If you haven't seen In Bubble Wrap yet, you should check it out. Every day they give away free books and trainings. You simply have to answer a couple of quick questions and they choose several people a day to get the books.
I provided copies of my book recently and they gave them to people on the site.
I did it as a test to see how this kind of promotion would work and so far it has been pretty good.
A couple of guys who have a very popular podcast called Lock Jaw Radio
my book and talked out it on episodes 12 & 13. I'll be very curious to see how much impact this has in actual sales. I'm a big proponent of podcasts and believe that most companies can use them to more effectively promote their business.
They also followed the In Bubble Wrap instructions very carefully (in addition to popping the bubbles) and crowned themselves winners. It is a great example of how you can even use your packaging to get people involved in an experience.
Take a look at the pictures here.
Many times giving away a sample of your product is the best way to kick off a word of mouth effort. Since I just started following the results of this I'll let you know how it turns out as time goes on. What can you do to give your clients a taste or sample of what you do so that they can begin their relationship with you? Enjoy the site and I hope we both win a book tomorrow! P.S. Amazon reports that they just got a fresh new shipment of Persuasion: The Art Of Getting What You Want in their warehouse, now is a great time to get your own copy.
Dave-
Thanks for the link and the book. Thomas and I are looking forward to dipping into the persuasive goodness and find some nuggets we can share with our listeners. As for the "giving things away" experiement check out Joseph Jaffe and his "using new media to prove new media" foray. http://www.jaffejuice.com/2005/12/unm2pnm_2005_wr.html Very cool stuff and its exciting to see the way web 2.0 tools give authors like yourself and anyone else new and powerful ways to spread ideas.
Good luck!
Jose Castillo
Posted by: Jose Castillo | January 20, 2006 at 09:54 AM
Dave-
I echo Jose in saying thanks for the mention and we will share some of your book in the next few episodes of lockjaw radio. In your post, you say "enjoy the site and I hope we both win a book tomorrow" - well, one of our cohorts at work won a book yesterday from inBubbleWrap. What are the odds of that???
Looking forward to digging into "Persuasion..."!
Best!
Thomas Eorgan
Posted by: Thomas Eorgan | January 20, 2006 at 03:22 PM