It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting here trying to come up with, for lack of a better word, a bribe. I want to create a cool little freebie that I can offer as an incentive for people (umm — like you guys) to do all the wonderful things that help businesses in today’s world stay solvent:

Some of you guys have been loyal fans since I started this blog in 2007, and based on other uber-supportive comments you’ve made, I imagine you might say, “Oh, Beth — don’t be silly — just stay sincere and honest and people will follow you.”

In all actuality, that’s the technique that has worked for me so far. But there are a lot of sincere and honest people out there,  creating fabulous products that people will love. The problem is no one knows about us yet, and we have to compete with all the other people with fabulous products for our potential audience’s attention. Thus we have to rely on your word of mouth and a little bit of luck to hope we catch on.

So, I’m coming up with cool freebies and incentives that will perhaps catch your collective eye. It’s a model I understand more than most, since many of the free tools that I discover are actually freebie versions of software and apps that their makers hope you will buy. I’m thinking of the following:

  • If you become a fan on the new Facebook page, you get electronic version of a quick reference guide of about 75 of my favorite tools.
  • If you pre-order the book on Amazon.com, you get a printed booklet of my editor’s top 10 picks OR a 15-minute one-to-one consultation to help you discover new tools that you need.

Now for your opinion… what do you think about all the techniques companies do to bribe you to pay attention to them? What works? At which techniques do you roll your eyes?