A simple idea to help your customes - and your business
Hey folks,
As some of you know, I run a membership site for children's book authors (The CBI Clubhouse - a Community for Children's Book Writers Writing Picture Books, Easy Readers, Young Adult Books and More!). I recently announced a new idea to my folks and the feedback has been tremendous -- so I wanted to share it here so some of you can try something similar.
Ed Schultz, who has a national radio talk show, recently started turning his Friday show into an open forum for small business owners to call in and promote themselves. The concept is that the "little guy", who couldn't possibly afford national advertising, gets to promote his or her business to a huge audience for free. Neat idea.
Inspired by that, I started The Fightin' Bookworm Stimulus Plan (my members are called Fightin' Bookworms), in which members get to promote a book they've written to the entire community, posted right on our front page. And then (and I haven't even announced this part yet), I'll also give them a plug in my free e-zine, which goes out to about 43,000 readers. It'll all be rotating and first-come, first-served, so it may take some time for a person's book to get its moment in the spotlight, but it will happen.
This is truly a "no skin off my back" kind of deal for me. It costs me nothing to do, makes my members feel great about being part of the site, helps people make money and gain recognition, and hopefully gives me the sort of karmic payoff that can prevent me from being reborn as a frog.
So, here's what it boils down to:
We each have some sort of "real estate" -- a web site, a twitter list, the countertop of our store, our forum sig file, the back bumper of our car, whatever. Why not offer that real estate to your customers to help promote *their* business?
for example -- let's say you drive a yellow Hummer that everyone in your city sees on a daily basis. It's ultra-high visibility. Why not offer to put a sign in the back window that promotes one of your customers and change it every week? Then take pictures of this rolling advertisement in action and post it to your site!
Think about the real estate you have to offer, and then offer it up selflessly. Show you really do care about your customers and they'll be loyal as hell.
Best,
Jon
As some of you know, I run a membership site for children's book authors (The CBI Clubhouse - a Community for Children's Book Writers Writing Picture Books, Easy Readers, Young Adult Books and More!). I recently announced a new idea to my folks and the feedback has been tremendous -- so I wanted to share it here so some of you can try something similar.
Ed Schultz, who has a national radio talk show, recently started turning his Friday show into an open forum for small business owners to call in and promote themselves. The concept is that the "little guy", who couldn't possibly afford national advertising, gets to promote his or her business to a huge audience for free. Neat idea.
Inspired by that, I started The Fightin' Bookworm Stimulus Plan (my members are called Fightin' Bookworms), in which members get to promote a book they've written to the entire community, posted right on our front page. And then (and I haven't even announced this part yet), I'll also give them a plug in my free e-zine, which goes out to about 43,000 readers. It'll all be rotating and first-come, first-served, so it may take some time for a person's book to get its moment in the spotlight, but it will happen.
This is truly a "no skin off my back" kind of deal for me. It costs me nothing to do, makes my members feel great about being part of the site, helps people make money and gain recognition, and hopefully gives me the sort of karmic payoff that can prevent me from being reborn as a frog.
So, here's what it boils down to:
We each have some sort of "real estate" -- a web site, a twitter list, the countertop of our store, our forum sig file, the back bumper of our car, whatever. Why not offer that real estate to your customers to help promote *their* business?
for example -- let's say you drive a yellow Hummer that everyone in your city sees on a daily basis. It's ultra-high visibility. Why not offer to put a sign in the back window that promotes one of your customers and change it every week? Then take pictures of this rolling advertisement in action and post it to your site!
Think about the real estate you have to offer, and then offer it up selflessly. Show you really do care about your customers and they'll be loyal as hell.
Best,
Jon
.