Public domain refers to information free from copyright protection. The two most important sources of public domain content are:
1. Books with expired copyrights. Copyright protection for many books written early during the previous century has expired. In addition, millions of other books, published later, have lost their protection because their publishers did not renew their copyrights in time.
2. The second source is Government created materials. In addition, hundreds of thousands of government-published books, pamphlets, reports, and ‘how-to’s’ are available. Information published by the United States Government and other governments is typically not copyright protected.
Basing your marketing materials on public domain content boosts your profits by saving you time and energy. This time and energy can be invested in more profitable activities like networking, selling or direct customer service.
In many cases, proper use of public domain content can increase your billable hours five to ten per cent!
This is in addition to reducing the amount of time it takes to complete a marketing project. One client, for example, had been struggling for three years to write a website incentive showing attorneys how to prepare an effective marketing plan.
Within a week of learning how to search for, and use, public domain content, he had completed his special report and it was already attracting new business to his consulting firm!
Public domain content can be used ‘as is,’ or you can repurpose it into different forms. For example:
1. Newsletters. Adapt chapters of a book into issues of your newsletter that build on each other.
2. Teleconferences. Use a book as the basis of a series of teleconferences.
3. Website incentive. Create a special report or email registration incentive based on a government booklet.
4. Autoresponder series. You can offer a ‘mini course’ as a series of lessons delivered at weekly intervals.
5. Articles and speeches. Books can be repackages in shorter units, adapted to current conditions.
6. Checklists and worksheets are always welcome and can be easily assembled from copyright-free sources.
Often, the original, copyright-free work can be used ‘as is.’ The owner of a fly-fishing camp located a ‘fly fishing coloring book’, which he sends him clients to give to their children.
Putting public domain content to work basically involves four steps:
1. Goals. What do you want to accomplish? Simply keep in contact or motivate fence sitters to act right now? Your answer will influence the amount of information you need, as will your market’s information needs.
2. Locate. The next step is to locate appropriate public domain content. This involves research that can be done at your computer, at any hour of the day or night.
3. Verify. You’ll want to protect yourself by making sure that the materials you have selected are indeed copyright free.
4. Adapt. Unless you are going to reprint a book or government pamphlet, you will want to scan or transcribe it, and reformat it into the format that works best and suites your marketing needs.
No longer do you have to write every word of your marketing. Information in the public domain permits you to market more efficiently, so you have more time to provide your unique products and services.
Public domain material allows you to save time and money while creating an ongoing stream of credible customer communications.
About the Author:
Roger C. Parker is the $32,000,000 author with over 1.6 million copies in print. Do you make these marketing and design mistakes? Find out at www.gmarketing-design.com
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