Social Media activities

Worst Fault When Promoting Your Book

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Top-Error

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I recently received a note from an aspiring author on my LinkedIn inbox (not even sent to me by email!).  She wrote: “So, I took your advice!  You were right!  I am proud to tell you that my book is officially published!  It is called  xxx xxx xxxxx .  Please do look it up.”
When reading this message I cringed – and guess what: I certainly did NOT look it up.  I also must add:  Months ago, I had for about half a day a very complex topic researched for this writer (for free) for which I never got a “thanks” or even a note that she had received my two pages of valuable publishing advice, info and lots of links…
And now she is too lazy to give me a link to her book and wants me to “do look it up”?

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How Would You Feel as a Reader / Customer?
To compare this behaviour to bookstores: Imagine, a customer would go into a store that has no books displayed, but lots of lockers and cabinets, all closed. When the customer asks for a certain book, the sales person just arrogantly points towards the furniture and advises the customer to find it in the lockers.  She wants to sell something – and I have to go and find it myself ???

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How to Make it Easy for Your Readers to Find Your Book
There are so many possibilities to subtly promote your books or portfolio, just add links to everything you write, post, send out or tweet. See here just a couple of examples, certainly many more do exist:

  • email signatures
  • your avatar
  • guest blogs
  • book pages
  • Social Media posts
  • bookmarks and business cards
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Email Signature 
Every day you send out dozens of emails or SMS’ to friends, business colleagues, potential readers or editors … Email signatures (signature lines) are powerful, low-cost, high-return marketing tools for writers.  Very few authors use this free way of getting the emails recipients’ attention to their books.
Create a hyperlink to your author’s website or blog, or hyperlink to your Amazon.com author page. If you are not yet published on Amazon or other online retailers, link at least to your Social Media presence.


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Why an Appealing Avatar is so Important
This was the title of a recent article, where I wrote: “There is more than just your image: To introduce yourself on the web or on Social Media, prepare a short text including links to your website or blog, the major Social Media accounts you have, such as Google+, Twitter, Goodreads, Linkedin etc. and a link to your author page on Amazon, where all your books are listed.

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Write Guest Blogs With a Book Link
A great benefit of writing guest blogs is that you can add a short author bio with up to two links to your books’ page. Many writers have not yet discovered the great benefit of writing a guest blog on a high-ranked blog which means a lot of new readers for their own blog and certainly a lot of potential book readers – if they don’t forget to add a link to their own webpage or book sales page. You cannot imagine how often I have to remind guest bloggers to add a short bio to their submitted article!

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Add Your Links to the eBook and Paperback
No matter which format your book is, it should contain:

  • a friendly invitation for an interview
  • all the links to your blog, website, author page and all Social Media links
  • an invitation to sign up for your email newsletter

All of it after the last book page. However, it is important to add at least your website or blog URL on the first pages as well.  In case someone browses through the “Look Inside” pages of your book on Amazon, they can find your website, even if they don’t order the book from the online retailer right away.

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Add Your Links to All Social Media Sites
Starting a new Social Media presence prompts you to introduce yourself – an important part of your presence that every visitor or follower on your site can see. And a fantastic opportunity to place your websites’ URL and even your book sales / author page. Your descriptions, and author information should be consistent across your entire online and Social Media presences. So you need only one great description including your links, which you can copy/paste to all your Social Media headers! This way all your followers and friends can easily find your books.

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Bookmarks and Business Cards
Use the space on one side of the card for thumbnails of your books’ covers. Take them to conferences and book signings – and everywhere else. Have them always handy. The more your card design stands out and clearly states who you are, the better. Bookmarks and author business cards are great opportunities to list ALL of you links and book sales pages.

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Never let potential readers / book purchasers scramble to find your book sales page or any of your web and Social Media presences – and don’t prompt your readers “to look it up!”  And if someone did you a favor, recommended you and your books, or even wrote a review, then immediately write a thank-you-note!  It’s called politeness, and is part of social networking.  What do YOU think?
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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,140 of them : ) if you haven’t already.  Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? There is also the “SHARE” button for easy sharing at Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

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3 Best Social Media Platforms for New Writer-Publishers

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SocialMedia
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New to Publishing?  Does the sheer thought of connecting with potential readers make you already nervous?  In many of my seminars and during publishing and book marketing consultations I meet authors that are not only new to writing, but also often have no “platform” – which means no blog or website and no Social Media presence, aside from some posts on Facebook to friends and family.

No problem, it’s all a matter of organizing it and not getting overwhelmed!  Here are some practical tips for new online book marketers – that are for independent writers and “published” authors equally important:
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How to Start Your Social Media Platform
Authors can do a lot to be organized and to save time on Social Media – time to write.
First let’s start with some brainstorming:

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Why do you want to make yourself visible as a writer?
Readers need to find you and your book! Your chances to be seen on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes &Noble or Waterstones is about 1 : 6 Million or more, almost as good as winning the lottery…

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What do you want to achieve?
Preferably show your best site to potential readers, reviewers and book buyers, interact with them, network and be sociable. Remember, there are two reasons people why people flock to Social Media: to learn / gain something or to be entertained.

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How do you want to be seen?
As a professional writer certainly, as someone to be taken seriously. That starts with your (not your cats’ or dogs’) photo /avatar and your short introduction. Always remember: You never get a second chance for a first good impression!

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And what do you want to post and why?
Just recently I wrote an article: “What to Post on Social Media”.

– Your Blogs Content and News Content
– Motivational and Inspirational Quotes
– Photos, Videos, Slide Shows
– Curation / Re-Blogs from other Posts
– Polls and Surveys
… and most important: Interactions with your followers
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Always ask yourself: does this post help my tweeps? Does this post entertain?  Are your followers gaining knowledge or learn about publishing news? Will they be happy to see your post?

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The 3 Essential Social Media Platforms for Writers

1. Your Blog:
Content you are writing that can be split in short, single sentences and (together with your blog URL) posted on your Social Media sites. Why your blog sells your books is shown in a former post.  Invite your readers to sign-up for your blog posts, and eventually for your newsletter too.
Some Key Statistics:

• 84 percent of people have bought products based on their description in blogs.

• 25 percent people (25-34 year olds) read blogs every day.

• 1 in 4 people buy something each month based on blog content.

• 18-34 year olds valued blogs as the most important information source when making buying decisions.

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2. Goodreads:
With 26 Million English-speaking readers worldwide the largest pool of potential readers for your book – provided you are following eventually roughly 5000 of them. As more you reach out as greater is your success, and following readers or reviewers is done by a single mouse-click. How to open an author and a book page, to navigate Goodreads and how to start a Goodreads Giveaway is explained in these Slide Shares.

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3. Google+
The greatest benefit of Google+ and their communities is the fact that everything posted there is automatically on Google’s Search Engines and very high in rankings! As with Goodreads, Google+ also offers an author page, but for EVERY book a separate one, plus the possibility to open your own community (up to 50 separate sites). There are no strong limitations how often your book can be shown on Google+. However your followers (preferably readers, reviewers, book lovers etc. ) want to hear more from you than about your book only.

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Before You Start Posting on Your Social Media Sites

  • Make yourself familiar with each detail on these Social Media sites, all the functions and how people interact.
  • First set up folders and files for your images, posts, tweets – and most important for all your passwords, to have them always handy when you work online.
  • To find lots of free images for your blogs use either the “Commons” on Wikipedia or check out the fast inventory of photo-sharing sites.
  • List your posts and tweets neatly in a row on a notepad or word documents, so that you just need to copy and paste into your Google+ page.  Don’t forget to type all your passwords and log-ins immediately in your files!
  • Connect all your Social Media Accounts.  An essential step would be to open a Twitter account, and connect it with Google+, so that all your Google posts go automatically over to Twitter. Set up your Goodreads page, so that all your blog posts are automatically show up on your author page.
    Always type into the search function on top of each site: reader, reading, book lover, bookworm, reviewer, book blogger, avid reader etc. to find the right people to follow.
  • To shorten your links in posts and tweets, use a shortener, such as www.Bit.ly, which you can even use to tweet from their site. And later, if you want to post more on Twitter or Facebook and to be present “around the clock”, use a scheduling program, such as Hootsuite.com or FutureTweets. It will save you a lot of time – time you can use to interact directly with your followers.

There are certainly more Social Media sites than these three pillars, such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest, however a blog, Goodreads and Google+ should be your first choice.

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9 Suggestions: What to Post on Social Media

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Social-Media

Social Media Connects the World

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People are on the Internet for one of two reasons: Either to solve a problem, or to be entertained.   Are you struggling to create daily numerous engaging “posts” on your Social Media sites?  Then you are not the only one on the search of great content. We all want to stand out from our “competition”.  On the other hand, creating content for Social Media should not end up in stress. In a former post I explained that blogs do not necessarily need to consist of written content, but also may be among others, videos, images, curated content, re-posts etc.  The same is true for Social Media content.  How can you achieve this:
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Your Blogs Content
Connect all your Social Media sites and use a scheduling program to post at the best times of the day.  It enables you to publish your message to all of your social media channels at once.  The time you save frees you to communicate with your followers.  Using your blogs content lets you stand out among your peers and makes sure you have original content / messages that no one else posts.  Write posts that resonate with the things your audience cares most about.  Create a document or notepad and start listing your tweets and posts out of short sentences or headlines from your blog or website, add the URL – and voila!  you just have created an archive that you can copy / paste and use forever.
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News Content
Ask questions and tease new stories to encourage people to comment and like. Try to find news in your field that is interesting for your followers. Avoid political and religious topics, as well as gossip. Bookmark the best news sites and comb through them, using their sharing buttons to post on your Social Media sites to save time.  Then spend this time to interact with your followers on a personal level. Relevant News provide something that is shareable, conversational, and engaging for Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social platforms.
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Motivational Quotes
One of the most popular forms of inspirational content are quotes. Nearly everyone loves quotes! And especially quotes with images. Pinterest has helped to make them extremely popular.  Bestselling author Sean Gardner took it a step further:  “I searched online for inspirational content from my supporters, and then started making image quotes with what they wrote and/or said. I believe this is a powerful way for people to connect online.  The greater the diversity of positive, empowering statements, the greater the diversity of people sharing those points of views. ”
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Interact with Followers
Are you a good party guest at the big Social Media party?  Are you commenting or asking questions?  Are you thanking your followers? Invite conversation by asking your followers’ opinions on topics, or asking them to tell you what sorts of content they would appreciate.  Everybody likes being asked, and fans and followers feel extra-appreciated when you fulfill these desires.  It’s all about conversation, that’s why it is called Social Media networking.
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Videos and Slide-Shows
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and creating a short video is very easy these days. Load it up to YouTube or any other video sharing site and post the URL for your video frequently on your Social Media sites.  On most of them visitors can click it directly to watch your content – and generates almost double the amount of visitors / views and attracts more content and likes or plusses on Google+.  The same is true for slide shares

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Photos
When you are scrolling through the feeds on any social network, what’s the first thing to catch your eye?  I bet images!  No question, photos are THE most popular Social Media tool, and more appealing than text only.  Even if you are not a professional photographer you can use fantastic photos on Social Media – for free.  We listed several sources for free photos you can use on Social Media in former blog posts.  Photos generate more re-tweets and likes, but keep in mind that attaching an image to a Twitter post takes up approximately 11 of your characters.
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Promote or Re-Blog other Posts
Retweets are a great way to get more followers.  By retweeting something that links to a website or blog, you are doing a service to the website mentioned and the person who originally tweeted the article!  Social Media is all about networking. Re-tweeting is a very important part of this.
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Polls and Surveys
Most Social Media sites offer this option automatically. What could be a question for a poll or survey? You could ask your readers for example which one of the book covers for your next thriller or non-fiction book they like best. Survey Monkey offers a free program  that allows you to create a survey in minutes with our intuitive web based tool. PollSnack offers a similar program.
Wepolls.com shows in a YouTube video how it works on their site.

 

Contests
For a photo contest, you can encourage users to submit their own photos and videos in order to win a really attractive prize.  Another possibility would be to organize a “pay with a tweet’ contest to win a free book.  In an earlier blog we explained how fast and easy it is to set it up.  Don’t forget to highlight your contest winners in several posts later on.
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Encouraging Results:
 joint research project by Stanford and Facebook where the perceived vs. actual audience sizes of 220,000 Facebook users were studied.  Each user was asked what they believed to be the size of their audience, then the research team compared this perceived size to an actual size, using server logs to gauge the true scope of a post’s audience.

The result: Your actual audience size is four times larger per post than what you think.  Great News!

Read also:
A Myth: Selling Books Through Social Media?
Are You a Good Party Guest?

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Our WordPress blog
http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/ has moved to our web domain at:

https://www.savvybookwriters.com/blog

As we cannot transfer thousands of subscribers we will re-blog for a while.  If you want to get these valuable tips in the future, please sign up when the pop-up window shows up after 10 seconds on the new site, to make sure you won’t miss any articles in the future. THANKS

How to Import Your Linkedin Contacts to Google+

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LinkedIn


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Google+.

In a recent blog post on SavvyBookWriters.com/blog I explained the possibility to connect all your Social Media accounts.  The task was to post / tweet more – in case you need this for a campaign to go viral.  Saving time on Social Media, allows you to interact more with your followers and readers.  But it also show them where else they can connect with you.

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Martin Shervington from PlusYourBusiness explained in a video how to connect your LinkedIn followers with your Google+ account.
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This is How it Works Step for Step:

  1. Log in to your LinkedIn account and on the upper left go to your Connections page and click on “Keep in Touch”
  2. Once you are on the page, click in the upper right on the gear-icon
  3. When the Connection page appears, click on Export LinkedIn Connections in the “Advanced Settings” part in the right column
  4. A new page opens with a button: Microsoft Outlook (.csv file)
  5. Underneath you can see EXPORT, click this which prompts the download
  6. Open the .csv file and you will get an Excel Spreadsheet on your computer screen with all the names and email addresses of your LinkedIn connections
  7. Select all the email addresses in the E-mail Address column and copy them to your clipboard / notepad.

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Hundreds of LinkedIn Connections?
Circloscope.com is the only tool that allows you to find Google+ users from your long list of email addresses and to transfer them in bulk.
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Now you have to decide if you want to transfer your LinkedIn followers by hand into your Google+ circles or if you want to transfer them with one click (paid version of Circloscope.com = $47 for one year).  If you have hundreds of followers to transfer, you might choose this small one-time expense to save lots of time.

  1. 1. Go to the Dashboard function, scroll down to the function “Profiles”, and from there to Email or Google ID’s
  2. Paste the long list with all your LinkedIn email addresses into the field that opens up
  3. Click the OK button and after a moment or two you should see your LinkedIn followers
  4. Filter the ones you are already following on Google+ in the “Filter” menu item at the top of Circloscope.com
  5. On the resulting popup window click the “Circled?” and then click the “Apply Filters” button
  6. Add the remaining people to your new or existing Google+ circles: Click on “Select All” on top of the page
  7. Click on “Action” on top of the page and choose the function “Add profiles to circles” and OK
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Should your LinkedIn account be relatively new with only a dozen followers, you can implement them one by one.  Just copy every email address from your clipboard or notepad into the search function on top of your Google+ page, where it says: Search for people, pages or posts. Google+ will open up their profile pages, if they are a Google+ member, and you just need to click “add”

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If you want your LinkedIn connections to follow you back on Google+ too, you can send them a brief note (in one shot to the entire circle!) saying hello and letting them know you are now following them on Google+ because you are already connected on LinkedIn. To do this, use the function “Also send emails from you to Your circles” at the lower end of each post, next to the SEND button. Just mark it, before you send your note. No one will know that you just sent out hundreds of emails.

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Dear Readers:
Our WordPress blog http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/ has moved to our web domain here at https://www.savvybookwriters.com/blog.  As we cannot transfer thousands of subscribers we will re-blog for a while.   If you want to get these valuable tips in the future, please sign up when the pop-up window shows up after 10 seconds, to make sure you won’t miss any articles in the future.   THANKS

 

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Social Media Obsession? Building Your Networks?

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Jeff Bullas, Marketing and Social Media Guru, explained in a recent post:
“Businesses who are relentless in building a following on social media are in fact creating their own publishing platforms, growing their marketing channels and content distribution networks. It is a digital asset that grows every year.”

This info-graphic shows very clear that Google+ is becoming by far the second most popular Social Media Network on the planet, and Google+  should be at the top of your list when it comes to digital marketing. Check out our blog post: 15 Top Reasons for Writers to Be on Google+
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Take Advantage of FREE PDF copies of What the Plus! Courtesy of Google. Please, share this link with as many people as possible. Get a copy http://goo.gl/eRy6z
Read also a short description: How to Get More Followers on Your Google+ Page

The Growth of Social Media v2.0 [INFOGRAPHIC]
Source: The Growth of Social Media v2.0 [INFOGRAPHIC]
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Search Engine Journal wrote: “Social media has transitioned into an obsession and almost a way of life for online culture, changing the way we communicate with our colleagues, loved ones, and our favorite brands. As social media continues to grow in almost every market, the idea that social media is “just a fad” is no longer worth consideration as more and more demographics move toward utilizing social media on an every day basis.”

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $159 for three months! Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/
to advertise your new book, specials, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 970 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://www.111publishing.com

http://www.e-Book-PR.com/

http://www.international-ebooks.com/

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: Google Events, Google+, Google+ author page, Google+ tips, Pinterest, Social Media activities, social media statistics, Social Media Tips, social networking

Social Media and YOU

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It is no secret that we use Social Media a lot – and all this social media usage can be hard to curtail. Resisting Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and other Social Media sites is harder than other urges, such as smoking, drinking, spending money, sleeping and even sex.  Posting about yourself on Social Media sites rewards the brain the same way food and sex do. Talking about ourselves or books we wrote became a tough habit to kick… Read and see more on this info graphic, created by OnlineCollegeCourses.com

Your Brain on Social  Media Infographic

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More about Social Media:

Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day
Well, maybe add a couple more minutes to these 30 minutes Social Media time, and learn about helpful programs, such as Hootsuite, Tweetadder, JustUnfollow, Manageflitter, Tweetdeck etc. to save time in order to win more time for interactions with your followers.
Read the Help Section
To take full advantage of the Social Media sites, study them well, read the “handbook”, helpful info and hints, set up to help users. Just from staring at the site and trying to figure out how it works, or trial and error actions, you will be only frustrated. Ask a fellow writer or your marketing coach to get even more user tips.
How to get more followers
The importance of having more followers (and following more) and how to find those precious friends has been …. Get lots of tips for your Social Media presence here:
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The Secret of Success with Social Media
Word-of-Mouth Content Marketing
If you’re in the midst of developing one of the more than one million books that are published every year, it’s time to start thinking about how you are going to market your book … because in today’s publishing environment, it’s up to you to build momentum for your work.  However, if all you do on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook is to hawk your book or try to interest agents and editors in your manuscript you are probably not going to get anywhere. This is not to say you can not ever talk about the interesting things you’re doing, this just can’t be all that you’re doing. People on Social Media want content, and sharing content has become one important aspect of it.
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Acting Like a Professional Author on Social Media?
Do you agree that selling books online or in stores is a business? You are getting money for writing and delivering your work, no matter how many books you have written, and no matter if you go with one of the big publishers or if you self-publish. And don’t forget: Many publishers and literary agents have a Social Media presence too. They are using Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Goodreads or LinkedIn and mingle on these sites with authors famous and unknown. Read more about professional Social Media use.
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How Social Media can Kill Students Success
Yet while social media has been lauded for its ability to connect people from all over the world, build friendships, support political causes, and even help people find work, it has also been blamed for a whole host of social problems. Some of this blame, subsequent research has shown, has been placed unfairly, but that doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t pose some real problems for its users.

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.international-ebooks.com/book-promo to advertise your new book, specials or KDP Select Free Days.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 900 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: how we connect on social media, Pinterest, Social Media activities, social media statistics, Social Media Tips, social networking, Twitter Social Media in 30 minutes/day