Ebooks are nothing new. Do you have one? Are you offering a free ebook on your site? You should. I'm in the process of setting up a brand new site for one of my businesses, and I'm writing an ebook this weekend. It's not that difficult and it should be one of your main lead generators on any site.
Newt Barrett on Content Marketing Today just posted Five Reasons an e-Book Should Be a Core Component Of Your Content Marketing Strategy:
- You can quickly, compellingly, visually, and inexpensively establish thought leadership with an e-book that provides relevant information on the toughest challenges your customers face.
- Offering a free e-book, is a wonderful incentive to entice your prospects to begin in their engagement with you.
- E-books, in the universally acceptable PDF format, are easy to pass along from one prospect to another, giving you potentially infinite reach.
- If you need help in designing your e-book and in generating the content, you can find talented designers and freelance writers easily.
- If your budget is very limited, you can create your own e-book by starting with PowerPoint and then transforming the PowerPoint files into PDF files.
Here's why I can't stress this form of content marketing enough:
- They are a great way to get your message out to people.
- They are easy to write, format and publish.
- They cost almost nothing to produce.
- They are great lead generators, and can build your email list of interested people quickly.
- Once visitors take the time to enter their email addresses and download a digital ebook, they experience what it's like to do business with you, trust is built, and the way is paved for more participation in what you have to offer.
It doesn't have to be complicated, long or elaborate. It does have to offer valuable information that is helpful to your readers. Don't waste people's times with sales hype though, or it will backfire.
Nobody wants to register for and download an ebook with a compelling title only to find out you're trying to sell them something. There's a reason the word "content" comes first in the phrase "Content Marketing!"
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Patsi, Thanks for the shout out. One thought on the ‘registration’ issue on my original post: A good compromise might be to offer your e-book as a motivator to sign up for an eNewsletter. That way, your visitor has two shots at value from both the eNewsletter and the e-book.
I still think that in many cases, you many simply want to spread the word via your ebook rather than sign up registrants. By not limiting access to the e-book, you make it more easy to build viral buzz. Kind of like YouTube videos. Of course, your e-book needs to be pretty compelling.
Newt
Newt is right. Don’t put your content under lock and key. Thanks for sharing the article.
One thing that always concerns me with eBooks is that they seem very spammy. You see them all the time on eBay and on poorly-designed sites for get rich quick schemes and I think a lot of people make the same association.
Do you share a similar concern? Are genuine eBook publishers like yourself doing more to differentiate themselves from the “etrash” out there?