The single most effective marketing method for book sales remains the power of a personal recommendation. It’s advertising you just can’t buy. Hence so much focus on reviews and endorsements for your book. This also explains the current appeal of social media marketing in an author’s marketing toolkit. If your friend on Facebook likes a book, you might too. Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, and Twitter… [Read More]
From the start of a writing project, an author needs to find a way to organize all of their contact information. Everywhere you go as an author, you will meet people whom you will want to reach when your book is released. It is never too soon to start your database of professional connections. Business cards, slips of paper, cocktail napkins, ripped corners from envelopes,… [Read More]
You need to consider using Facebook if your target audience uses Facebook. There are 1.11 billion users of Facebook, so there is a good chance some of your readers are there. It is a great tool if you are just beginning to build an audience platform; which should start a year before you submit a book proposal and two years before the publication date. Don’t wait… [Read More]
Yesterday was a rough day for those whose online presence is the lifeblood of their business. Authors, included. Early on Friday, August 2nd, a datacenter in Provo, Utah, experienced an outage. Millions of sites came crashing down. Including this one. Perhaps yours, too. Endurance International Group, the parent company of the largest webhosting firms BlueHost, GatorHost, HostMonsters, JustHost, and 50 others, experienced a cascading crash… [Read More]
Why do you need two email addresses? You’ve already got a personal email account with your internet service provider, or your webhosting company, or from Yahoo, AmericaOnLine, or Windows Live Mail. (previously known as Windows Outlook, previously known as Hotmail). Managing another email account sounds like twice the trouble. Relax. Your primary personal email account will remain the address where your personal mail should be delivered. Have… [Read More]
Facebook is important to your marketing strategy, but don’t use Facebook to sell books. Facebook is an online site that extends your social networks beyond face-to-face interaction. Despite the IPO (initial public offering) of Facebook and many attempts to monetize the site, most users ignore commercial advertising on the site. Don’t think of Facebook as a megaphone to try to sell your books or you’ll… [Read More]
Once upon a time, you could make sweeping changes to your privacy settings with a single click of the mouse. Those times are now history – but by knowing all the different aspects of privacy on FB, you can better control who has access to your information on this platform. General Facebook Privacy Settings On the top right-hand corner, past the Open Graph search bar… [Read More]
There was no warning for the average writer when their WordPress Twitter widgets went silent on June 11th, 2013. Suddenly, all their posts and retweets disappeared from their website. Their engagement went haywire as tweets no longer seamlessly streamed into sidebars, and footers, and landing pages. The developers knew what was coming – Twitter was updating their API (Application Programming Interface) from v1 to v1.1…. [Read More]
Although the majority of the traffic to your site will come through social media engagement, an author can’t ignore getting found through Google and other search engines. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, refers to practices used to get a higher rank in search engines – in plain English, it’s the difference between being on the 1st or 7th page of Google results. But, you might… [Read More]
The alternate title to this blog could be “Why do I keep getting my irritating cousin’s political rants in my Facebook newsfeed?” There’s an answer to that question if that’s happening to you, and it comes in the form of a question: “Do you engage with your cousin’s Facebook rants?” Because if the answer is YES, boy, are you in for a revelation – engaging… [Read More]
