Back in the day, I was into punk rock. It was loud, it was NOT disco, there was a culture surrounding it, and the cult-like followings for the bands were intense. Although I didn’t do the hair thing, I did dabble in the clothing and attitude a bit (well, as much as a suburban kid from Connecticut going to Kenyon College in Ohio could).
This will date me, but… The Ramones played my high school at the time their first album came out. That was Rock and Roll High School. I was fortunate enough to have seen a bunch of other cool bands live including: The Clash, Sex Pistols, and the Talking Heads.
Watch the video now. I think the gang at Engage | ORM are onto something with this analogy. It does seem a little like the late 1970s.
Ebooks are one of the most effective forms of new marketing.
Ebooks have tremendous perceived value and therefore people tend to pass them on. They help solve problems and therefore buyers appreciate the content, branding the writer as someone worth doing business with.
Ebooks lead to sales!
Many people have achieved business success by writing an ebook. So can you.
1. You should write about something that you know well. Martin is a Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and expert in Body Language and has assisted individuals, companies and law enforcement officers in developing lie detection skills and detecting deception. Damn. He's credible!
2. You should write to solve a problem that people have. Martin's potential readers ask: How do I know if somebody is lying?
How should I write?
3. The ebook should be authored by a person. Don't make it by your company. You need the personal connection with readers. An ebook by "Premium Landscape Company" will not do as well as an ebook by "Mary Smith, chief landscape architect at Premium Landscape Company."
4. An ebook is a medium length document, maybe 20 to 30 pages. But since this is not dense text like a white paper, it is usually around 3,000 to 6,000 words.
5. Make it interesting.
6. Have a definite point of view.
7. Do not sell your products or services in the body of the ebook.
8. Write using conflict. Martin has a warning at the front of his ebook. And the content (is someone lying or not) drips with conflict.
9. At the end, in the biography section, have a place where people can learn more and can contact you if they want to work with you.
10. You will need a great title that intrigues people. The Black Book of Lie Detection
11. Use a subtitle to say what the ebook is about Effective techniques from a professional lie detector
How should I distribute?
12. Make the ebook a simple PDF document with no reader software required
13. Lose control of the content by making it totally free with no registration required. You will have 20 to 50 times more downloads than if you require people to submit an email address to get the ebook.
14. Add a Creative Commons license to encourage people to share.
15. Point people to a landing page where they can learn more, but allow people to point directly to the ebook URL if they want to. Here is Martin's landing page
16. Tell people about the ebook, especially those in a position to talk it up. I am writing about Martin's ebook because he sent me the URL via a direct message on Twitter.
Design considerations
17. Invest in a great design
18. Focus on the cover – the first thing people see
19. Use landscape orientation, not portrait (so it fits on a computer screen)
20. Include a biography section at the end with your photo where people can learn more
21. Use a header or footer with the title of the ebook with page numbers. (Sometimes people print out one page).
What about the landing page?
22. You should have a permanent place to point people. It could be on your blog or site or you could even make a micro site with a unique URL
23. Consider search engine optimization. The title tag for Martins's landing page is "How to tell if someone is lying – free lie detector ebook." I wouldn't be surprised if he gets to the front page on Google for the phrase "How to tell if someone is lying"
24. Use bold section breaks so people can determine immediately if the ebook is for them
25. Add the first link to ebook above the fold on the top of the landing page.
26. For those who do not download immediately, provide details on how you can benefit from reading the ebook
27. Add some author credibility at the bottom for those who need convincing
Martin's ebook and the related parts are excellent. But here are several things he might consider for the next time around
28. Make the landing page a permalink with the URL part of the SEO term. I am concerned that Martin's URL www.communicationdownloads.com/Links.aspx is not a permanent link.
29. Make the inside design a little less font heavy. The font choice should add to the text. I'm not a fan of the various colors at the top of some of Martin's pages because I think it detracts from the writing. However, this is a personal observation.
Question to Martin
30. How will you promote the ebook? How will people find it? A well done ebook has potential to generate hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of downloads.
What did I miss in the tips? Do you have one to add?
Have you written a great ebook? Congratulations! Go ahead and add the link in a comment and let us know about your success. How many downloads did it get? Can you tie the ebook to sales?
I recently spent the day at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ to meet with public affairs officers and senior leaders of 12th Air Force / Air Forces Southern Air Combat Command.
In this video, I ask my friend Capt. Nathan Broshear about his current role as Director of Public Affairs, how he uses social media, and a little about his 6 months in Baghdad working in public affairs in a war zone.
Capt. Broshear says of his work: "We're not launching missiles, we're launching ideas."
While mainstream media is critical for launching ideas such as the 60 Minutes story that Capt. Broshear worked on with Lara Logan reporting On The Increasing Use Of Drones In The Battlefield, he frequently uses social media to get the word out.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a fan of what the hard-working public affairs officers at the U.S. Air Force are doing with social media. Here are some other posts on the topic:
I had an opportunity to connect with Chip McDermott, founder of ZeroTrash who I originally met at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. I haver become fascinated with the online grassroots movement Chip started that's gathering momentum and is now instrumental in ridding the streets and beaches of Laguna Beach, CA of trash.
Chip started ZeroTrash Laguna as a nonprofit organization in November 2007 with the support of XS Energy Drinks, Hobie Sports & Thalia Surf Shop. Though population and tourism had exploded, the city had not kept up in providing a sufficient infrastructure for public trash and recycling.
Social media to influence people
"The spark of the idea was that trash was becoming commonplace on the streets and the sidewalks of Laguna Beach," Chip says. "We started with a Facebook fan page for ZeroTrash Laguna that now has hundreds of members."
People use the Facebook page to organize events and connect local storeowners and residents. Before and after photos of trash on the streets incite people to action.
"We met with store owners to get our first Saturday movement going," Chip says. "We meet at a couple of stores and got volunteers to walk the city and pick up trash on the first Saturday of each month."
The storeowners love it because they people support local stores and the shopping areas remain clean. Chip has tapped storeowners as sponsors who fund the purchase of supplies and tools like trash pickers, t-shirts, trash bags, and gloves.
Chip has also started a ZeroTrash blog and is on Twitter as @ZeroTrash. The social media sites serve to keep people updated. For example, on the first Saturday of May, 2009, the Laguna Beach community helped to remove another 590 lbs. of trash and 375 lbs. of recyclables from the streets.
He has high hopes for the organization and ambitions to spread the movement beyond Laguna Beach.
"We want people to take individual ownership of each new local ZeroTrash community," he says. "How can they get people with a passion to take control and start in their own communities? The obvious answer is to use social media to influence people."
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are a great place to start (or extend) a movement. If you work at a nonprofit, are you tapping these resources to reach your supporters?
Last night at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC, John Hodgman was the keynote speaker.
Imagine following President Obama at the podium?
Hodgman nailed it big time. Watch this video. Now.
John Hodgman, of course, is a World Wide Rave. He appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as the show’s Resident Expert. He is also "PC" in the Apple TV ads.
It was really cool that Hodgman was posting photos to Twitter as he was waiting to go on. Now that's nerd. Well done, sir.
I met John Hodgman at his book launch event in Brookline for his book More Information than you Require. At his event, he kindly signed my poster and let me take his photo.
My friends at Wiley, publishers of my last several books, asked me to do something I've never tried: Sign books while I deliver a presentation.
There were 150 people in line to get a copy of my book and we had a tight time window because we did not want to keep people waiting.
Yikes. Talk about multi-tasking!
I was also trying to pay attention to individual people in the audience (about 100 people were out of camera view).
At about the 6:00 point of this short video, you'll see me talking about Dr. Ruth and her new book. Dr. Ruth was in the crowd and she LOVED the tweet I did from the BEA floor Now exploring the Top 10 Secrets to Great Sex.
Here's what I find interesting about this. When you know your material really, really well, you can deliver a performance while doing other things. But this level of multi-tasking is impossible unless you are totally prepared.
The first time I recall being aware of this was when I sat in the front row at a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park in Boston in 2005. During Satisfaction, Ronnie Wood was playing right in front of me (see photo) while chatting up the cute girl right next to me: “Hello Love!” Ronnie said. “How are ya?”
Do you know your stuff so well that you can multi-task?
But many bloggers don't understand how syndication works and why it is important. And some are downright fearful of syndication.
The ability to provide blog content to many places through syndication is incredibly valuable. With no extra work, syndication allows you to reach a potential audience of millions of people you would not otherwise reach.
Warning: This blog post is a rant. (But it does have a purpose.)
I travel a lot, over 100,000 miles so far this year in 8 countries.
As I pass through airport concourses (after security), in nearly every U.S. city I hear loud messages every ten minutes or so that are more or less like this:
"In order to expedite the security screening process, Transportation Security Administration regulations now require that liquids, gels, and aerosols carried through the screening area must be in three-ounce or smaller containers carried in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag. Each traveler can only use one bag and must remove it from their carry-on and place it in a bin or on the conveyor belt for X-ray screening. So remember 3-1-1 to speed your screening process."
I'M ALREADY THROUGH THE SCREENING AREA.
I’m in the freakin' airport already! Why do you insist on playing this inane announcement again and again and again and again and again and again for people who have already passed through the damn security area?
I asked a TSA representative about this. He couldn't have been nicer as he explained the concourse announcements are not required. He said that the airport he works at has only one Public Address channel so the announcement is played everywhere, all the time, including to the tens of thousands of passengers inside the terminals.
This is annoying and stupid.
Do the airports not care about passengers? Is noise pollution not an issue?
As long as I have your attention, another noise pollution issue inside many U.S. airports is the constant blaring of CNN Airport Network in every gate. According to the CNN Airport Network site, this noise pollution "is available in 43 of the busiest U.S. airports and is seen in more than 2,000+ gates and other viewing areas."
I wonder how many of the gates of those 43 airports do not have CNN Airport noise pollution? Probably zero.
Oh, and don't get me started about "Logan Radio" that plays constantly at my home airport in Boston.
I do not experience this level of noise pollution at airports I visit outside the U.S.
Hey, airport administrators – you need to create some quiet space for passengers who don’t want to listen to this sort of crap. While you're focused on being "green" (the buzzword of the year at airports), why not spend some time being silent too?
[end of rant]
This sort of tuned out behavior happens when organizations do things for their own benefit, rather than their customers benefit. Are you unwittingly doing something to annoy your customers?
The most successful organizations understand their buyers and create positive experiences for them.
So I wanted to offer another set of ideas for successful public speaking. I was thinking about the differences in what I do now as a professional speaker with 50 gigs a year compared to what I was doing five years ago when I speaking about once a month.
After a gig, I run through video of the presentation with Nick.
I thought it might be interesting for those of you who are honing your own speaking skills to see the clip and hear from Nick about body language too. I realize this puts me out there for analysis, both good and bad, but I'm game.
So watch this clip from the Convention Industry CouncilCMP Conclave 2009 and then read Nick's comments below.
Here are Nick's comments on my performance, both good and areas for improvement:
"The great thing about David as a public speaker is that he is technically good so that his passion for the subject shines through. I should know – I'm his speaking coach. Every communication is two conversations, the content and the body language. When the two are aligned, you can be a persuasive, authentic, charismatic speaker – as David is. When they're not, people believe the body language every time. We're all unconscious experts in body language, and we pick it up instantly when someone is nervous, unprepared, winging it, or not passionate about the subject.
When I first started working with David, I could see right away that he had the passion and that the goal was to make a few technical improvements in his body language so that the passion could come through unfiltered.
All speakers have adrenaline-induced energy when they get up to speak. That energy comes out in different ways. David’s tended to come out in too much pacing around the stage. Pacing is good when you move purposefully to a point in relation to the audience, stop, plant your feet, and deliver. But when you just wander, you've got ‘happy feet’ and that’s distracting for the audience.
David quickly got the idea, and one of the great things that comes through on this video is the combination of good motion and passion that he’s now – almost – mastered. His move out into the audience about half-way through is brilliantly timed – and it becomes the high point of the speech both in the room and on video. Notice how many people talk about the Air Force in relation to this presentation. David covered a number of topics, but it’s the Air Force that will be remembered, because he went into the personal space of the audience at that point.
Personal space is 4 feet to a foot and a half away from audience members. (Never go into intimate space – a foot and a half to zero – in a public setting.) Because we all crave personal connections with our speakers, celebrities, politicians, and famous criminals these days, thanks to TV, we really engage as an audience when a speaker gets into the personal space of a few of us.
David still needs to work on his motion when he’s on the stage. The goal is to move on a thought, plant your feet, and deliver to a different segment of the audience – and make it look natural. David still has a tendency to move a little too much across the stage just to get rid of adrenaline.
Remember, the point of mastering all this body language stuff is so that people will hear your message, rather than be distracted by something you’re doing. David is a great storyteller, and because he’s on the way to mastering the technical stuff, you can get his stories. He opens this clip with the Singapore Tattoo Show story, and it’s a perfect illustration of his point, that social media is a new, better way to market than spending millions on TV ads. That’s what a good speaker does: informs and entertains at the same time. There’s a reason why David is in such demand as a speaker these days."
Thanks Nick.
Thinking about body language has transformed my presentations. I hope my clip and Nick's analysis is helpful to you too.
Starting today (four hours ago as I write this), you can set your Facebook username.
Do it now!
Previously, Facebook URLs were a series of random numbers. Now you can have a username and provide friends an easy to remember URL. This is an important component of personal branding.
