Who says there is no free lunch?  In the world of content AND promotion, *free* is a pretty darn good tool to gain attention and devotion.

A couple of weeks ago a local radio station gave out *free* trees on Arbor Day.  The line to get a tree must have been a block long, snaking around a corner by a Starbucks and trailing out of sight of the truck dispensing the trees.  Men, women and children standing in line for an hour for something that can be purchased at any hardware store in the country for about $7.

Speaking of Starbucks, I’m a sometimes reluctant customer; I wish they didn’t get so much of my money.  Though, I do have to note that I’m taking full advantage of their *free* coffee on Wednesdays.  They are giving away tall cups of their new “Pike’s Place” roast.  I feel like I’m taking back a little bit of my wallet each week.  Starbucks bean counters are likely marking me as a “Pike’s Place” customer for the next four years ….

I bring these examples up because there is a predisposition to value things commensurate with price.  Sometimes free isn’t so good, but in the world of brand building, blogging and content, free is great and expected.  It’s our lingua franca.
Free in other arenas is good, as well.  Many magazines are *free.* They hope to keep a high subscriber base so they can sell advertising and you, the consumer, are the benefactor.

One recommendation I have for just such a free magazine is BtoB magazine, a trade magazine for marketing strategists. www.btobonline.com

You can subscribe for, again, *free* at the following link:

http://freemags.magazines.com/?afd_number=7218

While flipping through my *free* magazine, I noted a couple of articles that were really good.  One was by Phil Johnson, President of an advertising agency in Massachusetts.  The sub-title of his column was, “When looking for ways to freshen up your brand, become a provider of relevant content.”

Hmmm … starting to see a theme here.  He might as well have said, “When branding your company, consider *free* content by blogging.
A couple of the nuggets he mentioned include:
  • Mine existing content
  • Transform old content into new
  • Treat your web site like a media property
  • Partner (license content, if appropriate)
The net take-away here is that *free* is a good thing and if you can provide something for free that has a tremendous value—something that engenders a user response, then, well, you’ve just cracked the code on this little blogging thing, creating a new customer who comes to you with a high value in mind, for something you have provided to him for free and that makes the subsequent business negotiation for something that’s not so free all the better.