In early 2007 a free guide was released that started the conversation about social marketing. It set the standard for organized, professional marketing with social media.
The Authority Black Book was named the best free ebook for bloggers by Mashable.com, a social media community with over 5 million visitors per month (easily the largest community online dedicated to the latest news in social media and social marketing).
Early in 2007 no one but a handful of bloggers was really talking about social marketing as an organized marketing system. In 2006 we were doing training calls on social marketing for small to large websites when, again, no one was talking about anything social other than spamming Myspace to get a lot of friends.
So, a lot of people downloaded and continue to download the Authority Black Book every single day. It is recognized as the industry leader in social marketing education and we never charged a cent for it.
After the success of the Black Book in 2007 and after “social marketing experts” have now dropped out of the trees from every direction since the Black Book was launched (where most of them learned what they are now training for big bucks), it is no small feat to come up with a great sophomore release.
But I think we’ve done just that. In the next week we are going to be releasing Authority Black Book 2008 to the public.
Right now we have advance copies in the hands of bloggers around the world and our clients at ASC and SPL are tearing through the guide as fast as they can to gain an edge or to get the scoop on the latest from an award-winning franchise before others get a chance to report on it.
This year’s Black Book has been drastically updated. Social marketing moves very fast and several adjustments and additions needed to be made in order to keep ahead of the pack and continue to provide the best free social marketing eduction on the web alive and strong.
It’s not just full of hardcore traffic driving tips and resources! This baby is even sexy!
It is hard to compete with shiny things like video and audio these days. But if we’d turned the Black Book into a video course it would be gigabytes in size and would choke even broadband connections for hours while it downloaded.
So, we made the thing easier to read and reference, and made it more exciting to interact with. If you have to read, at least this read will be entertaining and easy on the eyes!
Plus, the Black Book is now only 67 pages due to a new 2 column layout. (The original Word version was 117 pages, making it longer than the 2007 version.)
What Will You Learn?
You will learn something far different than the “just add water” social marketing Chia Pet experts are teaching. You will learn responsibility in social marketing and tactics that will boost your rankings in the search engines. You will learn to drive heavy, direct traffic from authority links you acquire with my methods without spamming or doing the short-term gain methods that don’t build critical mass for a real online business.
For example, did you know that all that traffic from Digg everyone else is talking about is all but worthless? Yikes! But its true and you need to know how to go far beyond simply getting traffic from the social networks themselves in order to get quality, measurable results from social marketing.
Its not the traffic from hitting the front page of Digg or any other social network that professional social marketers are actually concerned with, despite the shallow inferences many of the overnight experts make to the contrary.
Yes the major social sites combined get more traffic than Google or any of the other behemoths. This is the basis of our attraction to social marketing. But to say that because Facebook gets 30 some odd million visitors a month you should go set up a profile and then PAY for advertising on that network…well..that’s not actually anything close to social marketing.
We don’t pay for any advertising. Paying for advertising is the exact opposite of social marketing even if you do it on a social community.
What kind of traffic and links you get is important.
And the kind a lot of new social marketing experts are touting is the trashiest kind you can get for raw conversions and amount of time spent on site.
You really have to know what you are shooting for before embarking on a social marketing campaign, and that’s what makes the Black Book different than all the other courses (even the $2000 coaching programs) because I tell you what works and what to do instead of telling you what I think you want to hear about social marketing.
What have I got to lose by telling a few uncomfortable truths? I’m giving the thing away, right?
So stay tuned. Someone, somewhere is going to give you a shout out and let you know when you can pick up a copy of the 2008 Black Book.
When your get the nod, drop everything and grab that puppy because you are going to see a marked increase in high quality, converting traffic, higher search rankings on more keyword terms than you thought possible, and voluntary editorial links from virtually everyone who is considered an authority in your market niche.