To be honest, when Newt and I sat down to write this book, our prospective reader was a marketing professional in any size organization.  Surprisingly, the majority of positive feedback we have received has been from owners, operators and from other functions throughout businesses that are really looking into how they are running their businesses and their business models.

In my discussions with these decision-makers, many were aware that significant changes needed to happen in their business communications and marketing approach, but they weren’t quite sure how to deal with them. We are humbled to be able to help these individuals take a new content marketing mindset into their organizations that will pay dividends.

Here is one worthwhile quote from a small-business owner in California: “We’ve been talking about these issues in our organization for quite a while, but have never found the necessary direction to make actionable change. Your book is helping us do that.”

Here’s a comment from Bob Leonard on the Amazon.com site: “Barrett and Pulizzi went well beyond an academic treatise of what “content marketing” is. They took the Harvard Business School approach and told the stories of 15 different companies and how they leveraged content marketing for business success. You get all the hows and whys. The stories are fun to read and, like every well told story, they’re memorable.

This book should be required reading in every business school in the country. It explains a fundamental shift in the way products and services are sold, and every person in business needs to understand it.”

Also, check out this review from Greg Verdino (Greg was an early reviewer of the book).

Blatant Sales Pitch:  Get this book! If you don’t get something out of it, I’ll buy it back from you.

Chapter 1
The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life (NYTimes Article on Nike)
The End of Advertising as we know it - IBM Global Solutions Survey
Nike+ Microsite
Will it Blend? - Blendtec

Chapter 2
Interview with David Levin, CEO United Business Media
Endangered: Local business coverage - Media Life Magazine
Guy Kawasaki’s Truemors.com

Chapter 3
Article from Dec. 20, 2007 Wall Street Journal Blog on Yellow Pages

Chapter 4
Website Example - MindJet
Microsite Example - HomeMadeSimple
eBook example - Small Business 2.0
eBook example - The New Rules of PR
Webcast example - Microsoft
White Paper example - Grant Thornton LLP
Digital magazines example - Nxtbook
eNewsletter example - Tendo View
eZine example - Shama Hyder
Business blog - Sun Microsystems
Virtual Trade Show example - AMD
Podcasts example - Paul Dunay

Chapter 5
Custom Publishing Council
Alexa.com
Compete.com
Quantcast.com
Trafficestimate.com
Technorati
IceRocket
Feedburner

Chapter 6
Is Social Media Killing the Campaign Microsite?
Pandemic Labs Blog about Kevin Nalts
Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
Digg.com
Propeller.com
Reddit.com
Mixx.com
Shoutwire.com
Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon.com
Furl.com
SmallBusinessBrief.com
Sphinn.com
Junta42.com
Hubspot.com

Chapter 8
Miller Electric

Chapter 9
‘Tween Waters Inn

Chapter 10
TheBoomerBlog.com
NextGreatThing.com

Chapter 11
BookSurge

Chapter 12
The Questory of Root Karbunkulus
Kitchen Studio of Naples
Maui Wowi

Chapter 13
Bitemark
Fort Knox Self Storage
Ace Mobile Mechanics

Chapter 14
Northern Trust
Wealth Magazine

Chapter 15
Naples Chamber of Commerce

Chapter 16
Best Buy
Best Magazine

Chapter 17
MindJet

Chapter 18
Webkinz
Playhouse Disney

Chapter 19
ThomasNet
Promote Your Business Microsite
Flex Products

Chapter 20
Constant Contact

Chapter 21
Out-law.com

Chapter 22
Rockwell Automation
Automation Today Asia Pacific

Chapter 24
Facebook.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Joe and Newt Resources
Junta42.com
Joe’s Blog
ContentMarketingToday.com

So here goes…my eleven key steps to writing and publishing a book when you have absolutely no time to write or publish a book. Even executing a handful of these recommendations will help you get closer to your book publishing dream. Remember…keep your goals in mind. A book can do far more for your business or career than you realize.

1. Find a Co-Author. This may not seem like a sound strategy to most, but finding another body takes 50% of the workload from you. When Newt and I first spoke about the book last summer, we were actually both in the process of starting our own individual books. As our conversation continued, it seemed obvious that our topics were so similar that it might make sense to team up.A couple notes if you decide to go this direction. First, pick someone who has a vested interest in your customer base or industry, but is not competitive. Newt and I are both entrepreneurs and own marketing consultancies, but the type of work we do is different enough that there were no competitive issues. Second, make sure you trust that person with your life. Newt and I worked together at Penton Media, Inc. for years and were friends, so no issue there. But, even with that, we created a thorough partnership agreement through my attorney. Even family members split sometimes, so we wanted to make sure that if some issue arose that we differed on, the agreement spelled out a solution.The final point to the co-author arrangement is that we both had expertise in different areas, which really helped. Newt was much better than I at interviewing and case studies, while I was a bit more proficient on the industry and research behind branded content and custom publishing (which we call content marketing). Once we completed the table of contents, we could both work on our areas independently, hit key dates, and continue to always more forward.
2. Keep and Adhere to a Production Schedule. To be honest, our goal was to release the book in March of 2008. Didn’t happen. But we were always true to our production schedule. Even though we kept moving the dates back, the important part was that we kept dates. As you may be aware, most people that start writing a book never finish it. Part of the reason may be that there are no hard dates to keep their eye on. I have a big white board in my office with the key book dates written in blue marker. Every morning I would see those dates. Makes a difference.
3. Before You Start, Create the Table of Contents. Creating the table of contents for your book is like your business plan. Understand full well that the original table of contents you create will look nothing like what you end up with, but you need the TOC in order to start and finish the book. I believe we had four or five significantly different TOCs by the time we finished. We even reworked the entire order of the book after our initial reviewers gave their feedback.Here’s the real importance of the table of contents: if you just start writing, how will you know if you are making progress. If you write 100 pages, is that almost all of the book or 25% of the book? How do you know when to stop and move to the next section? Seems obvious, but I know quite a few people that just started to write with no idea where they were going. Needless to say, those people still have not completed their book, and they most likely never will.
4. Work the Financials and Publishing Plan from the Beginning. Newt and I had the budget complete, and were well into finalizing the self-publishing details with our partner, Lightning Source, within the first month. We received quotes for the design, the copy writing, knew what our break even point would be, and both agreed to the financial terms. But more than anything, it made the process real and manageable. Writing a book is such a labor-intensive project, that you need as many tangible things as possible to keep you going.
5. Find a Review Team and a Great Copywriter. The book draft was sent to two people, Mike Azzara and David Drickhamer. They were simply fantastic. Their feedback uncovered some key gaps in our methodology. We were able to develop a much better book with their honest expert opinion. Also, our copy writer, Lisa Murton Beets, is one of the best. She really brought it all together. So don’t think that you can write a book completely sheltered from the outside world. Find a team of reviewers and a copy writer that you can trust. Makes all the difference in the world.
6. Expert reviewers help you qualify and pitch the book…use them. We approached a number of marketing and publishing experts in the field for book reviews. This does two things. First, you’ll know if you have a bad book if they don’t want to give you a review. Fortunately, all but one of our reviewers made the date in time for publishing. The team included the father of integrated marketing Don Schultz, bestselling author David Meerman Scott, digital expert and author Rohit Bhargava, Mr. Magazine Samir Husni, leading marketing blogger Greg Verdino, post-advertising expert Simon Kelly, and the copyblogger himself, Brian Clark. Second, the “praise for” section of your book is a wonderful way to market the product. I don’t know about you, but I almost always read the testimonials before purchasing a book. They’re priceless. We were overwhelmed with their reviews, and will be leveraging them for our marketing efforts.
7. Develop a System to Write during Off-Hours. If you have a real job and are not a full-time author, writing during the day is almost impossible. Most of my writing was done between 10pm and 2am. Find what time suits you best, but probably not during regular work hours.
8. Tell People You Are Writing a Book. This keeps you honest. Tell as many people as you can. They will start to ask you how the book is going (especially to see if you are one of those people who never finish a book). Use this as motivation to actually complete your book. There’s nothing better than showing a copy of your book to friends when many of them never thought you could do it. Ha.
9. Determine a Core Selling Strategy (If You Can) Before You Start Writing. Part of our strategy was to sell bulk copies to custom publishers and other organizations who would benefit from giving the book to their customers. Upfront bulk sales to other businesses may be a lot easier for you than selling individual copies. Using both would be the ultimate goal, but if one falls through you have the other. Minimizes risk. Find a strategy that makes sense to you so you can get off the ground running. Doing it from the start gives you a good focus on who your core audience should be.
10. Stop Somewhere and Realize that Perfection Is Unattainable. We could have kept writing the book forever if we wanted to. At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand and publish it. As soon as you finish it there will be some new research, some new story, or some new perspective that you should have covered.Don’t worry about it…just use it for your next book.
11. BONUS ADDITION - From Rohit Bhargava - Start Blogging First. “The benefit of being a blogger before writing a book is that my writing was “in shape” when I started my book. As a result, I feel like I was able to write much faster and make my points much more quickly. For anyone considering writing a book, I would highly suggest starting to blog at the very least so that you can start to flex your writing muscles in a consistent way. And you get the side benefit of starting to build your platform online too.”

Remember, books can be one of the most powerful forms of content marketing. Use it to your advantage. And, as a good friend of mine once said, “Handing a book to your client or prospect is the greatest business card ever created.” Good luck with yours.

“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

We’d like to share with you our experience as we bring the book to life and into the world.

We’ll be using this blog area to keep everyone updated on our book publishing and marketing experience. Please feel free to share any comments you have with us.

Only one thing is certain for sure…that nothing is certain. Enjoy the ride!