heartharmony.com.au

Yesterday I tripped over a strategy used to write an e-book in less than 2 days. Now this is not “War and Peace” and nor is it great literature, but it is an e-book used to entice people to sign up for a newsletter.

So how did he do it?

Well this guy is very active in LinkedIn – the social networking site for businesses. One of the features of LinkedIn is you can ask questions about any topic and people from around the world share their knowledge and advice.

Depending on the question you ask – you could get a LOT of advice. Some of the advice will be brilliant and a lot will be very average.

This guy’s business is all about building brand’s for business, but rather than using LinkedIn to ask a question about branding to create his e-book, he asked something along the lines of “I have an introverted salesman who has trouble making cold calls. What advice would you give him to improve his sales technique”.

He then collated all of the responses and listed one per page of his e-book. Formatted it nicely with a lovely front cover and header on each page and released it with a hot title as “The Reluctant Salesperson. An introverts guide to selling. Proven selling tips from reluctant sales people from around the world”.

Two days = instant book. If you want to check it out go to the Branding Experts ( you need to sign up for the newsletter, but as always you can unsubscribe at any time).

Brilliant concept … but to me they have missed an amazing opportunity. The topic is obviously a hot one and they will get a lot of traffic as a result of it.

The problem is when you open the book you get every piece of advice the LinkedIn people offered – some good and some trite. There was no removal of the average comments – and because they were generally only one or two lines they tend to stand out as he has one piece of advice per page.

There is also no “value-add” to the advice in the e-book. It would not take much for his company to add in a few paragraphs exploring the theme of the particular piece of advice and offering further advice from their own experience. They could even hire a freelance copywriter to do this part for them if writing is a challenge.

For example one person said to put your elevator speech on your business card. Great – but wouldn’t it be even better to go on to explain what is an elevator speech and how to create one that reinforces your brand (in other words link the example back to your core business – in his case branding).

If people receive trite advice when they ask for your services, without a deeper demonstration of your expertise then they will tend to back off as a customer.

Business is all about building a relationship. Don’t blow it by offering a half-hearted service!

For me the lesson is about adapting his strategy and using it properly for your business. Now … how can you use this strategy of compiling answers and then fleshing them out further in your business?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony

Putting your business into words

PS: See you on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ingridcliff