Prolific New Zealand author Rachel McAlpine shows a good understanding of the way things work on the web with her recent email promo.
Received at 1.14am NZTime:
FREE GIFT TO 5 WHO COMMENT ON TODAY’S BLOG
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Contented online courses in web content: what’s new?
http://www.contented.com/contented/?p=827Today’s blog post spells out the differences between the new
Diploma and the old courses. New courses, new format,
new system for managers to monitor staff progress…Please visit the blog now, because… The first 5 people
to comment on the latest entry will get a free course.
It’s a good way to sample the goods!
Essentially Rachel is leveraging her assets (online training courses) to obtain content, build a sense of community and in time backlinks. She’ll do well with building networking this way. All she needs to do is pick up a few influentuial bloggers who will link back to her and “Bob’s your uncle” she’s streets ahead of the others who have simply paid Google to advertise their offering.
In my presentation and e-book Web Thought Leadership I teach that web thought leaders use networking to gain centres of influence and gain traction in the web world. The fact that I’ve spent quality time writing about her recent offering here is testament to the principle of giver’s gain. She gives me something for my time – and in return she gets kudos and increased exposure.
Well done Rachel.
Unfortunately for me her email arrived in the middle of the night many hours after others had already commented on her blog, so I will naturally miss out on any of her freebees, but the principle remains the same – give people something of value and encourage them to help you in return. This is the way the world works. Rather than own and control, we gain influence through helping others.
In fact a far better way that Rachel could have created value would have been to seek comments and blog posts without a tight timeframe and involve others in the assessment process. This would give people like me time to think things through, create far greater lasting value blog posts and backlinks, and avoid timezone/notification issues.
The next stage for Rachel and Alice could be to move into some form of affiliate marketing by giving me a reason to actively promote their materials and offering, rather than just rave about them in a blog post – then they would really have my attention.
Digital resources are an excellent way to create value. Productisation is the monetisation of knowledge. We take knowledge, create a product (be it a membership system, e-book, or in Rachel’s case a training programme) and make money from it. McDonalds does it offline, taking an infinite array of ingredients from around the world, an enormous amount of experience in meeting people’s culinary expectations, an excellent understanding of human nature, and producing a Bic Mac.
Businesses wanting to make it on the web must embrace new ways of thinking and doing business. Get creative in your own business. Create products like Rachel has, market them online creatively, understanding the principle of creating centres of influence and with viral replication; you too can become a web thought leader!
Make sure you get your copy of web thought leadership today.
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