Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a solopreneur or small to mid-size business, you might have determined that a great way to find customers is by sharing your expertise on your website, blog and other sites used by your customers.  If you’re not on the expertise-sharing bandwagon yet, you may be interested in learning more.

In today’s post we’ll be showing you a new technique for sharing your expertise in order to attract new prospects. Our topic is eBooks and they are emerging as an ideal platform for showcasing your business expertise and how-to information.  Self-publishing an eBook  combines the cost-effectiveness of creating an electronic publication with the authority-building benefits of traditional book publishing.

If you’ll try this new eBook technique, you’ll avoid missing out on a new, expanding source of prospects.  More importantly, being a published author positions you at a different level.  A book is a bigger business card!

And if you’ll adopt this new eBook idea for sharing your expertise, you’ll increase awareness about your capabilities with a new set of eBook readers (prospects) that will help you grow your business.

What You’ll Get

Here’s what you’re going to get if you use the new approach we’re about to show you:

• A new cost-effective way to showcase your expertise (content)
• A new lead generation tool
• The ability to repurpose customer-education information from your website and files by placing it in a new channel where prospects can find it
• An innovative way to demonstrate your industry expertise (buyers today want to hire, or buy, from experts)

Meet Sellbox.com

If you think that this is something that can help you grow your business, you’re probably thinking, “How can I get started?”  so let me introduce you to Sellbox and its founder, David Wogahn.

Sellbox.com is an eBook agency and David is going to share some insights about getting your business better known by publishing an eBook.   David Wogahn is an eBook and digital media publishing expert, public speaker, author, and my friend.

He’s sharing some ideas here for how you can add eBook publishing and distribution to your marketing campaigns.  You can learn more about David here or follow him on Twitter @Wogahn.

Are eBooks Popular with My Customers?

Here’s an interesting statistic from emarketer about the number of adults in the US that are using electronic devices (Kindles, iPads, etc.) to read digital books.  You can see that reading books created in digital format (eBooks)on electronic readers or laptops is a growing trend.

Source: emarketer

Your Expertise Counts

In general, in order to establish your business as an industry expert, you’ll want to share your how-to information using multiple methods.  That way, it’s easier for like-minded prospects searching online to find out about your business, experience and knowledge.  That usually means using your content-rich website, publishing an e-newsletter, creating and posting free reports, white papers, instructional videos, how-to guides and more.

eBook Definition

For our purposes, an eBook is a book that is created and prepared specifically for reading on electronic devices, such as Kindle and iPad.  There are also eReader software apps for PCs, Macs and Smartphones (Android, iPhone, etc.) that allow you to read the same eBook.  An eBook is formatted differently than a PDF file, making it easier to read on new electronic reading devices.

So now we’re going to ask David some questions:

Small Company, Big Image: How does publishing an eBook fit into the marketing campaigns for entrepreneurs and small to midsize businesses?   

 David Woghan: For consulting firms, service providers, and other businesses, publishing a book in your area of expertise is a powerful marketing tool. A book demonstrates deep knowledge and a commitment to communicating that information.  A traditional book positions the company and the author as an industry thought leader.  It also implies demand for the information presented in the book.

In other words, experts write books and customers want to hire experts.

But the term “eBook” is evolving these days with the advent of reading devices like the Kindle and iPad. It used to be that someone could create a Word document or PowerPoint, save it as a PDF, and call that an eBook. You can still do that but I think the average consumer is more inclined to think of an eBook as being more substantial than a file with five or ten 8.5” x 11” pages.

SCBI: What is the difference between publishing the eBook as a PDF vs. Kindle or Nook?

David: This is a great question Cynthia. While the PDF is easy and free to create, and you can read it on virtually any device, I think there are some compelling reasons for publishing in the Kindle format and if possible, ePub which is viewable on Nook.

Kindle has the largest market share by far so we’ll use that to illustrate the advantages. (By the way, Amazon provides free software that allows you to read a Kindle book on any Apple device, a PC, Android devices and several Blackberry models.)

• Your name and information will be available on Amazon’s website, an entirely different audience than you are probably reaching now. Think of it as another form of search engine optimization. Leading Internet marketing companies like Hubspot and MarketingSherpa are doing this today.

• You can generate income from eBook sales. Items sold for between $2.99 and $9.99 receive a 70% royalty. Ars Technica (a 10-year old Information Technology news site) published their review of the Apple Lion operating system upgrade on their website for free. But they also created a Kindle version that they sold for $4.99. They reported sales of 3,000 copies in 24 hours netting themselves $10,500 ($4.99 x 3,000 x 70%) for information that is essentially free online.

• I think the benefits from social sharing could be huge for small business. When a potential customer reads a passage they like that they can instantly share that passage on Twitter and Facebook. This has the effect of spreading your message to an even wider audience than the person who first bought your eBook.

• Reader convenience is going to increase in importance as more people read on mobile devices. Readers like the ability to annotate, highlight, share and sync their reading across multiple devices (again, Ars Technica is proof). One last point: you don’t have to sell it in the Amazon store. Companies like email service provider MailChimp offer their free guides in the three key formats of PDF, mobi (Kindle) and ePub.

Note: (ePub is used by companies that manufacture eBook readers and also sell eBooks.  Examples are Nook, Apple, Sony and Kobo).

SCBI: What makes a good eBook? Since we already have a website and maybe even a company blog can we draw material from these sources?

David: I think what you are asking is whether your readers can repurpose existing content into a new form. Absolutely. I call it “brand publishing” when something is published by the organization to essentially promote the organization.

I can share three tips for entrepreneurs and businesses thinking about brand publishing using an eBook:

Educate, don’t sell. Your eBook should not be a marketing piece but something that truly benefits the reader. Give the reader actionable advice that does not require them to call you or buy something from you.

Price it appropriately. Put yourself in their shoes as the buyer as you think about the value of your eBook. Also compare what you are selling to similar items in the Amazon store. Timely, relevant, detailed, insightful information is more valuable than freely available information that everyone already has.

Deliver quality. Invest in an attractive cover, write a detailed and accurate description, hire an editor and format it correctly. The final product is a reflection on you and your business. (You can find more information on these steps in the links provided below.)

Keep in mind that you don’t have to sell your eBook on Amazon. Just like MailChimp you can offer the file free as a download. One benefit of this approach is that your eBook won’t necessarily be held to as high a standard as it would be if you were charging people. Expectations tend to be lower for things that are free.

SCBI: Could you suggest some steps that entrepreneurs and businesses can take to get started with eBook self-publishing?

David: Sure, here are four key steps:

Step 1.  Determine what problem-solving topic your book will address. Ideally you already have some or most of the content written. The key is to have content that benefits your reader first and foremost.

Step 2.  Visit Amazon.com and/or bookstores and look for books similar to what you have in mind. How does yours differ? Can you offer new insights?

Step 3.  Get your material in good order; edit it and design a cover. Research the eBook publishing resources listed below for more details.

Step 4.  Before you hit that publish button I suggest you outline a basic marketing campaign. A press release, promotion on social networks, and telling everyone you know should be at the top of the list.

SCBI: Can you share some eBook publishing resources?

David:  Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing website is loaded with free information, and here is a link to the Barnes & Noble publishing platform called Pubit.

We also offer a number of free resources on sellbox.com. In addition to our blog posts we have created a guide to Amazon publisher services and a Kindle publishing checklist.

And visit the Calendar page on my website for upcoming presentations. I hold a monthly Kindle “meetup” and I’ll be conducting a roundtable on eBook publishing for businesses on October 6^th here in San Diego.

Thanks Cynthia, this has been fun. I hope your readers got a few good ideas.

SCBI:  Thanks, David for the ideas and for the links to resources!  If you have eBook publishing questions, post them in the comments and David will give you additional ideas.

Are you a small business owner who’d like to win a year of help in your marketing and finding new customers efforts?  If so, click over to Project Rev 2012 and check out the details of the second annual ‘small business marketing advisors and more’ contest sponsored by Deluxe.  Be sure to do so soon, the project is open for applications until Sept. 30, 2011.

Business owners like Scot Waggoner, of w. b. builders, a recent Project Rev winner had this to say about his experience with brand building and more:

With little to no marketing, we have successfully established our business as a premier remodeler. But in the economic downturn, I realized that marketing was needed to be sure that our business was more visible to those seeking upscale building or remodeling. With Julie, my Deluxe advisor, we planned a to raise our company’s brand image. I worked with Deluxe to create professional marketing collateral, apparel and promotional items.

It was showcased when we were recently awarded ‘Contractor of the Year’ in two categories by the Minnesota Chapter of National Association of Remodeler’s Industry (NARI). I now understand where we are, who our constituents are, and the importance of getting the brand out there.

I learned about the project when a nice public relations person contacted me with the info.  Then, Diane Presser, another recent Project Rev winner was kind enough to give me an interview about what she learned about keeping her website updated and using offline networking to get her business better known.  Read my post about Diane, here.

If you’re intrigued about beefing up your small business marketing, and want to apply to win, check out the link here to apply.  Maybe you know a small business that could benefit from winning a year of professional marketing advisors and some great marketing services?

Or, just check out the interesting blog posts here with marketing lessons learned by the business owners that participated.

Blogging for your business is a different animal than most traditional marketing tactics.   A successful business blog is not a marketing campaign that has a start and stop point.  Business blogging is not a glitzy promotion that you can completely outsource to an agency.

So if you’re a beginner, here are the five success factors that I think will make your business blog launch a smooth one.

Success factor #1: Think of your business blog and its content as an extension of your daily conversations with customers and prospects.

Business owners have told me (countless times) that blogging isn’t for them because… “I’m not a writer!”

You don’t have to become a book author or even a reporter in order to blog for your business.  You’re creating your business blog because you want to share your industry experience, expertise and knowledge with like-minded people.  Much like you do today in the course of running your company.

A business blog is a lot like an “online conversation”.  When you start out with a new blog, the conversation will be one-sided.  You’re sharing valuable, useful, informative, interesting, timely information—content—with your prospects and customers.

You’ll be having similar “conversations” on your business blog that you typically have in person with prospects and customers.  When you think about topics for your blog content, you’ll be using the same sorts of topics that you discuss with your prospects and buyers over the phone, at networking events, trade shows and during face-to-face meetings.  (Of course, with the exception of sharing proprietary information.)

Success factor #2: Develop a few basic goals for your business blog.

Your blog goals should be in support of your business goals.  Create a brief strategy or a plan for what you’d like your business blog to accomplish.  A basic 1-2 page blog plan is sufficient.  Start by identifying the top goals you’d like your business blog to achieve.  Some ideal business blog goals are:

-  To build your list of prospects and find new customers by increasing the number of qualified visitors to your website.  A constant supply of fresh, accurate, and helpful content will help you increase your website visitors.

- To position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.  If your company isn’t yet well known in your industry, you can use your blog to change that.    Demonstrate your leadership, experience and vision by taking a stand on industry issues.  Drive the larger discussion on emerging issues for your industry, by writing on topics that cause people to think differently.

- To strengthen your company’s brand and your personal brand by demonstrating your problem solving expertise.  You can accomplish this by creating one-of-a-kind, useful how-to blog articles (blog posts).  Create content that shares insider tips about accomplishing goals that your prospects may not be familiar with.  Create content explaining how to expedite pesky tasks relevant to your products and services.

Success factor #3: Prepare a killer blog content plan.

List your customers’ top problems and goals.  The issues that you get the most excited about discussing when talking with your customers in person.  These are the topics that you’ll be most excited to use for creating content.   Go for the toughest problems in your industry.

The foundation of a successful business blog really is the quality of your content. You’ll want blog content that is valuable to your specific customers and prospects.   Scope out your competitors’ blog or website content.  Up your game!  Create content about topics they’re missing.  Go deeper. Go bigger.  Create content that’s in a series for an issue facing your customers and prospects.

Success factor #4: Put together a blogging operational game plan that fits your business, your lifestyle and your resources.

One of the huge benefits of adding a blog to your business website is that you can update the blog (and so your website) with fresh content weekly. Or as often as you like.  And you don’t need a website developer.  Be sure to assign team members, and yourself, to blog content creation tasks.

After the blogging system is installed on your website, adding new content is really about as easy as using Microsoft Word, Google pages or other word processing program.

Success factor #5. Stay involved with executing your business blog plan.

Completely outsourcing your business blog development and ongoing content isn’t a good idea.  Even if you hire outside writers, it’s a mistake to not remain involved just as you would with any other business initiative to grow your company.   It’s your company and your reputation is online and on-the-line.  Treat your business blog just as you would any other strategic initiative.

Valuable Content is a Must

If your customers find your business using the Internet, then the content on your business website and your company blog are crucial.  It’s tough to maintain your online brand, your online identity and to “be found” when your customers are searching without an ongoing supply of fresh content.

Following the above success factors when putting together a blogging game plan will help you whether you’re thinking about adding a business blog or are considering sprucing up your current business blog.

The first steps really aren’t about which blogging software to use.  The first steps are how well does your website or blog content engage the Web searcher that lands on your website or blog?  How well will you be remembered by your future customers?

image: iStock

I love social media marketing success stories about small businesses and startups operating on a tiny budget.  If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur looking to create awareness, earn interest and actually win paying customers on a budget, blogger Mary Hall’s recent interview with the founder of GoGo Gear is a must-read.

Marketing expert Mary Hall published a valuable, how-she-did-it interview for anyone starting a new company or looking for a marketing tactic that won’t break your budget.

Mary Hall spoke with Arlene Battishill, founder of GoGo Gear, a new company making stylish and protective riding gear for women motorcycle riders.

This interview is a rich case study for small businesses and startups in all industries because it provides insightful detail about the founder Arlene’s thought process.  You can peek into her personal approach as she  shared steps to building her new brand using social media and no budget.

Social Media Was New to Founder
Arlene Battishill acknowledges that she didn’t know a lot about social media.   Importantly, she did deeply understand GoGo Gear’s target customers and her new company’s mission to fill a gap in the market.  This clarity helped considerably.

She knew that her future customers, women motorcycle and scooter riders, did not believe that riding apparel could be both stylish and safe (padded for protection in case of falls).   Why?  Because as a motorcycle rider herself, she couldn’t find any protective riding jackets that were also fashionable.

Arlene kept the skepticism in mind when she began her Twitter account @LAScooterGirls three months before launching the company’s finished website and new riding apparel line.

Arlene used a business approach to Twitter.  She searched for terms that pointed to her potential customers on Twitter (“motorcycle” or “scooter”) and began following them.  She crafted a clear Twitter bio that explained exactly what the company does. In her words, “… we only have only one  click to gain their interest.”

Seth Godin, visionary author of global bestselling books like Purple Cow and Tribes, would say, GoGoGear set out to appeal to only those folks that shared their worldview:  Women motorcycle and scooter enthusiasts who want to wear stylish jackets while riding.

Women motorcycle lovers on Twitter began following @LAScooterGirls because Arlene was a real person sharing her ideas for riding apparel quietly.

• She shared openly and candidly experiences in building the brand new company.
• She was not selling or pushing her new brand.
• Arlene posted on Twitter frequently and enthusiastically.

Twitter Followers Became Referrers

When the new company’s website was launched, three months after the @LAScooterGirls Twitter community began, GoGoGear experienced a wave of support and it’s Twitter followers acted like, well, a community.  They shared the new company’s website with friends, made purchases and then shared their delight with the fashionable riding jackets on Twitter.  In other words—Arlene’s Twitter followers built buzz for the new company by referring others to GoGo Gear.

The Best (Marketing) Money We Never Spent

According to Arlene Battishill after the launch of the clothing and website,  their Twitter followers   “…started sending out RT (Retweets) to their own followers and we continued to pick up more followers. The momentum continues to this day. The “Twitter-verse” has been the most important marketing tool we’ve used and the best money we’ve never spent.”

2 Key Success Factors

Personal Approach. I think the key success factor in this new company launch success story, is the personal approach Arlene Battishill used when posting on Twitter.  She was her authentic self and she was “all in”.    She achieved the personal touch in her Twitter posts  by sharing overseas travel anecdotes as they were happening.

Commitment to Use the Marketing Tool.  The founder Tweeted non-stop for three months before the company website and product line launched.  What did she Tweet (post) about?

She frequently Tweeted about her global travel adventures involved in finding manufacturing partners in Asia.  Arlene’s Twitter followers became invested in the progress of the new apparel line and startup company because they connected with Arlene as a person first.  They followed her progress for three months and became “invested” in the new brand.

Twitter Followers to Sales

For those (few) cynics among you that may be saying, well, Twitter followers are not customers—wrong! @LAScooterGirls followers soon became customers and sent their friends and family too.  When new riding jackets were shipped to a retailer, GoGo Gear Tweeted the details.  Retailers would find a line of loyal @LAScooterGirls fans lined up to buy the new jackets right out of the box!

Follow the new company on Twitter here http://twitter.com/lascootergirls
Their Twitter handle is   @LAScooterGirls
The company’s blog is here

Social media marketing is long on hype and short on from the trenches examples of what works.  Mary Hall has prepared a terrific case study for consumer marketing with the article, read full interview here. Thanks Mary!

Mary Hall blogs at Huffington Post and at the wildly popular blog, The Recessionista here.  You can follow Mary on Twitter here.

As a small business owner you’re wearing a ton of hats—entrepreneur, chief sales person, accountant, product developer, customer service rep, and more.   If you’d like to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, great!  Social media marketing is really the way business gets done now. It’s time to put on your publisher’s hat.

Before you fire off a bunch of clever Tweets or set up one of the latest Facebook pages, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a plan to develop lots of original, exceptional how to articles, white papers, online videos and other content.  Content that’s going to set you apart from your competitors.

Do yourself a favor.  Figure out what tasks and functions aren’t paying off.  Evaluate everything you and your team are doing—include marketing and every other function.  If a program or task isn’t producing new prospects and leads, delivering happiness to your customers, or producing revenue—either outsource it or eliminate it. Be brutal.

Free up your time and your team’s time and energy for creating exceptional content that demonstrates your unique competitive advantage..  Social media marketing can’t be phoned in.  She with the best content and the best interaction online wins.

During my time in corporate America, I experienced repeatedly how new programs and initiatives failed because the senior team didn’t (have the guts to) eliminate non-productive, non-revenue producing tasks from their staffs.  Executives simply piled on new programs/tasks and rarely considered what functions could be eliminated.

This is the beauty of a small company, you’re more nimble and you can quickly discard what’s not working and invest your time and energy in a new role:  exceptional content publisher.

What tasks have you seen successfully eliminated in order to find the time for social media marketing?  Or successfully outsourced/delegated? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. Five BtoB Social Media Marketing Tips from IndustrialInterface.com’s Brian Jones

2. Junta42 Content Marketing Blog:  37 Reasons to Blog

If your small business is looking for ways to increase the number of web visitors—as most of us are—here are seven content marketing ideas.  The secret to being found online is a web site updated with an ongoing supply of fresh, relevant content when your prospects are searching for solutions.

Before you can Tweet your way to successful marketing and sales, you’ll want to publish lots of valuable content.   Content that sets you apart from your competitors.

Content Marketing Tactics:

1. Create original, relevant content that attracts your prospects. Invest time in asking your customers and prospects about their information needs. What kinds of answers/how-to’s/tips are they having trouble finding online?   What are their favorite information sites when problem solving?  Do they use online forums?  Blogs?  Trade publication sites? When do they use print sources? More content ideas here.
2. Generate content that stands out. Go way beyond FAQs.  Your competitors publish frequently asked questions. Break the mold.  Be creative.  As Seth Godin suggests: “Go to the edges…Start where the last person left off.”  Look for innovative content formats that are not common in your industry.  Short videos?  Coolest case study of the month? Top 10 questions people forget to ask when buying a solution.
3. Publish fresh content on your web site as often as you can. Searchers and search engines love fresh content.  Don’t wait for a new product release.  A press release doesn’t usually equal fresh content.  Unless it includes a customer success story using your products/services.
4. Monitor your Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts closely. Track appearances of keywords relevant to your offerings. Check out the web site where your industry content is published.
5. Monitor your competitors’ content to keep up with current topics. Set up Google Alerts for competitor company names, products.  When the Alerts arrive, review the sites where your competitors are getting their content published.  Find the holes in competitor content.  Fill them with better content.  What’s missing?  What info can be presented better?
6. Publish a company blog.  If you don’t already maintain a corporate blog, it’s time to start because blogs are easier to update than (most) web sites.   By posting relevant content a few times a week, you will be more findable by the search engines and prospects.  I posted more about business blogging here.
7. Stay on top of the latest issues/trends talked about online by your prospects/customers. Check in often with the key social networking sites that your prospects use.  If you do not have time to do this—find someone that can.  Stay in front of your market’s info-needs curve by producing timely content about new issues that your prospects are facing.

A recent Forbes survey here of the online searching habits of 354 top executives confirms the need for relevant content.  Some key survey findings from these execs (firms with $1 billion-plus in annual revenues):

• Executives cite a more than 2:1 preference for viewing work-related information online (70%) instead of in print (30%).

• 53% of executives surveyed prefer to gather information online themselves.  Not delegate it.

• Are you selling to execs under the age of 40? These folks search online for information over 20 times each day.

• 86% said they occasionally or frequently click on linked words from Web articles and content

So, as an example, given the specific data provided in this post, how likely are you to click through to review the Forbes CSuite Digital Survey?  Or to read more about it at Forbes.com?

Related posts:

How to: 5 Social Media Marketing Tips from IndustrialInterface.com Co-Founder

The three most common questions that business owners/marketers ask me when the subject of starting a small business blog comes up (right after, jeez do I really need a blog?):

1. “What do I write about on a blog?”
2. “What kind of content should I add to my web site?”
3. “We’ve got product/service descriptions, testimonials, capability brochures, tech specs, white papers, and other marketing collateral.  What other content do we need?”

I’ve posted on this topic before and thought I’d update it.  Good quality content is just another basic business requirement these days.  It’s not a nice-to-have.

Especially for small businesses without large marketing budgets.  Writing compelling, interesting, helpful content and posting it online can help you to be more “findable” when buyers are searching for solutions.

In order to make your web site or blog the go-to Internet site for buyers in your industry looking to solve problems or achieve goals, here are some ideas for creating killer customer content:

Check Out Competitor Sites: If your competitors are blogging or hosting online community sites, check out the topics being discussed.  Write a blog post or article with your fresh approach to solving the problems.  Remember to share your (best) insights when you create content.  You’re goal is to start a conversation with a customer or future customer.

Monitor Social Networking Sites: What are the most popular questions, issues on the social networks used by your customers & prospects?  If your target market is on LinkedIn, the Answers section is a good source of content ideas.  Or Twitter, or  ITToolbox. Or other social media sites your customers use.

Ask Your Customers: Start with your current customers.  What kind of conversations are you and your sales and service folks having with your current customers?

• Talk with a few of your best customers every week.   Find out what’s keeping them awake at night.  (This week/month.)  It’s a fast-changing market/world.  Don’t assume you know what’s on your customers’ current list of priorities today.

• What pages on your web site are the most popular?  Take those subjects and expand them into multiple blog posts.  (Make sure you have visitor stats and analytics added to your web pages.)

• What are the most common questions that come up on your customer or technical support calls?  List each question and provide detailed how-to answers.

• What new strategies are your customers are using to weather the rocky economy?  Expand on those.  Offer your insight for improving operations, doing more with less, cutting costs or whatever your core competency is.  You’re the expert.  Share!

• What’s the most common topic in email messages you send to existing customers? You probably have several useful approaches to solving problems around your products and services.  Those make great blog posts.   (Or web site articles if you’re not ready to launch a blog.)

• What are the problems your customers encounter over and over?  Create blog posts, or a series of articles, to explain the options—and when to use each one.

Ask Your Sales Team: What are the top 10 questions customers ask when making purchases? Paul Gillin, in his most recent book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, says in that a ‘frequently asked questions’ blog is the safest type of business blog.

• You can get lots of content-mileage out of prospects’ questions.   Be sure to get your sales people’s feedback.  They’re hearing different questions than others in your company. There are probably a few ways to answer each question, depending on the customer situation.  So take different slants and write web site articles or blog posts about each one.

Listen to Prospects: For people not using your products and services yet, list their most common issues. Think of the type of information you offer during your first sales call with a future customer. This can be a treasure trove of customer conversation (blog) topics.

• Also, check in with partners that refer potential buyers to you. Ask them to describe the buying signals that indicate it’s time to refer a customer to your company.

All Work and no Play…Back in 2006 (when blogs were sort of the new, new thing) at a conference I attended in Seattle, Robert Scobel (leading tech blogger) suggested that business bloggers should publish one personal post out of every 17 posts.

Share your passions. What are your favorite causes, charities or fundraising events?  Talk about why you love your favorite non-profit.  Write about your favorite team occasionally on your company blog.

Personal stories about a travel experience during an industry trade show, a family trip or about a local hero.  Content that reveals your personal interests like ScienceLogic’s blog does is valuable because it builds a picture of who your company really is.

Share Your Expertise

How-tos and tips. Share your fave shortcuts for problem solving.  Stuff your customers do not think to ask you about.  Be generous with your expertise.  As you’re writing, ask for other ideas from your readers.  Remember, this is a conversation.

When creating content, remember to share your very best ideas.  Your best practices, advice and secrets for getting things done.   When you publish surefire ways to solve problems, cut costs and achieve goals, it helps you to stand out from the crowd.

What useful content inspirational ideas did I miss?  Add your ideas below in comments.

7-13-09 Update:  Here is link to Guy’s blog where he published all of the links he discussed at this event.

This morning 600 people gathered in La Jolla (San Diego) to hear Guy Kawasaki talk about “Social Media to Market Your Business”.

Photo source: Adjix TwitPic

Guy treated us to a powerful tutorial on how he uses social media (and by social media I mean mostly Twitter) to build his new venture, Alltop.  The lesson was so valuable because he visited each social media site and demonstrated in real-time how he uses the services to search and to market.

A good time was had by all.  Thanks Guy and San Diego Venture Group.

Alltop is an online “magazine rack”.   Alltop compiles the top content sites in 600+ subject areas (food, wine, news, venture capital, football, art…)

Guy generously shared tips, tricks and strategies.  If you’re a small business or a startup working to grow your customer base by improving visibility, attracting attention and visitors to your web site, here are some cool ideas from the busy Tweeter who just published Reality Check: The Irreverent guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competiton.

He started with some of the networking social media sites:

Finding or Checking Out People On Social Media Sites

LinkedIn’s highest and best use is to see who is connected to your personal network of contacts.  A good tool for finding partners and doing background checks on folks you’re thinking about working for, or partnering with.  (Most of the 600 here today use LinkedIn.  Not so much on the Twitter users…)

Jigsaw is useful when you want to directly contact a person but do not have their company email or other contact info.

Spokeo provides human resource folks with background information (the good and the bad) by searching people on 43 different social networks.

Tip from Guy: When approaching someone for first time, anything you learn about heir interests can give you a helpful icebreaker.  Like maybe the person’s Amazon wish list contains books about soccer, wine or vintage cars.  According to Guy, you might tweak the person’s interest for the few minutes you need to begin your pitch.

Marketing Your Company Using Social Media

Unless you’re a well-known brand with a base of fans already on Facebook, Guy doesn’t recommend using the site to market your business.  “You’ll end up talking to yourself and your competitors” he says.

This is where his love of Twitter comes in.  Guy thinks “Twitter is the best thing to happen to marketing since, well, maybe ever…”

Guy’s Strategies + Tools for using Twitter

Build a following

• Follow everyone who follows you.  Out of respect he believes.  (and my note hey, who knows where your next customer, gig or opportunity will come from?)

• Search for people with your interests. Here is Twitter’s advanced search page.

Find interesting links.  Tweet or Share them.

Search Alltop (just as an example) for juicy content related to your business and the interests of your market.

Try Adjix, a free-link sharing service for use on Twitter.  It also shortens URLs, a must for 140-character limit-Twitter but unlike other link-shortening sites, Adjix allows you to schedule re-tweets.  Bonus for Firefox web-browser users is an Adjix button.   http://web.adjix.com/AdjixWhatIsIt.html (Personally I find Firefox’s web browser to be like a rocket compared to Internet Explorer’s more 1960′s VW Beetle.)

Big Companies  Using Twitter Successfully to Market

JetBlue They actually answer customers’ questions.  Check out their twitter page, this is 5-star customer service

Los Angeles street food vendor Kogi BBQ is known for Tweeting where their food truck will stop and at what time.  This small restaurant is said to have hundreds lined up to buy their tasty food at each stop  http://twitter.com/kogibbq

Comcastcares is poster boy for customer service for Comcast with 23,000 Twitter followers.

Next post I’ll cover Guy’s killer Twitter marketing tools.

• Sure business blogs are great, but for me?
• I just put up a new web site. Now I need a blog?
• Who would read it?
• What would I write about?
• I have to write?

When catching up with a friend of mine recently, he mentioned his new online business.  He’s designed a handy, pocket device to help amateur photographers to (actually) use the settings on their SLR cameras.

Of course, this entrepreneur  has a beautifully designed website—he is after all a photographer and amateur photography instructor—so that’s expected.

His new web site (developed to sell his new product invention) is not just beautiful but it outlines the problem experienced by many amateur shutter bugs  and clearly explains how his product solves the problem.

Excellent!

Now the next step is to make his new site more “findable” by online amateur photographers.

He has the opportunity to now build up content and interest, outside his domain. To place his content in a few other online destinations of his target customers–photographers.

Here are my suggestions:

1.     Upload his excellent demonstration video on as many video-sharing sites as possible in addition to YouTube.

2.     Set up a Flickr presence with his photographs

3.     Launch a blog to tell the stories of how amateur photographers can improve the story they are telling with their photos. Topics like:

-       Top 10 questions asked by every amateur photographer
-       Top 7 problems of new photographers when purchasing a SLR camera
-       How to take better pictures
-       How to work with exposure factors
-       How an amateur photographer improved her photos by learning how to set the SLR

Did I miss anything?

Why take all these extra steps, when he already has a great website?  Humm, glad you asked:

Benefits of building content outside of your small business domain  (your website):

-       Make your small business more “findable”. The more places you are outside of your website, the easier it is for buyers to find you when they’re searching for your products, services.
-       You can update your blog easily a few times a week without going through your web programmer.
-       Search engines (still) like ‘froth over’ frequently updated content
-       Blogs make it easy to tell stories about the folks that use your products.  We all love stories.
-       You build trust.  Visitors to your blog, (future buyers) can post questions, you can answer and become a trusted source of information and how to articles.

- Generate leads.

What’s not to love? Small business blogs are for every entrepreneur that wants to establish a relationship with his/her future buyers.  (I will keep you posted on his progress when he begins his blog.)

Put your toe in the (social media) water…you’ll love it.

Or, maybe I’m missing the mark? Is a small business web site enough?  Do you really need a blog if you’re selling to online buyers?  You know the drill.  Leave your comments below and set me straight.

Since I am a marketer/ social media enthusiast—I’ve translated the speakers’ recommendations into marketing ideas.    (Apologies in advance to the experts.)

This is part 1 of my posts from ideas shared at the DMC’s “Orange County Business Growth Forum.”

Steve Mednick, Plenum Revenue Group: Steve Mednick is a professor at the Grief Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC and a serial entrepreneur.  He shared his own bootstrapping stories and those of students of the Greif Center program.

One of the graduates of this USC program is Mark Benioff, founder of Salesforce.

•    The start point. When launching a new startup  (or for that matter,  a new product, service or marketing project) just get to the start point.  What is the idea that will get you started?  What is the idea that will get you your first customers?  We’re in business to get customers.

•    On market research.  Don’t worry about needing a budget to do research. The only opinion that counts is the customer’s.  Ask your (potential) customers when in doubt.  Then, give them what they want (as long as you make a profit.)

• Cynthia’s note:  I uncovered one of my small business clients best ideas for generating revenue during a 15-minute call with one of his best raving fan customers.

•    Ask someone for help.  If you’re uncertain about a project, product or service—ask someone!  Use your network. Talk to 250 people. Get help. Find someone who knows about what you’re attempting to achieve.

•    Your ability to execute in the marketplace = $$$.  Execution–finding a way to get something done—is the key.

•    Take the hair-on-fire approach. [To starting a company or a marketing project.)  Just do the next thing, take the next action to get to your (next) goal.  Steve had a great slide for this one.  Actually all of his PowerPoint slides were excellent. Very Zen.  Not crowded, not busy, got his message across, told the story.

•    “Think from your customer backwards.” Saras D. Sarasvathy published research about “thinking from the customer backwards”.  In 2007, Saras was one of the top 18 entrepreneurship professors by Fortune Small Business Magazine.  Steve Mednick says:  “Just start talking to customers.”

•    Get past the ‘great idea’ stage. Get to customers to execute your ideas.

•    Network. Network. Network.  Become known in your space.

•    Give to get. Make connections.  Brand your company as the go-to-person for your products, services.

Thanks to Steve Mednick for a great presentation.  Here is the link to his complete article, Bootstrapping Your Business – Get Real – Get Started

Next post I’ll cover more pearls of wisdom from the Digital Media Center’s  “Orange County Business Growth Forum.”

Any hair-on-fire ideas that worked for you that you’d like to share?  Add them below in comments.