Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition

About the Author

Mike Stelzner is a family man who tries to work the principles of his Christian faith into his business practices.

In 2002, the technology bubble burst, hurting his design business. Needing to feed his family, Mike remade himself as a white paper expert. He tinkered with new marketing ideas while writing for big brands, such as Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, Dow Jones, and Microsoft.

In 2006, he released his first book, Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged. MarketingSherpa later declared him the “grandfather of white papers.” He went on to develop an entire industry focused on white paper creation and marketing, and his name became widely associated with the field.

In 2009, he began to wonder whether his marketing methods were transferable to new markets. With very little social media knowledge, he launched SocialMediaExaminer.com, in October of 2009—an online magazine focused on social media.

Within months of the launch, Technorati ranked the site the number-one small business blog in the world. Only 16 months later Mike's site had become one of the top 1,200 in the United States, according to Alexa, boasting 59,000 subscribers and more than 500,000 monthly page views. Since then, SocialMediaExaminer.com has consistently been ranked one of the top two social media blogs in the world.

Within a span of only 8 years, Mike became a dominant player in two very different industries—by using the very techniques he outlines in this book.