• Home
• About the Author
• Everett Feeds
• Tech and Social Media Videos
• RSS

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. 

Thomas Paine

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: 

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

Comments