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Using Ebooks To Boost Your Online Marketing

One online marketing channel that is often not considered by small businesses is that of ebooks. With the advent of ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle, ebooks have found new favour and sales are really starting to soar. If you have paper based publications, have you considered moving them across to the electronic platform?

Is publishing an ebook online considered marketing? I know many will claim that a business needs a good online marketing program to promote the ebook – and they are right. However, if you consider one important premise first, that is, that anything you do online, whether it’s writing to a blog, leaving a comment or promoting a Facebook (or any other activity) is a form of online marketing, then so too is publishing an ebook. So how can an ebook help to promote your business? Consider the following:

Branding – every article, blog post, comment or social media appearance is an opportunity to promote your brand. An ebook is no different, especially if it proves to be popular.

Reputation – a well written ‘how to’ book, for example, can help to build your authority in a niche. In social media circles, this can be very important in attracting more followers and, hopefully, more customers.

Customer Service – many products are sold these days with paper based manuals and how to guides. Online, there are sites that publish how to guides. If you fit into either of these categories (or both) then you may want to consider publishing an ebook version. Your customers may well appreciate them.

Whether you sell these ebooks or give them away is a business decision you will have to make. Free ebooks can be very attractive online marketing tools – they can also be viewed with disdain by some, simply by virtue of the ‘free’ tag. However, offered as part of a customer service program could be a different story altogether.

There are many different online marketing opportunities available today. Videos and blogs have been very popular and I see no reason why an ebook couldn’t fit into the same category. Of course, creating a nothing ebook to capitalise on the concept could have a reverse effect and do more harm to your business than good. If you are going to publish – make sure it is worthy of having your business name attached.