Meet the new rules

I was interested this week to participate in a B-2-B webinar with David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of PR & Marketing. And, as usual, David said something interesting.

This time, it was the idea that an e-book is essentially a glorified white paper. 

Recently, I worked on a series of white papers for a client. After they were finished, the client gussied them up with some eye-catching designs, essentially turning them into high quality printed mini-books, rather than the usual bland black-and-white format that gives the white paper its name. The electronic version of this is, as David points out, basically an e-book.

E-books, in my experience, come in different flavors. 

There are the alternative to hardcover versions that will teach you anything from how to write a wedding toast to how to write a killer business plan. Inexplicably, these often contain less content, go through less vetting and yet cost more than a book from your local bookseller. (There are some excellent ones out there as well. And I recently edited one of those.)

Then there are the free, designed-to-be viral e-books that are basically informational tools used to raise visibility for one’s products or services. These are designed to establish expertise and credibility, to build a brand. These are the credentials that members of the media often find online when looking for information about a certain topic. (That's when they call you.)

These are the ones that look something like fancier (and sometimes more meaty) white papers. And they are here to stay.

You see, the new rule is not just that publishing and publicity are now potentially in our hands in a way they never have been before. The rule is also that information publishing and Internet marketing have lost their niche status. Marketing and visibility methods long seen as a wild new frontier are increasingly just the way we do business in the marketing and PR world. 

How are you using these tools-- and new rules-- to your advantage?