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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"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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Using PR and Social Media

Obtaining coverage in media publications (TV, radio, podcasts, online video, newspapers, magazines, online news sites, blogs, etc.) is every author's goal for spread the word about their book. PR coverage is free, third-party validation, which often results in more credibility for you and your book. So how does one secure coverage in these publications and media, and how can social media help?

If you have been reluctant to launch yourself into the Tweet-o-sphere, here is another reason to get yourself out there.

Social media is not just a way for you to spread the word about your activities or book release. It is a way to connect with what the social media gurus call "influencers."

An influencer:  is someone who is connected with and able to influence the public through the media, such as a journalist, reporter or blogger.

Many journalists, reporters, and bloggers make themselves available on Twitter. Oh, it's true, I promise, and using Twitter is a great way to introduce yourself to them.

First you have to find them and one way to do this is to look for influential blogs (use blog search engines like Technorati), subscribe to them, and start following their authors on Twitter. Another way is to start following journalists who target our industry. Then start tweeting with them, but don't oversell yourself or your book.  Get to know their work and site themes first and make sure that you have something to offer them before making your approach. Develop relationships by tweeting about an article of theirs that you enjoyed or by asking a question. (You can also use the comment section on a blog in much the same way.)

The web and social media give access to a whole slew of influencers with which you can easily interact and develop relationships. Building relationships and networking through social media connects you with these influencers who have the ability to place stories about you and your book in front of the reading public.

Join us next week for TIPS on . . .  How to Pitch Yourself .

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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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Promoting Your Book

I wrote this article for the WITS Fabulous Friday Newsletter several weeks back and am only now getting around to publishing it here on my blog. I hope you find it useful.

Promoting Your Book Using YouTube

The era of publishers marketing books for authors is gone. Traditional publishing houses are no longer flush with funds and are not willing or able to promote the majority of the books they publish. If you are a self-published author you have always been responsible for marketing your books. Publishers, both independent and conventional, are increasingly advising authors to promote themselves online using virtual blog tours, podcast interviews, book trailers, and through the popular Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube social networking sites. The difficulty arises in knowing how to use these tools. Unless you are a teenager or surfing the Internet has become a major part of your life, you may not see all the marketing opportunities. You probably don’t know what to do, where to go, or understand how to integrate social networking into your marketing strategy as a means of redirecting internet traffic to your author home page, where readers can buy your book.

Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services [WITS] offers authors assistance with promotions, including consultation and management for a growing number of social network marketing strategies. This week we would like to highlight one aspect of social networking that will help you bring your book to the world market of YouTube.

YouTube was founded in February 2005 and has risen to become the world's most popular online video community. YouTube allows “. . . millions of people to discover, watch, and share originally-created videos.” It does this by allowing “. . . people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through Web sites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail.”

If you are not familiar with the Internet jargon . . .

YouTubing: is surfing the wave of Internet video posting.
YouTuber: is one who surfs the YouTube wave.

There are an estimated 30 million new video posts uploaded to YouTube every day from across the globe, in every language, with YouTube currently reporting “. . . 2 billion videos viewed a day [and a] . . . user base age range of 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies. Fifty-one percent . . . of users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.” ~ http://www.youtube.com/t/about

This is important to authors because the reading audience is hanging out and being entertained on YouTube and we want them to find, buy, and read our books.

What Can I do as an author to benefit from YouTube?

The first thing you need to do as an author is to have fun! Go exploring. Familiarize yourself with what YouTube has to offer. In the beginning you probably won’t have any videos of your own created or you will need to have a way of attracting YouTubers to your video clips. If you are going to attract attention you need to understand what YouTubers are looking for, to be where they are and to do what they are doing.

• Search for videos related to your own interests, e.g. video clips that share your book’s genre or major themes
• Create your own YouTube login account and channel (see WITS’ channel http://www.youtube.com/Writersinthesky)
• Keep your personal YouTube channel separate from your author channel
• Decide on a focus of interest for your author channel, choosing a genre, topics, or themes that relate to your book or that are in harmony with your book’s message
• Create playlists by theme on your channel
• Surf YouTube, using key words to find video clips you like, and begin adding videos to the playlists you’ve created under your chosen themes. By creating a playlist using other people’s videos, you are tapping into and harnessing pre-established searches. This saves time spent building a following and it places your author interview or book trailers where they can be seen.
• Post your author site URL and information through your YouTube channel to redirect traffic where your book is available.
• Use the subscription functions of YouTube to allow others to become a fan of your channel
• Allow followers to make comments. Even negative comments attract viewers and sell books. Google recommends, for increased search engine ratings and site traffic, that you do not monitor or block commenting.
• Become someone else’s fan and make comments on your favorite video posts. Leaving comments will create a back trail or back-link that allows others to find your playlists and video material
• Begin creating your own video vignettes, between 1-3 minutes in length is ideal.
• Have a trailer created for your book.
• Seek out video interview opportunities like those offered by WITS.
• Use video blogging on YouTube to talk about your book or current projects
• Key word tags are used to assist searching for and finding videos. Don’t forget to set up key word tags to any playlists and video clips you create

In this way you can begin to use YouTube to redirect traffic to an author site where your book is available. YouTube is a key component to integrating social networking into a marketing strategy and it isn’t necessary to have videos of your own created in order to begin benefiting.

Social Media - Why?

There are a lot of people that don't understand how or why using social media is an important business strategy. When you mention Twitter or Facebook their faces screw up and they look at you like you have just laid an egg.

"Isn't Twitter that site where people text about what they are doing? . . . I'm in the car on the way to grandma's house . . . just checking out that new movie . . ." they say.

Well, yes and no. Twitter is much more than that. And Facebook? Facebook is more than just a site to connect with your old school chums. They are networking tools that if used well can help you generate traffic to your Web page, attract readers and generate book sales.

What about YouTube? Oh boy, get me started please!

Businesses use social networking to drive traffic to their sites and to interest people in their products and so can you, using many of the same techniques.

Authors that are looking to self promote can't afford to neglect any opportunity to get their name and their titles in front of potential readers. Having a Twitter account, using Facebook to network and using You Tube to post videos, and audio clips, sharing content and information is vitally important in promoting your work.
Why? Because people, that read books are using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Your readers are surfing these sites and you want your presence and your book to be where they can find you.
If they can't find you, they aren't going to read your book.

If you aren't already sold on social media or don't know how to use it to promote your book there are some quick tips that you need to know.

To promote yourself and your book you need to master utilization of several avenues of social media:
Facebook
Twitter
You Tube and
BlogSpot or one of the other blogging tools available free on the web.

Social media integration is KEY to making money using social media networking for marketing your book.
If you don’t have time to master the use of these tools yourself, hire someone to do it for you. The cost of hiring it out is less than the expense of not doing it at all or of doing it poorly.

Tips when using social media to promote your book:

- Keep your personal and business accounts separate.
Create Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube accounts that are devoted to your work, your book and related activities. Do not post personal details and pictures of the family in these accounts.
- Create an Author site that gives information about you, your book, and your public speaking and signing events. Make sure that this site includes a blog or links to a blog; where you can post information, articles and excerpts of written work such as poetry or share intriguing new character and story development details for current projects.
- When blogging, don't crowd your readers. Make your book available but don't burden visitors with aggressive sales tactics. Win their interest and their trust.
- Give your blogs visitors something that will engage their interest. If they like your blog they will seek out your book.
- Be a host for Author Virtual Tours; network with other others. By hosting and promoting others you create relationships and expand your visibility.


Use Twitter, Facebook and You Tube to drive traffic to your blog and your main "author" site.
Visit other authors' sites and leave comments or become a fan, doing this creates back links to your site and accounts, potentially attracting visitors who may then buy your book.

For more about using video and audio clips to promote your book through YouTube come back next week!