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.
Nick Morgan asks: "Why is most public speaking so awful? Why do we subject our fellow human beings to this form of torture when there are so many better things we could all be doing, like cutting our toenails, baking snickerdoodles, or watching re-runs of The Prisoner?"
"Why is most public speaking so awful? Beyond soulless venues and Death by Power Point, speakers make the same four mistakes over and over again, continuing the sorry state of the art."
The United States Air Force Public Affairs Agency, Emerging Technology Division just released a new ebook and video about how social media is used in the Air Force. The ebook and video contain excellent information for all organizations and should serve as a blueprint for social media guidelines for those who do not have them.
For those of you who work in large organizations struggling with social media, please share this with your bosses.
Both the ebook and the video show how Airmen are using social media to stay informed and inform others. Airmen have the ability to communicate and tell the Air Force story better than anyone else. By reaching out with social media tools, they're able to it quickly and in their own voice.
In my new video, more than a year in the making, over 100 people from all seven continents contribute to show how people spread ideas and tell stories.
As I was passing around the work-in-progress video that resulted in How will YOU create a World Wide Rave?, everyone had a question about some aspect of it. How did you come up with the name World Wide Rave? The music is cool—what is it? How did you get so many photos and videos from around the world? As I answered each question, I thought back on the more than one year that the video has been in the works and the more than 100 people from all seven continents who contributed to it.
What's so cool about ideas that spread is that people WANT to share.
Thanks to everybody who contributed. If you’d like to put a banner on your blog, please do! I'd be honored. You can point to this post.
Blog Badge
Video by Your Business Channel
Mark Sinclair, Features Editor, with James Kirk, George Laycock, Jeremy Decoursey, David Chandler, Melanie Sinclair, Georgie Johnson
Sound Branding and Original Music by Audiobrain
Audrey Arbeeny: Executive Producer/ Creative Director
Jason Rothman: Lead Composer
Curtis Macdonald, Mitchell Yoshida and Audrey Arbeeny: Composers
World Wide Rave published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Matt Holt, Publisher and Shannon Vargo Editor, with Christine Moore, Kim Dayman, Jessica Campilango, Cynthia Shannon, Peter Knapp, Rose Sullivan, Deborah Schindlar, P.J. Campbell, and Lori Sayde-Mehrtens.
I would like to thank the more than 100 incredibly generous people from all over the world who took photos, shot video clips, or participated in the photos that are shared with you in the video.
Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and the Apollo astronauts: Buzz Aldrin, Dave Scott, Tom Stafford, Charlie Duke, Alan Bean, Jim Lovell, Vance Brand, Ed Mitchell, Al Wordon, Walt Cunningham, and Fred Haise.
Apologies to those I’ve missed or whose names I have misspelled. My bad. I know I’m bound to screw up a few times. (Let me know if I missed your link and I can change).
A special thank you to our canine friends who posed for photos: Pukko & Bailey
Your challenge:
How will YOU create a World Wide Rave?
(Please note: This link brings you directly to the PDF ebook with no registration required and no landing page. It is a 1.2MB document, so please be patient.)
Do you market like the Grateful Dead? Or like Led Zeppelin? (Find out in the ebook).
Here are some other things you'll find inside:
"For many executives, an obsession with ROI is just a convenient excuse to shy away from something new and untested. Yet that's exactly what the best ideas for creating a World Wide Rave are—new and untested."
"If you're obsessed with ROI measurements that worked in an offline world, then you're just making an excuse. If you worry about losing control of your message, then you're making an excuse."
"For decades, companies have offered Web content as lead bait. But the goal should be to get the word out about your organization, not to misuse the Internet for the sake of an outdated technique."
"For your ideas to spread and rise to the status of a World Wide Rave, you must give up control. Make your information on the Web totally free for people to access, with absolutely no virtual strings attached."
(Please note: This link brings you directly to the PDF ebook with no registration required and no landing page. It is a 1.2MB document, so please be patient.)
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a fan of ebooks as a great way to deliver information. When I find one that I like that is in a new market, I love to share with you. Sometimes what people write ebooks about are downright surprising – that's often what makes them work.
Max Trescott just released Learn to Fly, an ebook that is the perfect format for getting information out to people about a process—Learning to fly an airplane—which is non-trivial and often unclear to people.
Download Learn to Fly: Live your Dream and Get a Pilot's License!here
Sharing your passion with the world
Max began learning to fly at age 15 and became a part-time flight instructor while working at HP. In 2004, he left HP to found Glass Cockpit Publishing, a publisher of aviation training materials, so the eBook format nicely complements his more traditional products. And it does a great job in introducing people to his work. His passion is preserving and growing general aviation in the U.S. so that it remains available for future generations. He is the President of the SiliconValleyGA, which protects and promotes General Aviation in California's Silicon Valley and he is the "2008 National Certificated Flight Instructor of the Year."
Max told me that he came up with the idea of doing a blog a year ago while "stuck" in Jackson Hole waiting for an airplane to be repaired. (Hey I can relate, I do my best reading in airports! But in my case it is while waiting for commercial planes). It was a fortunate wait for Max because the ideas inspired him to start a blog as a vehicle for raising his profile.
Have you wanted to learn how to fly? I took a few lessons on college and would probably have kept going through to getting my license if I had enough money at the time. Now that I do have the financial resources, my wife won't let me. Too bad. But if you do, check out the blog and ebook that Max has published.
Better yet, if you’re in professional services, you can learn from what Max has done.
Why don't YOU start a blog or write an ebook? It will make your business soar. 2009 is the year to take off and fly in your market. (Sorry for the bad jokes).
There's been some debate recently about totally free content vs. gate content. On one side are people like me who say put your stuff out for free (my ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing that has been downloaded around a quarter of a million times in 2008). On the other side are people like Bob Bly who believe that gated content (such as white papers that require an email address to download) is the way to go. Many people suggest a combination.
Last week I was in New York spending time with my publisher at Wiley. After work, we went to see Canadian indie band Wolf Parade. But in order to get into the proper mood for the show, we first hightailed it up to Rudy's Bar & Grill in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City.
Rudy's serves free hotdogs. A lot of free hotdogs. In fact last year they gave away 55,000 free hotdogs. They also sell a hell of a lot of (cheap) beer. The place was packed when we were there.
I was wondering as I ate my second dog and drained my third pint if we’d have been there without the free hotdogs? And I wondered if I’d be seeing Wolf Parade without checking out their music for free on MySpace first?
The Scene
Rudy's is one of the last bars in Manhattan where suits, slackers and lifetime ne'er-do-wells commingle in a laid-back, beer-laden haze. It's always loud and crowded, even when the backyard "garden" is open. And when you're ready to date out of your comfy little social circle, slap on your sluttiest lipstick or your spiffiest blue jeans and head here. Chances are you'll cozy up in one of Rudy's little red banquettes with someone new before long.
The Draw
Heated on one of those fast-food rotisseries and served with a plain white bun and a little mustard, the full-sized hot dogs are always free and always available--so long as "the hot dog guy" is behind the bar. The blackboard lists about 12 brews on tap, from Bud to Checker Cab Blonde Ale; Rudy's Red, the house brew, is dirt cheap but rather weak.
Readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of ebooks as a way to show the world that you're smart and worthy of doing business with. Ebooks have potential to spread your ideas far and wide. For free. My own most recent ebook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free, released in early 2008, has been downloaded a remarkable 250,000 times.
E-books have become a very significant medium, partly because people can instantly see the value of a product that looks like for-purchase content but can actually be downloaded for free. In my opinion, e-books should be material people want to read, compared to the dense and usually boring white paper, which our buyers feel they should read but often don't.
Many of the ebooks I've written about in the past such as Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex are for consumer markets.
For business-to-business companies used to the more traditional white paper, an e-book is a radical departure for one simple yet revolutionary reason: the goal. An e-book is about spreading ideas. But for most companies, a white paper is about generating sales leads.
If you've created and published a white paper for your business before, it's highly likely that you put all sorts of controls over its dissemination. If you offered it online, you probably required readers to fill out a Web form before they could download it. The form required them to supply their name, affiliation, email address, phone number, and perhaps more details like the size of their company. Most companies apply the same "give to get" philosophy to offline white papers, requiring interested readers to supply a business card or fill out a reply form.
An e-book is different, or at least should be. Make the content totally free with no registration requirement at all so people are more likely to download it and share with colleagues.
The ebook has been very popular with the corporate librarian buyer persona - a major target market for Dow Jones Client Solutions - who find the ebook through partner links on Association sites such as the Special Libraries Association, and events such as the Semantic Technology Conference, Taxonomy Boot Camp, Enterprise Search Summit, and KM World.
Disclosure: I've done consulting work for Dow Jones and have spoken at many of their events around the world. However, I did not work on the Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook.
Please forgive the gratuitous headline but I couldn’t resist. Two new free ebooks have been sent to me recently and both of them involve sex. Well, sort of.
Dianna Huff points us to Dr. Helaine Smith, a Boston, Massachusetts cosmetic dentist. Dr. Smith asks the question: "When was the last time you thought about your teeth? That's like asking when you last thought about your femur or your elbow."
In her new e-book, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex! Dr. Smith explains the connection between oral health and sexual well-being: "a topic not too many people talk about."
She says: “What many people don't understand -- or even consider -- is that the health of our teeth and mouths has a huge connection with our overall physical health -- and our sex lives!
The ebook asks: "Were you taught how to shave by a pro? More likely you've unknowingly taken on the bad habits of your father, or even worse, you've taught yourself to shave from what you've seen on television commercials. If you ever get razor burn, ingrown hairs, redness or irritation then you have to read on!"
The ebook includes six reasons why you should pay attention to your daily routine with number 6 being: "The amount of sex you get is in direct proportion to how well you shave!"
The sex angle, while just a teeny bit gimmicky, does spark some interest because the authors are linking sex to unexpected things like shaving and dentistry.
I really like these ebooks. If a dentist and an Australian company producing "male grooming products that were created to increase the appeal of the uncompromising man" can find topics to write an ebook about, it shows that virtually any company, product, or organization can use an ebook to tell a story.
You can too!
Disclosure: Both of these ebooks kindly mention me in the acknowledgments and I thank the authors for that. I had nothing to do with the development of either ebook. However, both authors were in some way inspired by the information about creating ebooks that I included in this blog and in my latest free ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.
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