Ron Passfield – Page 16 – Small Business Odyssey

November 1, 2011

Creating a Free E-Book from Your Articles and Blog Posts

One of the most effective forms of small business marketing is creating and marketing a free e-book. These e-books can be developed very easily by drawing together articles or blog posts that cover a common theme and then organizing them into a logical sequence.

I have recently completed an e-book, “Building a Team through Performance Conversations”, for my own small business. It is available for download via our website at the following URL;

http://www.meritsolutions.com.au/products/

Identify the purpose behind your free e-book

The purpose behind my free e-book is threefold:

create awareness of our business, Merit Solutions Australia
promote our training program
promote a specific training program focused on performance conversations

To achieve these ends, our website address is prominently displayed on the front cover and on the footer of each page. The “about the author” page includes details of our training programs. Reference is made to the performance conversation workshop throughout the text and these references are hyper-linked to the sales page.

The purpose behind your free e-book should drive the length, focus, format and overall design. You can add images, illustrations, diagrams, mindmaps and screenshots to add interest, aid understanding, assist memory retention and facilitate action by the reader. It is important that the images reinforce your content and do not distract from it.

The “Building a Team” e-book is my 6th free e-book and I find that, as with any writing, creating an e-book gets easier every time.

Converting your free e-book to a PDF Document

Typically, e-books are written as Microsoft Word documents in the first instance and then converted to a PDF format. The PDF format enables easy upload and download, retains formatting and facilitates security over your content (you can lock out the facility to highlight and copy).

If you have 2007 or 2010 Microsoft Office, you can save your Word document as a PDF file with clickable links. There are many free PDF converters on the Internet but most of these display hyperlinks that are not clickable, so you lose one of the major advantages of a PDF file.

However, there are paid programs that have all the required features. A low-cost option ($10) that I have used is eWriter Pro. This software has the following features:

You can create your content directly inside the software or just paste it in from your text editor (like MS Word).
You can include active hyperlinks to websites or email (clickable links)
You can password-protect your PDF document (for security purposes)
You can disable the copy/paste function or print function to prevent people thieving your e-book
You can easily insert pictures, footers & text frames
You can include page breaks & automatically add page numbers and footers
You can manage, store and categorize all your ebooks, articles and works-in-progress from within the software.
You can create an unlimited number of full-featured PDF files. No restrictions, no royalties, no 3rd-party ads.

So there is no limitation on how many free e-books you can create and distribute to market your small business and your products and service.

October 31, 2011November 8, 2011

Small Business Marketing Mistakes (1): Outpacing Your Customers

In a recent webinar, Greg Habstritt, creator of the Trusted Authority Formula, identified a number of mistakes in small business marketing made by entrepreneurs and small business owners. He went on to describe a fundamental mistake that many small business owners make – a mistake that he called. “The Field of Dreams Marketing”.

This mistake arises when you assume you know what your market wants and then create a product or service based on these untested assumptions. If you have missed the mark with your assumptions, you find that your sales are poor. This is a very common mistake in small business marketing and I know I have been guilty of this one.

The core problem for small business marketing is that sometimes your knowledge and understanding of the needs of your customers outpaces their own perceptions. You have probably spent a lot of time working with customers, analyzing your market and offering a range of products/services. Out of these interactions, you have identified some recurring, foundational problems. Then based on this knowledge and understanding, you launched a new product/service – but the market did not buy.

Your customers have not arrived at the same conclusions that you have in relation to possible solutions to their problems. There is a mismatch between your perception and theirs about their problems (needs) and possible solutions. Until you demonstrate that you are meeting their needs (as perceived by them), you cannot influence their (buying) behavior.

Sometimes, this mismatch in perception can be addressed by patient re-education – an approach that Greg Habstritt and others adopt for product launches via a progressive series of webinars, videos, workbooks and podcasts. The goal here is ultimately to have your potential customers share the same perception you have about their core problem(s) and possible solutions (reflected in the program/product being launched). Donald Schon (1984), in “The Reflective Practitioner”, described this approach as helping people to “re-frame the problem”.

However, this re-education approach can be very time-consuming and costly and you need an expensive product to make it worthwhile and considerable credibility (Trusted Authority status) to be able to pull it off. More often than not, small business marketers don’t have the funds, patience or time to undertake such re-education. Instead they expend time, money and effort on creating a new product that very few people see the need for – and hence very few sales result again, if any.

A cheaper and more reliable approach is to find out what your customers want – what they perceive their needs to be. This can be achieved by surveys or via discussions with customers (by phone, Skype, face-to-face). The starting point is to find out what their “greatest hurt” is – that is, where they are hurting the most in relation to the potential products and services that you are equipped to offer.

In my studies of organizational psychology (1983 – many years ago), I learned that changes in human behavior are motivated either by a desire for pleasure or desire to reduce pain, the latter being the stronger driver of the two. If you can tap into what is “hurting” your customers, you are better able to create products or services that meet their perceived needs.

Small business marketing options where you have outpaced your customers

Even if you have created a product that “outpaces your customers”, there are some options you can explore to recover from this mistake.

Here are some small business marketing options you could use:

Offer free access to some of your key customers to enable them to gain exposure to what the product has to offer
Undertake market research to ascertain the core issues as perceived by the customers (this may lead to re-naming or re-orienting your product or creating an entirely new product)
Develop a series of products as a marketing funnel leading to the “outpacing” product as the final offering
Develop a re-education program incorporating an e-book, podcasts, workbook and webinars that lead to the “outpacing” product
Design an introductory product that focuses on where the customer experiences “hurt” – and on-sell from this new product
Break the “outpacing” product into separate components that customers can directly relate to.

The solution to remedying this small business marketing mistake may lie in adopting one or more of these options. The ultimate choice of a small business marketing strategy should be grounded in the business vision and business goals.

This discussion highlights one of the core mistakes that you can make in small business marketing and suggests some options for redressing the mistake. It also reinforces the need for market research as a central requirement for small business marketing.

October 29, 2011

How to Use Wizzley to Market Your Small Business Online

Wizzley provides a great platform for you to market your small business, your personal profile and your products and services.

Wizzley is an online writer’s community that incorporates social networking and article writing/article marketing. The writer’s platform is easy to use with a range of modules that can be plugged into an article with a click – the net result is a potentially, very attractive multi-media presentation:

You can embed videos and images and incorporate the RSS feed from your blog. The design options (e.g. two-column presentation, different themes and colors) add to the flexibility of the site for small business owners who want to present their business in the best possible light.

Jimmie, a top author on Wizzley, provides a great exemplar of how a small business, Backermann’s Bakery, can be attractively presented on the site:

http://wizzley.com/backermann-bakery-whiteville-tn/

Jimmie has creatively used the two-column presentation, video, variable-sized images, Google Maps, the duel module and the Amazon affiliate module. Her presentation, with delectable images of baking products, makes you want to visit the Bakery.

Wizzley is a free platform for you to market your small business and present your business and yourself in an attractive light.

October 28, 2011October 28, 2011

Using Flickr Images for Content Creation

Flickr photos are often high quality and make superb images for online content creation such as blog posts, e-books, articles or videos. The following discussion provides some ideas on how to use Flickr for content creation for small business marketing.

1. Check license arrangements

Before you use a Flickr image make sure you check the license agreement. You need to be aware whether or not the image can be remixed (to create a derivative product) and whether or not you can use the image (remixed or not) for commercial use. The ShareAlike component of a license means that, “If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.” The range of licenses looks like this:

Attribution License
Attribution-NoDerivs License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Attribution-NonCommercial License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
Attribution-ShareAlike License

2. Advise when you have used an image

In all the above licenses, you have to make an attribution to the originator in the form they request – usually a hyperlink to their Flickr site showing their username and photo title. Of late, I have been making the habit of commenting on the photo I use and leaving a link to my blog post or other URL where I have used the image. Often, the originator will respond with some form of appreciation.

3. Be creative in your use of Flickr images (within the terms of the license)

There are endless ways you can use Flickr images. A common way is to integrate them in a PowerPoint presentation and make an attribution list at the end. You could use them within an eBook (abiding by the “fair use” rule). Wizzley, a writer’s community, has a built-in module for displaying Flickr photos which provides a range of options. The most frequent use of Flickr photos is in blog posts and a number of the top bloggers illustrate their posts with Flickr photos.

4. Showcase a photographer via Squidoo

If you come across an outstanding photographer or one who is creating images relevant to your focus/niche, you could build a Squidoo lens to showcase their photography. When I was working towards my 50^th Squidoo lens (GiantSquid) I developed a series of lenses focused on the towns/beaches on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland (the home State for my small business). In the process I came across the stunning photography of BarbaraJH on Flickr. Barbara lives at Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast and at last count had more than 7,700 photos on Flickr with 81 sets. Her photography is exquisite, so I asked her whether she would agree to my building a Squidoo lens to showcase her work. She readily agreed. The lens provides a great insight into the quality of her photography:

http://www.squidoo.com/BarbaraJH-Maroochydore

Barbara’s public comment on seeing the early version of the completed lens was:

Thank you Ron, you’ve made a simply wonderful showcase of my photos, hopefully others will now get to enjoy seeing just a glimpse of the beautiful area in which I live.

Her personal appreciation via email was particularly moving. This is one example of how you can build social equity through your innovative content creation using Flickr. You can imagine that if your small business was located at Maroochydore, illustrating a top Flickr photographer from that area could bring a lot of traffic to your personal profile(s).

Flickr makes it easy for you to create online content with quality illustrations.

October 26, 2011

10 Tips for Building Your Personal Brand on Flickr

The real value of Flickr in terms of small business marketing is the ability to create a personal brand and build a following around common interests. This post offers 10 tips for developing your personal brand on Flickr. They are offered in line with the small bsuiness marketing ideas discussed in the previous post.

1. Build your profile with care

Your photos are your marketing medium but your profile is your marketing message. Take time and care in creating your profile and keep refining it to keep it up-to-date with your online marketing strategy.

Focus is important here as is clarity. Take advantage of Flickr’s format offer in the profile area and add bold and italics and URL’s where appropriate … and images. Flickr adds “no follow” code to all links, so your focus should be on the reader, not search engine optimization (SEO). Whatever you do, keep in mind that your profile is the main way a Flickr visitor has to find out who you are and what you have to offer.

Your Flickr profile itself will also be indexed by Google. Here’s an example of a Flickr search result on my own name – the link leads directly to my profile:

Flickr: ronpass
Everyone’s Uploads Groups Flickr Members For a Location Applications · ronpass’ Photostream · to ronpass’ photostream page. About ronpass / Ron Passfield …
http.www.flickr.com/people/ronpass/ –

Part of your broad social media marketing strategy should be to have a presence on as many high traffic locations on the Internet as possible. Flickr provides an opportunity for further exposure if you have photos to share.

2. Get a Flicker Pro account

A Pro account costs about $25 per year at time of writing. This enables you to overcome the limitations of the free account – which are 100 MB monthly photo upload limit (10MB per photo), 2 video uploads each month (90 seconds max, 150MB per video) and post any photo to up to 10 groups. The Pro account gives you some authority on the site as you get a “PRO” icon added to your name and account. Here are the PRO account benefits:

Unlimited photo uploads (20MB per photo)
Unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max, 500MB per video)
The ability to show HD Video
Unlimited storage and Unlimited bandwidth
Archiving of high-resolution original images
The ability to replace a photo
Post any of your photos or videos in up to 60 group pools
Ad-free browsing and sharing
View count and referrer statistics.

With a Pro account, you can get access to your Flickr account stats. It pays to check these stats regularly. Here’s what Flickr has to say about their stats (provided in tabular form and visually):

Stats on Flickr are designed to give you insight into the ways that people are finding your photos. There are stats available for people surfing on Flickr itself – where the referrer is flickr.com – and stats about people coming from other websites. We can show you the sorts of things people search for on search engines where your photos turn up, and tell you how many views your photos have.

3. Participate in Groups

Groups are the major medium for communication on Flickr. They represent people of like interests sharing their passions. Choose groups wisely and be willing to participate through sharing and commenting (remember comments brand you). Flickr facilitates easy participation in groups. Once you upload a photo you can specify what groups you want it to go to with an easy click. The more groups, the more exposure, but keep them relevant to your profile and purpose. When joining a group, make sure you take a note of their rules, e.g. limits on the number of photos you can add to a group in a day (e.g. 2 or 3).

4. Titles, Tags and descriptions are important for traffic

Flickr gives priority to photo titles when activating search results. However, people on Flickr will often find your images through your tags – so be industrious here. Check tags in use to see whether you can link to them. Descriptions are also important because they inform the viewer and give them a better context and understanding to view your images. You don’t want them to go away bewildered – they may not return. Providing an interesting description could hold their attention and stimulate their curiosity.

5. Create sets of photos

Sets are groups of photos around a theme much like an album. This makes it easier for the viewer to look at related photos. If you have a Pro account, you can also create collections which are groups of sets. Both sets and collections have their own URL and a mosaic created from the photos that make up the set or collection. Collections are particularly useful where you have a large number of photos.

6. Be topical and creative

Creativity and humor attract people to you (as evidenced by some of the top YouTube videos). A way to attract lots of traffic is to create an interesting and creative set of photos around a topical event. You will attract attention if you adopt an innovative perspective (in line with Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow”).

7. Encourage others to reuse your images

Flickr offers a range of options in relation to licensing your photos. The least restrictive license is known as “Creative Commons – Attribution” which effectively means:

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give you credit.

So you make your photography available to others as long as they acknowledge the source. People can then use your photos on their websites and blog posts, in eBooks or in remixing to make other products. You thus place no restriction on commercial use of your photos as long as the attribution is given. This can have a viral effect as more and more people come to see your photography through a diverse range of outlets. You might be lucky and have one of the top bloggers like Brian Clark of Copyblogger pick up your Flickr photo and use it in one of his blog posts (he has 130,000+ subscribers).

8. Maintain your contribution

As with any social media site, it is important to maintain your momentum and contribute regularly through uploads, joining groups, commenting on others’ photos and using Flickr images in your content creation.

9. Add video to your Flickr site

As mentioned earlier, with a free account you can upload 2 videos each month (90 seconds max, 150MB per video). However, with a PRO account, you can upload an unlimited number of videos (still 90 seconds max) with a limit of 500MB per video. Flickr is a great way to leverage animated music videos created from photos via Animoto. In a previous post, I explained that with the free account at Animoto you can make an unlimited number of 30 second videos or with the All Access Pass, an unlimited number of videos of any length.

10. Improve the quality of your photos

Space does not permit a full discussion of this issue but here are some thoughts:

Observe “the Rule of Thirds”: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds
Fill the frame: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/fill-your-frame
Crop your photos : This is one way to achieve “fill your frame”. It is also important for quality presentation. Flickr uses thumbnail images for individual photos, sets and collections. It pays to be conscious of this and crop your shots so that you get the best result from your photography. It’s amazing how cropping can totally change an image and even convert a poor shot into a great one.
Frame your subject: Find something in the scene to provide a natural frame for your shot. The image for this post is an example. It is one of the photos that I took on holidays from a lookout in a mountain village, Montville, Queensland … the photo is aptly named, “Picnic on the Edge”.

The 10 tips in this post offer ways to build your personal brand and Internet profile on Flickr and, like any form of small business marketing, demand consistent and persistent action.