By Nettie Hartsock
David Meerman Scott is the author of the book, Cashing In With Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers. His popular blog is called Web Ink Now.
He most recently authored the very popular eBook (to be published as an expanded a hardcover book from Wiley in June 2007) - The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly.
Many of the strategies used by Scott to promote his eBook can be applied to white papers. In this interview, he shares his insight on eBooks and white papers, and the viral power inherent in both.
WhitePaperSource: How did your eBook The New Rules of PR originally come about?
Scott: I created the eBook during December 2005 holiday break. My book Cashing In With Content had come out in September 2005. My goal with the eBook was to generate more paid speaking gigs and consulting business.
WhitePaperSource: The eBook was posted in January 2006?
Scott: Yes, I first posted it on my blog, which at the time had a decent following. I was expecting in the first week I would get a few people to download the eBook. On the first day I had more than 1,000 people download it, which surprised me.
I did not require registration and the eBook had no cost. That was an important choice and it worked for me. I wasn’t trying to collect names; the goal was to spread my ideas.
WhitePaperSource: What other things helped the viral spread of your eBook?
Scott: I put a Creative Commons license on the eBook so people could post it on their own sites, if they were so inclined. And remarkably, dozens of people did so. I even found out that many organizations, even some large and famous ones, posted the eBook on their corporate Intranets for employees to download.
By the third day, the eBook had several thousand downloads and several people were blogging and commenting on it. I then emailed a link to the eBook to Seth Godin, who writes about many of the same things that I do, and he posted about it. That generated 8,000 downloads in one day!
It is important to note that if you are going to send something to someone with a large following, it must be someone who writes in the same niche as the white paper or eBook you have created. Don’t send it to people who are not in your niche. That is spam!
WhitePaperSource: Beyond the burst in downloads from Seth posting it, what also happened?
Scott: Not only did Seth link to it, a lot of people found it through Seth, then went on to blog about it. Steve Rubel, for instance, who writes the MicroPersuasion blog, disagreed with my ideas and blogged about it in a deliciously titled post: “Direct to Consumer Press Releases Suck”. So he helped create controversy about the eBook. Controversy was good in this case. The number of downloads averaged about 1,000 per day for months.
WhitePaperSource: Did you make any other PR efforts to boost the download or viral forwarding?
Scott: I sent two press releases - the first one was to announce the eBook. The second release, distributed a month later, announced that the eBook had hit a 50,000 download milestone after only six weeks. This generated more reaction, blog coverage, and also a bunch of mainstream media pickups in newspapers and magazines.
WhitePaperSource: What are some tips on how this strategy can apply to white papers?
Scott: Make a distribution plan for how you’re going to get the paper noticed and do your research. It is also really important to figure out who the bloggers are in that space. Let people know about your white paper early because bloggers like to be the first ones to know about something new.
1. Find out what bloggers write about, and send an individualized email to each blogger.
2. Don’t send messages about the white paper to people willy-nilly. Target people who might be interested and send it only to them.
3. Know your audience and be genuine in your outreach to them.
4. Don’t email the white paper. Rather send them a link for download. Don’t send them a giant attachment (unless they ask).
5. Personalize. Bloggers are more receptive to a personalized pitch around a white paper.
WhitePaperSource: Can you give an example of how to target successfully?
Scott: Say, for example, that there are 100,000 readers of coverage in your area on ZDNet. You’d be thrilled if ZDNet wrote about your paper and most people focus on just that. But consider that you might be able to reach a similar number of people if you target 10 bloggers, each with 10,000 people who read their blogs, and get better results. And incidentally, the mainstream editors at outlets like ZDNet read the important blogs in the space so they will pick up on your work by learning about it on blogs first. That’s what happened in my case.
WhitePaperSource: Do you foresee a time when white papers and eBooks merge?
Scott: I think white papers have a bad rap because so many people have abused them. The abuse is when someone takes a product brochure and prints it on white paper and calls it a “white paper.” And people are sick of this. It is a form of spam.
In my mind, eBooks versus white papers is semantics. Good content always rises to the surface.
WhitePaperSource: What about registration for papers?
Scott: Registration depends on the goal. If the goal is to build a list or sales leads, put a registration requirement on it. But, if the goal is thought leadership, make it easily available. Anybody who derives benefit from it is smart enough to make the leap to contact you, and they will want to do business with you.
I’ve had 150,000 downloads of my eBook and it helped me to achieve my goals of securing a book deal from a major publisher, of generating more paid speaking gigs and of signing new clients. It has produced amazing results. If I would have a registration requirement I probably would have ended up with fewer than a thousand new names in my database to show for my efforts. You tell me which is better.
WhitePaperSource: Thank you for all your insight and best of luck with the book!
Scott: My pleasure. Thank you for your hard work spreading the word about how to create effective white papers.
