In the we told you so category, the Christian Science Monitor declared the bookstore tour of readings and signings “passe.” Fewer writers are being sent on the traditional tours, bypassing them in favor of podcasts, film tours, blog tours, book videos, and book trailers, which certainly puts less stress on the author and opens the tour up to a wider audience online.
by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.
Last week I was digging through a bunch of links that I found on articles of mine that were recently posted. One of them was a link to a cosmetic surgery site. Was my article on cosmetic surgery? No. But did I care that the article was linked to a site that had nothing to do with my topic? Not at all. Why? Because I welcome any and all incoming links!! Joan Stewart (aka The Publicity Hound) did a fantastic blog on this issue so instead of repeating what she so eloquently wrote, I thought I’d link her blog here. Way to go, Joan!
Ready to tell the world you wrote a book? Why not start with Google instead? Google is hosting Google Author Talks bringing authors (and their books) to their Mountain View offices (also New York and Santa Monica) for a book discussion, reading, or lecture. Think you’ve got what it takes to present to googlers? Then head on over to: http://www.google.com/talks/authors/index.html and sign up today!
With so many web sites, blog entries, podcasts, ezines, and articles proliferating the Internet it’s hard to find what you want. The same is true for search engines. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but search engines seem more and more inclined to pull up junk before it pulls up the “good stuff”. The reason for this is that even a search engine as thorough as, let’s say, Google, struggles to find the right stuff the first time around. That’s why social bookmarking is on the rise. Social bookmarking is a way of creating your own people-powered search engine. By marking your blog posts, articles, or web pages using DIGG, del.icio.us, Stumbled Upon or the over thirty other social bookmarking sites you’re essentially giving your stuff a better chance to be found. Recent studies have showed that instead of heading to their favorite search engines, many consumers are now going to their favorite social bookmarking site to find the things they need. So while I don’t recommend that you overlook search engine marketing, you might want to consider becoming more social a la social bookmarking.
You can social bookmark each page of your web site and each blog post. If you archive articles on your site, bookmark those as well!
Don’t get me wrong, the reason I’m not reading your blog may have nothing to do with you so don’t take this personally. But if your RSS (really simple syndication) feed isn’t working chances are I forgot you even had a blog.
With all that we have to sift through daily, having an RSS feed that doesn’t work could cost you blog readership. Do you subscribe to your own feed? You don’t?! Then how do you know if it’s working or not? Yep, just like the book marketing gurus will tell you to re-read your own book on a regular basis so you don’t forget what’s in it, you should also subscribe to your own feeds. Whether you have a podcast, blog or both – subscribing to your own feeds is the only way you know if folks are reading your blog.
So what happens when someone buys something off of your store? Do you sent them to a nice little “thank you” page and then send them off your site? Why would you tell them to leave after they’ve just made a purchase? Did you know that someone who just bought something off of your site is far more likely to buy more stuff, especially if you offer them quick and simple add-ons to their original order. Vistaprint.com does a version of this. Their system cycles you through about 3 pages of fabulous add-on stuff that costs practically nothing. So why sell it then? Well if you buy the additional product for, let’s say $1, you might need more of it someday. Or you might decide to gift one of those products to someone else. When you do guess what happens? That’s right, now it’s full price.
So besides making additional sales, be sure and add in additional product to entice your store shoppers. A nice “thank you” page is ok, but a page that actually offers them some rock bottom priced bonus items says THANK YOU the way nothing else can.
If you’re looking for places to list your video you might want to consider a few of the sites that have popped up recently. While not all of them may garner the attention that YouTube does, they all offer direct access to consumers. So if you’re ready to start plugging your video all over town, head on over to this link to find out more places to load your video.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136021-page,4-c,webservices/article.html
Squeeze pages are popular among web-marketiers. These are pages designed to “squeeze” you out of your email by offering you fabulous (free) incentives or opportunities to buy. When done correctly, squeeze pages can be a great way to grow your list but the problem is, many folks use these as stand alone web sites which is a huge mistake. Squeeze pages are fine if they’re a page within your site, but when they’re a site onto themselves this becomes tricky. Why? Well the squeeze page is designed to block consumers from getting to content unless they give you their email address. The same is true for search engines but the problem is, search engines can’t fill out forms. This means that they can’t spider your site either since they can’t get to all of your fabulous content. Second, journalists are *not* going to give up their email address to get to your media room. So if a press person lands on your site and finds nothing but a squeeze page you’ve not lost a media interview too.
So you have a newsletter – great! But now you’re wondering how you’ll get subscribers. Here are a few quick tips to help grow your subscriber list and bring more people into your fabulous marketing funnel!
1) Make sure you have an ethical bribe: this is something you give to get something. A free eBook, special report, whatever it is it must have value to your reader. If it doesn’t you won’t attract new subscribers. The idea is that if they want the freebie they have to give you their email address.
2) Create some “Top 10 Tips” articles: People love those “Top 10 Ways to…” articles so why not create some of your own. Even if you’re a fiction author you can still offer suggestions for top ten ways to get published, simple solutions for character development, research, etc. If you’re stumped for ideas consider this: add the following words to the end of the title string “Top 10 Tips to…” Create, Solve, Prepare, Start, Prevent, Save, Improve. These should get you started!
3) I tell authors this over and over again and I’m surprised how many folks still forget to do this. Your email signature line may be your most powerful asset. Always include a link to the subscribe page for your ezine (if it’s on your home page refer them there) – don’t forget to tell them about the fabulous freebie they’ll get just for subscribing!
If you think being your own Search Engine Optimization Expert is too tough of a job, think again. There’s a very simple thing you can do right now to get more of those fantastic incoming links to your site. Google (aka controller of the Internet) loves incoming links but the trick is, they must be high-quality and relevant. What this means is that you can go after sites, blogs and online magazines and offer content in the form of an original article or comment on their blog postings. All of these links will get spidered in Google and voila! Welcome to the wild world of SEO.
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