Book Marketing Blogs

When it comes to having a lot of options for coffee you can’t really beat Starbucks. It seems that there’s virtually a store on every corner. Bad planning or an intentional marketing ploy? It’s been statistically proven that the more Starbucks stores there are in a one-mile radius the better each individual store will do. So what does this mean for your Internet marketing campaign? It means that the more ‘stores’ you own, the better your main store will do.

Here’s a real-time illustration: if you have a main website and five incoming links, you’ll get traffic to the main site from five places. Now this doesn’t mean you need five additional sites along with your main one, these five incoming links are from other websites that often won’t belong to you. Now if we’re talking numbers let me say this: five is paltry compared to where you need to be. When we work with clients we like to double, triple, or quadruple their incoming links.

What does this mean to sales? Well, let’s go back to our Starbucks example. Let’s say you’re scouring the ‘Net for a perfect cup of Joe. When someone Googles “perfect cup of Joe,” the mentions of your site come up in excess of 5,000 times. Your competitors come in somewhere at 1,000 or less. So it stands to reason that someone searching on this topic will go to your site before they hit your competitor, right?

Ok, so now that we have the incoming links thing down, how in the world do you go about getting all of these links? Well, sometimes the build is slow but that’s ok. What we’re looking for are high-quality, high-traffic incoming links to your site. Let’s break this down even further.

Going after incoming links can happen in a variety of ways. Not the least of which is a link you get from a site after your book is reviewed. That’s probably the most basic link you can get. Ideally you want links from sites that can drive readers (buyers) to your book. Links from other author sites might be a nice way to network, but they don’t often leverage anything in the way of ranking or sales potential.

Why? Well, readers shopping for similar titles often won’t migrate from one author site to another via a link, they’ll generally head over to Amazon and find a list of “similar titles” or the category: Readers who bought this also enjoyed this title. Which then refers you onto a list of their best-selling books in the same genre. Second, unless you’re getting a link from a celebrity author site, you’ll probably find that most author sites don’t have great ranking. Google looks at the ranking of the site that’s linked to you to determine how valuable this link is and in turn, how much it will matter to your overall site ranking.

The ideal incoming link is from a niche site, meaning that if you’re pushing a WWII novel or a book on dieting, the link is coming from an authority site, i.e. a site that specializes in that topic.

The next option for getting more real estate is to start your own social networking page. There are a variety of sites that can benefit you including: Linkedin, MySpace, Squidoo, and my personal favorite: Facebook. These sites can all offer you a way to connect not just with other people in these social networking circles but also gain a valuable incoming link to your site.

Article syndication is another fantastic way to get more links. Most of us know and understand the article syndication process. You write an article of 500-2,000 words and send it (called syndicating) to sites like: EzineArticles, ArticleCity and many others. Remember to include your byline in the article with a link back to your site.

Commenting on blog postings is another way to drive links back to your site. Head on over to Technorati and dig up at least twenty of the top blogs in your market. Then get in the habit of commenting on the various posts with a link back to your site. The more you comment, the more links you’ll get. The secondary benefit to this is virtual networking: getting to know bloggers in your market is never a bad thing.

Gaining valuable real estate and building your “stores” isn’t as difficult as you might think. It takes time, persistence, and some keen research skills to find the appropriate sites. In the end, the benefits far outweigh the amount of work you’ll do. Gaining exposure online will increase traffic, build platform, enhance exposure and grow your bottom line. So take a lesson from Starbucks and start building a store on every corner. You’ll be glad you did.

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These days, everyone talks about free content. “Give it away!” they say, but does this really work? Well, yes and no. As with anything, there has to be a strategy.

Last Saturday I was on my morning run through our neighborhood and I noticed a number of garage sale signs (that’s tag sale for those of you back east). One of the signs had a sign beneath it that read: We have free stuff! As I ran though the neighborhood I passed that house and noticed they put all their free stuff in the “Free zone” and already, even at that early hour, hoards of people were migrating there. I passed the other garage sales which were doing OK, but not great. Clearly the one with the free stuff pulled more people, but did it actually sell more paid merchandise? Yes. I checked in with the sale after my run to find most of the good stuff gone (note to self: shop first, exercise later). When I talked to the homeowner they said that the free stuff went fast, but as I noted each time I passed by, it wasn’t junk stuff, it was actually good enough to make the garage sale shopper feel like they got a real deal. If it’s junk and it’s free, it doesn’t really matter.

What’s the lesson here? Free stuff can help you sell more of the paid merchandise, but you have to be careful, because some people just want freebies and that’s fine. But they are not your customers. Here are some tips to help you maximize the use of free:

1. Why free? The first question you should ask yourself is why are you doing this?  If you aren’t sure, then free might not be right for you. Free content should be offered to help further your message, build a list, and get new people into your marketing funnel. If your model isn’t set up this way, maybe it should be. If you aren’t interested in this kind of a marketing model, then free probably isn’t your thing.

2. Define how free can help: Figure out why you want to give free stuff. As I mentioned above, getting clear about your model will help determine if a free product is even worth your time. If it is, then you need to figure out how it will help you. As an example, we have a lot of free stuff on the Author Marketing Experts, Inc. site (www.ameauthors.com) but the free for us is designed to build trust. Distrust is rampant online, and in particular, in the book promotion and publishing industry. There are a lot of scams out there and so trust is important. Our free stuff builds our mailing list, yes, but it also builds trust.

3. Make sure it’s really free: A lot of people have content that is purported to be free when it’s not really free. What I mean is that you get a sliver of it, not even a piece really worth mentioning, but the stuff you want is something you have to pay for. If you want to do free, make it free. Find something of value and give it to your customers.

4. Make it something your end user wants: As I’ve mentioned a few times, make sure the free is something people want. If it isn’t you a) won’t bring in the right crowd of people (you’ll end up just getting the freebie hunters, and b) you won’t build your mailing list as fast. So, for example, give your readers something really substantial like an e-book or tips, or a workbook. Virtually any electronic product is easy to create and deliver. When I changed our freebie on the Author Marketing Experts, Inc. website, we quadrupled our sign-ups. So, what was the freebie? 52 Ways to Sell More Books. Now, as an author, isn’t that appealing to you? Exactly my point.

5. So, what if you’ve written a fiction book? Well, consider this: 83% of Americans want to write a book, so what if you gave them a free how-to guide? You don’t even have to create this yourself, you could partner with someone who has already created this. If you don’t like that idea, consider (for those of you in the historical fiction market) doing a did-you-know piece on the history you’re referencing in your book. The idea here is to a) give value, and b) give your readers something they will care about. Also, whenever possible, give your readers something they need to keep so it will remind them of you and your book: tip sheets, workbooks, reference charts. All of these things are pieces that your consumer may keep, which can keep you top of mind.

6. Take names: You should never give free away without asking for an email address. I see people do this all the time; they have a ton of free stuff but never collect emails. If that’s the case, the freebies you are offering may be of great value to your end user but they won’t matter to your marketing. Get emails. It’s called an ethical bribe. You get something (their email) and give them something (the free stuff).

7. Make it easy to get: Don’t make free difficult. What I mean is make it easy to get your free stuff. If people have to jump through hoops, they won’t do it and the free stuff won’t matter. For example – put your free stuff on your home page, or at least have a link to it, though I recommend using free stuff as an ethical bribe (as a way to get sign-ups for your newsletter). When you ask for their email, make it easy. A simple click or two is all it should take. Then, don’t ask for too much information. If you ask me for my address, birthday, and whatnot I doubt I will want your free stuff that badly. Shorten the staircase. If you make it complicated, it’s not really free. Just bait. If you bait your consumer in this fashion. You’ll lose them.

8. Make the free stuff work for you: If you give away something, make sure that it works for you. What I mean is that when you get our free stuff, we always make sure and remind folks of who we are and what we do. For a while we had a free Twitter e-book that always went out with our product catalog imbedded in it.

9. Call to action: Make sure that your free stuff has a call to action. You are collecting names and email addresses and building your list, that’s great. But what do you really want people to do? Define what you want them to do, and then include your call to action in the free stuff. Let’s face it, it’s a good piece – designed to help your reader – but it must also help you. It’s ok to promote your book on the last page, or encourage folks to do a consult with you if that’s what you offer. You can also offer specials and change these periodically in the giveaway.

10. What will you give? People often ask me what you should give away, and I say, it depends: Who is your market and what do they want? Now, on our site you’ll see 52 Ways to Sell More Books, which is an e-book we offer when you sign up for our newsletter. Do our folks want that? You bet. Why? Because they are authors and authors want to sell more books. A special report or e-book always makes a great freebie, maybe you have a white paper that you did on the industry; if so, offer it as a freebie.

11. Follow up! The best kind of free stuff is, as I like to call it, the gift that keeps giving. Auto responders are a great system but often underutilized when it comes to marketing. If you are collecting names and then never contacting your prospects again, what’s the point? Our 52 Ways to Sell More Books is delivered over several weeks, and then when we’re done, we deliver more quality content. People need to be reminded, and reminded again. Now, you can also funnel folks into your newsletter as I mentioned earlier. I do both. We have the auto responder and the newsletter. Think it’s too much? Maybe, but our market wants information. Define what your market wants and then give it to them. If a newsletter and an auto responder is overkill, then scale it back. No one knows your market like you do.

The real key here is that free stuff can work well for you in so many ways, but free stuff without a goal is just free. Great to get free stuff, right? But then how is all of this hard work going to pay off for you?

If you still aren’t a believer of free, try it for 90 days and see if it doesn’t change your life. If you do it right, free will monetize your audience like nothing else will. The biggest reason is that in an age of pushing things on consumers, your audience really wants to sample what you have to offer before they buy. Free is a great way to do that. It’s also a great way to stay in front of your audience, build trust, and develop a loyal following.

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“I had a fortune cookie the other day and it said: ‘Outlook not so good’. I said: ‘Sure, but Microsoft ships it anyway’.” Author Unknown

These days, you can’t go into a coffee shop, bookstore, or turn on your television without hearing about social networks like Facebook, and Squidoo. These sites have exploded in recent years with members and an influx of money that’s kept them growing.

The idea behind social networks isn’t a new thing, but the concept of socializing online developed and morphed as more and more people spent time in front of their computers. The idea being that you could socialize, network, gather, communicate and meet friends in an online venue, rather than, let’s say a coffee shop. Years ago, before social networks, we met people in clubs, organizations, bowling leagues. We may not have had “profiles” like we do on these social networking sites but the concept was still the same: like attracts like and similar interest-based people gathered in places that supported these common interests.

As we continue to delve into this Web 2.0 world, you’ll start to see more niche social networking sites like those built for wine-lovers, car lovers, and book lovers. The more focused a site can get, the more the network expands. And how many sites should you be on? As many as are appropriate to your message and you have time to manage. If you’ve got a book about cars then by all means, join the car lovers network. Got a book about travel? There’s a travel lovers social network as well.

Social networks, also referred to as social media, are places where people can join and become members of an online community. And why does this matter? Well, for a few reasons. First off, consider the Internet one big networking party. As such, you really want to participate, right? So you show up at the networking party (in this case Facebook or Squidoo) and you network. Meaning you connect with others who are interested in what you are doing. And much like a real-time networking event, you give first and ask for the sale later. In fact in most cases you don’t even ask for it. If you give enough, eventually you’ll make the sale.

People join social networks for a variety of reasons: to socialize, share and/or self-promote. The one caveat to this is that social networks are not receptive to marketing messages or sales hype, but those sitting on these sites are looking for answers and advice. In fact, your presence on a social networking site should be 80 percent education and 20 percent sales. Users on social networking sites want friends, mentors, experts and guidance. If you can offer this to a social networking site or sites, you can certainly grow your list.

The Right Way to Approach a Social Networking Site

There’s an old saying that goes: fake it till you make it. This is not true of social networking. You can’t fake anything. The best sites are those with an authentic voice. Social network members can sense an individual who is pretending to be just an “average joe”, but is really just looking for a quick sale. In fact the worst thing you can do is constantly promote your book.

Users join social media sites to socialize, learn and get to know what you’re offering. Be helpful or be gone. That’s the motto of the social networks. Remember that social media (much like anything on the Internet) is a trust-based model. You gain trust by helping, advising, educating, or enlightening your readers. Seth Godin, who started one of the best social networking sites out there today (Squidoo.com) is a great example of what to do when promoting yourself. He offers helpful advice, tips, insight but rarely promotes his book. Does he sell books? You bet he does but he’s helpful first, and a sales person second (sethgodin.typepad.com). The point is, gain someone’s trust and you’ll probably gain a sale too.

Tips for Social Networking Sites

The first piece of this is to figure out what your message will be online. If you’re going to expose details of your brand, book, business, or life, figure out what you want to expose or I should say, what’s necessary to expose in order to get your message across. This is important because once you start branding yourself on the ‘Net via social networks, you want to be consistent.

Next remember that the first word in social networks is “social,” that being said, these networks only work if you interact with them. Whenever appropriate (and this will vary from network to network), join groups, be sociable, be interactive. Participate. You can’t just show up at a party and sit in the corner. Well, you can, but you probably won’t get asked back.

If you can spend a half an hour to an hour or so a day on your networks, that’s great. Don’t overdo the time you spend on them or you’ll burn yourself out. If you can use the social network feeds to have them syndicate your blog to the site, the updating of your social networking page will be done for you. To a greater degree anyway. You’ll still want to get in there and tinker, update content, add friends, etc.

Fan Pages and Facebook

Since Facebook is the dominating force out there, let’s talk for a moment about Fan Pages. Why would you want one? Well first off, you’re in the business of marketing and as such, Fan Pages are business pages so you’ll really want to consider pulling your book-followers off of your profile and sending them to your Fan Page. Also, Fan Pages are indexed and searched by Google so you’ll get great ranking with a Fan Page, more so than you would with a Profile.

Fan Pages, once you know your focus and message, are easy to create and update. You just want to stay on message and know what your followers want.

Tips for Effective Social Networking

Leverage other social media: if you have a strong presence on another social networking site like Twitter or YouTube, then I recommend that you use that to promote your Facebook Fan Page. Let folks know where to find you and never, ever forget to add “Follow Me” buttons to your website pages and your blog.

Tagging: you can drive more interest to your page by tagging an author or a popular Facebook page to a status update, photo, or video. It’s easy to do this in Facebook, you can also tag an article that a high profile member ran on their page.

Step outside of your social circle: try getting away from your inner circle and migrate out to other people who might be good networking opportunities. While it’s fun to stay connected to all your college buddies, that’s not the main focus of your Facebook page.

Selling on Facebook: Facebook now has an application that can add a store page to your Facebook Fan Page. What this means is that you can start selling your books and products from your Fan Page.

Slow and steady wins the social media race: the best Facebook pages (and this is true for any social networking site) are built over time. Slow growth is best when it comes to social networking sites, so don’t force a sudden surge of growth. This will also keep you from getting booted off if you add friends too quickly. Facebook watches for people who are adding hundreds of friends at a time and will lock your page if they think you’re over-promoting yourself.

Don’t be shy: the purpose of Facebook is to connect and interact with other members, so don’t be shy! Interact with people on your friend list by commenting on their news, and pictures, and/or wishing them a happy birthday. Doing all these things will help others to get to know who you actually are instead of just knowing your name.

Content, content, content: remember that it’s important to add content. You can do this by uploading a video, adding the RSS feed from your blog, and a variety of other things.

Keep updating your Page or Profile: don’t let your profile get stale. Update your status, add photos, and answer wall messages and emails.

Add your Facebook page to your blog: make sure and add your Facebook page to your blog. You can have your web person take care of this for you; it’s a simple widget that gets added to let people know you have a Facebook profile.

Social media is a great way to market yourself and your book. When Facebook is integrated with other social networking platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Squidoo, it can be an enormous boon to your inbound marketing campaign. Just remember, your website needs to convert the folks you’re sending there.

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Some tips and tricks from the BlogHer ’10 session with Nora Leibowitz, http://www.nonlineargirl.com/; Catherine Holecko, http://mayberrymom.com/; and Celeste Lindell, http://averagejane.blogs.com/

There are many benefits to having a small blog, including feeling less pressure to achieve certain goals and the ability to do pretty much whatever you want – whenever you want. This session focused on discussing the issues small bloggers face and providing some tips for bloggers who might want to expand their reach.

There are many reasons bloggers blog:

* Practice writing

* Update family and friends

* Share interests

* Enjoy their art

* Build an audience

* Change the world

And the truth is, it’s a lot of work to grow your blog, get readers and comments. That first comment is addictive; many bloggers then think they should have more. That means time and work: Typically bloggers use a combination of Twitter, commenting on other blogs, guest posts and a variety of other tactics such as Facebook and other social media sites to increase their readership.

With the millions of blogs out there, it can be difficult to get that growth even if you do apply the recommended tactics… and is that what you really want or need in the first place? Blogging is supposed to be fun, but it’s less fun when bloggers fall into the mental trap of worrying about what they need to do to be bigger. All bloggers have to decide what their goals are and how much work they’re willing to put in to meet those goals.

Having a small circle of readers and commenters allows small bloggers to know their audience personally, and for many, that’s a big plus.

Additional advantages to having a small blog include:

* Blogging when you can or want to – take vacation, enjoy your family, just take time off, it’s OK

* Not following or reading blog stats – no stress from trying to keep up with anyone else

* Not caring about fame or money – no sponsors to pitch, no pitches to clog your email

* You can write for yourself – write what you want without worrying about offending sponsors or even readers

Bloggers should think about why they began their blogs in the first place, and if their blog is for them, and they’ve got some readers, then it’s meaningful. Consider the concept of “an audience of one,” and decide who it’s for.

In addition, smaller bloggers usually don’t deal with some of the problems that the larger blogs do, such as anonymous negative comments. However, each panelist talked about that one post that got a lot of traffic for them and included some negative comments – for Nora it was an open letter she wrote to The Gap about skinny jeans for toddlers that continues to receive negative comments today. It just goes to show that you can write something, post it, and it will take on a life of its own regardless of the size of your blog.

There’s no magic to growing your blog – the blogosphere does have millions of blogs so there’s a big crowd to compete with for attention – but essentially using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to share your blog posts, commenting on other blogs, holding contests and having guest bloggers can help make your blog stand apart. These activities do require a time commitment and to work, have to become a regular part of your blogging. It’s a personal choice for each blogger whether that time is worthwhile.

Still, small bloggers admit that all of them have faced the feeling that they should be doing more, writing posts that generate comments, checking their stats and so forth. At some point each blogger will have to figure out how to let those feelings go if they want to make peace with their small blog. Celeste probably summed it up best: “I ignore my stats for the same reason I don’t have a scale in my house. It is a drug.”

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Some tips and tricks from the BlogHer ’10 session with Nancy Martira, http://www.ketchum.com/; Adria Richards, http://butyoureagirl.com/; Keidra Chaney, http://www.thewebfarmers.com/; Stephanie Stiavetti, http://www.wasabimon.com/

How can a blogger measure his or her influence online? This session examined the importance of traffic, the value of high traffic and what bloggers can do to give their blogs an edge.

The focus for many years was on blog hits, and then turned to unique visitors (the number of individual people looking at a blog). Now, the focus is on how many human beings are reading your site, what they do when they are on your site and how much time they spend on your site – which shows how engaged they are. Bloggers should review their blog stats to see where people are coming from – a New York Times article, Google, another blog, etc. Examine the “bounce” rate, too. Do your visitors land on your site and leave right away or do they visit multiple pages on your site? The goal is to get visitors to stay on your site, by motivating them to a call to action – ask them to subscribe to your blog, retweet your blog post, sign-up for your newsletter, etc. You want to create a funnel to bring readers in and give them a goal or goals so you can track them on your site. You can learn all these things by using tools like Google Analytics.

Influence can be very nebulous but comes down to how you are affecting your readers. People mistake popularity for influence, but if a site has a high number of visitors who take little action, that blog has far less influence than one in which the users follow up in some way. Although it’s not easy to quantify loyalty and trust, it’s something most bloggers recognize when they do have it.

Measurement Tools

Google Analytics is one way to measure influence. Twitter Analyzer is another tool that can help – tag the links from your blog when you post them to Twitter, and Twitter Analyzer will help you measure who came to read them and whether those people who found you on Twitter clicked through to your site.

Look at referring sites, it’s a good indication of your influence; for instance, if you get a lot of links from high-ranking sites like the New York Times this will make your blog more influential. All links are important, but you really want the links from bigger sites. Google Analytics can provide a filtered keyword report and that way you can evaluate whether your SEO and keyword tactics are working. This program will also let you see where your “bouncers,” the ones who click onto your site but leave quickly, come from. Conversion University is the tutorial program for Google Analytics so you can learn to use it.

Google Page Rank gives sites a ranking from 0-10 to rate influence based on an algorithm; a 5 is good but a lower number doesn’t mean your blog isn’t doing well. If you’re part of a niche online it may be difficult to go higher than a 2 or 3. The Google Toolbar is free and includes the GPR measure. You can work to improve your GPR by getting more inbound links to your site from high-ranking sites. The easy way to build up your rank is by building activity, relationships with other bloggers (even smaller sites) because having a lot of those links is valuable. Be clear, sharp and concise in your blog writing so it’s easy for others to Tweet your posts. Use pithy headlines, using phrases such as “5 Ways to,” “Secrets of,” “How to.” Have your blog categories “above the fold” on your site so they’re easy to find and for visitors to click through. Images can also be an effective way to keep people on your blog.

The goal is to have a variety of links on your site: inbound links from other sites; internal links that lead visitors to other pages on your site; outbound links to other people’s blogs or websites – if you don’t link to others, they won’t link to you. However, if someone asks you to link to them, check out their stats first – if they don’t have a good ranking it’s not going to help you to link to them. In fact, it could decrease your GPR. The quality of the links matter because Google tries to define what you’re about, so links from “like-minded” sites count the most in building your online credibility and ranking. Practice “safe linking,” because when you link to another site you’re creating a partnership whether you like it or not.

Compete.com and Alexa.com also allow you to examine the traffic statistics of people who visit your site. These are all free tools and are not always accurate, but they can be used to establish a benchmark for your blog stats. Additional free tools include Wordtracker.com, Google Adwords and Postrank.com.

PR people do ask bloggers who do product reviews and giveaways for media kits, and they are looking for information including coverage (particularly from larger media), whether you’ve been featured in any local broadcasts and site statistics.

Building Engagement

Leaving comments on other blogs (not overly promotional comments, leave comments when you really have something to say) and inviting comments on your blog are great ways to build engagement and measure your influence. Don’t get tied up in the number of comments you get – it’s only one indication of your influence. Others include GPR, subscribers to your blog’s RSS and links. Google’s Feedburner.com can help you track your subscribers.

It can be a challenge for bloggers to break through, but you can own a specific niche and be influential. Protect your brand – don’t do every giveaway and product promotion out there, if you’re going to do promotion of any kind, reach out to brands you love and make it personal. Tell them why you would make a great fit. And when growing your presence and influence ask yourself: what do you want people to do when they go to your site? Then, develop a plan to make that happen.

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Some tips and tricks from the BlogHer ’10 session with Kamy Wicoff, http://www.shewrites.com/; Florinda Pendley Vasquez, http://www.3rsblog.com/; Penny Sansevieri, http://www.amarketingexpert.com/ and Carleen Brice, http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com/.

Publishing is continually evolving, and the biggest change in the past 3-5 years has been the explosion in publishing methods, including self publishing. The stigma is largely gone as some self published books – such as Legally Blonde, The Lace Reader and The Shack – have become mainstream successes. Agents will pick up a self-published book that is selling, but self-published authors need to know their audience and sell to them. It is also important for self-published books to look professional – as good as any traditionally published book – so don’t skimp on editing or the book cover design.

In addition, there has been a huge growth online of book bloggers, who have become like a giant online book club. Many of its members have formed relationships with each other as well as the big New York publishers, Florinda said. This has all happened as the number of review pages in traditional outlets such as newspapers and magazines has dwindled, with book bloggers picking up some of the slack. Given the strong online presence of book bloggers online, it’s now easier than ever for authors and publishers to connect with potential reviewers.

Even with the advantages of having a traditional publisher, one reality of today’s publishing environment is the fact that authors really need to do a lot of their own promotion. Carleen noted that author Rebecca Skloot starting making connections she could use for her book tour long before her book was published. For her tour, she visited more than 70 cities, speaking at universities and other venues where her travel expenses were covered, and once she was set to visit a specific city, she would contact local bookstores to let them know she’d be in town and tried to arrange a signing.

The Importance of Marketing Plans

Each new book is like launching a new business, and authors need a marketing plan. Kamy’s site SheWrites is meant to be a resource to help authors understand these aspects of writing, publishing and marketing. A good resource is How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larson.

Authors need to network, build connections and have as much as they can in place before the book comes out. Blog five to six days a week, get on Twitter, support other writers so they can support you in turn – Tweet about each other’s books, do blog tours with each other. Think about everything you would do if you had a traditional book contract – get to know book bloggers in your area (before your book is out) and get to know other writers in your area, too.

Pay attention to who is listening to what you say; publishers need to know there’s an audience before they take on a book, said Carleen. If you are self-publishing, you need to know going in that there are buyers for your book.

Cover via Amazon

Penny said authors need to do their research – know your competition, the landscape for your book. Publishing is a business, you would never open a store without doing research first and the same applies to publishing. The promotion for your book should start two years out; marketing guru Seth Godin made this point on Penny’s Publishing Insiders podcast recently. Bestselling author Marci Shimoff, featured in The Secret, still worked like crazy when her own book, Happy for No Reason came out. Newsletters, Twitter and Facebook are good tools to use to build your platform.

Genre/Form

One way authors can keep marketing themselves while in between books is to post short stories and excerpts to sell on Amazon.com or their websites so readers can get a taste of their writing. A great resource for digital book publishing issues is J.A. Konrath. His blog is titled A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/. Konrath sells some of his books exclusively as e-books and is making good money. Some of the books had been traditionally published but didn’t sell well in that format. Once e-books became available Konrath began to experiment with his books, discovering that $2.99 and under was a great price point for his books – and yet enough for him to make money.

Platform

An online presence is really critical for authors. Kamy recalled a publisher who received a manuscript, Googled the author’s name for more information and found nothing, so she passed on the book. In addition, reviewers like to include a link to the author’s blog, said Florinda.

Creative Publicity Ideas

Hold events in non-bookstore venues; pet stores, gyms, spas, coffee shops, flea markets … more books are sold at those venues than in book stores. Either order them yourself or seek a partnership with a local bookstore to bring them so that you can get the best royalty rate; without the bookstore, publishers consider such events specialty sales and they sell the books very cheaply. Take video of the event and share it on YouTube.

What’s the Cost?

How can authors afford the time, hours and cost of promotion? In reality, if they want someone to read their books they have to put in the time and money. Authors have to invest in their success. Carleen said if your book is traditionally published it’s difficult to get your next book published if the first fails.

Measuring Success

Book sales are not an indicator of success, said Penny, referring to her piece on Huffington Post, Why Some Authors Fail, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/penny-c-sansevieri/why-some-authors-fail_b_534629.html. For a traditionally published author, “success” depends on the advance, and the amount of the advance signals the publisher’s expectations for the book. Publishers don’t wait long for a return on investment; after six weeks they’re on to the next thing.

Publishing is moving into niche markets now, and that’s how audiences and readers will find each other – by becoming part of that niche where they share interests. All the tools are there, it’s just a matter of taking advantage of them.

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Some tips and tricks from the BlogHer ’10 session with Susan Getgood http://getgood.com/roadmaps, Beth Blecherman http://www.techmamas.com/ and Kimberly Blaine http://www.thegotomom.tv/

When using social media tools to build your brand (also known as your reputation), consider your objectives. What do you want people to think about you and know about you?

Once you have a brand name, it’s time to let the world know. Broadcast your brand via online sites (such as the sites listed below), realizing that these are tools, and you need to decide which of these will work for you so you can create a strategy:

* Blogs/websites

* Facebook/LinkedIn

* Twitter

* Social curation tools such as Delicious, Tumblr

* e-newsletters

* Video

* Location based tools such as Foursquare

There’s also the issue of whether you should use your real name or a brand name. Although using real names has become more common, there’s nothing wrong with a brand name. Beth is techmama – she talks about technology and parenting and the name clearly represents what she’s about.

You can use http://checkusernames.com/ to see if the name is available across all the online services. Meanwhile http://whois.domaintools.com/ is good for choosing a name for your website or blog.

To monitor your online reputation, you can use Google Alerts and Tweet Alarm.

To manage your brand, you can use http://claimid.com/.

Twitter

Good Twitter strategy includes posting useful information, sharing relevant links, answering questions, finding people and responding to people.

Social curation tools

There are a range of tools depending on what you want to achieve:

* Content & Media Curation – Posterous, Tumblr, Pearltrees

* Rss: Bloglines, MyYahoo, Google Reader

* Updates: Twitterfeed, Ping.fm, Atomkeeper, FriendFeed

* Bookmarking: Delicious, Shareaholic

Using video

Video is an effective tool because when people can see you and hear you they feel a lot closer to you. Google also loves video, so it’s great for building your online presence. The “Google juice” from video will give your blog or website a higher ranking in Google search results, making it easier for people to find you. These days the way to build your presence online is via distribution, so put your video on as many channels as possible. You can also syndicate video to get the content out there online where others can find it, try: Howcast, fivemin.com, YouTube, Blip and Vimeo. Video content producers love Twitter for video sharing because Twitter users are excellent sifters who spend a lot of time watching videos – more than anyone else online.

Work across social platforms

Once you’ve created your brand, use it across all platforms; you want a mix of community, sharing and connection. The question to ask before you jump in is: what are the people you’re trying to reach doing? You can find them via sites such as postrank.com, which is great for identifying bloggers in your niche. Howsociable.com is good for searching brands. Topsy.com lets you see who retweets you first and then who picks up those tweets. You want to be wherever these people are, but don’t be afraid to start small – you don’t have to join every social network at once. Pick a couple, build up your brand and grow. Also remember that with Twitter and Facebook you can run the feed of one through the other – which means you only have to update one of the sites and those updates will then appear on the other site. Social networking sites to consider:

* Blogs/websites – create a community

* Facebook/LinkedIn – share ideas, thoughts and connectivity. Facebook fan pages have metrics built in so you can see how your page is growing, what people like and so forth. Facebook also has 500 million users so it’s where you can cast the widest net.

* Twitter – do you want a personal or professional account? If you want to keep them separate then create different accounts. If your personal and professional lives are intertwined then you can mix them.

* Social curation tools – Tumblr allows you to grab those things online and put them together in one place. Pearltrees lets you choose things of interest on a particular topic – such as video, photos and Twitter conversations that you can share around the Web, then people share it with others.

* Video – incorporate video into your blog. Offer video content to other bloggers and offer them video interviews on your site. Try vlogging – do a video blog post instead of a written post.

* E-newsletters – you can use these to build relationships and to stay on people’s radar. Educate, entertain and entice them – it’s not about you, but what you can offer your readers. There are programs such as iContact and Constant Contact that will allow you to track users.

* Location-based tools – Foursquare is still developing from a branding standpoint, but it’s hot right now. You do need to know who you’re connecting with on the site. Play with it but be careful – you don’t want to advertise that your house is empty, for instance.

If you want to be a brand, to monetize, then you need to have a niche, be consistent and build your presence. Things that go viral don’t go viral by themselves, and you can put in work ahead of time to build contacts and engage participants – who will then help you spread the word once your message is ready to broadcast.

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Some tips and tricks from the BlogHer ’10 session with Melissa Silverstein http://www.womenandhollywood.com/, Beth Terry http://fakeplasticfish.com/, Gina McCauley http://www.bloggingwhilebrown.com/ and Stephanie Himel-Nelson http://lawyermama.com/

Your blog can have an impact, no matter who you are. Bloggers on this panel have had a variety of results from their activism on their blogs, some trying it out as an experiment, while others were advocating for change with the first post.

For example, Beth’s blog Fake Plastic Fish was her attempt to eliminate plastic in her life; 3 years later she’s become known as an activist who has taken on major corporations, including spearheading a North American campaign to urge Clorox to take back and recycle its plastic Brita water filter cartridges. Gina’s greatest achievement is using the platform that she built to battle irresponsible corporate media to highlight underreported cases of horrific violence against Black women, such as the Dunbar Village case, Romona Moore, and Dorothy Dixon. Gina’s blog readers have successfully lobbied large advertisers such as State Farm, Home Depot, McDonald’s, New Balance, Disney, and Yum Brands to pull their advertising from content that demeans and degrades Black women and girls.

Blogging is good for open source activism – you can make a little snowball, roll it down a hill and watch it take off … and readers will then generate their own ideas. Blogging is permanent, it’s dynamic and perfect for microactivism, where even one person can make a difference. You don’t have to have a lot of money or connections to organizations to make a difference, as these women discovered. And over time, bloggers can make valuable connections with each other and have more power in numbers.

You are powerful if you have a blog. Don’t worry about becoming the largest, it’s the networking, the call to action, that can be seen by the whole world. The network you build with other bloggers is your most valuable tool because there is power in numbers. Use it. It’s important for activist bloggers to be:

* Honest

* Authentic

* Transparent

* Passionate

* Fearless

With Fake Plastic Fish, Beth was just blogging for herself until she checked her blog stats and saw that people were coming to her blog for information. This spurred her to further action – in this case the campaign to have Brita filters recycled in the US (Beth had discovered that the filers were recycled in Europe).

Before starting your blog, ask yourself if your issue is actionable, can it be changed, and is it bloggable? Is there interest in your topic online? You can check via Google search to see if people are talking about the issue.

Welcome civil comments and feedback

It’s inevitable that there will be some negative fallout for a blogger who becomes an activist. Those who have taken the ‘body blows’ note that if you don’t have haters, you aren’t doing your job. You learn to deal with it, but be prepared to face threats and anonymous comments – blogging for a cause is not something to be done lightly. Consider having a commenting policy for your blog and state it clearly – a call for civility and respect is appropriate. Feel free to remove comments that don’t respect your guidelines; disagreeing with you is one thing, but name calling or worse qualifies for removal.

Make it easy for others to spread your message

When making a call to action and inviting others to become part of your cause – including other bloggers, publicists, media – there are some definite rules to follow. Make your communications short and easy to read, and, when using email – no attachments. Provide a good blurb people can pick up and run on their own blogs or in emails, a badge that can be posted to other blogs or used as a logo and Twitter information. Personalize invitations, never write “Dear Blogger.”

Consider more than one presence online

Find the right place to engage people – perhaps it’s through your blog, or via Twitter or on a Facebook fan page that you’ll find the ones who want to become part of your cause. Remember that your followers can do many little things that have a cumulative effect. You may also discover that your followers have a preference for one site over another – some will follow you on your blog. Others will only see updates on your Facebook fan page. Still others will follow you on Twitter. Having a presence on different social networking sites can help build up your cause.

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Image via Wikipedia

If you’re trying to find out who’s blog to follow check out: http://www.search4rss.com. This site will let you search keywords and pull up RSS feeds that are talking about your topic! Then you can pick the feeds you want to subscribe to!

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