Do you have a white paper that needs a little more attention?  What follows are four “not so obvious places” to promote your white papers.

1. Your Email Signature: Why not include a title, short description and link to your white papers in your email signature.  This will ensure that your white paper is prominently displayed in all of your email communications.  Be sure to include it in auto-responder emails, such as newsletter registration confirmations.

2. On Twitter: Create a custom background on Twitter with a thumbnail of the cover of your white paper.  Include a very prominent visual URL.  Remember that Twitter backgrounds are graphics, so you won’t be able to hotlink the white paper.  However, when folks want to learn more about you, they’ll see your white paper.

3. On Facebook: Try including a link to you white paper in your personal profile in Facebook OR on your Facebook fan page.  In addition, you can use the Notes feature in Facebook to paste in HTML formatted content, such as your white paper landing pages.

4. On Your Blog: If your company has a blog, the sidebar is an excellent place to promote your white paper.  Simply include a small thumbnail image and a link or basic form to gain access to the paper.

Do you have any other ideas?

Should you use video and twitter together? Well it just so happens that a very cool new tool was just announced called TwitCam.com.

What follows is my review of the service based on an actual live video stream I conducted today (and the recording).

First let me say I think this service totally rocks!   I don’t think I could have expected an easier user interface or experience. So let me share with you how it works.

Step one: Visit TwitCam.com and sign in using your Twitter ID (if you don’t use Twitter you can set up an account with TwitCam).

Step two: Select your video and audio source from intelligent drop-down menu.

Step three: Press the “broadcast and Tweet”  button.

It’s really that easy.

Here are my own experiences using TwitCam and some of the pitfalls you should be aware of.

(more…)

Are you using white papers to collect business leads? Are white paper registration forms ‘old school marketing?’  Is it better to let white papers roam free with the hope that they’ll magically draw opportunity?

These are very important questions you should ask yourself.  And perhaps nothing has spurred the debate more than the mass adoption of social media marketing.  Many businesses are experiencing the viral marketing benefits of unleashing their white papers.  Some of the benefits of letting the paper free include:

(more…)

Perhaps you have seen the DISQUS comment system on other blogs and wondered, “Should I add this to mine?”  This blog post will reveal some things you need to know BEFORE you make the leap.

I have been blogging for more than three years now and there have been a lot of things that have evolved.  One new area is the advancement in blog comment systems.

I am an avid reader of Mashable.com and noticed they use the DISQUS  (pronounced discuss) commenting system.  So I decided to give it a try.  Here is my (detailed) analysis of the system…

(more…)

If you want to discover how to best grow your business in this down economy, generate tons of leads or take the lead in a crowded market, you won’t want to miss this live event:

White Paper Boot Camp, San Diego: Friday August 7th at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay Resort, led by me.

Frost & Sullivan and InformationWeek agree, white papers are the most effective marketing tools in a down economy. Creating the right white paper and applying the right marketing tactics will change the course of your business.

Two examples: A major printing company collected 5,000 leads and closed 500 sales—in just 60 days! “One day with Michael Stelzner could make your business wealthy,” says Ryan Malone, vice president of marketing and business development at Apani. “Following Stelzner’s exact process tripled our number of qualified leads—outperforming all of our other marketing combined.”

(more…)

It was July 4th 2oo6 when I first launched this blog.

Man what a ride!

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to the more than 5060 comments and 517 articles that have been posted on this blog!