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.

Is your ebook search engine friendly?

Make sure your PDF is optimized for search engines. Google indexes PDF files and often displays PDF files for relevant terms in SERPs. Just as any other page PDFs have meta fields. Make sure those fields are complete with descriptive meta that includes your target terms. Read more on this in my SEO for PDFs article.

Is it easy to locate by people and search engines?

Depending on how you want to distribute the book (free or for email address collection) you will host your PDF file on your server. If you’re giving it out for free, make sure it’s easily accessible on your website by both people and search engines. For people, make a call-out / banner in your site’s  sidebar to show you’ve got the book. For search engines, put the file into an easy to understand site directory (i.e. /files/your-marketing-ebook.pdf).

Is your ebook a part of ebook directories?

There are numerous ebook directories on the web that collect and help distribute ebooks. Make sure your ebook is part of those directories (full ebook if you share for free OR partial sample if you want to sell it or get people’s email addresses for it). For example you can create an account and ebook with Scribd or SlideShare (I’m pretty sure they do PDFs and ebooks too).

Will your reader be able to read your ebook?

Think about how people will view your ebook. For example, they may use Abode Digital Edition or a simple PDF reader like Adobe Reader. There are other ways to look at ebooks (iPad for example), but make sure your ebook is built for those devices / software solutions and the reader has great experience reading your ebook. For example, make sure that a proper table of contents is created.

In many ways ebook marketing should be very similar to marketing any other page on your website. These are some of the common creative ways to market things online:

1. Find a forum on the topic of your ebook and engage in conversations, mentioning your ebook every once in a while
2. Get a list of blogs on the topic, follow the blog, join the conversations in the comments to posts
3. Distribute parts of your ebook through article directories. Sneak preview of a chapter is free.
4. Distribute your ebook through ebook directories. Start with a list of free ebook directories. Check the eBook Freeway too.
5. Make your ebook a part of your online persona, spread the info across all your social media properties.
6. Get your book reviewed by a blog in your industry. Make sure your ebook is included in a list of resources on other people’s sites. Here’s a great example from Marketo.

I’m sure you’ll be able to find more strategies by searching Google for [ebook marketing strategies] or even [creative ebook marketing strategies]. But whatever you do, make sure you keep in mind these things: your product (what you sell, and why you sell it), your audience (who they are and why they would want to get you ebook) and places where you audience is online (what sites, blogs, forums, communities they frequent).

Marketing events in Calgary this fall 2011

It’s been a few days since my last post. It’s just been super busy lately and I haven’t had a chance to put my head together around a valuable posts until now (I hope ;). As many of you, I’m subscribed to a few email lists of organizations that create marketing events in Calgary and area. This time I wanted to share a few upcoming ones as well as provide you with a couple of great resources to track marketing events in Calgary.

Upcoming marketing events in Calgary

The main reason I share these is that I met the most amazing people attending and helping organize marketing events volunteering with various organizations. And if you happen to start in the industry, I highly recommend you both attend and help organize and run events in your area.

Third Tuesday Calgary (TTyyc) is having Linkedin over

Third Tuesday Calgary is one of my favourite organizations run by Doug Lacombe, the social media authority in Calgary and Canada. Doug and his team bring great marketing and social media speakers to Calgary. Their next event will feature people from Linkedin talking about managing your professional brand. Learn more about and RSVP to this marketing event.

Digital Alberta is launching its events season

Digital Alberta is a dynamic industry organization that runs events and helps companies connect across Alberta. Their events are more technology focused but they also get a great marketing crowd. I used to volunteer for Digital Alberta and very proud of it. Check the details of their season launch party.

Calgary Marketing Association talks about DM for Today

Calgary Marketing Association (CMAcalgary) runs a number of high-profile marketing events during their events season. They bring in awesome speakers and often join forces with Digital Alberta. I’ve been to a couple of events while being a part of DA. This time they are bringing Kathy Levinski, Director at OrangeDoor Direct to talk about direct marketing.

The Art of… is bringing … leadership to Calgary

The Art of… is a Canada-wide events management organization. They organize huge events in major cities across the country. Their marketing events are a bit pricey but they showcase best-selling authors and gurus from all over North America. Check their November event details on The Art of Leadership.

Marketing events sites in Calgary

It’s difficult at times to keep up to speed with events in your area but luckily there are those who help us stay up to speed on what’s happening. And without further ado, my favourite site and one of my favourite social media professionals and marketers in Calgary…

Shannon Bowen-Kelsick (sbk), Calgary’s marketing events keymaster

Shannon has been doing an amazing job keeping track of marketing events pulse in Calgary. Her events list is always up to date and I’d highly recommend connecting with her for marketing and social media matters. I’d also like to ask you to link back to Shannon’s list and site from your own blog. This will reward her efforts (link juice!), and this is the minimum we can do to thank her for the great job she’s done. Check Shannon’s list on her marketing events page.

Look out for Marketing Events Calgary .com

It’s a new initiative and at this point way weaker than the resource Shannon is developing. This website was developed to centralize marketing events information in Calgary. Looks like the website is supported by a few organizations with great people and powers to develop this website into a dynamic marketing events calendar for Calgary and area. Time will tell.

I hope this post is useful for those marketing veterans who want to keep track of marketing events in Calgary as well as those who just start in the industry and want to hand out with good people. Leave a comment or two in the reply and, as always, I appreciate shares and likes and +1s, of course, if you liked the article.

Articles on digital media business

Another week went by fast. I’m still reading “who’s got your back” by Keith Ferazzi. Also here is a few articles on the business of digital media I wanted to share with you. This time I wanted to focus on transitioning of traditional media companies into the digital age.

Media business at crossroads as deals pick up

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The growing influence of the Web to distribute news, video and other content, combined with the lingering economic malaise, have left many media executives and investors uncertain about where to make their next bets. Read the entire article at Reuters.com

Newspaper brands that manage the transition to digital models can thrive

“Newspapers are dying.” Lately, that’s the constant, gloomy chorus. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. Certainly, the newspaper industry faces significant challenges, including a tough economy and the mass migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet. But newspaper brands that successfully transition to digital models can thrive — without giving up their streamlined print products. Read the entire article at Reuters.com

Tough times turning newspaper lenders into owners

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Newspaper headlines have skewered money lenders for dubious decisions that stoked the recession. Now the financiers are starting to headline newspapers in a new way – as the owners.

These newspaper novices are taking control through bankruptcy proceedings and giving few clues about their turnaround plans. Their decisions will be crucial because this new age of media ownership is unfolding at a time that could make or break some of the largest publications. Read the entire article at Associated Press

New Yahoo! Anthem ad: it starts with you.

I would not say that I’m a huge Yahoo! fan but I do respect what the company does to get the image and employees up there. I would neither say that this is the best advertising spot I’ve seen, but… it’s well produced and talks about YOU as the focus of the campaign, which is great in a lot of the cases.

Here are some of the themes I picked up in this ad: colour, kids, diversity, international, friends, beyond the limits, play, love, flirt, imagine, dance, all over the globe. The ad is 1 min long and it’s unlikely that it’s going to be on network TV. I’m thinking that the spot was initially produced for the award shows as well as for online distribution.

Great advertising campaigns: Dove

Dove Campaign for Beauty is one of my personal favourites done by Ogilvy & Mather, also one of my most admired agencies. I thnk they were one of the first hugely successful viral campaigns mainly due to its extreme masnifesto agains main stream culture. Great campaign overall, awesome creative work and music. I wonder where the music is coming from.

Here’s what I got from the video details on youtube.com. Director Tim Piper Ogilvy, Yael Staav (soft citizen). Soho – post production, Rogue – editing, Vapor music – sound and mixing, Gabor Jurina – photography, Make-up – Diana Carreiro, music – Flashbulb and Vapor. Ogilvy creative team: T Piper & M Kirkland. Thanks Dennis Lewis and Malcolm Poynton for starting it and Ogilvy Toronto and New York for expanding it. Go Dove. Great brand. Great people. Just want to recognize the people once again!

Although it’s been some time since this campaign was released, there’s still a great deal of SEO that’s being relevant. Comparing to the Sony Bravia Balls campaign, this one, when searched on google, brings up the actual websites for this campaign as a first listing. Although the URL is clightly longer than usual, it was been displayed prominently through carious media associated with this campaign.

Great concept, great execution. SEO, SEM and viral components are very strong. Following this commercial there were a number of others like this:

This on DailyMotion.com:

As well as a few that were more of a humour play on the initial Campaign for Real Beauty:

And this one:

Great advertising campaigns: Sony Bravia Balls

Above is another great commercial. I will not be able to comment on the contents of the integrated marketing campaign as it was awhile ago. However, the commercial is amazing. I can definitely say that there was a huge viral component involved but not the SEO of the campaign. I just searched for sonybravia on google and got the youtube and ebay links in the related searches. This leads me to think that although there as a strong viral component, SEO and drive to website was slightly weaker.

Learning

• Great colour play. Beautiful production. Feel free to read some notes on rendering here: http://vimeo.com/3703357
• Great sound and motion play! Awesome track “heartbeats” by Jose Gonzalez.
• Again, advertising is connected to the product key selling points: colourful, realistic, hi-def.
• Because of the power of song within the audio-visual balance, Jose Gonzalez got extreme recognition. This is a great example of promoting musical talent. Event today, I’m searching google and finding a lot of curious questions from people about who this guy is. Great move!

Great advertising campaigns: Pfizer

It’s not that often that you run into a great commercial. This one from Pfizer shocks even more: well made, very emotional and the craziest part it’s from a pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The campaign is called “More than Medication”.

The site where all traffic drives is http://www.morethanmedication.ca. The site engages with useful information both covering the viral component of the campaign and giving users valuable articles and communication tools around health and wellness theme.

The campaign is backed up by strong SEO and SEM efforts targeting “health and wellness” searchers. On top of targeting health and wellness audience in Canada, the campaign is very strong as viral. People want share it with their friends. I’m still looking for the agency responsible for this campaign. I will update the post once I find it. Help will be much appreciated.

Learning

• Advertising / marketing campaigns touch several different media of delivering information.
• Advertising is no longer a one way communication, there has to be feedback.
• Advertising is no longer on its own, it has to go in tandem with business model.
• The message here is composed of sound, colour contrast and the concept.
• Agencies are becoming ever more creative with the ways to communicate the message. For example, who would have ever known that Pfizer (medication) will start talking about More Than Medication. The message touches of very personal strings of the audience. Great campaign.
• This particular video uses great sounds / feelings transition within the commercial.
• Great play on colours too!