If you haven’t heard the news this month, Apple has released a new program to make it easier for educators to create visually stunning textbooks.

While originally intended for the educational community, this program opens up a whole new world for marketing your business – namely in the creation of your free reports and e-books.

Have particular knowledge on a subject your customers keep asking about?  Create a free report with iBooks Author, save it as a PDF and post it to your site.  Or offer your free report in exchange for an e-mail address.

You no longer need a designer or expensive page layout software to create professional looking reports and other marketing materials.

iBooks Author is free and can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store.  However, you must be running Apple’s latest operating system (Lion 10.7) to use it.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

*Are you a small business owner and struggling to find customers?

*Have you tried advertising, but don’t seem to be getting any results?

*Tired of looking for business in networking events where everyone tries to sell you something and no one is buying?

*Fed up with spending days at expensive trade show exhibits that generate few to zero sales leads?

*Confused, frustrated or just don’t have the time to experiment with social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?

*No one seems to be buying during this never-ending recession?

*Is your spouse putting pressure on you to close up shop, start sending out resumes and get a “real” job?

If you fit any of the above descriptions, you’re going to love this…

In this one-of-a-kind business success group, you’ll learn the secrets to attracting a steady stream of customers and how to finally put an end to your financial worries forever.

Running a small business can be time consuming, confusing and frustrating if you’re going it alone. I know because I experienced many of the very same problems you’re facing right now. But I realized I needed to try something else, so I sought out the advice of the most respected experts in the fields of marketing and sales. Then I went from zero business to generating thousands in extra income per year with just a few simple changes to my marketing strategies.

You DON’T have to figure everything out by yourself.  I want you to help you find those loyal repeat customers, just like I did.

WHO WE ARE:

Our group brings professionals from all over Southern New England together for FREE interactive workshops on a range of topics from newer social media strategies to powerful traditional marketing tactics, all tailored for you, the small business owner. We meet at a convenient location in Providence, Rhode Island, with plenty of parking.

HERE’S A SMALL SAMPLE OF WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EXCLUSIVE GROUP:

*The 7 most common mistakes that small businesses make in their marketing tactics that actually repels customers. (Make sure you stop doing these immediately…)

*The 3 places your customers are actively searching for the products and services you offer. (Are you marketing there?)

*A 4-step strategy for unlocking and tapping secret markets your oversized competitors have completely overlooked.

*Exactly want to say in your marketing materials that will generate an irresistible desire in your customers to buy from you right now.

*And much more!

HOW TO GET INVOLVED:

Go to our Meetup page at http://www.meetup.com/small-busines-success/ and subscribe to this group right now by clicking the “Join Us!” button at the top of your screen. You will receive e-mail updates for our regularly scheduled events and workshops.

Then, RSVP for the next workshop on our calendar and start growing your business right away!

If you understand some basic buyer psychology and know how to tap into your market at just the right time, you can enjoy a boom in your business.

2012 is right around the corner and millions of people will be making their New Year’s resolutions.  They all want to change themselves for the better by setting fitness goals, getting out of debt and growing their business, just to name a few.  Check out a top 10 list of New Year’s resolutions here: http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/holidays/tp/resolutions.htm.

So how can you help them?

If you’re in charge of attracting members for a credit union, how you can help someone climb out of debt or save more money for retirement?

If you looking for small businesses to hire your Website design company, how can you advise entrepreneurs on how to grow their business?

If you are looking for more customers for your restaurant, how can you advise people on how to eat healthy and lose weight?

Nearly all businesses can plug into the New Year’s resolutions season and provide useful advice to potential customers which will generate some positive PR.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Determine what expertise you have which can help someone who is embarking on a New Year’s resolution.  Learn from your existing customers by asking them what they want to know.
2. Write a short, easy-to-understand report with all the steps someone should take in order to accomplish their resolution.  Include your company name and contact information.  Save it as a PDF.
3. Upload the PDF to your website and Facebook page (you have a company Facebook page, right?).
4. Send out a news release to your local media via the wire service of your choice to drive traffic to your website.

The increase in Web traffic and positive PR you get from your free report will generate a boost in your sales.

If you would like more information about how to tap into the New Year Resolution Season or would like me to help you with your free report, e-mail me at robert@northeastpr.com

In the shadow of social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, many online services often do not get the attention they deserve from businesses.  If you’re looking to get customers quickly, especially if you’re a small shop and don’t have a lot of resources, I recommend you take a closer look at Meetup.com.

If you’re unfamiliar with Meetup.com, this service is designed for bringing people together who have similar interests and wish to meet in the real world.  This is NOT the place to set up a virtual community or get people to follow your brand.  This is where you get to meet your customers face-to-face (the best way, in my opinion).

To illustrate how Meetup works, I’m going to use an example of Jim, a financial planner.  If Jim wanted to reach out to more people who were looking for advice on how to manage and invest their money, he might go to Meetup.com and set up a group called “Weekly Money Discussion Group.”

Meetup is paid by organizer fees, but it is free to anyone who wishes to create an account and look for meetings to attend.  If Jim buys a six-month “organizer” subscription, it will run him about $12 per month.

Jim builds his Meetup group’s custom website with compelling copy that highlights the problems most of his clients face.  After a few days, Meetup automatically advertises his new group to the online community by sending an e-mail to all the members in his city.

His first few members begin to sign up for his group.  Then Jim organizes his first Meetup discussion event and promotes it via e-mail to his new members.  His first group draws a handful of people and he proceeds to assists them with their financial questions.  He might even charge a small fee in order to pre-qualify his members.

After running several months of events and some good PR, Jim is able to grow his membership to respectable size.  Jim begins to get inquiries into his financial planning service.  After all, Jim is now recognized as the local expert in his field and he is the first person people talk to when they need financial advice.

Meetup is a great tool for larger organizations too.  For example, if a credit union is running a series of home buying workshops, it can create an “organizer” account on Meetup and attract more attendees for its seminars.

Take a look at Meetup.com and tell me what you think.  As always, if you have any questions or would like me to help you set your Meetup group and write your sales copy, contact me at robert@northeastpr.com.

I recently attended “Feeling Ignored by Editors?” a meet-the-media Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) event held in Providence, R.I., on September 27.

The media panel included:

Sue Areson, The Providence Journal
Artie Tefft, WJAR Channel 10
Andrew Gobeil, WPRO Radio
Scott Pickering and Patricia Resende, Patch.com

Here are some of my notes and comments from the discussion:

• Editors want “real” people – As public relations professionals, we have a role as connectors, but we are NOT the story.  Especially for interviews, reporters are interested in talking to the people who are the focus of the story.  For example, if your company is participating a children’s charity, have some kids available to talk to the reporters.

• When to send – Your news release or media alert should be delivered on a schedule that pays mind to the type of outlet you are targeting.  A good practice is to send your release out ahead of the event by one month, two weeks and one day.  The exceptions include magazines which require much longer lead times (often three or more months).  And while it is a good idea to notify broadcast media well ahead of an event, they don’t actually set their schedules until the day of, so don’t bother pitching a story far in advance.

• Social Media - The editors seemed divided on the use of social media for pitches.  For example, newer online publications such as Patch.com, heavily rely upon social media for story leads.  However, older more established publications, such as the Providence Journal, still rely upon e-mail as their preferred method.  It is a good practice to check with the editor or reporter you wish to contact to see which method they prefer.

• Providence Journal Schedule – The Monday paper is the smallest, so you will be competing with fewer stories if you aim for a release in that edition.  The Sunday is the biggest and most of the stories are planned around Wednesday for that edition.

• Multimedia Press Packages – The consensus among the editors was to spend more time on the quality of your story rather than dressing it up with lots of multimedia (video, audio, etc.).  A TV station will NOT use your video on their broadcasts, unless they specifically ask for it.  But a video might help them visualize a story during the pitch.

• Experts - Editors are always on the lookout for experts who can add perspective and credibility to their stories.  Think about who in your company might be able to provide an expert interview on a topic that is relevant to the interests of their audience.

I am a member of the Southeastern New England Chapter of the Public Relations Society of American and I recommend you see what they have to offer www.prsasene.org.

I speak with a lot of PR and marketing managers who are interested in adopting a social media marketing program for their company and the inevitable question always comes up, “How much is this going to cost us?”

My answer – “Nothing more than you’re already spending.”

This raises some eyebrows.  “How can we get the benefits of social media without additional spending?”

With the economic slump that shows no signs of letting up anytime soon, companies are getting used to tightening their belts and doing more with less.  But if this turbulent time has taught us anything, it’s that we must get the most bang for our buck.

Many companies rely upon advertising as the “safe” marketing activity, yet the return on investment is generally low.  Some companies do not even calculate their advertising ROI.

However, the ROI of social media marketing can be calculated and there are many ways to tie your activities directly to your bottom line.

First, it is important to understand that “social media” are a set of tools, NOT a strategy.  The strategy comes from your public relations department in the form of corporate social responsibility events (CSR).  These newsworthy events, which you run for the benefit of your local community, gain you valuable attention in the local media and generate good will toward your brand.  They are also a mechanism for you to engage audiences on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your blog and other social media.

Companies that organize these CSR events on a regular basis, promote them via social media and register their participants, will build a database of customer leads and thus have ROI measures pre-built into their campaigns.

It is the job of PR to generate publicity, a positive reputation and leads.  It is the job of your sales people to convert those leads into customers.  At the conclusion of this sales cycle, your company will now be able to cross-reference new customers with the database you created during your social responsibility events and see your rate of conversion on paper.

So how do you do this without spending any more money?  It’s simple.  Reallocate 50 percent of your funding from a low ROI activity, such as advertising, to a high ROI activity such as social media-powered corporate responsibility campaign.  You’ve just multiplied the value of your dollar several times.

I have advised many organizations about how to create newsworthy social responsibility events, which tap the word-of-mouth marketing power of social media networks.  Write me at Robert@northeastpr.com for a no-obligation consultation.

[This is the third article in my “thought leadership” series.]

Now that you have conducted some research on your customers and identified their most common questions and concerns, it’s time to put that knowledge to use in your content marketing campaign.

Sometimes blogging simply does not provide the length or depth needed to adequately cover a topic or answer a complex question for a company’s target audience.  Enter the e-book*.

An e-book is a PDF-formatted document that:

• Identifies a market problem.
• Supplies an answer to the problem.
• Is targeted to a specific group of people.

A typical e-book (a.k.a. free report) is 10-30 pages in length, presented in landscape format with a color design and often includes images, illustrations, charts and graphs, if appropriate to the topic.  In contrast to a white paper, the e-book is designed to have an entertainment and motivational element behind its educational purpose.  It should be fun to read.

This is where your survey system becomes important.  If your company understands customers’ needs and challenges, it can begin to create an editorial plan for e-books which precisely target specific groups and provide answers to their questions.

Types of e-books include, but are not limited to:

• “How-to” (steps to accomplish a task).
• Top 10 lists (to solve a problem).
• Reports based upon research.

The e-book should be posted to your company’s online library or resource page and heavily promoted via news releases, newsletters, your blog, social media sites and other channels as appropriate.

If the e-book is a “hit” among the first readers, they will often share it with their friends, creating a word-of-mouth marketing effect, which will send more interested prospects to your company’s website for more information.

*This term is not to be confused with the type of “e-books” available for purchase and download for an electronic book reader such as Amazon Kindle or Apple iPad.

In my last article, I discussed the concept of thought leadership and how important it is to a successful public relations program.  If you missed it, read it here.

While it may be tempting to jump right in and develop “thought leadership” content for your customers, it is best to start out with a little research.  The best thought leadership programs are developed with a firm understanding of one’s customers.

Customer feedback helps companies offer informational products and content that precisely target common questions and problems while also delivering content in the mediums customers are most likely to use.  Here are some sample questions:

“What are your primary goals for 2011?”
“What are your most common questions pertaining to [your industry]?”
“How often do you use Facebook?”

While there are a number of ways to solicit customer feedback, such as interviews and focus groups, one way to accurately monitor customer opinions is to create an online survey.

One easy-to-use survey tool can be found at ConstantContact.com.  Constant Contact makes it easy to create questions in a variety of useful formats such as multiple choice, Likert-scale or open-ended response.

When you get the results back, pay particular attention to the words and phrases your customers use to describe their problems and challenges.  These are the words they most likely use in a Google search to discover the answers to their questions.  Therefore, these are the terms you should be using to create your content in order to make it more visible in an online search.

In my next article, I will begin showing you some formats for your content and how to get it into the hands of prospective customers.

What distinguishes a good company from a great company?  The answer, as I’ll reveal in this article, is thought leadership.

Today, it is not simply enough for your company to have great products and services in order to distinguish itself as a leader in its market.  Your company must strive to exceed expectations and surprise your customers with free, useful and easily-sharable content that they can’t get anywhere else.

People invest their money in organizations they trust.  Thought leadership is the concept of earning and managing people’s trust via forward thinking – not just following the industry trends, but by shaping them.  The content you produce via your thought leadership program conveys that your company is smart, understands the market very well, and is a valuable organization with which to do business.

To further understand thought leadership, we must also define what it is NOT.  Thought leadership content never directly promotes products or services.  Instead, it promotes ideas and new thinking.

In order to earn a thought leadership position in the market, your company must begin thinking along the lines of a magazine publisher and develop an editorial plan to reach customers and prospects with focused content delivered in the media formats they prefer.  This content includes news releases, blog articles, e-books, videos, etc.

Great thought leadership helps turn customers into a potential army of sales people, all promoting their company to family, friends and networks, because they are inspired to do so by its content.

In future blog articles, I will discuss several programs which can help your company evaluate the information needs of its customers and prospects, as well as deliver targeted content designed to satisfy those needs and inspire content sharing that drives the word-of-mouth marketing effort.

I had a chance to finish a book this month by my favorite business author, David Meerman Scott.  The book is entitled Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.  You might remember him from the “New Rules” book series which has become so popular in recent years.

In his latest book, Scott proposes a new way of thinking for many business owners – equipping your company to respond to the public in real-time.

Although this concept is not exactly new since crisis communication counselors have been stressing the importance of creating a crisis response plan for decades.  However, Scott updates this idea by demonstrating how companies must factor in the Social Web response as well.

I especially liked how he has dropped the term “Social Media Marketing” and switched to “Real-Time Marketing & PR” which is technically more accurate.  I think sometimes business leaders push back on “social media marketing” (as they should) because it was never about making companies “social.”  It’s about eliminating the unnecessary and outdated communication barriers between companies and their stakeholders (customers, members, donors, partners, etc.).

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this concept is only useful for crisis communication.  There are many practical applications such as new product development, customer service, sales and research, including marketing and public relations.

However, one complaint I have about the book is that, while it paints the real-time response concept in broad strokes, it leaves the reader with only a few of the particulars needed to enact such a plan.  This is not a “how-to” book, but rather an argument for the “why” companies should engage in real-time.

Every chief marketing officer and PR director should put this title on their reading list.   Scott’s conversational writing style makes it a fast and fun read and his interesting case studies show his concepts in action.  And if you haven’t seen his previous book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, you should definitely pick that up as well.