Hey guys, welcome to ShamaTV. As many of you know, I launched my book, “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” not too long ago, maybe a couple of weeks ago, and the response to far has been absolutely phenomenal. I’ve been completely blown away and humbled. Thank you so much if you’re one of those people who got a copy, and read it and made the most of it.
One thing I want to share with you guys today is about the product launch process. I got a lot of questions about “why this?”, “what made you turn it in to a package and then in to a book?”
I’ll give you a brief back-story. I initially wrote this in a social media marketing to be a stand alone e-book, but when I shared it with my colleagues the response I got was that it was really overwhelming information and I needed to package it, and give readers more hand-holding. So I packaged it, but then what I learned was that I was getting an overwhelming response for just the e-book itself. People wanted the content, they wanted to see how far they could go with it themselves before they decided they needed hand-holding.
I wanted to share this lesson with you because it’s really key. I’ve been in this business a long while; I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time, but you know what: this is a lesson that’s great at any point in your career to understand. No matter what you think the market wants, or even needs, it is always the market that actually dictates what you put out there. I think this is a really important point, so I’m going to focus on it again: No matter what you think the market needs or wants, it is always the market that dictates what you put out there in the end.
For me, for example, when I put out “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” package, I got a few people interested, and that was great, but then most of the people said, “I want the e-book. I want to see the material. I want to see how far I can take this by myself.” So I thought who am I to stop them from doing that? The demand is for the book, so I was going to give them the book. I put the book out there, and the response, again, has been great. If you haven’t grabbed a copy, be sure to do so. It is also free for all non-profits, so if you run a non-profit or know a non-profit please ask them to e-mail me: shama@clicktoclient.com. I will be happy to send all non-profits a copy.
April 1st, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I really appreciate the sharing of the behind the scenes thought process for your book launch. You’re absolutely right, ultimately your marketplace tells you what they want – that is by far the easiest way to do business.