Getting a read on the e-book

Presenting complex information in a reader-friendly format – and finding ways to repurpose that content.
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To keep up on the ever-changing world of public relations, I often go in search of free e-books to download.

Whether the topic is blogging or social media, search engine optimization or inbound marketing, it has been covered in an e-book.

A terrific source of e-books is the Content Marketing Institute. Joe Pulizzi, who founded the Cleveland-based company, recently published his print book “Epic Content Marketing.”

He offers this definition:

“Content marketing is owning media as opposed to renting it. It’s a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance a consumer behavior.”

Visually attractive, reader friendly

An e-book is one way of creating and conveying content. Another definition from Pulizzi:

Think of an e-book as a white paper on steroids: a report, generally 12 to 40 pages or more in length, that presents complex information in a visually attractive, reader-friendly format. The context is both informative and entertaining; the tone, collegial; the format, “chunky” rather than linear, to facilitate skimming and scanning.

Of course, one of the great challenges of content marketing is producing a steady stream of content. It takes a lot of time.

Feldman Creative’s Barry Feldman created an e-book, “21 Pointers to Sharpen Your Website,” then found a host of ways to repurpose the content contained in its six pages. That repurposing is the subject of this subsequent SlideShare presentation, in which Feldman describes the numerous other forms that e-book content may take: articles, presentations, webinars, podcasts, videos, infographics.

I’m working on my first e-book on behalf of a client. I’m looking forward to the challenge, not only of creating it but also of finding ways to morph the content into a steady stream of “babies,” as Feldman calls them.
I’ll blog about my experience as the project unfolds.

 

 

About the Author

Neal Goulet

Neal Goulet, Owner
Having been a journalist, Neal knows writing, grammar and style, as well as the language and movements of a newsroom.
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