How to market an eBook?

I haven’t written an ebook myself, although I’m working on it. But I recently got a question from Viola Olah asking: Do you know of good avenues to market your e-book? In this post I will talk about ebook marketing and ways to market your ebook.

So you’ve written an ebook. Congratulations! It’s most likely going to be a PDF file that you now have to put in front of those that are looking for it. Here’s a number of things you can do to market your ebook.

Facebook tactics to keep you on the site

Facebook has been updating things recently. Left-hand sidebar was updated with new list management features in response to Google Circles. Right-hand floating sidebar got status updates at the top. The pop bar is now following you as you scroll through the page. Another one of Facebook tactics is reducing the number of email notifications you get.

How to use Twitter? Client training preps

I’m preparing for a client training session. The client manufactures custom furniture in Perm, Russia. My task is to train marketing coordinators on how to use Twitter and the business and marketing value of it. The client already has some understanding of Twitter, but he’s skeptical. The following questions are coming from this client:

Social media for start-ups in Calgary. Event in review.

Earlier this week I attended a great social media meetup in Calgary organized by the Podium Ventures team. The room was full of people who came to hear Cameron Chell of Business Instincts and Tish Bell of BizBoxTV speak about ways start-up businesses can use social media. Here I’d like to summarize some of the key thoughts and discussion points from the eventing.

Cameron started with a well-laid out presentation on key differences between Start-ups 1.0 and Start-ups 2.0. Here’s the flavour:

• Idea vs. Execution: ideas were more important than the execution. With social media it’s the other way around. Your success depends on how well you can execute.
• Secret vs. Live: before social media it was important to keep your idea to yourself as something precious, so that others don’t steal it. With social media, everybody is able to monitor everybody and everything and know of things in an instant. As a result execution AND acting NOW becomes paramount.
• Exclusivity vs. Participation: before the age of social media only the elite few had an opportunity to build great things. If you belonged to a closed group of people in power you could make it. Today, the more people you get to participate openly, the faster your product succeeds or fails (in this case, failure is great).

Something that was cool and interesting was Cameron’s comment “#1 contributor to killing a start-up is passion (ego) of the owner, you need to let it go”. In other words “be passionate about WHY and let your customers determine HOW”.

Tish Bell took over from Cameron with a series of exciting slides and here’s a summary of key points:

• Marketing is no longer about making stuff but about telling stories.
• Research shows that people WANT to connect with brands. For example, “liking” the brand page on Facebook. It gives people a sense of belonging to something great.
• It’s important to monitor the conversations on Twitter / Facebook / etc. This will give you a better idea of what people are looking for and what they’re happy / unhappy about.
• Keep it sharable and significant – the new KISS method for social media.
• In your social media spills on Twitter and elsewhere be a human being, not human doing. Let’s make it clear once and for all that people don’t generally care how you do it in the bathroom and what you have for lunch.
• Although video is the most engaging form of communications online, not all videos are created equal. Ensure your videos are authentic, speaking to the right audience honestly and openly.
• A cool quote from Gary Vaynerchuk: “If content is king, community if God”.

There and other great points are available in the presentation below. Thanks a lot to Chett at Business Instincts for the deck!

For those who missed the event missed out on a great Q and A that followed the presentations. Here’s a few great discussion points:

• Connecting social media profiles (automating posting to multiple social media profiles). Tish Bell: Be careful with that, consider different audiences on different networks. Twitter and Facebook lingo differ.
• How do you plan social media if it’s so fluid and a start-up owner should be flexible? Cameron Chell: Have a plan and be ready to change as a reaction to change in your key metrics. Planning is still crucial.
• To time or not to time (on scheduling posts with tools like Hoot Suite). Some things can be timed, some can’t. There’s multiple ways to engage in social media, here’s a relevant article on 5 ways to stand out on Twitter. So, use multiple engagement tactics for better results.
• How do you use social media in B2B? Cameron Chell: the B2B misconception is that social media is for selling, so we end up looking for people that will buy from us. Cameron uses social media as a way to engage with people beyond selling, on personal level (as a result, relationships become deeper). He uses it to get feedback and monitor industry players and trends.
• If someone follows you on Twitter, how do you respond? Tish Bell: thank the person, be open, look a person up, see what they’re doing, reply with a questions or recommendation (don’t sell your stuff here though).
• What do you say in response to “I tried Twitter and it’s dumb”? Robert Christianson, one of the attendees suggested starting by conducting a search at Search.Twitter.com that is relevant to your business. This will allow you to see the chatter that’s going on around the topic of interest. Tish Bell: Look up your competitors, they are probably using social media.

I’m pretty sure I missed a few gems, but I hope you add things in comments to this review. Thanks a bunch to organizers, participants and Boom Town for hosing us.

Social media marketing and the tip of the iceberg

Since the election campaign last year Jo Williams and I have been working on a few social media projects together. One of the biggest thing we agree on is that social media as presented by the main stream is just a top of the iceberg. There’s a lot more that goes into a successful social media marketing initiative than just having the profiles setup. Jo is amazing at locating and sharing great content on social media marketing. Here’s one of her latest shares from Social Media Examiner:

Social media and elections in Calgary, lessons learned.

Last night I participated in a panel discussion at Election Dissection by Third Tuesday Calgary. The event was put together by Doug Lacombe and Troy Wason and took place at Melrose Cafe and Bar. Over 80 people had a chance to listen to a panel of 3 (DJ Kelly, Stephen Carter and Alex Zagoumenov) and engage in a few great discussions. In this post I’d like to share a few points I made last night. I hope this post is also useful for those that didn’t have a chance to make it last night.

My campaign story

• I was introduced into the campaign by Jo Williams of NotYourAverageJo.com. Jo had a friend “on the inside” who needed social media people.
• Became part of communications team lead by Lois Lockwood of Scout Communications, the agency of record for Barb Higgins’ campaign.
• Worked closely with Shannon Larkins of BlackCoffee Communications, the media relations person for Barb Higgins campaign for Mayor.
• Responsible for building and managing the digital communications platform: social media monitoring, website maintenance, SEO, paid search, email campaigns, social profiles support and online community outreach.

What follows is a list of 7 lessons I learned going through this campaign. The idea here is NOT to blame or make excuses. I want to make sure that the lessons I learned in this campaign can be applied to any business.

7 lessons learned through the campaign

1. Start early. Looking at this election starting 6 months in advance is not a bad idea. It’s important to understand that you can’t build a community of likeminded people at once. And without a community of committed users a product is nothing.
2. Have a strong product. As many of the attendees tweeted last night, if a product is not complete, it doesn’t matter how much money you put into advertising this product. My point is that with time and the right team anybody can be developed into a great candidate / product.
3. Have a strong message. Is your message worth sharing. I can tell you from experience that 7 platform points do not build a strong message that’s worth sharing. Also, ensure that once you have a strong message, you provide tools like AddToAny or ShareThis that simplify sharing.
4. Plan, plan, plan. Some will say that with social media it’s impossible to plan because you don’t have control over it (control is with the audience). However, you should be able to know the product, audience and the message, the competition and the key players. Once these are clear, you should be able to anticipate a number of outcomes and plan to execute on.
5. Know your audience. Speak their  language. Be where they are. According to Stephen Carter, Twitter was not the primary choice to start the campaign. Instead they started with CalgaryPuck and Beyond forums where Calgarians with strong opinions live.
6. Work with your audience. It’s no longer us (selling) versus them (buying). Today, you should be in business of creating fans and empowering them to speak for your product on your behalf. You will probably start with a small group of customers (your family, circle of close friends, small group of customers). Work with these groups, educate them, provide with updates, make it easy for them to share with their networks.
7. Grow from within. Grow by starting with audiences that are close to you, educate them on how to share. And if your message is resonating with them, they will spread it. Running multiple accounts and tricking the system does not work in the long run. Social media is not a broadcasting channel.

I’m proud that I had a chance to be on the team and met so many wonderful people both inside the campaign and outside. Barb was a strong candidate and would have had a huge chance of winning if we all started earlier. A stronger campaign won. And I’m eager to continue learning and sharing what I know with you!

Social media and politics. A week of events in Calgary.

As some of you may know earlier this year (August 2010) I got on Barb Higgins’ team as a digital communications guy. The next 2.5 months were months full of interesting and unforgettable experiences. It was my first political campaigning experience. It was tough but I learned a lot. The elections took place on October 18th, 2010 and Barb came in 3rd with a little over 90k votes.

As you probably know, I like sharing things and I’d love to share what I learned through this campaign with you both here and and at events across Calgary. This week appears to be the most active one since the election to discuss social media and politics at public events. There’s 2 events I’m speaking at this week: Election Dissection by Third Tuesday Calgary and Online Marketing in Politics by Calgary SEO and Online Marketing Meetup groups.

Election Dissection: The role of social media in Election 2010 Calgary

There’s no question social media came to life for the first time in a Calgary civic election this fall. The question is, what role did it play in the final outcome? Did tweets and posts elect our new mayor as many claim? Or was it a case of a good mix of strategy and all forms of media?

Four of Calgary’s finest politicos, pundits, and digerati will come together in what is sure to be a lively panel discussion "Election Dissection". Troy Wason will moderate, joined by panelists Stephen Carter, DJ Kelly, and Alexander Zagoumenov.

Online Marketing in Politics: tools used, results achieved, best practices

In case you slept through October, there was a landmark election that was more exciting than any municipal election I can remember. Regardless of who won, the exciting part for many of us marketing geeks was how much of the race was run using social media and online marketing techniques.

Alexander Zagoumenov will be giving his insight on Online Marketing in the political arena. He was hired to handle Barb Higgins’ social media campaign, and can now share with the Meetup Group his experience.

I really hope you have a chance to come and support me and my colleagues as we discuss what the future holds for the use of social technologies in political campaigning.