So…you have written white papers and eBooks and they are up on your website. They are probably on the resources page and get their fair share of downloads. That’s good, but with some of the free publishing sites out there you can get more exposure.

I have started to put ReachForce content on some of the sites and wanted to share the results, compare with you or ask if you had suggestions.

Content placement sites:

Scribd – the best content placement site I think. You can publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents. It’s easy to set up…sign up and make an account for free, then just upload your documents. I have uploaded all of ReachForce’s eBooks and have gotten 5476 views as of today. People can add your works to their favorites and rate them. You can join groups an add friends.

Docstoc – provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. I uploaded all our eBooks and have 300 views and 30 downloads as of today.

edocr – upload your documents for sharing by the professional and business community. I uploaded our eBooks, again, and we have 618 views so far. One of our eBooks was featured on the front page when first uploaded.

whitepapers.org – is “all the world’s whitepapers in one place.” I really haven’t figured out how to see how many views or downloads our whitepapers have had.

The pros of publishing your content on sites like this is that it is free to do and can bring unexpected visitors an exposure. The biggest con I can find is that there is really no way to find out who downloaded our content (with information like an email address). To help with this, we added links to all our whitepapers and eBooks to hopefully drive traffic back to our website.

Suggestions?

We are big fans of Mr. Scott and his eBook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing, which gives tips on how to spread your ideas for free using word-of-mouse. Or in other words, “one person sends it to another, then that person sends it to yet another, and on and on.” With the internet, it is now easier than ever to start a viral campaign, but “marketers need to learn how to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.”

This eBook is full of case studies and other “people’s success so you can apply some of their ideas and lessons in your own word-of-mouse efforts.” Most of this is at the beginning, so if you are short on time I would start on page 14 for the real meat.

David’s formula for success:

“A combination of some great-and free-Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.”

To help achieve this success, David provides specific advice on how to launch a viral campaign using YouTube videos, e-books and other techniques. I’ll pick out some points I thought interesting (or that I haven’t thought about before) and list them here, but make sure you go back and read the eBook for all the tips.

How to help your eBook get shared:

• Present you eBook in a landscape format, rather than the white paper’s typical portrait format. This makes it easier to read and signals to the reader that the content is interesting.
• Consider writing in a lighter, more conversational style than you would in a whitepaper, marketing brochure, or Web page. Think of the writing in an eBook as you would write for a blog.
• eBooks should always be free and should never have a registration requirement.  (This has been hotly debated for a while now on how to balance capturing leads and distributing content.  What do you think?)
• Put a Creative Commons license on the content so people know they can freely share your copyrighted material.
• Create a landing page from which people can download your eBook. (All of our eBooks and whitepapers have landing pages set up on the ReachForce Resources page on the website.)
• To drive viral marketing, (you have to read the eBook for the rest of this great tip)!

9 tips for using YouTube (here are a few)

1. Your video should be no longer than three minutes. (Come on, who has time to just sit and watch a 10 minute video…unless it is really funny or something). If you have a lot to say, consider creating a series of posts.
2. Don’t attempt “stealth” fake customer insertions. Be authentic and don’t try to sneak in company promotion where you can. (YouTube itself can catch unauthenic video and that might cause harm to a brand).
3. Make sure bloggers know about the video. The best way to do this is when you are reading and commenting on blogs in your space, next time you comment link to your video (if it makes sense to).

Other tips he mentioned:

• Use interactive tools (like Hubspot’s Website Grader)
• Don’t break the bank with expensive advertising
• Don’t beg mainstream media to write about you

I have left some really great tips and specific advice out, so go back and read what all David has to say about viral campaigns. Have you had success with viral campaigns? What did you do?

David Meerman Scott is an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist. The programs he has developed have won numerous awards and are responsible for selling over $1 billion in products and services worldwide.

This is GREAT! We are both customers and big fans of Hubspot, and they released a new video yesterday and we wanted to be sure readers of The B2B Lead saw it. It already has over 200 diggs and is Number 1 in YouTube when you search “marketing.”

Written by guest blogger, Jason Morio, VP of Products at ReachForce

Twitter apparently turned down Facebook’s offer to buy them for $500 million (reportedly $100 million in cash and $400 million in Facebook stock).  What is Twitter up to that makes them think they can actually turn this down?  There is apparently a secret revenue model they will be announcing next year.  What does that mean for B2B Marketers?  Will Twitter have advertising now?

While this story still appears to be somewhat speculative, when it comes to things of this nature, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.  The brazen audacity shown by Twitter in declining this offer is mind-boggling.  In a time where less than 1 in 50 VC-backed startups ever sees an IPO and down-round term sheets are the norm, one can only wonder:  how much is enough?  According to GigaOM, Twitter has taken down a little over $20M in funding thus far.  When will the next 25X-multiple-on-money-in surface?  The halls of VC-backed startupdom are littered with the corpses of past offers of this magnitude that were turned down, only to result in eventual liquidations at fractional values (anyone remember Pointcast?).

HubSpot’s ebook, Get Found Online, is right on the money. Today’s marketing is changing from outbound to inbound, and “consumers are going to the Internet to start their purchasing process.” For businesses to remain competitive, their websites need to be found online through search engines, the blogosphere and social media sites.

Luckily, this eBook gives detailed steps on how to be found on each of these inbound marketing techniques. Here is a short outline which should entice you to read the eBook for all the great how to tips (pages 5-9) to get found online.

How to get found on search engines:

1. Find Keywords – choose keywords that your target market is using
2. On-Page SEO – place keywords in the page title, URL, headings and page text
3. Off-Page SEO – build more links
4. Measure & Analyze

How to get found on blogs:

1. Read – other industry blogs
2. Comment – join in on the conversation (even link back to your own blog)
3. Write – find the right blog software, blog weekly and promote your blog
4. Measure & Analyze

How to get found on social media:

1. Guidelines for Engagement – join communities and provide useful information, don’t just sell your company
2. Publish, Share, and Network – everyone can publish and share anything, everyone can network with anyone (through content placement sites, linking to others an online communities)
3. Measure & Analysis

I manage all the online media for ReachForce, and found these tips extremely useful. It is really cool to see how many people go to our website from our blog and social media sites. Think of any other useful tips while reading Get Found Online? Please share!

HubSpot is an inbound marketing system that helps your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers.

No book club next week for Thanksgiving (you have an extra week to read)! Look for us on Thursday, December 4th talking about Marketo’s Best Practices in Lead Nurturing…enjoy!

As I was working on my FREE list last week I noticed I seemed to also be building a list of things that we as B2B Marketers can do that require minimal cost, like less than $100.

• StumbleUpon advertising – be very targeted with your ad and your landing page.  Each click only costs  you $.05.  I’ve only heard good stuff about this, we’ll be trying this one immediately.
• Long Tail PPC keywords – think niche, pick words or phrases people would use to search for your EXACT solution.  The landing page is just as important as your ad.  You’re goal is to convert unknown visitors into known leads.  Remember you can track companies visiting your landing pages using ReachForce Convert.
• Survey Monkey or Zoomerang – both have free versions or subscription pricing (for more features) of about $20/per month.  Create a survey and use it for lead generation, thought leadership or PR.  People are interested in what their peers think and are doing, share your results with the participants.
• PRWeb – write a news release and link it up.  Add an offer to the news release or offer additional content on a landing page with the full announcement.
• Start a blog – you can do this for free but you might consider investing in your own look (vs. stock templates and photos).   Regularly updated content helps your SEO too.
• Video/Podcast Series – you can add them to your website and use them for lead generation programs.  Get a FLiP camera and set up your YouTube account and you’re ready to go.  Remember to keep your videos and podcasts short and to the point.
• Email campaign – If you don’t already use an email or marketing automation system, check out VerticalResponse.  Emails start at less than $.02 a piece.

I’m sure my short list is only a beginning of things you can do for about $100, please feel free to add to the list if you’ve got more.

Many B2B Marketers, along with most Americans, are wondering what is going on with our economy.  Now that we have elected a new President, will that help?  How long will this slump last?  How is this going to affect budgets and jobs and new sales opportunities?  While wondering all of the same things and how it will affect ReachForce, I decided to make a list of FREE things that we as Marketers can do in a recession.  Some lead generating tools and some awareness building tactics, but all things you can do at no cost.  Here’s what I came up with, please feel free to help add to the list.

Twitter – free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (AKA tweets), these text-based posts can contain up to 140 characters.  Feel free to share links to other good content in these micro posts too.
Here’s 10 tips for building a following a Twitter.

Commenting on other industry thought leader’s blog or other blogs related to your business – Get in on the conversation and get your view point out there.

Submit your best practice content to free sites – The content will be indexed by the search engines allowing people to find your article when searching for something related. Some examples are Scribd, Docstoc and WhitePapers.org.

Website Grader – Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

Email signatures – Set up a standard email signature for all company emails and include things like your blog, or events you’re attending or a customer testimonial video.  Easy to do and everyone that gets an email from someone at your company will also get your mini marketing message.

ReachForce Insight Lite -  Do you know your best customers? Can you easily identify your target market sweet spots – markets that you sell the most or the fastest? Are there other business buyers in your sweet spot that you should be targeting with your Marketing campaigns?  Download ReachForce Insight Lite on the Appexchange and see.

Re-purpose content you already have – or create a Top 10 list or a list of Top 5 things to Avoid.  People love lists and you probably already have all of this information at your finger tips.  At ReachForce, we’ve recently turned our best 101 blog posts into an eBook series.  We didn’t have to create anything new, we just pulled the best posts and put them together in an eBook format.  We’re currently using them for lead generation campaigns and getting GREAT results and feedback.  Also, it has increased our daily blog traffic.

LinkedIn – just sign up and start linking up.  LinkedIn is rolling out new applications and group features all the time, take advantage of these free networking tools.
Once you’ve set your profile up, check out LinkedIn Answers.

Facebook – Facebook is somewhat of a new thing for B2B Marketers, here at ReachForce we are still figuring out our strategy but know their endless opportunity out there.  Here’s a few tips on getting started and promoting your business via Facebook.

Google Analytics – why wouldn’t you use this?  Here’s a few more ideas on Tracking Tools.

ReachForce Convert 30 Day Trial – You are probably tracking web site visitors and your best PPC keywords, but are you capturing those visitors and turning them into actionable leads? Only 3% of web visitors fill out a form or announce themselves; what happens to the other 97%? ReachForce Convert, a software-as-a-service application, empowers Marketers to proactively target lead generation efforts at passive web visitors.  Why not try it, it’s free.

Press Release Grader –   “Press Release Grader rates a press release based on a checklist of criteria – from content and structure, to search optimization and link analysis. The free tool is designed to optimize a press release so it can be found more easily by media, bloggers, customers and prospects. Press Release Grader provides an analysis and recommendations that will help you improve the way your press release is structured.” It only takes a second and the recommendations for improvement are typically easy fixes.  Again, why wouldn’t you use this tool?

What FREE stuff are you using out there?  Please share with the rest of us.  Who knows, it could save your fellow Marketer’s job.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how to use Trigger-based marketing techniques in a down economy by leveraging Web 2.0 tools. Some of these tools are also great for online reputation management, as well, you’ll just want to focus on a different set of search/scan criteria.

To get started, you’ll need to identify keywords that are important for tracking your industry, key trends or issues, the competition, your company and product brand names, as well as company spokespersons’ names. Once you’ve come up with a manageable list, configure the following tools to scan and collect that data.

1. Google Alerts, Google Blog Search, and Google Reader: We’ve written a lot about using Google Alerts here on The B2B Lead. What we haven’t written about is organizing all of the discoveries you’ve made using these tools in Google Reader. It’s a great way to collect a bunch of sources of insight about your keywords and feed them into a list of must-read links each day.
2. Tweetscan: This is one of the most important feeds in your Google Reader list as you can use it to monitor what people are saying about you or your competitor throughout the Twitter universe. It’s also another good way to find people with shared interests.
3. For my company, most of the conversations are taking place on tech forums and message boards. I just discovered Boardtracker.com which will enable me to keep an eye on popular forums and alert me by RSS feed if my company is mentioned. But, you have to know which forums to track.

Need more? Marketing Pilgrim published this great post with 20+ others.

Did you know that our new President Barack Obama was named Marketer of the Year 2008? Last month, Advertising Age named Barack Obama “Marketer of the Year”. Congratulations, on both counts. It doesn’t matter if you voted Republican or Democrat this year; I think we can all agree Barack Obama took campaigning to a whole new level. As an independent first time voter, I was impressed as a Marketer by the campaign overall. The dimensions of marketing they put to use stretched my marketing brain. With the use of direct marketing, event marketing, online marketing and new media the Obama team understood the need to reach out to voters as individuals – demographics and targeting were central to the campaign.

Obama and his team understood their target demographic/markets and how to use a mix of multi touch, multi level and multimedia platforms to reach these people where they were already hanging out. By using video game ads, Twitter, an active online community, and a list of other marketing vehicles, the Obama marketing team understood the importance of motivating the younger demographics and using multiple mediums that worked for them.

B2B Marketers take note. Our new President has something to say about reaching the right audiences with the right kinds of messages through the right vehicles. Below is a list a few places you can find Barack Obama marketing. Are you there for your business and what lessons can we learn from the reach created by his campaign?

Email marketing

• event based – I would receive text messages and emails while Obama was at an event or debate
• 1:1 with key players – email messages from Barack, Michelle Obama and Joe Biden – For example, I got a message from Michelle Obama reminding me it was the last day to give money to the campaign.

Community – currently over 1 million members. Through the community supporters can:

• find information about local events or groups
• connect with other supporters
• share information or real-life stories
• donate to the campaign

PPC – 14% of Barack Obama’s online traffic in August 2008 came from paid search

New Media – Barack Obama is out there, are you?

Polls are showing more young voters have registered to vote than ever before. I have no doubt that Obama and his team’s approach to reach them drove this involvement.

Thank you President Obama. You are proof that targeted marketing does drive real results…oh, and I’m sure your messages and positions on the issues helped too.

New stuff to do now!

I got the heads up from Chris Brogan, and now I want to share with all The B2B Lead readers about the new applications LinkedIn has released. On first glance I was really impressed. The list is not sooo long with applications (like Facebook) that have nothing to do with the business world, and I really think these apps will make LinkedIn much more interactive and useful.

So far I have downloaded the 2 apps for blogging and My Travel (to tell everyone I’ll be at Dreamforce next week), and am still exploring the others. Other applications let you show what books you are reading, upload slideshows and more.

Go check it out and start using. What other applications would you be interested in seeing?