"Free" E-books Should Really Be Free — Friday E-book Downloads

Lots of great content for B2B marketers was published in the last couple of weeks — including white papers. I had to make a decision: should I include white papers in my E-Book Central posts or stick with e-books?

Companies posting white papers usually do so to generate leads — and they can post their white papers on syndication sites which are designed to help them get these leads.

An e-book, however, is different. It’s usually registration-free, it’s easier to read, and the company presenting the content is sharing ideas with industry influencers and ultimately purchasers.

Because I have yet to find a resource that lists the viral e-books being published for marketers, I decided to stick with posting new ones each Friday (I’m also going to include guides and industry reports based on research).

After spending a good hour researching various white papers and e-books, I have a few tips for you to aid your readers when they try to download your content:

1. Make a dedicated landing page or write a blog post for the e-book. On this landing page, give a brief abstract of the e-book and how the information in it pertains to your audience. Be sure to ask your readers to pass your content along to others.

2. Make the free content *really* free. A couple of the e-books I considered and ultimately declined posting here wanted me to log into various sites or programs in order to view the content. A simple PDF link to the e-book ensures that people can easily download your e-book and share it with others.

3. Include a “hero shot” of the cover. Most bloggers will include the cover of your e-book when they write about it — if you provide one for them. When I write content for myself and my clients, I have my designer make a small jpg of the report, e-book or white paper cover just for this purpose.

If you’re unclear on the concept of how an e-book differs from a white paper, be sure to read David Meerman Scott’s, “The New Rules of Viral Marketing” e-book where he covers what an e-book is and how to market it.

Herewith, this week’s featured E-book downloads.

1. Increase Sales Productivity: Sales Tools and the path to productivity gains, an e-book by Nancy Nardin, Smart Selling Tools (no registration required).

This 103-page report sets out to answer the most important question of all — “How do you get sales people to sell more?” How do get from where your sales are now to where you want them to be in the future? You can follow many paths — but the real key is to provide reps with tools that will help them meet or exceed demands through the use of productivity tools. This is a great book even if you’re not in sales, as Nancy covers productivity and presentation tools marketers can use, too. It also gives you great insight into the sales job. (To download the e-book, look for the link in the sidebar of Nancy’s blog.)

2. Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2010, an e-book by Junta42 (no registration required).

This 75-page e-book covers over 100 social media and content marketing predictions for 2010 from the most influential marketers in the world.

3. Design Nurturing Programs to Drive Sales, a guide by Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions (no registration required).

With longer buying cycles, unprecedented information availability and buyers delaying sales conversations it’s imperative to continuously evolve your lead nurturing programs to parallel their needs. In this guide you’ll learn how lead nurturing differs from lead generation, the 7 Stages of the buying process and how to address them, and the three types of content that influence buying decisions — plus lots more.

4. Gaijin Male Model: A Case Study in Conflict-Driven Business Writing, an e-book by David Meerman Scott (no registration required).

Sadly, very few marketers and business writers introduce conflict in their writing. We all see tons of this stuff instead: “Here’s our product. It is great. Here are customers who say it is great. Now buy some of our product.” In this e-book, David gives an example of conflict-based writing in the hopes of getting you to think about how to introduce conflict into your own writing.