Tuesday 31 January 2012

How to Build Your Business On Line - Book

In December my book “How to Build your Business Online(http://HowToBuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com) was published and is for sale on Amazon as a paperback and on Kindle as an e-book. Barnes and Noble is supposed to carry it. We ran into a snag with our foreign bank account. That may change soon.

It’s a simple book that describes in layman’s terms what needs to be done to build your brand and market your business online. It covers Search Engine placement, keyword strategies, Search Engine Optimization, Video, Blogging, Content Marketing, Mobile and Social Media.



I video blog and write about media a lot these days and have more than once said that we are all publishers. With this in mind, it seemed logical to publish a book about building your business online. 

You may have seen samples of my writing on various website and in magazines (Sea Technology, Computers in Education, Hi Society etc). For example, I embarked on a world saga project years ago that got me writing about local cultures starting with the saga of Bathsheba in Barbados, Example Life in a Fishing Village.  I was asked to write an account of Barbados for the BBC TV program “By Any Means”, a Project of Great Big Earth, with Charley Boorman (reprinted on Barbados.org).  But this is my very first book and publishing it was quiet an experience. 

There are many self-publishing services and I investigated several. In the end I ended up with OpenSpace, the publishing arm of Amazon. As a new Author you don’t get tracked down by a publisher. But you can do it yourself. 

I was inspired to launch this book by a Class I took. It was a class of Main Street Marketers who were having the same problem. We had all had great systems that make a difference but we were removed from day-to-day basics.

We needed a simple plain-language authoritative book that explained in non-technical language what an anchor text was and what was involved in online marketing and just how to build your business online. We needed a simple text on how to build your Brand and how to market it using the internet and online media: Something that business managers could understand and enjoy reading even, if they had no interest in technology.  

We were a diverse group with as many options and views about what the book should be as we were people. We decided to pool resources and hire a publishing team. We would each build our own book with our own points of view and with our own content and perspective. Sharing publishing resources made it cost-effective to produce a helpful guide about online marketing for each of our respective industries. 

My intention was to write a book on travel. I was persuaded to make that the second book which is now in process. Travel is a very specialized industry; the Global Distribution Systems, Tour Operators, Online Travel Agents (OTA), airline reservation systems, holiday packaging, seasonal rates and offers, have few parallels in other industries My texts about all this bewildered the team. My editing assistant said, "Ian you can't put all that into a simple easy to read book". Hence, all of this is in Book 2.  

For book 1, we ended up with a very simple version, thanks to an editor who was ruthless with words. Several of my insights and concepts were dropped because they were too technical or too philosophical. Ideas and paragraphs were re-crafted. "Your writing for ordinary business people, not the Harvard Review" I was reminded. It amazed me how, in the hands of a good editor, whole paragraphs of complex ideas were reduced to a single sentence that everyone could relate to. Having an editor is a very good idea!

“How to Build Your Business Online” will help any business understand what technology is available and how to use the online media to build and market their brand, be it in the health field, in food services, in automotive or hairdressing.  In retrospect this is a good move - a general book on brand marketing using the internet and all online media, opens new avenue for our skills in Barbados to help small businesses on an international scale. 
 
My current involvement with the book is to create a series of business marketing tutorials for each section of the book. I will also maintain a blog and website where book patrons can share their ideas and experiences, and ask questions of the group.

I’ll share more about the publishing process, cost and option in my next blog. Keep watching.

For more on the book and how it might help you see http://HowtoBuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com


Resources

Subscribe to our newsletter and Tutorials on the latest Tourism marketing technology:  The Social Index Engine

Buy the Book: http://Amazon.BuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com
Bonus For Book Buyers: Bonus.BuildYourBusinessOnlineBook.com

Interested in Publishing Your own book see BizonlineBlog 
(http://www.howtobuildyourbusinessonlinebook.com/about-publishing-a-book-case-study-buildyourbusinessonlinebook/)

Useful resources for Online Marketing