Page 53 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com
P. 53
complete the share, or use a bare link as a snippet in a tweet. I’ve seen some
Twitter buttons that just tweet the link without the title or the site/author’s name,
which is a missed opportunity for free PR.
As I explain in Chapter 3, some personality types prefer email for social
transmission, so add one of those buttons, too.
2. Tear down those walls!
Many companies create a firewall that forces you to opt-in for content by signing
in with an email address or trading even more personal information.
I can understand the logic of this approach. If I’m providing value to you
(through my content), you need to provide value to me (through an email address
so I can send you offers and updates). The problem is, this strategy turns many
people away. The number varies widely by industry, but research states that
between 25 percent and 90 percent of your customers turn away if they need to
register first to obtain what they’re looking for. In one user interface experiment,
a large company found that removing the need to register for content increased
sales by $300 million.3
If you’re in the business of igniting your content, why would you throw water
on the flame by requiring people to divulge personal information first? That
issue is the tip of a larger iceberg question: If I give away my content and best
ideas with nothing in return, am I just giving away my business? Let’s address
this issue.
On the right side of my blog, there’s a prompt called “Categories” where you
can peruse hundreds of blog posts by topic. For example, under the category of
“blogging best practices,” you can view more than 180 posts. I also have a free
blogging eBook available on my site and have done numerous podcasts and
webinars on blogging … all of them completely free.
In a couple of hours, you can probably learn every idea and concept I’ve ever
had about blogging by mining these free resources. And yet, somebody calls me
every week willing to pay for blog coaching. I do social media workshops on
content creation with many large companies. I’m paid to give speeches on the
topic all the time. And lots of folks are still buying my comprehensive book
Born to Blog.
This doesn’t make sense, does it? How can I make money dispensing
blogging advice when I’m giving away every blogging tip and secret I ever had?
Business relationships are built on trust. They always have been. But for
centuries you were limited by time and geography. You could only create trust
with those who actually knew you—and probably within a pretty small area. The
social web is an incredible gift to businesses everywhere. For the first time in
