Is Tablet Marketing The Next Big Thing?
Remember when everyone went ga-ga over video marketing? The talk of the town was it’s the next thing. Remember?
It happened right after YouTube started to climb sharply in popularity.
Then, remember when mobile marketing was the big thing? When did it happen? Right after everybody and his dog decided that you could Facebook on your phone. Now mobile phones are supposedly smarter and marketers are trying to figure out a way to get into your ear through them.
That’s cool.
Well, it seems that now nearly 20% of consumers have e-books and another 19% have tablets. So it’s time to start on the tablet marketing bandwagon, right?
Hold on before you start mocking me. I’m not being facetious. Not entirely anyway.
What can a tablet do? Play music and other audio files. Broadcast videos. Display e-books. Think any of those could be useful in promoting your business? How about that Internet radio show you wanted to start last year? Or that YouTube video channel? Maybe that e-book you’ve been putting off writing?
Yep, all of those can be marketed to tablet owners. So maybe now is the time to start looking at tablet and e-book marketing.
There are other benefits to promoting you and your business through these media. It also doubles as reputation management. That is, the more you publish and the more you promote yourself in a positive light the bigger and better your reputation will be online and off line.
Don’t just take up tablet marketing because it becomes a fad – it will. Do it because it delivers on the benefits.
E-books: Are They Viral?
At one time e-books were a great viral marketing tool. But that was a bit of a primitive time. It’s like the Stone Age now. Cool tools, but the hammers we use now do a lot better pounding.
Unfortunately, e-books have not arrived. But they’re not exactly in the Stone Age either. There is a transition.
Thanks to two developments in the e-book publishing industry – the iPad and the Kindle – there is a revitalized interest in e-books. But it seem like the big frustration for consumers is there isn’t one standard. That makes it difficult to get a viral marketing effect with an e-book.
Not impossible. Just difficult. There is still a possibility that an e-book can go viral, but if it does so it will have to go viral in one of three accepted formats:
- Kindle
- iPad
Right now, I’d say e-books are more likely to go viral if they are in PDF format. But you can create a mini-viral effect with either Kindle or iPad versions of your e-book. But the most important thing about e-books going viral is you have to have great content. Mediocre just won’t cut it.
How E-books Could Become An SEO Tool
Google is starting a new service called Google Editions where it will publish and sell e-books. Consider this:
Anyway, Jessica E. Vascellaro and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg reported afterward that Google will try to establish deals with publishers, and then, “Google says its new service . . . will allow users to buy digital copies of books they discover through its book-search service.” Which should put Google into competition with Amazon and Apple.
If Google is going to compete with Amazon then it will have to do so on equal terms. That means it will have to offer previews and sample chapters for free in order to sell books. Publishers will do everything they can to ensure that their books are found in the search engines and through social media outlets. What ways could they do that?
Well, one obvious way is through SEO content. Imagine a book introduction being written with the search engine algorithms in mind, anticipating its use as the free preview. I think this is something that Google could actually promote and condone in order to court publishers at co-marketers in its digital e-book sales outlet.
What about you? Do you think this scenario is feasible?
Viral Marketing Through E-books
E-books were very popular at one time. When the Web was young you’d see the free e-book downloads and when you got to the last chapter of a 200-page e-book you got for free you suddenly realized you were in the middle of a sales pitch. To get the next e-book you’d have to pay something. But you were encouraged to share the free one with your friends.
Another version of the e-book viral marketing method was to offer downloaders a way to brand the free e-book under their own name as long as nothing in the e-book changed. Of course, all the links pointed to the originator’s website. Viral marketing at its best.
For awhile, free e-books went out of fashion. But they seem to be making a comeback. This might be due to the increase and interest in e-book readers. Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the Sony eReader have all become more popular. So too have e-books.
The truth is, e-books are a great way to spread a viral message. They work. If you do it right you can gain a new audience and sell your services. Viral marketing through e-books is one of the most powerful ways to reach an audience online today. Some things never change.