Well, a few weeks ago we launched our first book on Amazon.com, and it has been an interesting experiment. We have not yet set the world on fire with book sales, but it has been a great credibility builder when talking to local prospects, especially when I hand them a copy. They are impressed. I advise you to do the same thing for your business, especially if you sell a service. What better way is there to prove your expertise than to write a book?
Sure, anybody can do it, especially in this day of on-demand printing. But you know what? Most people don’t. The fact is, even though it’s easy to publish a book, it’s hard to write a good book. It take a lot of time, a lot of pounding the keyboard. It takes a lot writing, reading, and re-writing. It’s not really all that fun.
But who ever said credibility building and marketing had to be fun? This is business. If there is a ZERO COST strategy you can use to establish your reputation and spread your marketing message far and wide, you need to do it. You should write a book now.
You might think that it is funny for a search engine marketing company to be talking about using something printed to promote a business. But we have never said you should ONLY market yourself online. You need a comprehensive marketing plan that includes elements of online marketing combined with other forms of marketing…such as writing a book.
I’ll let you in on a secret. Now…I did not use this strategy and probably never will because I just don’t trust ANYONE to do as good a job as I can. Having said that, it’s actually pretty easy to get a book on your subject ghost-written for you, with you taking ALL of the credit and the glory. Go to elance.com, create an account, and post the details about what you’re wanting to have written. You will have people jumping at the chance to write your book for you. This is not necessarily the strategy I advice because I believe your book needs to truly reflect YOUR knowledge and experience. But this is marketing…so whatever it takes to get it done.
My strategy is basically to compile material that I write in the form of articles and blog posts into book format. It is just part of the content reuse cycle that we have talked about many times. It works.
So get to work writing your own book. There’s a best seller just waiting to come out.