Giveaway Best Practices!

Mary E. Martin's Virtual Tour is Set to Launch 

Tuesday August 25, 2015!

As a highlight to her tour Mary is running an Amazon Boost Purchase Incentive. The campaign is offering a $200 Amazon gift card giveaway, with valid proof of purchase. Giveaway details, purchase carousels, and an entry form can be accessed from Mary's Virtual Tour page on her website. 

Did you know, more giveaway submissions are entered on Monday nights between 8:00 PM and Midnight EST than at any other time of the week; and that a quarter to a third of the total accumulated entries occur during the final 24 hours? ~ according to blogRafflecopter "5 Effective Promotion Tips For Your Ending Giveaway"

http://maryemartintrilogies.com/virtual-tour/

If you are investing in a promotional giveaway, that would be important information you will want to consider when selecting dates for your campaign. Ending your campaign with a count down to finish on a Monday night at Midnight EST, is the best practice for a successful giveaway.  According to Rafflecopter's Market research "Tuesdays and Wednesdays work as well. Thursdays are alright. But Friday, Saturday, & Sunday — are days to avoid."

Anyone self promoting these days needs to glean information about marketing best practices where they can find them. There are no absolute methods for marketing success.  Every audience is different. It may take multiple promotional campaigns, trial and error attempts, data collection, and  incentive offers for you to discover the best formula for engaging the audience you've attracted. 

Selling is never easy and the entertainment market is saturated with marvelous recreational outlets. Readers are also movie enthusiasts and video gamers. You have to give them an incentive to choose your book over a plethora of other pleasing diversions and entertainments. That is where knowing how to use behavioral patterns and human psychology, in regard to purchasing habits, can be of benefit. It is rare for someone investing in self promotion to have access to marketing information of this kind. So, when you run across it, make a mental note and pass the info on to your networks.

See you Tuesday August 25, 2015 for the @MartinTrilogies Virtual Tour Launch.

Entries in the $200 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway are being accepted through Midnight EST, Monday August 31, 2015. Click here to see details about the bonus reward package of free e-books and coupons from tour host sponsors.

Enter Below To Gain Access to the Rewards Package Without Entering The $200 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Creative Process and Marketing Innovation

Starting a marketing strategy before the book is written can benefit the creative process.

• Plan to meet your target audience's needs from the start.
• Build interest and plot themed hooks into your story or material, usable themes which will open up marketing angles in the future.
• Is your book of a self help nature, or does it have an element or theme that could be used to attract related interest groups? 
• Knowing your audience wants may lead you to write in or material suggestive of marketing venues and purchase incentive opportunities. 
• It allows you to bring your audience into the creative process, through blogging, "chat"-ter, forum activity, collaborative challenges and competitions.
• Having an interested reader base before you go to print can encourage creative output, and editorial excellence.

Write down marketing ideas as you go. They will feed your creative process and may help you develop new plot elements, as easily as creative marketing strategies.  

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Tip Tuesday: Diversify!

It is Tip Tuesday!

Expand your online marketing reach by developing effective strategies, SEO best practices and knowledge.

Tuesday's Tip for 10/22/2014: Diversify! Diversify! Diversify!

Approach building your online presence and marketing power from multiple angles. Attract larger, more loyal audiences, and increase your Search Engine ranking while doing it. Approach your marketing and creative process with an eye to diversify. Deconstruct, re-frame and then re-imagine how you will reach your audience.

Three areas of the utmost importance in attracting an audience to your blog or website are

• SEO ranking: clean up your webpage for search engine optimization; start by loading quality content.
• Social Media: reach out and engage audiences using social media
• Mobile Apps with visually optimized webpages

Search Engine Optimization

With "Content as King," SEO is hands-down your best way of bringing traffic to a blog or website. However, search engine ranking criteria is constantly changing. Technologies are also changing, so are the ways people enter and use the Internet.  In order to increase and safeguard your ranking, you will have to be flexible too.  Diversify your marketing activities, so that when changes occur the impact on your website will not be catastrophic. 

Social Media

Did you know, Facebook has partnered with Bing to use LIKES as a major factor in which pages will rank highest during keyword searches. If one of your friends has liked a page and you perform a corresponding keyword search, that page is most likely to appear at the top of your search query. 

Google has also associated social media activity with ranking clout; analyzing Facebook, Twitter and other social media interaction and connections to a webpage or blog, and is assigning rank with these factors in view. Social Media gives Google a more reliable tool in gauging site popularity, than counting back-links ever did. Back-links aren't dead, but social media activity which leads traffic back to your site has taken the lead in determining SEO popularity.

Mobile APPs, Smart Phone/Tablets

Technological advances change the way people use the internet. Mobile apps -- smart phones and tablets, are the fastest expanding point of access for Internet users. Be sure to optimize your website for easy mobile app viewing. 

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Time to Think Outside the Book

To stand out in the book market you have to think outside the book, beyond the story you are writing.

Do you as an author bring any added value, knowledge, or expertise to the world in addition to your book? If you do, that is a marketing tool in your bag. Any aspect of your interests, experiences, profession, or life outside of and within the writing world could lead to audience exposure and interested markets.

It's Time to Think Outside the Book 

Your book is an extension of yourself, a form of self expression. It can transmit your skill, your interests, dreams, traditions, education, point of view, loyalties, ideals, values, bias, ideas, hopes, agenda, convictions, frustrations, loves, curiosities, anger, illusion, temptations and fears. Every character has grown from thoughts and experiences that you have had. Every plot twist and turn first wound through your imagination.  Loyal fan bases are often eager to interact with and curious about the life, mind, and/or interests of their favorite authors. Use that to tendency to your advantage.

Marketing research reveals that it takes on average three visits to a website before any purchases will be made. You have a book ready to market. How will you get reader attention? How are you going to entice people to visit your website repeatedly, until they decide to buy your book?

Books do not have the same value to readers as they did in eras of the past. Gone are the days when wealth was determined by the size of your library. Books have competition as suppliers of news, entertainment, education, and inspiration. Audiences have a thousand distractions and options to choose from in the form of the Internet, TV, Film, Theater, Sports. . . need I go on? Bringing audiences back to your site is gong to be an important focus for your online marketing activities. This is guerrilla marketing we are talking about. You have to be able to stretch your reach beyond what has worked in the past and try new tactics.

Once a book is published it isn't changing. The story is over, it isn't going anywhere and your audience knows it. Where as, your life is still growing, and that is where things get interesting. Find a way to interact with or engage your audience further than the immediate entertainment value of your book. Attach your book to a cause, or an interest group you belong to.  Use your website to promote what you have to offer the world in addition to your book.

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Tip Tuesday: External Links

It is Tip Tuesday!

Expand your online marketing reach by developing SEO best practices and knowledge.

Tuesday's Term of the Day:

External Links

External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source). ~ moz.com

For our purposes and understanding, external links are those which originate on another site or domain and lead traffic to you and your website. External links are the most coveted and influential for SEO ranking, as they are harder to manipulate and therefore viewed by search engines as a more reliable indicator of popularity and relevance. Sometimes you will hear these links referred to as back links.

Developing good network relationships with other theme or interest related bloggers and site owners, in order to establish links between pages, is one way of acquiring external links for your blog or web page. This form of linking is referred to as reciprocal linking. Often these kind of relationships are used in multi-site linking where sites band together to create and use links for SEO. Trading articles, offering promotional support, participating in virtual tours, blog jogs, and incentive giveaways are just a few of the creative link building tactics used by savvy marketers who wish to establish reciprocal external links, drive Internet traffic, and raise SEO page rankings.

Another form of external link that will benefit your SEO ranking and lead Internet traffic to your door is one way links: those which come from articles, reviews, media releases, forum or comment signatures, and bylines that lead back to you. You can create many of these links through your own activity and through reciprocal relationships.

Directory links are external links which generally lead traffic seeking resource material and information. Having your site listed for expert content in a directory can be very useful to your SEO relevancy standings.

Acquiring and creating external links is an important step along the path of marketing your book, brand, product or personality online. They are valuable to search engines because they help measure two key factors, popularity and relevancy. More about that another Tip Tuesday.

The more you know the more you grow.
Great day to you.

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"Watt's Up?" A Look at Wattpad and How it is Helping Authors Find Readers

What is Wattpad? 

If you haven't heard of Wattpad, you haven't yet fully joined the era of Internet and social media savvy readers and writers.

Wattpad is the Internet sensation and brain child of friends Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen; who each dreamed of using social media to revolutionize how we tell and share stories.

"Their realization: that user generated content, social networking and mobile phones were all that was needed to enable the future of storytelling." ~ Two minds: Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. One idea: to use social media and mobile phones to build a network of readers and writers.

You can learn all about how they got together in 2006, to take advantage of the changes in technology, and the building of Wattpad in the article, Two minds/One Idea, through the link above.

The end result, or should I say the beginning, of their collaboration became Wattpad, an online community using social networking and mobile smart phone technology to advance, share and enjoy the written word.

Wattpad is a writing community in which users are able to post articles, stories, and poems about anything either online or through the Wattpad app. The content includes work by undiscovered and published writers. Users are able to comment and like stories or join groups associated with the website.  ~ Wikipedia 

Authors are always searching new methods of reaching a reading audience and Readers are always in search of new and exciting books. The idea of bringing the two together and of harnessing technology to facilitate their joining is brilliant.
All this started 7 years ago before social networking and media took over our telephones. Today, Wattpad is one of the largest social networks going and they are entirely devoted to sharing and discovering literature! That’s right, a whole forum of interaction devoted to writing and reading.

How many times have you as a reader chewed your finger wishing you had something to read; and how many times have you authors agonized about getting your book under the nose of a reader?

Today's readers aren't just looking for a good read, they are looking to engage, contribute, and connect in ways that readers of yesteryear did not. Some of the best and most well known writers of this century are those who have embraced a two way conversation with their fans. Social media is not only a marketing tool it is a creative tool allowing writers and readers to interact, communicate and grow together.  Writers are able to test ideas, and improve their work using fan based feedback and comments. Readers become personally attached to their favorite books and authors, they share with their friends at the click of a link button those authors and books they enjoy.  A match made in heaven, or in this case, Toronto Canada, the home base of Wattpad.

In the words of Wattpad . .

• All You Need are Words: You don't need a publisher, editor, or finished manuscript to write on Wattpad. Anyone can share their writing. Anything you post on Wattpad can be published in as many other places as you like. We don't demand any rights to your work, or any control over where you share it.
• Writing Socially and Serially: One of the greatest benefits of Wattpad is a direct connection between writers and 30 million readers, all over the world. Readers receive notifications whenever a new chapter of a story is posted. Many writers share their work serially: posting stories one chapter at a time, so readers keep coming back. 
• Amplifying Authors: Published authors use Wattpad to amplify their online presence. They post short stories and drafts, or attract new readers by sharing the first part of a series. Our readers are socially engaged, and the writers who prosper on Wattpad are the ones who embrace this direct social connection with their fans.

According to Wikipedia, as of April 2014

• 85 percent of Wattpad's traffic and usage comes from mobile devices [13]
• 25 million unique visitors per month [13]
• over 1,000 story uploads per day [14]

Friends of Ink Slinger's Whimsey found on Wattpad . . .

• Author of the paranormal fiction, Spirian Saga, Rowena Portch 
• Author of the Osgoode and Remembrance Trilogies, Mary E. Martin
• Reviewer and author Fran Lewis
• Author of 27 Things to Feng Shui Your Home, Tisha Morris

Blog, Blog, Blog

A blog by any other name is, Free Publicity.

Why aren’t you blogging?

I have heard a lot of excuses for why authors don’t want to blog.

    "I am not good with computers."
    "It is too technical, I don’t know how to set up a blog."
    "It is too much work to maintain."
    "I can’t think of anything to blog about."
    "No one will know how to find my blog."

These are the most common excuses, but none of them need to be a deterrent.  Blog hosting providers like Google and Wordpress are developing more user friendly tools every day.  Gone are the days when you had to know a programming language to create a good looking website to promote your work.  These days blog domains are creating templates that allow inexperienced bloggers to create attractive and exciting multimedia pages.  An author can create what amounts to a decent webpage through their blog.

Take for example Blogspot.com, Google’s blog domain.

When you set up your account you not only get a front blog page, but you can also create additional pages for information  such as, About the author, a page specifically about your Books, Reviews, Virtual Touring and more.

Take a look at my blog.  I have additional pages that allow me to give focus to information I think is of value to my followers. At the bottom of my page I have a YouTube playlists of book trailers showcasing book trailers, for authors whose books I have reviewed.  I can add audio files, and link to sites that have posted my reviews.

Through investing time in creating a blog, I have gained access to all the great features that used to belong exclusively to companies and people with the cash needed to hire a web designer and techno geeks.  I have had fun finding and adding gadgets, personalizing my site to promote my work and I didn’t need to pay a site administrator to get it done. I have even posted attractive links to books on Amazon.com where followers can make purchases.  [See, look left]

Granted I like computers, but I did all of this without knowing a computer programming language, or html code, because Blogspot.com has designed it’s tools with beginner to average computer users in mind.  The same is true for most blog hosting domains.  It serves them to make it easy for users to . . . well, use.

Even if you aren't super with computers, you should be able to create an account, a basic site, and learn how to post. You can afford to play around creating a site because it doesn't cost anything to set up a blog and because you don't have to start posting until you have things the way you like them. You could, if you wanted to, but there is no pressure to start posting immediately.  Also, until you start connecting your social networking accounts to each other no one has to see your blog under construction.

The number one way to promote yourself and your book is through blogging.  Blogging allows you to communicate with fans, to answer their questions  and tell them what you want them to know. 

Many social networking sites have programs or applications which allow you to syndicate your blog, redirecting traffic to flow into your blog through links that announce automatically when you publish a post. That means once you post to your blog, an announcement rolls over to Facebook, or Linked-in, and even Twitter, letting your followers know they have something new to read. 

Subscribe buttons allow followers to receive your blog like a morning paper on their iPads, pcs, smart phones and other media devices. Where have all the newspaper subscribers gone?  Why—to  the internet, where they are reading their favorite morning blogs over a cup of Joe.

So what is really stopping any of us from capitalizing on this obviously a great promotional opportunity? Yup . . .

Fear

"It is unfamiliar territory and it sounds like hard work. I told you I hate computers!"

Let’s do it!

Let's move past our fear response and let’s familiarize ourselves with the tools.  Let’s talk about it as we go. We don’t have to go it alone. If we have a question, let’s look for answers together. 

Over the next few weeks, we will explore blogging, the best blogging practices and we will familiarize ourselves by using Blogspot.com’s tools and gadgets in creating an author blog. 

Just think about it . . .  Free Publicity.

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How to Tips: for prerecorded podcast interviews

Considering seeking podcast and radio interviews to help market your book? WITS Podcast host Vonnie Faroqui has some tips for how to give a good interview.

How to Tips: for prerecorded podcast interviews

Prerecorded podcast interviews differ from live radio in several ways. You will need to find out ahead of time how your interview will be conducted, live or as a prerecorded podcast to be aired at a later date.

Many Web radio and podcast interviews are prerecorded for the convenience of the blog host and site management. This allows for minor editing, a “positive” in favor of prerecording interviews that a good host will use to make higher quality podcasts. Writers In The Sky pre-records its podcasts and schedules these interviews to be aired on a weekly basis.

Even the best editing can’t turn Mr. Potato into a thrilling interviewee

That being the case, here are a few tips to help you on your way to becoming an interview superstar.

Get Comfortable

Live radio interviews can begin abruptly. A prerecorded interview usually allows you to get comfortable with your host and to ask questions of your interviewer before recording begins. For WITS Podcast interviews, I like to give our guests the general outline of the interview a day or two early, and then to answer questions before we begin recording. Taking the time to chat with my guests beforehand helps me gauge an author’s comfort level, break the ice, and address any fears our guests may have about interviewing. Live interviews rarely have time to allow a host to put their guest at ease. Interviewing is a skill that, as with all skills, gets easier through practice. Practice your interview skills with friendly audiences. Get your friends to ask you questions about your book and themes. Play around with your responses so that you learn to answer questions on the fly.

About timing

With prerecorded interviews, there are fewer concerns or constraints about time and timing than is the case for live interviews. During a live interview, you will need to be prepared to talk at a moment’s notice and to keep your answers brief so that your host can speak to other callers or break for commercial. With a prerecorded interview, it is possible to take more time with your answers as pauses and hiccups can be edited away. In both cases, help your host know when you are finished speaking by ending with a declarative sentence or by using a vocal downtick to make it clear to the host that you’ve completed your answer.

No prepared speeches

Don’t write out speeches to read during the interview. Instead, create a bullet point list of things you would like to convey during the interview, key thoughts or themes you want to work into your responses. Read answers are never very engaging and will make you sound stilted and mechanical unless you are theatrically trained. Even good actors avoid reading from a prepared script and take liberties with their material to allow for natural, conversational phrasing. Don’t make the mistake of reading prepared answers during your interview. It is a mood killer.

Listen to your host

Listen to your host and do your best to answer the questions they ask. Don’t assume that they are disinterested. Give them something to work with. An unresponsive guest is a hosts worst nightmare. A host will often ask follow up questions if they like what you’ve said, if they are trying to draw out more information from you or if they want to carry you deeper down a line of questioning they think will be of interest to their audience. If you are listening to your host, you will hear the cues they will give you. Be responsive and they will guide you through. An engaging guest is a delight to support and easy to sell. If you need a little help with energy and want to avoid sounding flat and uninspired, try matching or slightly exceeding your host’s energy level. To do this you have to . . . listen.

Share your passion

If you aren’t passionate about your book, who will be? Listeners will turn the dial if your interview lacks passion, but they will “hear it” if you SMILE – so get a telephone headset and free yourself to wave those arms around while you talk. Let the love you have for your book, theme, and characters come through in your voice. Standing while you speak conveys energy and confidence. Gesturing helps you convey intensity and meaning. We rely upon these things in everyday speech to help communicate clearly. Allowing for movement will help you relax during an interview and greatly enhance the sound of your voice.

Give of yourself

Being a good guest translates down to one thing. Give of yourself. When someone speaks from a place of inspiration about something they love, it is always interesting. Do you love your book? Didn’t you just invest time, energy, and money in creating and publishing it? If you love your book and speak from that place, you will have something interesting to say.

Letting go of fear and embracing life is a challenge that everyone faces. The circumstances may vary, but the opportunity to move past fear comes to all of us. I have one last tip to share and it will help you overcome any fears you have about interviewing . And it is . . .

Keep breathing

Breath is life. When you stop your breath, you stop your life, you freeze your emotions, and stifle your truth. Breathing frees stuck emotion and gives you voice.  It carries you through and out of fear. If you encounter a question that throws you for a second, or need to gather your thoughts for a response, take a breath. In that moment of internal silence, while you concentrate on inhaling, your answer will come. It will come from a place of truth that exists deep inside of you, a place that is inside all of us. Share what comes to you and keep breathing.

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Social Media: Using LinkedIn's Blog Link application to broaden your promotional reach

If you have a LinkedIn account or are considering using LinkedIn as part of your social media plan, don't miss adding the Blog Link application, powered by TypePad, when you set up your profile.

Blog Link is a free application that pulls your author blog, or blogs you write for clients, onto your LinkedIn home page. All you have to do is list your blog as one of the live links allowed in your profile, and when you choose the Blog Link tool it pulls your blog into LinkedIn.  Not only will this application display your blog entries, it will display the blog entries made by any of your LinkedIn connections who also use the blogroll feature.

For those of you seeking to expand the reach of your blog or sell books outside of a regional location, using the Blog Link application in LinkedIn is a powerful easy way to attract new readers, and to build stronger relations with your connections.

To sign up for LinkedIn visit http://www.linkedin.com/

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Social Media: Having a Plan

Thinking of using social media to market your book?

It isn’t enough to simply use social media in an attempt to attract followers and redirect traffic to your website. If you are posting sales tweets or blogging sales promotional material all of the time you are not going to attract an audience, the followers you do have won’t be clicking through your links and you will develop a reputation as a walking advertisement. You have to be strategic about your use of social media and you have to be friendly. A lot of time is wasted by dropping link bombs or book promo sales tweets. Social media only works well for online promotions when you have a strong-engaged-return-following, a level of trust established with your audience, and when the communication and interest flows both ways. In order to build that loyal following and trust you have to offer the reader something they are interested in, you have to do it regularly and be open to comments by responding where you are able.

The people who are making and saving money using online promotions all employ a strategic plan when using social media. Here are some tips for making a social media plan that have been shared with me or that I have discovered working with WITS.

TIPS:

1. Write out your objectives: Know what you want your social media to do. Write out a bullet point list of objectives such as: “attract readers who are interested in my themes,” “excite readers into purchasing my book,” “inform readers about issues that interest me or have influenced my writing,” “introduce readers to my writing style,” or “Show readers how interesting and creative my writing is.”

2. List out all the social media sites you will be using: Pick your Favorites. The main four are: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, plus having a blog. You don’t have to know how you’re going to use them, just list out the possibilities. Familiarity or popularity may be a consideration in the sites you select.

3. Develop a vision: Take each site and write the outcome you want. For example, “Attracting people who are both entertained and want to do business with me,” or “Sharing information that my clients want to know,” or “Creating a group that people are excited to join.”

4. List out possible places you can get material: This will be your resource guide of reliable websites that offer interesting news stories relating to your business or book themes. These sites are the places where you can return time and again for a new post or blog idea. If you aren’t familiar with or already searching the web for theme related sites try looking at the Top 100 Blogs on Technorati for examples.

5. Create a strategy: This might be posting updates three times a week or writing out a list of Tweets at the start of each month. It might also just mean spending time every day familiarizing yourself with the social media site and how to use it.

6. Write out your goals: Maybe your goal is to post a video book trailer, or get to 100 followers, to expand into a new sales area, or to simply generate more sales. Start with small, possible, measurable goals and update the results as you go.

7. Keep your blog friendly but professional: If you want to share pictures of your cat or update the babysitter on your current location and plans for returning home, use a separate Twitter account. Don’t use your professional blog to talk about Aunt Sally’s lumbago.

8. Give it time: It takes a certain amount of time to establish a following or return audience. Give yourself two or three months to know if your social media efforts are paying off before considering a change of direction.

9. Keep your advertisements to a minimum: You need to establish a returning audience, before you try to sell a product. Your audience will return to your site because you have peaked their interest by offering them news or insight, given them advice or passed on information they find useful. The fastest way to turn them off or away is by continually dropping sales posts or advertisements for your book. Out of every 100 posts, one should be advertising your services or product information.

10. Stick to your themes: Part of developing trust with your audience is being consistent in your choice of themes. The only way to woo your audience into returning to your site time and again is by offering them more of what they came to you for in the first place. Pick four or five themes and use those themes as a guideline when creating a post or blog entry. Follow your posting strategy religiously. Pre-program your posts and blog entries using a schedule. People respond well when they have expectations that are being met and random, irregular posting practices kill audiences. If you are offering quality content consistently and on a regular posting schedule, you will build the loyal following you want and sell books.

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Promotion TIPS: Be A Guest

For Promotions there is no doubt that the Internet is the strongest place to market your product, in this case . . . your books.
There are a few online publicity tricks you can employ that will strengthen your marketing strategy and assist in elevating your site page ranking, self and your book in keyword searches with Google, Yahoo and others.

• Become a blogging author
• Become a commenting author at the sites of others
• Become a guest blogger for an established blog or site

If you aren't interested in becoming a blogging author or in maintaining your own blog the other options are still open to you. Maintaining a blog however does open avenues and opportunities for promotions that shouldn't be passed up without serious consideration.

Each of these options will provide an opportunity for your byline and URL to be placed in front of potential readers and will create important cross and back links to other sites; which is important when you are seeking to improve your page ranking with search engines or when building toward monetizing your site.
Each of these options will also help establish your name and credibility as an expert or established author and will place your work in front of readers, providing sales opportunities; and all three are available and FREE ways to publicize your books.

Join me as a guest blogger

• Blog about your current or past projects
• Blog on your chosen theme
• Submit an excerpt from your book
• Send me your book trailer
• Join our network of virtual tour blog hosts
• Invite me to be a host for the virtual tour you are organizing

I am happy to be there for you.

Contact Vonnie Faroqui for information about being a guest blogger with http://inkslingerswhimsey.blogspot.com or at one of the Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services' blogs.

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Article Marketing: Promoting Your Book

By Vonnie Faroqui

Daily we at WITS are consulted by authors about book promotion and how to drive traffic to an author homepage. One powerful and non intrusive tactic for marketing your book and driving web traffic is through the intelligent use of article marketing. 

Bloggers and other online or print publications use sites like EzineArticles.com, ABC Article Directory and Etopic.com, to obtain free content that is available for republication.  These article database sites specialize in collecting the most up to date articles, on a variety of different topics and making those articles available for reprint.  Articles on these sites are available for use, free of charge and may be reprinted any number of times by multiple publications. 

WITS utilizes these sites to promote our authors and their books through article placement and marketing. We create content rich, key word optimized articles on topics that either introduce readers to a book and author or refer to an author’s work as a reference guide of unique knowledge and experience on a theme.

Articles we have written are reprinted across the internet and through conventional print media, giving our authors a broad range of exposure but the benefit of article marketing doesn’t stop there.  It is not necessary for an article to be republished in order to be found and read online by your audience. Simply being placed in one of these databases opens an  opportunity for your book and your name to enter the online stream of communication. These articles and database sites are also available to internet users surfing the web using key word search engines like Google.com. This makes article placement and marketing even more effective. 

To learn more about article marketing visit our author promotions page at Writers in the Sky.