E-Books: Great Online Marketing Tool

The reason why Internet users love blogs is because they want to learn more about their special interests or share with other people who like the same thing. They also want to get the latest information from an expert–the person writing the blog, who may or may not be selling products or offering services. 

This is Why People Love E-books, too!

Here’s Ten–10–Reasons to Write Your E-Book Now

1) Driving Traffic: Your present or potential customers or clients are hungry for information on the subject you know best. If you offer this information, they will come to your site to obtain it.  This is a perfect way to encourage people to your Web site.

2) Building Lists : All web sites need to grow a list of people who are interested in their products or services. These are individuals who want to hear from you about new items, information and news about their product or service of interest. When you offer a free e-book, you capture the name of these people for future marketing.

3) Fighting Competition:   You need to distinguish yourself from your many competitors. What better way than offering free information?  When they have a choice, Internet users will go to the location with free valuable information rather than just a product or service listing.

4) Establishing Expertise: When you provide up-to-date, relevant information, you are building a reputation for being an expert in the field. People want to buy from individuals who are in the know.

5) Returning Customers: Internet users will go to sites where they find information and will return to these sites again and again. If you have e-books to download, they will keep coming back for more.

6) Growing SEO: Many of these e-books can be accessed by search engines, offering key words and extensive material to help with ranking.

7) Offering Flexibility: Do you know that you can now put your e-books on your own web site as well as book sites such as Amazon.com, free e-book sites, e-readers, electronic devices and other web sites? You can get a lot of exposure just with one book.

8 ) Growing Income: Once you establish a list that is interested in your topic, you can sell more in-depth and specific e-books to them. These can also be sold on other locations.

9) Making Contacts: Send a link to your e-books to potential customers or clients, the media, organizations who may need your services, consumers, legislators, professionals, and anyone else who would be interested in downloading them.

10)Publishing Ease: The best thing about e-books is that they can be done quickly, effectively and for a very reasonable cost.

**You have all the information in your head. You are the expert. You just need to get the information on paper. That’s easy with a few telephone interviews.

**An e-report of about 25 pages or an e-book of about 100 pages can be completed and on your site in a couple of weeks–cover and all.

**Just set aside several hours to establish the e-book’s theme, topics and chapter order, and a few times to be interviewed, and it will be done before you know it.

**Forget the high costs of ghostwriting a book from scratch. You are “writing” the book, but just with verbal versus written words.

E-Book Reader Battle in Full Swing

First Amazon had its Kindle. Then came Sony’s or was it Barnes & Noble’s e-reader?  Now the Ipad. And, of course about 20 other e-book readers that you probably don’t know unless you have a particular reading need. Everyone is battling it out.

That’s not all, by any means. As the battle continues on e-book readers, the same is happening for e-books. As you know, there are millions of e-books for free or sale online and through the libraries. These have been sold by Amazon and Kobo, as well as smaller online businesses. Many of these smaller Web sites have niches, such as a certain theme, or publish people’s works and then sell them on their site.

Google, is joining this area, too, in June or July. You will be seeing Google e-book stores that have about 4 million or so books for sale. This is going to have a major impact on all the smaller stores, and even the larger ones.  or need to quickly niche themselves. They need to differentiate their online business from the big guys. What can they offer to their customers besides the books and price?  This is why a blog and e-mails and e-zines to customers is so important. They build up a following.

Why am I writing about this? For three reasons: 1) It shows you the direction in which the industry is moving. People are getting used to reading their information in electronic form–including books. Also, they are reading this information on a variety of vehicles–online, mobile, ipad, laptops, etc. etc. 

2) Smaller businesses that are already in the e-book selling business should have established a niche in order to compete with these big guys. They need to differentiate themselves. That is why blogs, e-zines, e-mail and social media is so important. It builds up a following.

3) In the very near future, online businesses will have to reach their customers via other vehicles besides the Internet. They have to start thinking about developing marketing e-books, e-zines, reports, and other marketing tools for all those people reading information from their phones, ipads and e-readers. In addition to a blog, you are going to need an informative e-book/e-report that lets your customers or clients know about you and your business.  Let me know if you are interested in hearing more about this!

Online Businesses Use Videos for Product Info

An interesting article in REELSEO explains how increasing numbers of online buyers are looking for product descriptions and/or review before purchasing.  How are you using videos?

When YouTube first became popular, everyone looked for the most inane video, like someone eating a bag of worms. YouTube has come a long way, and now it is time for small online businesses to add videos to its marketing mix.

Online buyers are going to different video sites to find answers to their product or service questions.  If they are lucky, these potential buyers can see a short video on how several products compare or more  indepth information on a specific item that interests them.  If it is the actual business that sells the product that made the video, the buyer will link to the site to find out more information or make a purchase.

The bottom line: You should be using videos to promote your business. YouTube, for example, is the second most popular search engine.  Videos are not difficult to make and some of them will actually add to your search engine optimization. 

Videos are not difficult to make: One camera, good sound system, and some lighting and you are all set. You can even sit at your computer and make a video right from your office chair.

You may also want to check services such as Treepodia that uploads an e-commerce vendor’s entire catalog of product videos to YouTube.com, Google Video, Metacafe, Dailymotion and other video sites.

This is a great way that you can stand out from your competition and establish a stronger relationship with your present and future customers. It’s just a few minutes of work for a lot of exposure.

Yellow Pages for Small Businesses Going! Gone?

The Internet has greatly changed  marketing and communication in just a matter of a decade. This includes the yellow pages. Small online businesses are quickly learning that their customers and potential customers and/or clients will google their names rather than look in the telephone books. 

Does this mean that you should drop the yellow page ad for your brick-and-mortar or your service business? No.

Unless you have only an online presence, you do not have to think about other media. If you have both an offline and online presence or just an offline business or service, you need to spread the wealth of your marketing budget. You should be in the print yellow pages, have a Web site online with your business information. It does not have to be an expensive site with millions of bells and whistles. Just something clear and information with the right information. 

You cannot second guess where people will go 100 percent of the time to find you.  Small businesses have to be creative. In order to keep competitive, you have to put your eggs in multiple baskets. That means, you cannot reach most of your target audience with one marketing vehicle.

Where you list your services or products also depends on what you sell. Local items, such as car repair shops or jewelry stores will definitely want to be online and in print. Other services, such as travel, you may want to put more of an emphasis with the Internet.

Also, you know your customers best. If you live in a small town, and most of your customers are word of mouth or see you driving by, then you will want more visibility in the traditional yellow pages. Similarly, where are your hottest competitors listed? You need to be there, as well.

When people call you or come into your store or contact you online, ask  how they found out about you. Keep track of these marketing statistics, and review them when it is time to establish your annual marketing plan.

Use the Internet marketing to your advantage. Make sure you come up on the Google map. Also, keep abreast of new services, such as the Google “enhanced listings” service, which lets businesses call attention to themselves with a special feature, such as a sale, free giveaway or monthly menu items.

New E-book readers, Write Your E-book Now

The statistics speak for themselves. According to Yankee:

**By 2013, U.S. e-book reader sales will climb to over 19 million, with 6 million e-book readers purchased in 2010 alone.

**The U.S. installed base of e-book readers will hit over 36 million by 2013.

Although e-book readers have been around for some time, the cost has kept people away, as has the new e-format.  Japan introduced a color reader this past year for $1,000.  Increasingly, people are getting used to reading online or through their electronic devices.  The increased revenue from digital downloads shows that these concerns are disappearing.  According to the Association of American Publishers, the total industry revenue from digital-book downloads rose 149 percent in 2009.  

Amazon, which started the ball rolling with its Kindle electronic reader has sold about 3 million units in the U.S. and is now selling them in 100 countries worldwide.  

Barnes & Noble’s Nook runs on the Android platform and includes Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G wireless connectivity, a six-inch E-ink display, and a separate, smaller color touchscreen for the primary input device. 

According to an article on Teleread.com Sony reports that e-readers are the best sellers on the U.S. Sony Style Web site, and sales volume quadrupled year over year. Sales were so high over the holiday season that registrations crashed the servers on Christmas day.  The best selling model is the Touch edition, instead of the lower priced Pocket edition.  Sony wants to use e-ink for its displays, not LCD, so it’s waiting until color e-ink is for its new color reader.

E-reader Info. com says that Taiwan’s Delta Electronics will start shipping 13.1″ color e-readers at the end of the second quarter, in addition to the  8.1″ monochrome ones.

Apple announced a tablet computer, the iPad, that comes with a new iBookstore.  Most consumers don’t read enough that they are going to buy one device just for reading but Forrester’s data says that more consumers  read e-books on their cell phones and PCs than on e-readers.

The prices are already going down.  There will also be new features, such as listening to music while reading, or an e-book that has two screens like a book, or touch screens.  The battery life is getting much longer at the same time.  The Nook has a plastic screen to reduce glare.  Electronic-ink technology is set to move from black and white to color by the end of 2010. Even video is very close.

All this bodes very well for businesses that want to write high-quality and i informative e-books  on topics that their customers need and want. These e-books can be used as marketing tools or as income builders.  The next couple of years are really going to shake up the e-book industry.

E-Commerce Social Media Examples

This past year, numerous e-commerce sites increasingly used the social media as a marketing tool due to the economic situation and the growing impact of the social media in product and service decision making.  Rather than just putting up a Facebook account, many Web site businesses are using the social media to provide additional information and services not on their home site.

1) Some online businesses are giving fans perks, such as t-shirts, coupons and other types of savings. 

2) Do you have a unique business or service and want to show it off? Join other Internet companies that are using their Facebook for photos and videos on how their products work.

3) Many online services have particular nonprofit organizations that they support. The Facebook page is a perfect place to highlight the latest participation with that organization.

4) Does your online business have special contests? They can be listed here on Facebook. For example, what about a special recipe winner each month that uses your Web site’s products.

5) The Facebook page can be a great place to include photographs of customers’ photographs with your products.

6) There are numerous widgets now that do everything, but there is usually not room on the Web site of the business. Add them on Facebook and change them monthly.

Online Video Marketing:Trend Bigger in 2010

The trend toward using videos for marketing business Web sites, generating traffic and building a following is gaining more momentum in 2010. 

According to comScore, over 78 percent of the American online audience views Internet videos.  The Wine Library video blog has a hundred thousand viewers every month.  Increasing  numbers of people like to watch videos both online as well as on their mobile phones.  Now, it’s quite easy to create and publish videos on YouTube and iPhone.   Print blogging has soared over the past several years, and video blogging will probably do the same.  These blogs are also primed for search engine optimization, which enhances your marketing efforts. If you have or want to start an online business, you should give thought to videos for business Internet marketing online.

At the same time, live video streaming is also increasing.  These are not videos that play to a large number of general viewers. Instead, they are similar to written blogs that are designed to reach niche audiences.  In most situations, you ar targeting specific people with special-interest events with perhaps 1,000 or less individuals. 

Although there are a large number of free informative videos online, many of them do not cover topics in much deapth or are not high quality. Some of the videos also include advertisements, and viewers need to watch these before getting to the real meat .  Therefore, look for more video tutorials to be sold to interested customers either for a one-time use or on Web sites that offer subscription plans.  

Small online businesses can use videos in a number of different ways, such as providing information, establishing relationships and enhancing interest in products or services.  As your competition continues to only use text as a marketing vehicle, you can stand apart by including videos.  With a personal touch, you can talk directly to them and provide information on your products or answer questions that often arise with customers.  You can explain why you are better than the competition and how you can best meet their needs.

If, for example, you sell lighting, then produce video tutorials on how to enhance a livingroom with new forms of light.  Show how different lights change the look of the room. Or, you can talk about the benefits of the lighting products in terms of energy savings, length of use and quality design.  Or, have video just devoted to Q&As that you receive on a regular basis from your customers. Put that up on your site in addition to the regular FAQ list.  

It may seem overwhelming and expensive to do a good video, but that is not true. You do not need a full-length movie that is being shown in national theaters. Videos can be done very reasonably in a short period of time.