Craig Rentmeester's Blog

Thoughts 1 Year After Writing an Ebook

I'm in love with ebooks as a marketing tactic
Writing an ebook was a great experience.

It was easy to publish and distribute. Also, it forced me to communicate my knowledge in a digestible to first-time readers. 

If you're like me, or many bloggers for that matter, you're using your blog as a credibility springboard for your career.

An ebook is a cheap tactic that can spread your ideas beyond your blog, not to mention garnering links back to blog if it's well-received. 

It can help you get speaking gigs, consulting offers, credibility building testimonials, new RSS subscribers, and much more. 

Statistics for We Have a Web site. Now What? Part 1
Downloads = 500+
Testimonials = 5
Consulting Offers = 4
Recognition = Recommended by Chris Brogan*, Advertising Age Top 10 marketing blogger according to the Power 150. 

*I've never met him, but check out his ebook called Trust Economies on relationships and communities

Feedback from some of the Readers
"Simple and to the point." - Colleen
"Very useful, easy to follow." - Ansias
"Good, simple to understand, interesting short (and) sharp samples." - Unknown
"A good non-technical explanation of SEO concepts." - Albert
"You've really made the book easy-to-understand for non-techie people. Thanks!"    - Emily

Tip: If you write an ebook, create a survey to gather suggestions, thoughts and testimonials.

Download my first ebook,  We Have a Web site. Now What?

News: Part 2 of the ebook series is the works. It will focus on off-page SEO factors.

Other possible installments, include:

• Conversion Methods and Tracking
• Going Social - Leveraging Social Media
• Analytics
• E-mail Marketing

Hopefully, I will find time to publish and package the series for sale the series using Lulu.

Examples of Well-crafted Headlines in a RSS-centric World

After seeing this headline, Obamas juggle inaugral balls, in my RSS tab for CNN.com, it made me think about headlines of articles I've read via via RSS recently that I can remember as having interesting titles.

Hats off to Fast Company. I remembered four FC articles with interesting titles in particular. Also, 37Signals got in on the action.

* = Interesting article
- = Headline was better than the article
& = Great advice on customer service
% = Mildly interesting

The five I recalled were articles I've read in the past day, all via RSS.

*  Paper House for Disaster Zone Makes Three Little Pigs Jealous - FC
*  Wireless Electricity is Here (Seriously) - FC
&  The Bullshit of Outage Language - 37Signals - Signal vs. Noise blog
% These Cars are so Green they should be recycled immediately - FC
-  A House Optimus Prime Would Love - FC

A Classic Take on Advertising vs One-to-One Communication

From Hugh Mcleod of gapingvoid, the guy who creates hilarious cartoons on business cards.

Learn more about his personal faves and his background.

Smart Business Advice, especially during a recession

Andrew Griffiths gets it.

His advice, "Don't lose a good customer over a few cents".

Simple, but a good reminder nonetheless.

Don't let BS rules take the place of common sense, educated judgement and logic -- no matter how much you'd like to cut costs.

Right now is a time to make investment decisions and divestment decisions. IMHO, there's no better investment, for my money, than a keeping a customer happy.

Link: Google's SEO Starter Guide

Here is a link to Google's SEO Starter Guide.

It covers many of the factors discussed in my on-page SEO book, called We Have a Web site. Now What?

Some unique things that I covered are how to properly optimize PDFs (Page 16), and a helpful list of non-Google sponsored SEO resources.  (page 17)