Book Bait

Book Bait

Definition: This technique is a variation of ego bait. The idea is that you get a number of bloggers to contribute to a piece of content. For example, you may contact lots of successful business owners and ask them to each contribute some content on what they’ve learned over the years. You then collect all the answers into a single piece of content. However, rather than just publishing these ideas into a blog post, you collect them all into a book instead – then you print it and send each of the contributors a copy.

This is very different to how many companies try to engage with other people online and can leave a lasting impression. You can then follow up via email and ask them to share links to online versions of the book.

Types of links you’ll get: This technique could get you a reasonable volume of links if you contact and get good responses from enough people. You do need to make sure you engage with people who are likely to share links to the book afterwards and to make printing a book worthwhile, you should contact lots of people.

The process:

★ Identify the theme of your content that will be published, try to focus on providing really

useful content to your audience

★ Find lots of bloggers / experts on this topic area and collect their contact details

★ Craft your outreach message, customize it and send out to your contact list

★ Collect all responses into a single document and format it with images of the

contributors

★ Follow up with any contacts who haven’t replied

★ Use a service such as Lulu to get the books printed and mail them to the contributors

★ Create an online version of the book and offer it for sale very cheaply or with proceeds

going to a charity

★ Follow up with the contributors after a few days to ask them to share the online verison