. 12. How to get your target market to follow you on Twitter. 13. Ways to integrate Twitter into the pages of your book. 14. How to use quotations in your tweets - and why! 15. Getting top producers and editors to take your phone calls. 16. How to use Wikipedia to market yourself. 17. How to use the Huffington Post to grow your blog audience and platform (and meet one of their key editors!). 18. How to automate lead generation with social media. 19. How to get #1 rankings in the search engines. 20. How to set up a blog in less than 5 minutes. 21. The importance of platform in marketing books.
And those points don't even count the things John Kremer will be teaching during this 21st Century Book Marketing event.
The following post is a reprint of an email newsletter I received from Mahesh Grossman of the Authors Team and author of Write a Book Without Lifting a Finger:
What do Elvira, The Food Network's Bobby Flay, and comedian Tom Green all have in common? They all started out on public access television.
PBS affiliate KTCA even picked up a program called Mental Engineering that started at SPNN, the public access channel of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
With more than 700 stations throughout the world, public access television is the easiest way for any author to get on the air virtually anywhere. (For a list, go here: http://budurl.com/nzx8). And if you create just one video, it will get multiple plays.
My local community television station, CTV of Santa Cruz (www.CommunityTV.org) will air a half hour or one hour show a minimum of ten times in the first month. If you create something short, they will air it even more often.
And they have three different channels: one for government related programs, one for educational material, and one for general material. So any work that can deemed educational in nature, which would include anything in the self-help or how-to categories, and probably even children’s books, will air on two stations.
The kicker is, they have to air anything of a non-commercial nature that any resident of Santa Cruz County brings to them. All you have to do is fill out a form and make sure your video meets their technical requirements.
And here’s the secret sauce: I can bring them ANY video—by anyone. So you could live in Zimbabwe, send me a video, and if I bring it to CTV, they will air it.
And if you bring my video to your station, at least in the U.S, they will put my show on your channel. So if you can get enough friends, relatives, clients and/or subscribers to bring your video to a community television station, you could literally have a national show.
You could easily create seven shows—or get one show to air in seven cities.
There’s another reason this is important. Video is already the future of the internet. According to Business Week, as far back as last November there were more video views than searches: 12.7 billion viewings as opposed to 12.3 billion searches.
So you should be making videos anyway. Why not use the same videos to air on your local TV station? Plus, your chance of getting a video on the front page of Google is 45 times greater than the odds of getting your text page on the first page of a search.
For this strategy to be fully effective, you need to have a reason for people to come to your Web site after they see your show. You could give away a special report, or fr/ee chapters of your book -- or if you are a children’s book author, you could give away some coloring book pages with images of your main character.
(By the way, this is a killer strategy for children’s book authors. Do a show reading your book, and get it to air everywhere. Or team up with two other children’s book authors for a show, and use everybody’s connections to get the show on the air in as many locations as you possibly can!)
Once you know a show will air, call up the bookstores in the area and make sure they carry your book.
You could even promote a bookstore appearance this way -- then tape your appearance at the bookstore and put that on television. Some of these shows air for years—which could mean continuous sales for your book anywhere your show is on.
And if you dream of getting your own TV show, community access could be a good beginning. If you make the leap to a major cable or broadcast show, you wouldn’t be the first.
As a publicist once said to me, “Things lead to things.”
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Check out Mahesh Grossman's blog at http://www.authorsmbablog.com. You can also sign up for his free e-newsletter there.
Save $300 by joining the Ten Million Eyeballs self-learning course now. This Ten Million Eyeballs course teaches anyone how to get millions of eyeballs (that's impressions) via the Internet in the next two years. Learn the four major ways to reach millions of people via the Internet. You'll learn:
* How, why, and when to give things away free on the Internet
* How to organize and run an Amazon bestseller campaign that actually sells books
* How to create a viral video that gets millions of views, not tens or hundreds of views (Note: the average book trailer is seen by 65 people)
* How to develop a viral website that people come back to again and again - and do all the work for you!
* How to create effective selling relationships with major websites
* 35 ways to profit from the Internet. Book sales are just one of those ways. You can multiply your income by turning your book into a variety of products and services.
At the very beginning of this year, Jason Sadler started an interesting experiment: I Wear Your Shirt, a project where every day, Jason would wear one shirt from one company per day and post his image on YouTube, Twitter, Ustream, and more. In essence, he would be a walking, talking billboard.
He also had an intriguing price structure: He only charged $1 for a company to have him wear its apparel on January 1st, $2 on the 2nd, etc. until December 31st, where the price would be $365. While each amount isn't that big, it added up. So did the attention.
The result: He sold out every day and will make over $70,000 this year alone ($66,795 + other contests and deals). Jason just launched his 2010 calendar, and in less than 24 hours, he sold 115+ days.
2. Pay me (John Kremer) $1,000 and provide me with access to your Twitter account, and I will add 5,000 new followers to your Twitter profile in the next four weeks. Note: This offer is only good for authors who have fewer than 5,000 current followers on Twitter. If you'd like to take advantage of this offer, email JohnKremer@BookMarket.com.
I am proud of all of you for taking the first choice above. I offered the second option because I was told that many people wanted hands-on help to follow my simply guidelines in the free Twitter Mania Manual.
Well, no one took me up on that offer. Note: It was a legitimate offer. I would have helped any author to get legitimate, targeted, interested, non-spamming followers -- 5,000 people who would have had a real and legitimate interest in the author's work.
I am glad that all of you took the first option, because Twitter is all about building real relationships. And those are always better to build yourself rather than pay someone money to do it for you.
If you would like my guidance and feedback while you do it yourself, I'd be happy to help. For that service -- one month of Twitter feedback -- the fee is only $200. But you can do it well for yourself simply by reading and following the advice in the free Twitter Mania Manual. Download for free at http://www.bookmarket.com/50WaystoTweet.htm
If you want my feedback, email JohnKremer@BookMarket.com or call 575-751-3398. Again, the fee is only $200. A bargain at that price.
Book Marketing Expert John Kremer is the author of many books including 1001 Ways to Market Your Books,
The Do-It-Yourself Book Publicity Kit, and many other titles. He also developed the New York Times Bestseller Program to help
authors become bestselling book authors and the Ten Million Eyeballs program on Internet marketing.
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