Becoming a Sponsor
Mighty Guides, Inc. is the world’s first social eBook publisher. Our sponsored eBook campaigns combine thought leadership, influencer marketing, and lead generation. By building a consistent, multi-step social media campaign around the book you sponsor, we help you reach your target market, establish your company as a thought leader, and generate high-quality leads.
How our sponsors feel about us:
- Sponsors who have told us that they are “highly satisfied” with their eBook and would recommend us. 90%
- Sponsors that plan to sponsor future eBooks 80%
- Sponsors who have already sponsored more than one eBook 50%
Overview
Mighty Guides’ social eBooks start with a single, interesting question designed to pique the imagination of your target audience, generate a valuable collection of articles and match the goals of your messaging strategy. Under your guidance, we select and engage important influencers, practitioners, partners and customers who already reach your target market. Our professional journalists interview the contributors and draft essays that you and contributors can approve. The approved essays are then assembled, organized, edited, and designed in a handsome landscape book design that we’ve perfected over time. As the sole sponsor, you have the exclusive right to publish the book on your site for three months. Rather than waiting until the entire book is complete to publish it, we work with you to roll out and promote portions of the book as they’re completed. This gives you the opportunity to enjoy immediate value and help us build excitement for the main book’s release. We do all the heavy lifting, and we aggressively promote the eBooks through organic social media over a period of months.
Key Benefits of Sponsorship
Branding and Promotional Opportunities The cover and colors used in the book can match your brand, and we’ll include your logo on the front cover as the sponsor. You will receive four full-page ads, and your logo and call-to-action will appear at the bottom of every spotlight article page. In addition, you can have a Sr. Executive write the foreword to the book that will appear in the front of the publication.
Delivers Your Message in a Credible Way We get true experts to participate in your book. We focus on the key influencers who are already talking to your target audience as well as inviting well-placed practitioners who understand your target audience because they’re an essential part of it.
Generates High Quality Leads The perceived value of these books is extremely high because they are substantial, well-designed books, published by a third party. In short, filling out a form is a small price to pay. In addition, Mighty Guides, as a third party publisher of the book, will be able to promote the eBook to any group, email list, blog, facebook group, or twitter feed without it appearing that you are spamming the industry with promotional content.
Good for SEO Links from influencers, customer and partner sites boost your search rank and web rank.
Establishes Authoritative Thought Leadership Because the book is written by the most important people in your industry, it is automatically authoritative and credible. You become a thought leader by facilitating the discussion and participating in it. In short, it’s more likely to be read, and it will receive far more likes, tweets, and embeds than if you just published a piece on your own.
Builds Relationships – with customers, partners, influencers, and analysts You will create meaningful and important ties with influencers that you can leverage for future projects. In addition, you can have key employees, customers and partners contribute essays.
Sponsors receive:
- Logo on the cover, on every footer page, and on all the supporting assets.
- Up to four full-page ads in the main book.
- The exclusive opportunity to gate the main book on your site.
- The opportunity to help us focus the audience and messaging of the book to match your messaging objectives.
- In addition to the main book, you receive additional content assets that we use to promote the book that is gated on your site. These assets, depending on the size of the project, can include using the articles as guest blog posts, a quote book, and three to five mini books (small books with three to five articles on a particular theme or vertical used to drive people back to your site.)
- We select contributors and influencers to help build the marketing right into the book. As the sponsor, you’ll let us know what kinds of people and companies we should target, who we should avoid, and the types of influencers we should go after. We build the lists, and you can approve them.
- You get final approval over everything that goes in the book.
- We promote the book through organic social media to relevant influencers on twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other relevant sites.
- We encourage contributors to build direct relationships with you.
- You have the opportunity to include contributions from key executives, customers, partners, and potential customers.
How do Mighty Guides promote the eBook and all of its pieces?
Our goal is to generate as much exposure and leads for you as possible. To create multiple promotional opportunities, we promote the content organically by asking the contributors to post, tweet, and blog about the pieces as they’re created. In addition, we post our own notices to relevant social media groups, blogs, and influencers. We do this repeatedly for each piece of content that’s created for the duration of the campaign.
What does it cost?
Exclusive sponsorship packages for a campaign range between $10,000 and $25,000 depending on the size and scope of the project.
Ready to become a sponsor?
Please call: David Rogelberg, CEO and Publisher, Mighty Guides, Inc. 516 840 0244
Or write: david@mightyguides.com
How do I get started?
Once we have a draft of the question, the next step is to have a kick-off meeting with the Mighty Guides team who will be working on your book. This includes a set of professional writers, a project manager, and a marketing manager.
What is the goal of the kick-off meeting?
We use this meeting to understand your ‘world view’ in regards to your industry / vertical, marketing and products. The better understanding we have of your view of the book topic, the audience you would like to reach, types of influencers you would like to include, and your overall goals for the book, the better we can deliver you a finished book that is exactly what you require. It is also helpful to discuss what your ideal answer to the question would be, and what answers you are not interested in. There are often so many directions people can go when discussing a topic, so we like to understand the direction you are looking for and what your parameters are. We usually agree on a final version of the question after the meeting, once everyone has had a chance to discuss.
How do I pick the right question to use? Do you have a format you’ve had success with?
What advice would you offer [target job title] who needs to [perform topic-related action / goal]?
Some examples:
What advice would you offer a newly promoted director of marketing who needs to transform an old school marketing team into a highly productive and value-producing team?
On which metrics do you advise senior marketers focus to most effectively measure the impact of marketing on business goals, and why are these metrics the most important?
What advice would you offer a fellow marketing executive to help ease the transition to Individualized Marketing?
What advice would you give someone in your industry to get business value from text analytics?
Do you have any other advice regarding the question?
How do you select influencers to reach out to?
How do you get influencers to become contributors?
Do you pay the contributors?
Can I provide a list of potential contributors to reach out to?
Sample text to explain the opportunity internally:
Hi ________,
{Company} is sponsoring an eBook, {Book title} that will be published by Mighty Guides. The book will feature 10 VPs, CISOs, CIOs and Directors, along with 10 influencers.
As the sponsor, {Company} has the opportunity to suggest people for inclusion in the book, which is a major opportunity for us. We’d like you to suggest key customers in your region, people who you’d like to become customers, and even friendly regional influencers that you’d like to see in the book.
Ultimately, Mighty Guides (as the publisher) will decide who will be contacted and chosen for the eBook, but we can make the most of this opportunity by suggesting people who are important to {Company}.
For chosen participants, Mighty Guides will set up a 30 minute phone interview and will write a draft of the article for the contributor to review and approve. {Company} and Mighty Guides will both promote the book, as well as promote the contributors’ articles aggressively, so it’s a great opportunity for you to do something nice for your customers and help them establish themselves as industry experts/thought leaders.
Please feel free to reach out to as many executives/senior IT security leaders as you’d like, but also please note that the people featured in this book should be at the VP level and above.
After we have reviewed and vetted the suggested names, we’ll let you know who to contact, as well as provide a sample email you can use.
Sample text to reach out to executives:
Hi_________,
{Company} is sponsoring an upcoming eBook, {Book title} to be published by Mighty Guides.
I would like to submit your name as a potential candidate to be featured in the book. Ultimately, Mighty Guides, as an independent publisher, will choose who will be included, but I would like your permission to forward your information to the Mighty Guides team for consideration.
If selected, I hope you’ll agree to participate, because it’s a really valuable, vendor-neutral thought leadership piece that will be heavily promoted by both Mighty Guides and {Company}.
If selected, you will be asked for either an insightful quote or for 30-minutes of your time for an interview. If you are interviewed, Mighty Guides will write an article based on your interview (note that you don’t have to talk about vendors or specific solutions in your interview), and you will then have an opportunity to review and approve the final article. Also, regardless of whether you provide a quote or participate in an interview that leads to an article, you will be included in a list of impressive contributors and promoted as a thought leader.
I think you would be a great contributor to this thought leadership book. Please let me know if I have your permission to forward your information to the Mighty Guides team.
Who owns the content?
How do you create the manuscript?
Can I edit the essays to say whatever I want?
Who produces the eBook?
We do it all – the production, editorial, design, layout and all the project management. Each eBook is assigned a project manager who will provide regular updates and guide you through the process. We also always appreciate your input and ideas to make the book better. We also have the flexibility to coordinate colors and design to match closely to your own branding guidelines.
What does a sponsor have to provide?
- A high-res version of your logo
- Your brand guidelines
- A Foreword from a key executive, along with that executive’s headshot (the image file should be at least 50kb in size). The Foreword should be under 200 words.
- Up to four ads for the book along with any tracking URLs that you’d like us to link the ads to.
- Copy for the “About [Your Company]” sidebar that appears on the Foreword page. This is usually general info about the company, and should be under 100 words.
- Links to your company Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or G+ profile pages, If you choose to provide. These will be listed on the Foreword page.
- Approval of the question, influencer list, the essays and their organization, approval of the design and layout.
- Your input on the book title, sub-title and the the type of imagery you prefer for the cover.
What format should the ads be in and where are they typically placed in the book?
If I want to include essays from people from my company in the book, how is that handled?
How long does it take to produce a book?
What happens once the book is published?
We will work with you to create a marketing and promotional plan around the book and any other collateral that we create (mini books, quote book).
We have several different eBook publishing options. Sometimes sponsors choose a series of books with 10 articles each, or books with half articles and half Influencer Quotes. Sometimes they choose a larger book with smaller collateral pieces created from it. This is an example of a marketing release plan for a package that includes a large main book (20-30 essays) plus a quote book and mini books:
Week 1 – Main eBook is published on your site. We send an email to all the contributors in the book with a link to your landing page to promote to their network, and a PDF for their own personal copy. We ask them not to distribute the PDF, this is just for their own use.
We also send an email campaign announcing the book launch to the people who we reached out to originally, but who did not end up contributing to the book. These people are well targeted, and although they did not participate, they will likely be interested in reading and promoting the book.
Week 2 – Launch Mini Book 1 on Slideshare and promote
Week 3 – Launch Mini Book 2 on Slideshare and promote
Week 4 – Launch Mini Book 3 on Slideshare and promote
Week 5 – Launch Mini Book 4 on Slideshare and promote
Week 6 – Launch Quote book on Slideshare and promote
Throughout each week we heavily promote each book on Twitter, LinkedIn, and our Mighty Guides Blog. We ask all contributors to include the link to the main landing page in all of their tweets, posts, or emails. We do what we can to facilitate the contributors own marketing efforts at this time. We Tweet and post updates on LinkedIn that they can easily retweet or share to their own network.
Once the three months are up, we launch the main eBook on Slideshare. We send out another email campaign to let contributors and targeted people know that the book is now live on Slideshare. You can still choose to leave the book up gated on your site at the same time, and the links from the mini books and quote book will still be active and collect leads. If your package is a series of smaller eBooks, the same approach is used – the books are gated for 3 months from release, and then afterwards they go up on Slideshare and you can choose to keep the books gated on your site or to release publicly.
What Slideshare account is the book posted to?
What does a typical landing page look like?
How can I help promote the book?
In short, you should treat this eBook like any other important thought leadership piece that you’d use to generate leads and facilitate sales.
What content pieces do I receive as a sponsor?
Guest Blog Posts
As we line up interviews and write our spotlight articles, you can post portions of the articles as guest blog posts on your site. You might consider adding a call to action that directs people to the main landing page for the book that encourages people to sign up to receive the main book when it releases.
Twitter Images
For each article, we create a graphic that you can include in your guest blog post page. The image will have a key quote, a summary, and the author’s bio information. We will tweet your guest blog post page and image to all of the contributors’ twitter accounts. The image will drive people back to your guest blog post.
Three to Five Mini Books (large books)
Mini books are created using three to five spotlight articles that have a common theme. A common theme can be a particular vertical that you’re trying to reach (eg. contributors from Financial Services) or a mini book can be created around a similar content theme (e.g. Getting Started with ________.) By carefully selecting and influencers ahead of time, we can build out these mini books to help you really increase the utility of your ebook campaign.
Mini Book Announcement Blog Posts
For each mini book, we’ll create a blog post that provides an overview of the mini book. In addition, we’ll alert the contributors so that they can link to your post.
Quote Book
The quote book contains twenty to twenty-five pages made up of the twitter images described above and is very similar in format to the main book. However, rather than including entire essays, we include one or two key quotes along with a summary from each essay along with the expert’s photo, bio, and links to their sites on one full page. The quote book is also set up so that a page will have two buttons that will provide an automatic way for readers to post just a quote, bio and photo (a single page in the book) to their twitter or LinkedIN accounts. The quote book will contain your ads, and you can add links to other resources on your site — including the landing page for the main book. This piece resides on your Slideshare account.
Main Book
The centerpiece of the campaign is a 60 to 80 page professionally produced piece. It will contain twenty-five spotlight essays that are 500 to 800 words written with the help of influencers and key practitioners in your industry. You will have the exclusive right to publish and gate this piece on your site for three months. Even if you choose to continue gating the book on your site beyond the three-month exclusive period, we ask that you also post it to your SlideShare account and make it available without registration.
When can I start using the content that is created?
What can a sponsor do to promote the book and all of the pieces?
Kickoff
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Testimonials