Chris Brogan and Mike Lewis eBook Success

Successful content can propel brands to the forefont of an industy. To engage audiences meaningfully with content requires knowing them and giving them what they need and want.

Case in Point: Chris Brogan and Mike Lewis achieved this kind of success with their recent eBook Corporate Trends in Social Media Marketing.

Research and audience interaction intersection

In this case, getting to know the audience aligned brilliantly with the research that went into the report itself. Chris and Mike sent out a survey to over 2.1k marketing professionals late in 2008. They had a very successful ~30% response rate. This response gave them not only a large, statistically significant sample size for their report, it also provided a built-in audience interested in the results soon to be published in the report. The authors interacted further with their subjects/audience through ~15 follow-up interviews.

Research approach result: Better report content and pre-release audience interest.

The power of participation creation

The expansion of reach and value through soliciting contributions from your audience is what we at Tippingpoint Labs call participation creation — and it is a great ingredient for successful content. When your target audience is a part of something, they are more likely to check it out and tell their friends about it.  As built-in pre and post promotion, it gives your content a jumpstart and a power boost.

The numbers

The resulting eBook was released in March 2009 to great success:

• It was downloaded over 5K+ times.
• 5K+ signed up for a follow-up webinar with Chris and Mike.
• 1.8K+ attended the webinar.
• 1K+ viewed the SlideShare follow-up presentation.

If you’ve ever been involved with publishing an eBook, then you know that these are fantastic numbers, but it’s not just the numbers. There was also an extremely high level of engagement with a very interested audience.

The authors clearly understood the needs of their audience and wrote to fill those needs. The webinar attendance speaks volumes about how hungry the attendees were for this type of content and the importance of the questions they raised and the research they conducted.

Successful content yields more success

By speaking to the needs of their audience, Chris Brogan and Mike Lewis were also able to stake a claim for greater mindshare in the social media realm — for themselves and for their respective companies. In essence, they were able to increase the desire for their expertise. There was an immediate increase in requests for talks at conferences and a surge of engagement with their own content distribution.

Social media marketing is a very competitive and growing industry. By focusing on narrowcasting quality content to a niche audience, Chris and Mike leveraged their strategic advantages in the space: their insight, their access to the right audience, and their timeliness.

Takeaway

Corporate Trends in Social Media Marketing was very successful content marketing. It proves that by listening to your audience, you can serve them content to meet their needs. Your initial audience need not be huge. In this case, the authors reached a mere 5K initial  consumers who then continued to carry the conversation well beyond the initial publication of the eBook.  It is that extended reach that is the real power of social media marketing.

My questions to you

What did you think of the Corporate Trends in Social Media Marketing eBook?  What other eBooks have delivered value to you?  Any recommendations?

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."