What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know (TM) - The Blog For Original Content Infopreneurs

Quora: 7 Reasons Why It's My New Best Marketing Friend

For those of you don’t know, Quora.com is a free site where people post questions they are looking for help with.  Why bother answering other people’s questions? It’s one of the 12 Ways Infopreneurs (and entrepreneurs of course) Can Do Marketing Without Needing The Big Bucks that I discuss in that 33-page megachapter in my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know! But in a nutshell, it’s a great way to show what you uniquely know, build credibility in a particular field, and get leads, sales and boost your SEO in the process.

Even though Quora has been available to the general public since June 2010, I had never heard of it till a few weeks ago from Publicity Hound Joan Stewart’s blog post 6 Reasons To Use Quora To Promote Your Expertise at PublicityHound.net (well worth your time).  Quora was co-founded by Facebook’s former CTO Adam D’Angelo and originally attracted the Silicon Valley crowd.

So here are the 7 reasons why Quora is my best new marketing friend:

1.  You can you set up a general profile with links to your sites and social media profiles, as well as unique mini profiles for every category you want to focus on answering questions in.  

How I Made A Book Trailer Video For What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know

Last week I realized I would miss two great opportunities if I didn't have a book trailer video pronto for What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know!  The first was that my publisher, Booklocker.com is now offering to add a book trailer to my book sales pages.  The second, was that with the holiday gift idea press release I was going to be doing for What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know! allowed a book trailer video to be included as well.

I decided enough's enough, so one night last week I was wired,  I stayed up till 2 AM (I do my best creative work as a night owl), and finally made my first (of several) book trailers and other videos happen.  How did I achieve this polished video so quickly and easily?

After, all I had been practially pulling my hair out trying to make a great video that didn't have a huge learning curve, didn't require a lot of technical knowledge or editing software knowledge, and didn't always require me to be on camera.  Well, here's how I did it. 

 

SEO The Super Simple Thing That Got Me Media Coverage In A Major Women's Magazine

Update: The story gets better!  The same columnist from Woman's World asked me to be a source again for another round-up piece that just published!

You’ve probably seen SEO guru after SEO guru, and SEO service after SEO service, talk about the hoops you have to jump through, the expensive courses you need, the tons of backlinks you have to build, the hefty pay-per-click budget you need to show up as a top sponsored result, and the thousands of dollars you have to spend on search engine optimization (SEO) if you want to get found online.

And if you’ve read the huge 33-page chapter A Dozen Ways Infopreneurs Can Succeed Without Needing The Big Bucks from my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know!(TM) you’re aware that I think that labor-intensive, obsessed and expensive approaches to search engine optimization are so unnecessary. 

Well nothing proves that point more than the story I’m about to share with you.

It’s no secret that I believe very strongly in the importance of public relations efforts as a way that any entrepreneur, infopreneur or content creator can do their marketing without having to spend big bucks.  So pretty much every day, some of my time is devoted to public relations activities for myself or my marketing and coaching clients. 

But sometimes if you make an effort to get your work out there into the world, the opportunity for media coverage comes to you.  And you don’t have to be a major celebrity for this to happen!

Teleseminars Webinars And Live Events Promote Them Online With 50+ Places

Update 11/22/10: If you are also interested in promoting your small business, book, product, event, etc. offline as well, Joan Stewart also has a follow-up webinar package for promoting events offline called 60+ Places To Promote Your Product, Service, Cause, Issue Or Event To Build The Buzz And Encourage Others To Promote For You.

Do you do teleseminars and webinars like I do?  Do you do live events ("real world" offline) like I do for some of my marketing clients?  Then you need to grab your copy of 50+ Places To Promote Your Live And Virtual Events Online to Reach Your Target Market And Pull Sell-out Crowds from my friend and public relations mentor, Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound. 

I wasn't able to attend the original webinar live as I was flying back from BlogWorld/New Media Expo  that day.  But I just caught up this past week with the replay, Powerpoint slides and handouts she provided (the same ones that are available for purchase), and I was blown away by the content. 

Joan Stewart over-delivered in this information-packed event (in fact, she ran about a half hour over and had to sign off before her webinar service cut her off!  I was truly blown away by all the possibilities that exist online for promoting my own teleseminars and webinars, as well as promoting online the teleseminars and webinars I host for my marketing clients and original content information product/service coaching clients.  In addition, Joan shared tips on uncovering additional websites that can be

BlogWorld New Media Expo: How Going Led To My First Live Video

Now while my business is primarily virtual, there are times when you just can’t beat an in-person business event, and going to this year’s BlogWorld/New Media Expo in Las Vegas was one of them.  I had been to the conference two years ago when it was just The New Media Expo and got a lot out of it—it got me to stop talking about launching What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know The Podcast, and be inspired to actually do it. 

Plus, it’s where I met the Microsoft employee who loved my podcast and got it recognized as a featured show (where it remained ongoing), and my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know spotlighted on the Office Products Podcast Directory.  That love from Microsoft wouldn’t have happened any other way.

So I was optimistic about more magic happening when I attended this year’s conference, and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was also appropriate that this time instead of involving audio, the magic involved video. 

Why Entrepreneurs And Infopreneurs Need Their Own Media Properties

Being active as I am in social media, as well as keeping tabs on the hot topics out there on the internet and in the media for entrepreneurs and original content infopreneurs, I’d say that the two most common questions are:

 

  

1. How do I publicize my business on a limited budget? 
2. How do I get more traffic to my site?

Well, one of the least expensive ways to accomplish both is to simply have your own media properties.  What do I mean by a media property?  I’m referring to:

  

 1.   A blog—whether it be a traditional text blog, v-log or hybrid of the two. 

 

  

2.   A podcast or internet radio show—whether it be an audio podcast like my What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM), The Podcast, or a live show hosted on sites like BlogTalk Radio or TalkShoe; or a video podcast, or an internet TV show like one you host on sites like UStream.

 

 

One Of My Favorite Public Relations Methods Tie Your Pitch To Breaking News

Update 7/22:  This course is of course closed, butyou can still get the valuable recording of the How to Tie Your Pitch to Breaking News and Make the Media Interview YOU, or if you need help with your PR, I can hold your hand and coach you through it, or do it for you with my own affordable PR Services!

 

In my VP of Marketing days the playing field was not level when it came to Public Relations.  It was tough for the "little guy and gal" to get the attention of the media.  Fortunately, getting PR today it's no longer an issue...if you know what you're doing.

One of my favorite techniques for getting media coverage is to tie in the pitch to breaking news or seasonality.  My pitch for What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know!  as "The Gift Of Empowerment" got me lots of coverage during the holidays.  And one of my marketing clients just jumped on an opportunity to leverage some news about his NFL clients and is going to be on TV next week!

So how do you tie in your work with breaking news to get some media love?

Well, one of the people who has taught me a few tricks about PR and social media--Joan Stewart, an expert in these fields--is having a training webinar called How to Tie Your Pitch to Breaking News and Make the Media Interview YOU next Wednesday, July 21st, that will teach you exactly how to do it yourself!  You can check it out CLICK HERE.

I've taken several of Joan's quick, information-packed webinar courses and they have always taught me something I didn't know, which is why I'm recommending this one to you (and yes, I'm an affiliate but you know I only recommend things I have used myself or if I have experienced other work from that resource).

How To Get More Credibility Online In One Simple Step

Back in my real estate days, one of the things that always cracked me up was the real estate agents who would think that they were getting internet friendly by having a website or blog, and on their business card it would be listed as “JaneRealtor.usingfreeblogsite.toocheaptogetarealdomainname.com” and that was accompanied by an e-mail address at Yahoo or Gmail or AOL.

 

In Orange County, CA before the real estate bubble burst, ordinary people were buying million dollar homes, which meant that an agent’s typical commission on such a deal could be anywhere from $30,000 to $60,000 (3 to 6% of the deal depending on whether they were just the selling agent, or both selling and listing agent.  Is it any wonder that everyone and their brother had a real estate license?  And by the way, I was in real estate operations and training so I didn’t make those megabucks from that endeavor.

 

Back to the point though, here’s someone making tens of thousands of dollars on a deal and they were marketing themselves, in a field where personal branding is so important, in a way that was less than professional with the generic blog site address and the un-businesslike e-mail address. 

 

Now you might say that well if they were making that kind of money on a real estate deal, it probably didn’t matter.  Yes, but look at where real estate is today.  In the toilet in the U.S., and in many countries throughout the world.  Real estate agents are killing each other to make a fraction of what they used to, and I’ll bet those that were savvy enough to have their branding working for them back in the good times are the survivors today.

My CNNMoney.com Interview Experience - Public Relations In Action

About a month ago, while doing my daily public relations activities, I responded to one of the media leads that wasn’t really a direct match for marketing my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know! but it was for something I had experienced personally, and when I saw it was a reporter for CNNMoney.com that was making the inquiry, I figured why not?

 

Public Relations experts are split between whether or not it makes sense to be a source for a story that is not a direct tie in with your main work, but I think that the more opportunities you have to get your name out there in traditional and new media, the better off you are.  Many times, if you’re an author, they’ll mention that and the name of your current book anyway, which is always great.  Later on to be able to say you were featured in major media, even if it was not for your main topic, is still advantageous.

 

Responding to media leads is a numbers game, while you’ll be a match for many stories, it doesn’t mean you get selected.  But the more you pitch on things you’re a match for, the more you’ll have success. So I sent this particular response off and since more than  a week had gone by with no word, I figured nothing was going to happen with it.

 

E-zine Or Not To E-zine, That Is The Question

Back in 2001, when I started my public marketing efforts in support of my very first e-book about a popular legitimate work-at-home field, just the fact that you had a free e-zine was enough to make people sit up and take notice, and give up their e-mail address in exchange for getting that valuable content (well at least in my case it was valuable content, I can't speak for others).  I also carried that idea of an e-zine being a must-have through when I added my second topic in the healthy eating genre—Have Your Cheeseburger And Keep Your Health Too! which was my fourth book.

 

Now with my sixth book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM), I never even considered doing an e-zine as part of my marketing efforts.  Why?  Simple!  Now there are so many more other valuable offerings that can be used as an incentive for someone to raise their hand and opt-in to a list, or other ways that people opt-in to be part of your world, that in many cases, the reaction among those you're trying to entice to become a member of your list to an offer of an e-zine is likely "that's nice, so what else you got?"

 

Subscribers have become jaded, and you've got to offer quite a bit to get them to join, and more importantly stay on, your list.

 

In my case it's pretty easy to make a "subscriber to Melanie's list = totally worth your time" value proposition.  My subscribers never miss knowing about one of my podcast episodes, blog posts, videos, teleseminars, or media guest appearances, or getting access to the replays so they can check out my content on their own schedule in true Web 2.0 fashion.  They get a free copy of my Treasury of Infopreneur FAQs e-book, a free 3-chapter excerpt from my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM), and subscriber-only discounts on that book and many other offerings.