One of the strategies I encourage attendees of my workshops or programmes to adopt is the creation of audio tutorials, special reports, white papers or e-books which they can use on their business blog or website to attract people to register for their ezine or newsletter.

E-books continue to be a popular marketing tool to attract more leads and more clients as the investment you need to create them is minimal - you can use Word or PowerPoint (or the equivalent if you are using a Mac) to create the document and then use a PDF creator to create the copy you make available on your website or business blog.

Many people decide to create their e-book themselves without employing a designer to format the final version and create a professional layout and that’s not a problem.

 However if you are going to layout and format your ebook yourself here are five keys to remember to ensure that your e-book will look professional and be on-brand:

1. Colourful Pages - use colour sparingly when formatting your e-book. Absolutely make sure that the colours you use connect with your corporate brand so that it looks consistent.However your readers will not thank you when you have lots of colour in your e-book, and even worse if whole of the background of your ebook in a solid colour. Many people print e-books and they don’t like the expense or time that it takes to print a document in colour.
2. Let Your Copy Breath - as we continue to be bombarded with information, increasingly as readers and consumers of information we scan information.

   Format your e-book so that it is easy on the eye with lots of white space, perhaps using ‘call outs’ to focus your e-book readers on key points you want to make or quotes and use bulleted lists to help your copy breath.

3. Add Page Numbers - as your e-book streams off the printer, it’s easy for the pages to get muddled up.

   An often forgotten tip is the adding of page numbers to the header or footer of your e-book, making it easy for your reader to put them back in order when they drop the pages of your e-book.

4. Check Your Links - one of the benefits of writing an ebook versus a traditional book is that you can easily create active links to web pages in your e-book.Many e-book authors use this as an opportunity to include links to pages on their website or business blog for more information or even to affiliate programmes they participate in that provide resources and products or programmes the readers of their ebook will find of benefit.

   If you do decide to create links in your e-book, before you publish it online, be sure to check that the links still work to maximise the opportunity of people being able to click through to your links and eliminate the customer service emails you will receive from readers of your e-book advising you that your links in your e-book do not work.

5. Promote Your Brand - if your e-book is printed and then people come back to review it in several months or even years time, are you confident that they will know how to find you if they want to connect with you the ebook author for more information, advice or tips?

   Don’t forget to add your web address to the footer of your e-book and in the back pages of your e-book, use the opportunity to provide people with information on how to find our more about your programmes, products or services.

Apply these tips and your e-book will look professional and on-brand. Of course the copy in your e-book needs to be top class, expressing your expertise and thought leadership in your field. But remember that people often judge a book by it’s cover. Don’t let your e-book, special report or white paper readers be put off reading the quality content due to poor formatting of your e-book.

What tips do you have for others for formating e-books so they are professional and on-brand?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

If you are an e-book author or an author of a traditional book, don’t forget to check out the details of the forthcoming workshop taking place in Dublin on the 7 June 2008, hosted by Font Literary Agency about Online Marketing, Publicity and Promotion for your book or e-book. Readers of Biz Growth News and my Biz Growth Community can register to access a discount - you can find all the details here.

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If you saw my post yesterday you will know that Sherman Hu is the guest expert joining me today for ‘Biz Growth Live‘ when we will be discussing ‘How To Master Online Video’.

I just heard back from Sherman about the curriculum for the masterclass and he said “WOW, very powerful questions”.

As I explained to Sherman - that’s what my live calls with experts are renound for - I ask all the questions I know my clients and community want to know about.

Sherman then offered me a tremendous opportunity for all of you in our ‘Biz Growth Community’ - he has just created three DVD’s and as he is joining me on the call today and you might not be aware of his programme, he is extending the special pricing to members of the ‘Biz Growth Community’ until 28 March 2008.

This is not an affiliate link - you can access all the details of his DVD’s here.

In summary his package consists of 3 DVD’s:

1. How To Create A Video Home Studio For Less Than $500

2. How To Generate $10,000 A Month (Or More) From Blogging

3. How To Generate $10,000 A Month (Or More) From Video

Special price: US$127 including shipping and handling (List Price: US$180).

So why not mouse over if you are interested in online video and how it can support you in brining your brand to life!

Hope to hear you on the call later today.

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One of the things I have come to realise when considering implementing social media marketing strategies to build your brand and attract more clients is that many organisations have still not mastered the basics of online marketing.

In fact at a recent workshop that I led, less than 50 percent of the business leaders of small professional services practices had taken the first step in building their brand online and attract more clients. The problem they faced was that they did not know where to start in creating a presence on the web.

What is more disturbing is that some of the people that are teaching entreprenuers in Ireland through workshops being held by the Enterprise Boards in Ireland to build their business online have an ineffective presence themselves.

In fact I was speaking to one person last week who runs an ecommerce training programme for a number of the Enterprise Boards and their website actually consists of a PDF uploaded online. So they are definately not teaching ecommerce from a position of expert knowledge.

You might have seen a new book being promoted last week, Mastering Online Marketing - in fact it reached number 1 on Amazon for a number of categories.

One of the co-authors is a good friend and colleagues of mine, Mitch Meyerson, who has personally mastered online marketing and is an expert in the areas, and I am delighted that he is my guest on our next Biz Growth Live 60 minute teleseminar taking place at 6pm if you are in Ireland or the UK on Monday 10 March 2008 at 6pm (for those of you in the US as your clocks changed the time will be 2pm ET).

If you are not a member of our Biz Growth Community, you can join this call at no cost by registering at Biz Growth Live.

The call is free to attend - while I use a US bridge line as our community is global, if you are not in the US, you can usually find a low cost international calling card at most newsagents or post offices.

PLEASE NOTE THE CALL IS NOT AVAILABLE AFTER THE EVENT OTHER THAN TO OUR CLIENTS THOUGH I WILL BE MAKING AVAILABLE A PODCAST EXTRACT OF THE MASTERING ONLINE MARKETING TELESEMINAR IN A FEW WEEKS TIME.

ABOUT MASTERING ONLINE MARKETING - THE BOOK

Here is an extract of the subjects covered in the book:

1. The entrepreneurial shift: The key to creating an integrated business mindset
2. Strategic marketing: The key to sustainable online success
3. Products and services: The key to smart selling
4. Design and navigation: Making your Web site dynamic and visitor-friendly
5. Dynamic web copy: The key to getting people to respond
6. Traffic conversion: The key to increased sales and list building 
7. Automation: The key to increasing e-commerce profits
8. Multimedia: Increasing your impact using audio, video, and conferencing
9. Traffic strategies: The key to getting more visitors to your site
10. People power: The key to successful affiliate programs and partnership
11. Web 2.0: The key to using social media effectively
12. Momentum: The key to systematizing your business and building your virtual team

So if you are looking for a gread guide to getting started on the web, you won’t go far wrong if you read “Mastering Online Marketing“.

Mitch has also generously made available some tremendous free resources if you purchase “Mastering Online Marketing” - just purchase the “Mastering Online Marketing” book on Amazon here and then mouse over to his special offer page to access the free resources.

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If you are looking for ways to embed documents into your website or business blog, then you might be interested in the solution offered by Scribd - iPaper.

This tool allows you to take Word, Powerpoint and even PDF’s and upload them to your website - in fact there are a host of formats you can upload

I uploaded as an example the details of the forthcoming Association for Coaching in Ireland Masterclass which I had created in Word to see how easy the tool was to use. Check it out below.

Some of the great things about iPaper is that you can:

- upload documents in various formats and then determine how you want them to be accessed for example as a PDF, Word document or text file

- assign a creative commons and license for copyright

- embed adverts into the document

- make the document private or public

- quick post documents to your blog

- email the document to a friend

- bookmark your content and share it to your social networks

- change the width and height of the iPaper document you embed in your website or blog

- create a private group if you want to share documents with a select number of people for example your clients or mastermind group

- it’s free!

SOME POINTS TO NOTE ABOUT IPAPER USEABILITY:

- if you upload PDF’s make sure that they are not password protected

- in the tags, unfortunately you can not add tags that are several words long with spaces between them

- uploading to Wordpress.org, I had to switch off my HTML editor to upload the document here at Biz Growth News

- when uploading a word document, I found the document slipped and therefore it did not come out as I originally formatted it so do make sure that you check your document

- initially when the document was uploaded it looked fine - then for some reason it became unreadable - I emailed the Scribd team but have yet to find out what the problem is.

How do you think you could use iPaper to add great content to your website or business blog so you build your reputation as a great hub of advice and guidance for your clients and prospects?

Perhaps use it to add your newsletter, a sample chapter of your business book, or even your application forms for your training and coaching programmes to your website or business blog?

In summary, it’s a great tool, but has some potential limitations and problems if you are expecting your documents to be available with 100% accuracy and readability as noted in my last comment under “Some Points To Note About iPaper Useability”.

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Creating online video’s is a great way to provide resources and guidance to prospects and clients. Online video can also position you a knowledgable expert in your field and you have probably heard that they also increase the time people will stay on your website if the content is relevant and professionally delivered.

But what if you are concerned about the investment required to create online video’s especially if you have a limited development budget or you do not have the resources to outsource the production?

Well I just heard today that Camtasia Studio, one of the tools I use in my business, is making available a completely free, full version of screen capture video software Camtasia Studio Version 3 for a limited period of time. 

I use Camtasia Studio for tutorials around building your personal brand and developing your employer brand and for customer service resources to help the members of my online membership community get familiar with the environment and you certainly do not need to be a technical whizz at all to use Camtasia Studio. You could also use Camtasia Studio to create information products that you can then sell to realise new streams of revenue from your practice.

You can download your free version of Camtasia Studio here and then register it. Then develop your action plan to use online video’s to attract more clients, support your current clients and grow your profits.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• If you are looking for ideas and inspiration about how to use online video’s in your practice, you can read an article I wrote earlier this year
• My good friend and colleague Chris Austin has created some terrific free training videos where you can experience Camtasia Studio - Chris provides excellent guidance in how to use Camtasia.

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