Reviews and Sources

[Blaine Moore]

Yesterday, I reviewed The New Rules of Lifting on my Run to Win website. I had received the book for that purpose from the publisher, who had asked that I send her a link when I had written it. I figured, well, what the hell, why not send a link to to the authors and tell them about it too? So I did.

What a great idea. If you write a review of something, anything, email a link to whoever wrote/created/composed/whatevered the item you are reviewing. It doesn't matter if your website is a blog or not, and it doesn't matter if you are reviewing a book, another website, an album, or anything else. Both of the authors got back to me fairly quickly and were appreciative of my writing the review, and one of them even provided me with the content of a short follow up article (the trainer, Alwyn Cosgrove). Your mileage may vary, but it never hurts to let the original source of what you are reviewing know about the review, so that they have a chance to respond to it.

In emailing with back and forth with Alwyn, it even reminded me something I forgot to include in my review, and gave me further things to respond from. I don't know whether the authors will bother to link to my review or not, or whether the publisher will, but chances are good that at least one will.

So, you get the following benifits:
+ Possible inbound links
+ Possible fresh material straight from the source that nobody else has
+ Good will and possible news later on when they have a new product
+ Cheer and networking

[Yaro]

Fantastic tip Blaine and one that very few people go to the trouble of doing. It's not hard to send an email letting someone know you discussed them but in most cases apathy wins out.

I'm noticing an epidemic of apathy lately. People just don't seem to be able to dig themselves out of a hole. It's easier to be lazy, apathetic and then complain about how unhappy you are. Worse still the runoff effect hits motivated people and they have to "carry the load" sometimes for the apathetic people.

[Aitch]

Nice one Blaine.

And of course, it's all about networking. As a consequence of your actions, you're now known by someone today that probably had never heard of you yesterday, and that can only be a good thing.

Building up contacts, acquaintances, new friendships and personal profile, has unknown benefits, and at some point in time, a few lines in an email, or a snippet of content on a website, could possibly open doors that we never knew were there.

Sometimes helping out folk in the 'virtual' world can be a thankless task. So long as we continue to take care of our side of the street and persist in our ‘genuine’ attempts to help others in order to help ourselves we should reap good things in the long term. Business has to flow.

Many of the things we do (or could do) to improve our online businesses are often simple in theory but not always easy to think up. It’s the little things that matter!

Aitch