Engagement from Scratch! How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same!

by Danny Iny

MORE TRAFFIC, COMMENTS, SALES: WHICH SECTION WILL YOU READ?

This is not just another online marketing book.

Engagement from Scratch! contains the most important lessons learned from over 135 years of persistent effort and experimentation by some of the world's most successful audience- and community-builders. In this book, they have come together to answer one crucial question:

How would you build an engaged audience, from scratch?

Each of the 30+ co-authors has built an engaged and loyal audience, and in this book they explain exactly how they would do it all again.

YOU WILL LEARN (in less than 20 pages each):

How the Guy Kawasaki's pillars of enchantment can make people love you
Brian Clark's fool-proof method for finding exactly what people will buy Why building an audience is like starting a riot in London (Blog Tyrant)
Derek Halpern's formula for creating wildly popular blogs How to apply the 5 levels of networking like a superstar (Marcus Sheridan) Why your natural fear of engagement does not matter (Corbett Barr) How Alex Osterwalder built an audience with innovative business models How to get the whole internet to help you (Evan Carmichael) And much, much more. So open the book, and get started!

Here's the full list of contributors to the book: Adam Toren (Blogtrepreneur/Small Business, BIG Vision), Alexander Osterwalder (Business Model Generation), Ana Hoffman (Traffic Generation Cafe), Anita Campbell (SmallBizTrends/BizSugar), The Blog Tyrant, Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Corbett Barr (Think Traffic/Expert Enough), Danny Brown (Bonsai Interactive), Derek Halpern (Social Triggers/DIYThemes), Dino Dogan (Triberr/DIYBlogger), Evan Carmichael, Gini Dietrich (Arment Dietrich/Spin Sucks), Guy Kawasaki (Alltop/Enchantment), Jeff Bullas, Jk Allen (Hustler's Notebook), Kristi Hines (Kikolani/Photostry.com), Linda Bustos (Get Elastic), Marcus Sheridan (River Pools and Spas/The Sales Lion), Mark Schaefer (Businesses {grow}/The Tao of Twitter), Marlee Ward, Mitch Joel (Twist Image/Six Pixels of Separation), Natalie Sisson (Suitcase Entrepreneur), Onibalusi Dele (YoungPrePro), Randy Komisar (Monk and the Riddle/Getting to Plan B), Sean Platt (Ghostwriter Dad), Steve Kamb (Nerd Fitness), Steve Scott (SteveScottSite), Stuart Mills (Unlock the Door), Tristan Higbee (Bloggers Bookshelf), Tyler Tervooren (Advanced Riskology), and with a foreword by c.C. Chapman (Digital Dads, and co-author with Ann Handley of MarketingProfs of Content Rules)

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Reference

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 9, 2011

About the author

Danny Iny (@DannyIny) is the founder of Mirasee, host of the Business Reimagined podcast, best-selling author of multiple books including Engagement from Scratch!, The Audience Revolution, and Teach and Grow Rich, and creator of the acclaimed Audience Business Masterclass and Course Builder’s Laboratory training programs, which have together graduated over 5,000 value-driven online entrepreneurs.

All of this grew out of humble beginnings; he started out just like most online entrepreneurs, with an idea and message to share, and no idea how to do it. He made several wrong turns – which he calls “plot twists” in the Audience Revolution – before really understanding the Audience First paradigm, and how to apply it to online business.

And when he did, it was like lighting a match to a fuse. Back in 2011, he started Firepole Marketing with less than nothing; he had no traffic, no subscribers, no relationships with any influencers in the industry, and over a quarter million dollars in personal debt, left over from his last failed startup.

In just a few short years, he’s transformed Firepole Marketing into Mirasee, grown the business to multiple-seven figures in revenue and a team of 30+ people spread all over the world (including his talented wife) on a mission to support very special global community of 50,000+ loyal and inspired entrepreneurs.

Danny has maintained a passionate commitment to learning and transparency, freely sharing lessons learned from great successes, major challenges, and even his personal life to support the online entrepreneurial community as a teacher, speaker, angel investor, and advisor to many of the top leaders in our industry, who have Danny on speed-dial when they need help with their business or strategy.

Reviews

[Magdalena]

There may have been a time for writers when notions of readership and engagement could be left to professional marketers, but that is certainly no longer the case. Anyone who wants to sell their writing needs to create a loyal and engaged audience. In a noisy world where everyone is trying to get noticed in one form or another, this is easier said than done, but Firepole Marketing’s Danny Iny has created a manual that contains excellent advice from some of the most well-known online marketers in the business. Danny contacted the many people who inspired him when he was starting his business, and asked each of them to write a piece on the topic: “If you had to start over and build an engaged audience from scratch, how would you do it?” The answers make up this book. Written in clear, simple language, Engagement from Scratch contains some twenty seven different perspectives on how to build a loyal and rapid following, primarily through blogging. Each writer's suggestions are a little different, drawing on their own experiences of what worked for them, and providing real examples, but at heart, they all focus on the notions of honesty, real interaction, and good, freely provided content as the hub of engagement.

There are essays about the nature of blogging and enagement, essays on building an audience, essays on the best types of content and frequency of posting, essays on using social media, essays on encouraging and growing your followers, and lots more. All of the essays, without exception, provide personal examples, taken from the considerable experiences of the contributors. For example, Danny Brown, of DannyBrown.me and BonsaiInteractive.com provides 3 key things he’s learned from doing things the wrong way:

A few of my early posts are the kind I would call “traffic jams” – lots of traffic, but not going anywhere. The list posts; the Top 10 Ways To… posts; the posts about Twitter, or Facebook, or blogging – basically, the posts that were easy to write but had little real substance.

Guy Kawasaki, former “Chief Evangelist” (what a title!) of Apple and author of Enchantments and many other books, talks about the three pillars of enchantment and how to apply them in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Anita Campbell, of Small Business Trends and BizSugar.com provides five practical steps that she’s learned for building an online community.

Some of the essays are inspirational: encouraging newbies to keep at it, and showing, through real-life examples, that building an extensive, engaged audience is possible for anyone in any field. Other essays offer more specific, practical steps to follow to identify an ideal audience, set up a platform, and begin the engagement process. There are different ideas to try, some basic and integral to any process and others quite innovative. Throughout the book, Iny offers his own commentary, the organisational framework for the essays, and a few essays of his own.

Overall, Engagement From Scratch is a powerful, thought-provoking book, easy to read and full of powerful and immediately applicable information. It's relevant to anyone who wants to use the Internet to market their work. Though the book isn’t specifically geared to writers, all bloggers are writers of one sort or another and most of the contributors have written books, so the ideas are very relevant to authors of any genre. Developing a strong, engaged audience of followers is absolutely critical in today’s online world and authors will definitely benefit from reading, and above all, using the ideas in Engagement from Scratch.


Article first published as Book Review: Engagement from Scratch! How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same! by Danny Iny on Blogcritics.

[Danielius Goriunovas · Rating 2 out of 5]

So... I really loved the name of this book. That's why I bought it. The first few articles from the internet/blogging guru's were really informative and great! ...The whole second half of the book not so much.

I guess I was wrong to expect something more from a book, writen by so many authors? Most of this not only I ~could~ read online, but have ~already~ read from these authors.

Oh, and .pdf-> .epub conversion wasn't that great and whole .pdf design was lacking. It was hard to read it on the computer and it was little bit annoying to read on the Nook.

But hey. If you are a blogging person... Give this book a look or two. Three looks may be too much.

[Jane Blanchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engagement from Scratch!: How Super-Community Builders Create a Loyal Audience and How You Can Do the Same! is a great reference for those wanting to learn how to develop and engage an audience. Topics discussed in sections include General Principles, Know and Love your Audience, Why and How to do Content, Why and How to do Social Media, Be Your Passionate Self, Stories and Lessons Learned, and Step by Step.

In this book, Danny Iny compiles stories from thirty leaders of community builders, each with compelling reasons for engagement and tips on how to do so. The advice for new entrepreneurs is priceless, all revolving about one central topic: engagement. Because of this single-minded theme, I got bored with the book and found myself skimming the selections for those pearls of wisdom, which turned out to be only a few repeated so often it became tedious.

I also found the book poorly constructed, almost as if it were put together in haste. A little more attention to spelling and book formatting would have made a big difference. In spite of this, I gave the book three stars because I believe the information in the book can benefit those such as myself who want to develop a following and engage the audience. Also, Danny Iny is giving this book away, making it available to readers of his blog. Why don’t you pick up a copy and see what you can learn?

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engagement from Scratch is a comprehensive look at multiple perspectives on what's needed to build an audience. I enjoyed the book and found myself highlighting certain sections to return to later. I would recommend this to any blogger, marketer, or businessperson looking to build a tribe from scratch.

[Bianca Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I made the mistake of reading the ebook copy. All through, I was getting more and more frustrated that I couldn't add post-it notes to remember the great tips with.

So buy it, add notes and tabs and implement the advice.

[C. Lee Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Germán · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not so great... same old "tips" all over again

[Tara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book offered little to nothing new and was extremely repetitive. If you read any marketing blogs, books or newsletters you have heard it all before.

[Bernadette Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good ideas for engaging an audience for your business.