Content marketing tools and training.
Being entirely uncertain of my safe return from SXSWi at the end of next week, I bid you all a fond — if preemptive — farewell. I don’t get out much, so this could get interesting.
Anyway, Texas is big, life is good, and its hours become increasingly short. Therefore, on with this week’s edition of The Lede …
7 years ago, Brian Clark glimpsed the future.
With $1,000, no audience, and no connections, he started a simple blog and slowly, steadily built a vast resource for empowering online writers.
Now, he’s the CEO of a multi-million dollar software company built around the credo of helping writers and online publishers grow their brands and businesses — the right way.
By writing and delivering valuable content, Brian has earned a vast audience, and some impressive accolades over the years.
I visited the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre a few weeks ago. (Dahl is, of course, the author of dozens of brilliant books for young people, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.)
I expected to spend the afternoon learning more about his stories, the inspiration for his characters.
But something else happened that I didn’t expect.
As you know, we’re all about smart content marketing here.
And an ebook is a nifty little piece of content marketing that can get you all kinds of things for your business. It can generate traffic, earn you some links, get social sharing love … you can even package it up and sell it as a product.
An ebook can be a fantastic distillation of your topic wisdom and the unique contributions you can make to your audience.
It’s all a wonderful thing … except for the whole writing the ebook part.
What if, 30 days from now, you had a finished, well-crafted eBook sitting on your hard drive, ready to distribute and sell?
That might sound next-to-impossible to you, but it’s not.
Every November, over 200,000 people worldwide take part in NaNoWriMo — “(inter)National Novel Writing Month”.
NaNoWriMo participants aim to write 50,000 words during the month, and tens of thousands of them manage to do it.
If those writers can do that, you can write a 20,000 word ebook in a month. Right?
Earlier this year — after a Copyblogger article I wrote took off — a major publisher approached me and asked if I wanted to write a book on Pinterest marketing.
But there was a catch — in order to get the book deal, I had to write the manuscript in six weeks.
I decided to say yes.
I felt comfortable taking on the challenge because I had a set of skills — what I call my Tools of Super Content Creators — that I could use to crank out a good manuscript in an insanely short amount of time.
