We are honored to lead the current required reading list on the respected technology industry site, Sandhill.com.  Site readers  can download a free book excerpt that gives them the basics of why high tech organizations must learn to ride the content marketing tsunami.

SandHill.com is published by the Sand Hill Group, which provides investment and management advice to emerging leaders in the $600 billion enterprise software, services and solutions market. SandHill.com provides two main content areas – “Required Reading” and “In-depth Analysis” – with a broad spectrum of editorial and decision support broken out for management, finance, engineering and marketing executives.

As company founder and software industry vet, M.R. Rangaswami, explains it, the site is a place "where enterprise software experts can go for their daily fix of strategic business information – be it news, insight, analysis or community." He adds that "SandHill.com will give you the pertinent news, opinions from leaders and visionaries, informative and actionable research and industry metrics. But most of all, we want to add a personality to the industry."

Sandhill.com is clearly doing the job because it merits of strong 5/10 Google page ranking.  According to the company, it currently reaches 10,000 CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs, CMOs, VPs of Engineering, R&D, Services & Support, Venture Capitalists and members of the software industry eco-system.

Sand Hill Group produces the Software and the Enterprise series of conferences for industry executives, and authors research reports on cutting-edge technology topics. Click here to find out more about the company.

Click here for a link to Sandhill.com’s excerpt from Get Content Get Customers.

We are featured in a round up of 3 hot new business books. As they comment on Get Content Get Customers:

Search engines such as Google have democratised content, and so you have the opportunity to replace formerly vital media choices with your own high-quality content, advise Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett in Get Content Get Customers: Turn prospects into buyers with content marketing ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com). “You can be timely, considered, and reasoned. Your company can become the new thought leader among your many prospects who are completely open to great content from new sources,” the authors encourage.

To read the entire story click here.

Sales Streak Past 1000 Copies. Online Marketing Guru Recommends Our Book.

One thousand copies pales in comparison to any of the Harry Potter books.

But, put into context, it suggests solid acceptance of Get Content. Get Customers. among business book buyers.  Here’s what our book and every new book is up against in attempting to penetrate a very tough, competitive market(numbers from bookstatistics.com):

• In 1947, there were 357 publishers; in 2004 85,000 publishers
• 2.8 million books in print in 2006
• 291,920 books published in the U.S. in 2006
• average book sells 500 copies in U.S.
• 30% of books had print runs of less than 100
• only 20% of books sold more than 100 copies
• only 10% of books sold more than 1000

Thanks to so many of you and to the support of marketing experts like Shama Hyder, we have been able to beat the odds by exceeding the sales of 90% of all books published in the U.S.

Online Marketing Guru–and Content Marketing Aficionado–Shama Hyder Give Us a Major Plug

Frankly, I’m not sure this endorsement of GCGC could have been any better if we had written it ourselves.  It is especially meaningful because Shama is so good at what she does with After The Launch as we have written in our article: When You Are the Brand, Content Marketing is Crucial.

Here’s what Shama had to say:

Get Content, Get Customers! by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett. You know how I am a big fan of VALUABLE content rather than loud marketing? Yea, these guys get it. Not only do they get it, but they show you how to do it. They show how any business (large or small) can use the concept of content marketing to attract qualified clients. This isn’t a book of theory. It’s jam packed with case studies and statistics. Content sells! They show you how. The best marketing education 20 bucks ever bought anyone!

Be sure to read her entire article, 10k Worth of Knowledge for Roughly 40 Bucks in which she recommends another superb book, Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans.  I know I just bought it on her recommendation.

Join the Content Marketing Crusade!

Content marketing works.  We teach you how to put it to work for your organization in ways that will pay off on the bottom-line in these tough times.

You can follow Shama’s very sound advice simply by

clicking here to buy Get Content Get Customers or if you’d like to download a FREE excerpt, go to www.GetContentGetCustomers.com.

Thanks to everyone for helping us get this far.

“Pulizzi and Barrett have taken Integrated Marketing Communications to the next level with Get Content. Get Customers. The book includes how to combine old and new marketing, online and offline, print and electronic in innovative and useful ways. Every marketer, large or small, can use this text to build better on-going customer relationships.”

— Don Schultz, Professor Emeritus in Service, Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern University

“Turning prospects into customers used to mean interrupting people with your company’s product messages. But it was tough to break through the clutter. The Web allows smart marketers a better way: create compelling content that people actually want to consume. Pulizzi and Barrett show you how to create and deliver content and they provide dozens of examples of success to learn from.”

— David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

“Content marketing may be the most revolutionary obvious idea you’ll ever hear … that marketing works better when you actually have something to say. For those who are seeking to add a personality to their brand, this essential book will take you beyond white papers and give you a roadmap to making content a bigger part of all your marketing. Deftly navigating the worlds of PR, advertising and marketing — Joe and Newt prove that the real secret to great marketing is not a brilliant tagline, but creating compelling and useful content.”

— Rohit Bhargava, SVP of Digital Marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and Author of Personality Not Included

“Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett take one of the core concepts of new marketing — that providing consumers with valuable content trumps bombarding them with irrelevant advertising — and give brands a treasure trove of tips, tricks, best practices and actionable approaches for using original online and offline content as a weapon in the battle for bottom line results. Get Content. Get Customers. provides a play-by-play for any marketer who is serious about breaking away from the pack, upsetting the status quo and moving beyond interruption marketing by offering compelling content that delivers real value for consumers and real revenue for their companies.”

— Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer of crayon, LLC and marketing blogger at www.gregverdino.com

“Get Content. Get Customers. highlights the role content plays in making YOUR customers tick, click and stick. An eye opening book that takes you through a step by step strategy to enhance your content and to connect to your customers through words, pictures, sound and video. If creating great content that serves your customer and your customer’s customer is important, this book is for you.”

— Samir Husni, aka “Mr. Magazine”^™, Chair of the Journalism Department, University of Mississippi

“When it comes to online marketing, you’ve got to reach people with what is desired and valued (content) instead of what is despised and ignored (advertising). Online, great content is effective advertising, and smart marketers are the new media. The trick to content marketing is getting your message across while keeping people engaged, and you’re about to discover exactly how to do that with this book.”

— Brian Clark, copyblogger.com

“As we rapidly enter the Post-Advertising Age, marketers are scrambling to find new ways to engage their brands with customers, amid the growing realization that the old ways are dead. If intrusion is dead and consumers are in control, Get Content. Get Customers. brilliantly manages the feat of combining the theory of engaging customers through content marketing along with alarmingly simple and practical approaches to doing it. All of this is clearly and intelligently illustrated through many different case studies. For marketers who understand that narrative marketing is the only marketing left but are struggling to understand how to do it, Get Content. Get Customers. finally offers the solution.”

— Simon Kelly, chief operating officer, Story Worldwide