This is a guest post from Rebekah Donaldson, President of Business Communications Group LLC and author of a B2B communications blog called Red On Marketing:

In early February, Cris Rominger and I published a free B2B marketing e-book called The New Rules of Outsourcing B2B Marketing: What Marketing Directors need in a B2B marketing consultant today.

The e-book is aimed at helping Marketing Directors see the standard to which they should hold us. We discuss the traits a B2B marketer needs; how to cut ROI guesswork; why B2B marketing differs from B2C… and more.

There is a forum for discussing the e-book’s ideas, and I hope you’ll weigh in.

Keyword research 2.0, too?

I’ve been thinking since the e-book came out about visibility into b2b buyers’ search behavior. I have an idea, and it’s sketched out below. What do you think — any input?

• To attract and engaging B2B buyers, we need to know their search behavior. Where are they searching, and with what words and phrases, for example?
• Keyword research 1.0 shows us what B2B buyers search for in the major engines. It does not, as far as I know, show us what they type into search boxes on Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, ITtoolbox, or the like.
• Business use of social media is exploding.
• Keyword research 2.0 must account for searches within social media platforms.

It seems that, as social media grows, so grows our our blind spot.

Admittedly the volumes are nothing like searches in Google. But, depending on the particular B2B buyers, we have a big or tiny blind spot.

What I know

Note that I’m not thinking here about how social media participation influences one’s SEM results – something that folks like Oneupweb have covered.

Also, I’m not thinking about tracking mentions of one’s brand across oodles of platforms and contexts. That’s about finding instances of words and media, not patterns in search behavior.

What I don’t know

I’m thinking, specifically, about how I’d answer a client who asks:

“In Twitter, how many searches were there for ‘internet marketing’ vs ‘website marketing’ since 2007?”

“In LinkedIn, are more visitors searching for ‘marketing services’ or ‘marketing consultants’?”

LinkedIn clearly has such stats. They have rolled out context-relevant advertising. They might help advertisers incorporate popular search terms into their ad copy, too.

But for an internet marketing consultant, those stats aren’t accessible. Are they?

What do you know?

I can think of at least two objections to my line of thinking:

1. Keyword research 2.0 is already happening; xyz does it.
2. Keyword research 1.0 is plenty; it’s not important to know what’s searched within social media platforms.

We’re hoping to hear feedback. Please weigh in!

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My thanks to Red for this guest post! I encourage you to check out the ebook and then respond here or on their forum.

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My recently released e-book, Writing Holiday Donation Emails, has gotten some traction and I wanted to pass along a few secrets for success when writing an e-book. This was my second e-book (the first being about writing in a web 2.0 world) and I learned a lot.

I assume that you are already knowledgeable about your topic and have decent writing skills. However, there are several things you can do to increase the readership of your e-book outside of this expertise. Here are three secrets for writing your successful e-book.

1. Use e-books as collections of your best work

Last year, I worked on three posts about holiday solicitation emails, focusing on design, content, and strategy. The content was largely still relevant, so I packaged it into an e-book. It allowed me to add some material and correct other ideas.

Because I had already done the hard part (idea generation, writing) and received comments and suggestions from other marketers, it was comparatively easy to put together the new e-book. Plus, it gives me another post in the search engines and reaches readers who subscribed to my blog since those original posts went up last year.

Donation vs. Solicitation

2. Think SEO

There are millions of e-books, but only a few are read by more than 100 people. Why? 

One common reason is due to a writer’s inability to think about key words as they effect search engine optimization (SEO). If your e-book doesn’t get good search engine results rankings, it might as well not exist.

For instance, last year I used the term “solicitation.” This year, however, I compared “solicitation” and “donation.” You can see in the image to the right that “donation” had a much higher frequency in Google. Therefore, though “solicitation” is a more accurate description, I opted for the more popular term.

Holiday vs. Christmas

Likewise, I debated between “holiday” and “Christmas.” As you can see in the second image on the right, Christmas ranked higher during the fourth quarter of recent years. However, I also realized that people searching for the word “Christmas” are less likely to be searching for information about solicitation emails, and I risked limiting my audience if I confined the e-book to “Christmas.” Since the e-book was about year-end donations, rather than any particular holiday, I used the word “holiday.”

3. Recycle and Reuse

Now that the e-book is written, I can slice up the chapters into short posts are reuse them. This gives yet another chance at a good Google ranking and the ability to add to your e-book.

I asked my buddy Andrew, a development expert in Washington, DC, for synonyms of my topic. He gave me plenty: “year end appeal,” “appeal letter,” “support letter,” “fund proposal,” “end of year giving,” and “holiday appeal.” You can bet I will be using these terms in future posts taken from the larger e-book.

Plus, this interaction allowed Andrew to pass on additional insight. He recommends thanking the donor in the first sentence (or at least the first paragraph). This has the effect of making the potential donor feel appreciated and invested in your cause. Andrew, thanks for this great tip!

Recycle your content and reuse it liberally after you’ve posted your e-book. Readers do not approach your blog as they would a book, reading from the first post to the last. You are allowed encouraged to reuse themes and parts of content, as long as it’s relevant and not a mere duplication.

The Gist

An e-book can be a useful way to package your content and illustrate your expertise in a given subject. But don’t waste your time. Use these three tips to get the most value out of every word.

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(Image courtesy of cogdogblog via Flickr)

Most membership organizations use the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas to raise money for the coming year. Many use email to ask their members to donate to the cause. And many organizations do this very, very badly.

I have written an e-book about writing holiday donation emails. These are the emails where organizations, especially non-profits, solicit money from their members. It is often the life’s blood of a membership organization.

I invite you to download the e-book:

Writing Holiday Donation Emails

In the e-book, I outline best practices and ideas on design, content, and strategy. If you follow the principle outlined therein, I strongly believe your total donations will increase substantially and that you will lay the foundations of trust and engagement that ensure future donation drives will be all the more successful.

There is no cost for the e-book and no strings attached. I have purposefully left it without a firewall, free to anyone.

If the e-book is useful to you, however, please consider subscribing to this blog. You can subscribe using email or RSS and you will never receive spam from me. Subscribing is the only way you can be sure never to miss a post from OnlineMarketerBlog.

I hope you enjoy the e-book, Writing Holiday Donation Emails. It will be helpful to all web writers, but it is a must-read if you work in marketing or development, especially with a non-profit or other membership organization.

Feel free to leave your success stories in the comments section below. Or leave your own holiday donation email suggestions for the rest of the community to share.

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