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Internet Marketing Lessons 9 and 10 from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the fifth and final post of Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business. When Thomas Paine published Common Sense back in 1776 the Internet was about 200 years off and blogging had 225 years to lay low before entering our lexicon. However, bloggers, content marketers, small businesses owners, and Thomas Paine all share the goal of communicating a message through the most effective channels out there and persuading people to take a specific action.

Check out the first post in this series for more on why it makes perfect sense to look to Common Sense for Internet marketing lessons. Before getting to our final two lessons, here are the first 8 lessons we’ve mined from Common Sense thus far:

1. Figure out the specific content that you can contribute to your niche.
2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.
3. Have one main point.
4. Make your content rich with target keywords and phrases.
5. Break up your content into digestible chuncks to aid understanding.
6. Supporting your positions in a strong, entertaining, and witty manner is a plus!
7. Let your passion bleed through your language.
8. Don’t just point out problems, offer solutions!

Lesson 9. Offer Realistic Optimism that People Can Trust

Whether you’re trying to get people to do something good for themselves, buy your product, vote, or fill out a contact form; you want your content to be positive, optimistic, and energetic. You can be negative, but that’s only good if you want people to act against something. Speaking or writing negatively about a competitor, if effective, may make your audience consider other options, but positivity is the best policy when trying to attact people or at least get them to be for something.

However, you have to offer positivity and optimism people can trust. “Too good to be true” optimism doesn’t fly for long. Therefore, strive for a similar brand of realistic optimism that Thomas Paine pushed in his Common Sense pamphlet.

As Paine drew his Pamphlet to conclusion, he confidently wrote “that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence” (53). He wrote this long before independence was declared. Even today, 235 years on the other side of Common Sense, we can feel Paine’s certainty and optimism, and get fired up about independence, freedom, and all that good stuff.

But there was more to Paine’s optimism than just confidence. He modified it with realism by acknowledging that achieving independence is going to be a tough road – unpleasant but necessary business:

“These proceedings may at first appear strange and difficult; but, like all other steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become familiar and agreeable; and, until an independance is declared, the Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity” (54).

In lesson 8 we talked about offering helpful content that solves peoples problems. In addition, in order to be truly helpful, such content also needs to honestly prepare the audience for the challenges and difficulties that they may encounter on the way to the solution.

Lesson 10. Continuously Update Your Content

On the day the first edition of Common Sense was published, a speech the king had made had been published in America, so Paine quickly added an appendix to his pamphlet that addressed the contents of the kings speech. Also, in a subsequent edition to the pamphlet, Paine added some specific calculations to show the cost along with how feasible it would be for America to have a sizeable navy.
Like Paine we should maintain an attitude of continuous improvement towards our content for the following reasons:

• Frees us up to get our content out there! If we view our blog posts, articles, and ebooks as living and growing documents then we no longer have to wait for it to be “perfect” before publishing it through our channel of preference. Instead, we can post it, email it, publish it once it is “good enough” and then go back and research some other angels and make some further modifications and re-post it or re-package it at the appropriate time.
• Keeps our content relevant. While some of the principles expressed in our content may stay the same, new anecdotes, information, and discoveries are broadcast via the Internet, mobile devices, and the 24-hour news cycle everday. We might as well jump on the informational bandwagon and work any applicable viral information into our existing content. This expands our audience and keeps our existing audience coming back.
• Good for the search engines. Lastly, the search engines give preference to content that is frequently updated.

So that’s it! A big thanks to Thomas Paine for giving us 10 timeless lessons we can apply to the rapidly moving Internet and social media marketing arena. Click here if you haven’t read or would like to review all 10 of these Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business.
Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss
• Mad Staffing Blog

The quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook; I encourage you to read it yourself!

NJSA Teams Up with Everett Reiss to Help Two Staffing Firms in Social Media

On Tuesday, June 22, 2010, I wrapped up the third seminar in a three part series on social media and the staffing industry.  The New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA) organized the event and teamed up with Applied Systems Technology, Inc. (AST), the staffing software firm that I work for, to have me speak about profitable ways to use social media in the staffing industry.  While preparing for the event, Jack Wellman, who’s on the Board of Directors of NJSA and President and COO of Joule, Inc. gave me a call and suggested that we do something a bit more compelling than the usual Power Point presentation.  After brainstorming for a few minutes, we decided that we’d offer up my services to the first three NJSA-member staffing companies who expressed interest in working with me for two weeks on developing a presence on either Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter.

I ended up working with two staffing professionals from two New Jersey staffing firms:

• Roseanne McDonald, Software Manager at Bryant Staffing on building a Facebook Page.
• Josephine Dimaggio, Recruiter at High Power Temps on developing a presence for herself and High Power on Linkedin and Twitter.

Roseanne made excellent progress on Bryant Staffing’s Facebook Page, and Josephine did a great job building out her personal Linkedin and Twitter profiles, and also creating a Linkedin company profile and Twitter page for High Power Temps.

Here are some highlights from the seminar.

Here are some of the takeaways from my time working with Roseanne and Josephine:

• It’s so easy to build out a Facebook Fan Page, Linkedin profile, or Twitter account.  Once you see business value in one or more of these areas in social media, just get out there, and claim and build out your space!
• Promote your social media initiatives both offline and online.  If you’re launching a new Facebook Page for your small business, email an annoucement to your candidates, post an online press release, and print postcards to hand out at job fairs promoting the Facebook Page.
• Know your goals and be flexible with your tactics.  Clearly define your goals as you get involved with social media and be measuring your results, looking for actionable insights so you can see what’s working and what you need to change.
• Connect your networks.  As you get more involved in social media and on more networks it gets time consuming to maintain them all.  However, you can connect your networks so that you can update them all at once through tools like Hootsuite.com, Ping.fm, and the Twitter application on Linkedin.
• Lastly, your company’s presence on social media is really the sum of the activity and involvement of your individual staff.  If you want your business to have a strong online presence then you have to empower your staff to become more and more active in social media.

Email me if you’re interested in having me speak to your business or association on profitable ways you can start engaging in social media today.

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

Recent Videos on Building a Facebook Page and Using Linkedin for Small Business

Here are some recent videos I posted on my company’s Mad Staffing Blog.  One video is on how easy it is to build a Facebook Page and the other video are three things you have to do Today! on Linkedin (if you haven’t already).

I’m making these videos in preparation for a speaking engagement I have on Building Profitable Web 2.0 Activities into Your Daily Work Lives with the New Jersey Staffing Association at the Edison Sheraton Hotel on June 22, 2010 from 8a-10a.  Click the link to register.

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

Freedom to Blog Comes at a Price!

“Freedom is never free, it comes at a price!” 

• Young men with so much potential lost on the battlefield.
• Veterans forever changed for better of for worse.
• Fatherless children.
• Widows.
• Civilians caught in the crossfire.

• While still a one-party state, over the last 25 years, Vietnam has opened up their markets to foreign investment, and the National Assembly, which is the highest representative body of the people, “has become more vocal and assertive” in carrying out its legislative duties.  Check out the U.S. Department of State’s background notes on Vietnam.
• In Iraq, things are still chaotic, but another round of competitive and open elections ocurred in March with higher than expected voter turnout despite violence and Sunni boycotts.  Checkout the New York Time’s analysis of Iraq.
• The renewed troop concentration in Afghanistan with refined tactics is definitely paying off in what used to be some of the worst provinces in the country.  Check out this ABC News story on how Marines are building trust and getting help from locals to clean up ground zero – as far as opium and the Taliban are concerned.

It’s also important to remember that freedom does not necessarily spell out an easier life, but it does provide hope – hope to build a better life, actually have some say in your destiny, and to dream and even pursue those dreams.

It’s easy to take these freedoms for granted – even a trivial one like blogging!  But think about it – in N. Korea, Sudan, and Burma, you’re either not blogging due to lack of Internet access and inspiration, and if you are – you better be extremely careful what you write!  Of course restricted “blogging rights” is somewhere around second-to-last on the list of these oppressed people’s problems.

Here are some Slideshares of images I took today of the Korean War Memorial and ceremonies at Penn’s Landing, and look at how close freedom came to being completely squeezed out of the Korean Peninsula.  Click the view on slide share icon on the bottom-right, and then the Full icon at the bottom-right of the SlideShare for fullscreen.

 

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

Internet Marketing Lessons 7 and 8 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

Here are two more Internet marketing gems from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, that he published in 1776 to inspire the colonial masses to get behind the case for American independence.  Check out why it makes perfect sense to look to Common Sense  for Internet marketing lessons.  Also, here are the first 6 lessons we’ve covered thus far:

1. Figure out the specific content that you can contribute to your niche.
2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.
3. Have one main point.
4. Make your content rich with target keywords and phrases.
5. Break up your content into digestible chuncks to aid understanding.
6. Supporting your positions in a strong, entertaining, and witty manner is a plus!

Lets get to the next two lessons!

7. Let Your Passion Bleed Through Your Language

Think about textbooks – those hard and heavy books that we all had to cover by the next day or face threatening consequences.  Our textbooks contained important information we needed to know to succeed in the future or at least get to the next grade.  But as relevant as the material was to our immediate success, it sure as hell was painful to get through, causing many of us to find alternative ways to pretend we actually cracked ‘em open.

What were these old school textbooks lacking?  Mostly, passion and personality.  Imagine if instead of dryly telling us the facts about Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and the American Revolution, our history teachers jumped up on their desks and passionately read Thomas Paine on why America’s only king is God and Law:

“But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth  not make havoc of mankind the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is” (43).

I think this method would have seared the significance of Paine and his pamphlet into our memories and we may have even felt compelled to read the pamphlet for ourselves.

Here are some ways to get passionate about whatever you’re writing:

• One way to get passionate about a topic, any topic, is to do a lot of research on it, which gets us vested in it.  We naturally get excited about things we know a lot about.  I just wrote a blog entry for the staffing industry on tax credits for employers.  I don’t naturally get excited about tax credits, but my passion buckets were filled to the brim after researching the subject and knowing that I had some helpful information to offer staffing executives and professionals.
• Secondly, if you’re not directly passionate about the topic you’re writing on, relate things you are passionate about to the main matter at hand.  For instance, take this series of blog posts – I’m more of a history buff than an Internet marketing guru; so I’ve found Internet marketing lessons amidst the figures, documents, and events of history.

8. Don’t Just Point Out Problems, Offer Solutions!

It’s easy to criticize and be negative, but over the longterm negativity doesn’t sell because it doesn’t deliver solutions.  Most quality and valuable Internet marketing content (really any content throughout history) not only points out a problem, but offers creative and practical solutions.  As Jim Kukral, a small business web consultant, likes to say – offer people helpful information that solves their problems!

Thomas Paine got this.  While Common Sense contains, much vitriolic language towards the British crown, he also served up some enlightened ideas about what an independent government in America could look like.

“Let the assemblies be annual, with a President only. The representation more equal. Their business wholly domestic, and subject to the authority of a Continental Congress. Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten, convenient districts, each district to send a proper number of delegates to Congress, so that each colony send at least thirty. The whole number in Congress will be least 390. Each Congress to sit and to choose a president by the following method. When the delegates are met, let a colony be taken from the whole thirteen colonies by lot, after which, let the whole Congress choose (by ballot) a president from out of the delegates of THAT province. In the next Congress, let a colony be taken by lot from twelve only, omitting that colony from which the president was taken in the former Congress, and so proceeding on till the whole thirteen shall have had their proper rotation.  And in order that nothing may pass into a law but what is satisfactorily just, not less than three fifths of the Congress to be called a majority. He that will promote discord, under a government so equally formed as this, would have joined Lucifer in his revolt” (40).

 While Paine’s solution for government in his pamphlet was not very detailed or even original for that matter; he did an excellent job of whittling down some enlightened ideas into one paragraph and sharing them with the public.

Here are some ways you can offer up content that solves peoples problems:

• Talk and listen to your audience for the real problems behind what they’re saying to you.
• What quick articles, blogs, or videos could you produce that can at least help people get the ball rolling in solving some of their problems.
• Think about problems you’ve overcome and ways you could tell your success story others.

Here are ways I’ve been doing this in the industry I offer my services to:

• Problem: Employers don’t know how to make sense of all the legislation that’s flying out of DC.  Solution: Here’s a blog post that helps them makes sense of two tax credits they could take advantage of.
• Problem: With so much information, new websites, and activity regarding social media, executives and business professionals don’t know where to begin or what to do.  Solution: Started posting videos on very simple social media activities staffing professionals can build into their work lives that help build profitable relationships with prospects and candidates. 
• Problem: Staffing companies are facing higher unemployment costs across the country.  Solution: Posted a blog entry on one easy way staffing firms can get their recruiters place people on jobs who will help them reduce their unemployment costs.

Come back next week for our final two Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine. 

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

The quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook; I encourage you to read it yourself!

Internet Marketing Lessons 5 and 6 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

Break Up Your Content and Don’t Be an Idiot!

Internet marketing lessons from who?  Why not Al Gore?  Perhaps these questions crossed your mind, or perhaps your mind works like mine, so that mining Internet marketing lessons from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense makes common sense to you!  In short, Thomas Paine was an incredibly effective content marketer arguing for the necessity to declare independence from the British crown. 

For more on Thomas Paine and why I mined Internet marketing lessons from his life and writings, checkout the first entry of this series on Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business. 

So far we’ve covered the following 4 of 10 Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business: 

1. Figure out the specific content that you can passionately contribute to your niche.
2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.
3. Have one main point.
4. Make your content rich with target keywords and phrases.

Here are Internet Marketing Lessons 5 and 6: 

5. Break Up Your Content into Digestible Chunks to Aid Understanding

In writing Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s main goals was to explain in plain language to the masses why independence from Britain made sense.  To do this, Paine condensed these thoughts into a 47 page pamphlet, drew upon anti-monarchial thoughts from a book most commoners were familiar with – the Bible, and divided up his pamphlet into four sections: 

1. OF THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL, WITH CONCISE REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.
2. OF MONARCHY AND HEREDITARY SUCCESSION
3. THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AMERICAN AFFAIRS
4.  OF THE PRESENT ABILITY OF AMERICA, WITH SOME MISCELLANEOUS REFLEXIONS (11).

Just like a big hunk of meat, carving up your content into digestible chunks aids helps your audience understand – in other words, it’s good communication!  Imagine if instead of breaking this series of Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business into ten lessons, I simply had one really long post with no paragraph breaks.  You’d probably think “forget this” and move onto another site rendering my efforts a waste. 

Always look for ways to break up your content, and use numbered and bulleted lists whenever possible to increase readability and the chance your content will be consumed. 

6. Supporting your positions in a strong, entertaining, and witty manner is a plus!

Bold statements, a sprinkle of controversy, and a whitty unexpected left turn your sentences and paragraphs can go along way and make your readers want to keep coming back for more.  Thomas Paine understood this when he served up this scathing recap of England’s monarchial history: 

“England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no like divinity in it” (24). 

Season your content with sarcasm, strong opinions, and compelling language that generates emotion while driving home your main point.  The readers who agree with you will get fired up and keep coming back for more.  Those who you piss off may still keep coming back because some of us just like to get angry.  If you ignore this and continue to serve up impotent content, well then you’re an idiot! 

Idiot or not, come back next week for two more Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine.  And until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

The quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook; I encourage you to read it yourself!

Everett to Speak to Small Business Owners & Professionals in NYC on May 18th

Everett shares one of the ten social media habits he’s going to talk about in his presentation on “Building Profitable Web 2.0 Activities into Your Daily Work Lives” at the New York Staffing Association’s Super Seminar day on May 18th at The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY.

In this video Everett talks about how to use HelpAReport.com‘s (HARO) daily emails to either find free PR for your own staffing firm and personal brand, or to share these requests for expertise with your candidates, clients, and prospects.

As you can see, sharing HARO expertise requests with clients, candidates, and prospects is a great way to stay in touch with important relationships in your network and stay top of mind.  Check out Everett’s recent post There’s Such a Thing as Free PR! for more info on how to fully leverage HARO as a social media tool in the staffing industry.

Get more information and register to join Everett and many other expert speakers and professionals in the staffing industry at NYSA’s Super Seminar Day on May 18, 2010 by visiting http://www.nystaffing.org/Super_Seminar_Day.html. Feel free to email Everett at ev@astusa.com or Jennifer Kelley at jennifer@nystaffing.org if you have any further questions.

Hope to see you there!

• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss

There’s Such a Thing As Free PR!

Like my previous posts, I’m not going to tell you anything new!  Instead, I’m just going to rip off of Christopher S. Penn a social media tactic that has just paid off for me (I don’t think he’ll mind):

Signing up for, sharing, and responding to HelpAReporterOut.com (HARO) emails. 

Peter Shankman has re-defined PR by providing a free way for reporters to connect with potential sources of information.  Here’s how it works:

• Go to  HelpAReporterOut.com and signup to receive free emails that list out requests for sources/information from reporters.
• 3 times-a-day you will receive a HARO email listing about 50 specific requests from reporters under the following topics in addition to more general/miscellaneous requests:
  • Biotech and Healthcare
  • Business and Finance
  • Energy and Green Tech
  • Entertainment and Media
  • High Tech
  • Lifestyle and Fitness
  • Public policy and Government
  • Travel
• Scroll down the lists of requests and if you find something that fits your area of expertise, there are instructions on how to respond.
• If the reporter likes what you have to say, it’s free PR!

Recently I responded to a request from Linsey Knerl, Senior Writer for Wisebread.com, for marketing lessons learned from a mentor.  So I responded, and got prominently featured in her article 20 Important Lessons I Learned from My Marketing Mentor – check it out!  What a great way to promote my personal brand and my company, along with Jim Kukral, the marketing mentor I mentioned.

However, many times you’ll find that the HARO requests for expertise don’t apply to you.  This is where Chris Penn in one of his University of San Francisco’s online Internet Marketing lectures, suggests something so simple it’s brilliant:

If you see a request that matches the expertise of someone in your network, email it off to them. 

I’ve started doing this with some of my clients and business partners.  It gives me a reason to stay in touch with them besides, “Uhhh… just wanted to see how you were doing,” and can help them promote their business if they act on it.

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

And don’t worry, the 10 Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine  series will resume next week.

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

Internet Marketing Lessons 3 and 4 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

If you want a brief intro to Thomas Paine and why I mined Internet marketing lessons from his life and writings…

Read last week’s entry on Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business. I also discussed the first 2 of 10 Internet marketing lessons that Paine left us with:

1. Figure out the specific content that you can passionately contribute to your market/audience.
2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.

Here are Internet Marketing Lessons 3 and 4 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business.

3. Have One Main Point 

As you bring your content, personal brand, and “angle” to the marketplace, keep each “piece” of content simple by focusing on one main point that you reinforce through the beginning, middle, and end.

With Common Sense, Thomas Paine had one main point:  It’s common sense for America to seek independence.

Paine, in his introduction, let his readers know that his pamphlet lays out the irrefutable “Doctrine of Independence.”  As he makes his case, Paine writes that putting off separation from Britain will only delay the inevitable because “nothing but independence, i.e. a continental form of government, can keep the peace of the continent and preserve it inviolate from civil wars” (38).  And in the second to last paragraph of Common Sense, he concludes, “Independance is the only BOND that can tye and keep us together” (62).

4. Make Your Content Rich with Target Keywords and Phrases
Going out on a limb here, but I don’t think optimizing Common Sense for the search engines was on the forefront of Thomas Paine’s mind.  Nevertheless, he did a solid job of working into his content keywords and phrases that the colonists would have been Googling if the PC and Internet weren’t still 200+ years off.

Doing a keyword density analysis on Common Sense shows that Paine penned the words and phrases:

• “King” 136 times.
• “Govern” or “government” over 170 times.
• “Consititution” 26 times.
• “Independence” 22 times.
• “Form of government” 12 times.
• “Hereditary succession” (He wasn’t a big fan!) 9 times.
• “Common sense” 6 times.
• “Monarchial government” (Also, not such a fan) 4 times.

And he worked the words “independence” and “independent” into many longtail keyword phrases, which are meaningful phrases of three or more words likely to be searched on.

Don’t rip off of Paine’s keyword list, build your own!

• Use Google’s keyword tool, to build a list of shorttail (one to two word phrases) and longtail (three or more word phrases) that people are likely to search on in your target market, industry, or niche.
• Develop a list of 25 to 100 keywords that it are important for you to rank high on in the search engines.
• Either plan out your content around specific keywords and phrases, or look for opportunities to work keywords and phrases from your list into the title and body of your content.

Great job, you’ve made it through 40% of the lessons!  As you’re doing your duediligence, comment on this blog to share the type of personal brand you’re developing or how you’re carving out a niche for yourself.

Come back next week for two more Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine.

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

Imagine releasing an ebook or launching a blog that over 120,000 people download or subscribe to in 90 days. 

Imagine that those 120,000 downloads or subscribtion represented a whole 6% of your target audience, market, or industry. Then imagine your readership increasing to 500,000 or 25% of your target audience. 

 

That’s the type of success Thomas Paine achieved with Common Sense, his pro-American independence pamphlet published in 1776.  While Paine did not know he was also authoring what would become a highly downloaded ebook and rich blog-material, he unwittingly left us with 10 Internet Marketing Lessons in content development that I’ll be sharing with you over the next 5 weeks. 

So lets get to it with the first two Internet Marketing Lessons the Mr. Paine left us with!  One quick note, the quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook. 

1. Figure out what specific angle, thought, topic or niche you can passionately contribute to in your market, industry, audience, or community.

Paine saw that he had an opportunity, not to express new ideas, but to take to the colonial masses the anti-monarchy and pro-independent currents running through the heads of enlightened Americans.  He combined straightforward language with strong words and witt to take his message to the common people in a digestable 47-page pamphlet, starting things off with:  

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested” (7 ). 

He then drew upon the Bible, which his audience would be most familiar with; the scripture’s account of early man and Israel’s historic selection of a king to plainly prove that monarchy and hereditary succession is one most depraved forms of government: 

”In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throw mankind into confusion” (19). 

And he continued: 

“Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry” (21). 

These weren’t new ideas, but seasoned philosophies applied to the unique circumstances of the 1770s in plain language for the colonists to easily digest. 

2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.

Paine initially wrote Common Sense anonymously, signing it “Written by an Englishman,” which was a common practice at the time, but today not the best way to make a name for yourself as an industry expert, small business extraordinaire, or prolific entrepreneur.  

However, it didn’t take long for the pamphlet to be attributed to Paine, who defined himself at the end of the pamphlet as “a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a supporter of the rights of mankind and of the free and independant states of America.” 

Paine built on his success by publishing a series of pamphlets called The Crisis, which George Washington read to his troops for inspiration.  Paine wrote The Crisis to encourage the American resistance against the British with the American Revolutionary War underway. 

Later in 1791, Paine wrote the Rights of Man in support of the French Revolution, which helped him win honorary French citizenship.  Through his consistent content and self-definition, Paine established a personal brand of “freedom,” “independence,” “personal rights,” and “good citizenship” recounted in the history books and accross new media. 

Some Paine-Inspired Internet Marketing Action Questions

Set aside some time to answer one or more of the following questions to help you define the niche content you can passionately publish to transform your market and small business: 

• What’s your target audience look like?  Are there different profiles or personas that make up your target audience?
• What are the main problems that your audience, industry, market experience?
• If you were going to write anywhere from 12 to 26 newsletter articles, blogs, or traditional articles for your market, what would the titles be?
• How would you describe your personal brand or what you bring to your audience, industry, market in one sentence?

Comment on this blog to share some of your answers to these questions.  I’d love to hear your responses.  And come back next week for two more Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine, including some tips on keywords and phrases. 

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way! 

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on: 

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