social networking for writers

Which Social Media Sites are Perfect for Writers?

Social-Media

 

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook aren’t going away.  And in today’s connected world, customers research their purchases online.  It’s where your customers are, so meet them!

So many times I have heard writers say that social media just isn’t for them. It takes too much time. They are not sure where to start or how to keep it going. And besides, they should be focusing on running their company – not just posting pictures online – right?  Totally Wrong!

“When using social media, take advantage of something major
that those big publishers can’t match you on – Personality.”

Many writers view social media as a ‘free’ way to advertise.  It isn’t ‘free’ and it’s certainly not advisable to be used solely as an advertising platform.  A cardinal rule is to never ask people to buy goods or services.  I might add: never pressure people to like/follow you on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.  Rather, establish an authentic online personality, offer valuable information, analysis, opinion, and inspiring entertainment. Engage!

Here is an oversight of social media platforms where authors should engage:

Twitter
With more than 340 million visitors every month, Twitter offers an excellent opportunity to build a large base of followers.  To get more follows, use hashtags, retweet other tweets, and follow others.  Building a base of followers takes time, but once you reach 10,000 followers, it tends to take off on its own.

LinkedIn
Popular among professionals, with more than 320 million monthly users. LinkedIn is a great way to connect to others looking for consulting and coaching.  It’s also an excellent way to develop a relationship.  The platform is less effective for selling books than it is for selling services related to your book.  Which in turn might lead to book sales!

Instagram
The most popular of the photo-sharing platforms with over one billion monthly visitors, it is a great platform for posting photos of you or your books/services at any events.  Unlike other platforms, where hashtags either are not used (LinkedIn) or frowned upon if more than three are given, most Instagram posts contain often dozens of metadata tags.

Pinterest
The photo-sharing site is excellent for posting pictures of your book covers and other products.  Make sure to include links to the pages where they are sold. Because tagged items in Pinterest can go viral rapidly and show up high on search engines, it can significantly boost your sales.  Pinterest boasts 340 million monthly visitors.

YouTube
YouTube receives one billion monthly visitors and is the second-largest search engine in the world.  An incredible number of people go right to YouTube to see if there is a video on the topic they want to know about.  Because of this, on other search engines, such as Google, YouTube videos usually appear high in the search results.

Facebook
Facebook allows for excellent targeting of prospective customers if you are willing to pay for ads.  It’s not so great for just making posts unless you can develop a solid base of followers who regularly check your page.

Conclusion: Social media engagement is an area where authors can compete.  The barriers to entry are low and the costs of conducting posts and campaigns are minimal.

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GET A FREE eBOOK FOR A REVIEW
Request it by email: 111Publishing at gmail.com
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111 Tips to Create Impressive Videos:

How to Plan, Create, Upload and Market Videos

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BYDH41S/

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111 Tips To Make Money With Writing:

The Art of Making a Living Full-time Writing

An Essential Guide for More Income as Freelancer

https://books2read.com/u/bWZMjz

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111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free:

Detailed Plans and Smart Strategies for Your Book’s Success

https://books2read.com/u/bMre1a

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111 Tips to Get Free Book Reviews:

Best Strategies for Getting Lots of Great Reviews

plus 1,200+ reviewer contact links

https://books2read.com/u/mZ5nx5 

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111 Tips to Create Your Book Trailer:

How to Create, Where to Upload and How to Market Your Videos

https://books2read.com/u/mVZkjr

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Book Marketing on a Shoestring:

How Authors Can Promote their Books Without Spending a Lot of Money

https://books2read.com/u/mZ5gdp

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9 Steps to Take Advantage of Time Savers

Save-Time

Using these tactics should allow you to reach more social media followers and readers in less time – and to post your book sales campaign.

Social Media certainly is meant for networking, NOT for advertising.  However, sometimes there is an exemption, such as a book launch, pre-sale campaign, Amazon Free Days or a Kindle Count-down sales campaign, that you want to announce as often as possible to reach all your followers.

.
Your First Step: Connect Your Social Media Accounts
As more writers are engaged in Social Media and as more platforms they use, as easier it gets! You write the posts – snippets from your blog or short announcements only once, but then you copy and paste them to several of your Social Media sites. Here are some examples:

Goodreads: Import your blog. Authors are the only members of Goodreads who can have blogs, and author blogs are a great place to start a conversation. You can add a link to your personal website or blog.

Google+: Connect your Google+ account with Twitter and everything you post is pinged to Twitter as well. How to set it up via ManageFlitter is explained in this blog post.

Pinterest: Connect with Facebook and Twitter, using their “setting” function.

LinkedIn: Connect your Twitter account with your LinkedIn page

Got 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.
Now you just 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.
More on https://www.savvybookwriters.com/how-to-import-your-linkedin-contacts-to-google/

.

2. Step: Add Sharing Buttons to Your Blog
How can you multiply the number of posts and tweets for your campaign and get folks to share your posts or website content online?  Make it easy for them to share what you have written with their social networks – and forward it to their followers and friends, and these also forward it to their friends and followers …. You get the idea!
The best way to start this process is to include click-able buttons to offer the idea of sharing your article, tweet or post, and make it simple for your readers to post your link to LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and most important: to Google+, and many other social networks, such as Tumblr or StumpleUpon.

.

3. Step: Join Bit.ly or Any Other Link-Shortener
You might know Bit.ly as a tool to shorten lengthy URL’s, such as this posts’ web address from http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/benefits-of-using-bit-ly-for-social-media/
http://bit.ly/NbQgkw

When someone clicks on the Bit.ly shortened version, they are then redirected to the original long URL. Best of all: you can post to several Twitter and Facebook accounts with ONE click.

.

4. Step: Join as Many Google+ Communities as Possible
Posts within a community are indexed by Google and will be found in organic search results – which means higher ranking for you on Google’s Search Engine!  However, do some networking before you post about your campaign for the first time and don’t spam the communities, rather choose those who allow self-promotions.  Best of all: you can start your very own community, where you can post at your discretion!  Important is only that you have lots of followers there.
.

5. Step: Write on More than one Blog – plus LinkedIn
Use this new, free feature to get more exposure for your writing and your books.  This is how it works:
If you go to your LinkedIn homepage you will need to look for a “share an update” box in the upper part of your page and look for a pencil symbol next to the paper clip.  If this is visible, you are ready to publish on Linkedin! Hover over the symbol and it will show “create a post“.  If you click it, you will be taken to a page ready to put your title in, write a new post or paste an article from your blog, website or a previously created content.  It means you can start publishing articles, images, and links to potentially 300 million users on LinkedIn.

.

6. Step: Create Author and Fan Pages
Tips for Your Professional Amazon Author Page
Once your book goes live on Amazon you are eligible for an Amazon Author Central Account – and your very own web page on Amazon! Best of all: There is no advertising on your site, just a large image of your book(s), your reviews and your book’s description. Get more tips here.
Amazon is not the only place where you can have an author page: Google+, Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest etc., they all offer a second page, dedicated to your book or you as an author.

.

7. Step: Invite as Many Quality Followers as Possible
No matter which sites you join, create an attractive profile, complete with an avatar that shows a favorable and professional portrait and an attractive bio.  Display links to your Social Media account(s) in your email signature, your blog or website, business cards – just everywhere.
Re-tweeting and re-posting your followers is a no-brainer.  Be also generous in linking and re-tweeting others.  You do not have to sit all day long on your computer to do this.  Check tweets once or twice a day and pack interesting ones into Buffer who will spread them throughout the day.
Share only valuable content.  Be generous, inspiring, entertaining, provide useful links.  Provide content that people are proud to share with their own followers.
Be selective when choosing followers, avoid commercial account, celebrities and others who will most likely not re-tweet / post your content.  Never buy any followers, these are robots who will not help you!  As an author is looking for readers, book bloggers, reviewers etc. and thank everyone who is helping you to get the word out.

.

8. Step: Write Several Blog Posts Ahead of Your Campaign
Write at least three to five articles about your campaign or your book – either on several of your own blogs or as a guest blog.  Use several angles to get the message out, and write about the benefit of the reader/buyer!  Use for each of your blog posts a different image.  Use the headline and link to each of your posts during your campaign, under a variety of links as explained in the first tips of this article. Example: FREE TODAY: The Wolf’s Moon, ebook, 408 pages, 99 reviews – get this fascinating suspense #Thriller Amazon.com/dp/B0077F0DFI

To get more posts/tweets out, you can exchange the main link with the links of every country your e-book is sold in.  E.g. you might create twelve completely new tweets.  And on top of that if you add to each of these tweets a recipient at the end of the message, for example @ebookPR or @ebooksIntl, you are able to expand your tweets into hundred or thousands more…

Don’t forget to take advantage of the Buffer function that can spread your blog posts over the day – or Hootsuite.com and Futuretweets.com

.

9. Step: Schedule Your Posts at the Best Times
There are several tools you can use: You can for example schedule on Hootsuite or on Futuretweets, (or both) or on other providers, such as Twitterfeed, Buffer, and Twaitter (now Gemln).
Posting links to Twitter between the hours of 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time will give you the highest click rank, especially early in the week. Meanwhile, sending a tweet with a link after 8:00 p.m. should be avoided — as should posting links after 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.  My own experience so far with both, Google+ and Twitter is: 8-9 in the morning, 11-12 around noon, 3 pm and 5-6 pm.  One last tip: when you post on your Google+ timeline, you can also add a personal email to all your followers – hopefully, you have lots of them!

.
Take Advantage of these Time Savers – and Reach more Followers.
These tactics should allow you to post your campaign at least 15 – 20 times per day, without ever repeating the link to your book or your message.

 

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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+

Avoiding Your Readers? Really?

visibility

Publishing is as much business as art. It can be tough to switch hats, but those I see succeeding, have found ways to do both things well. Or as I wrote once: Writing is an Art – Publishing is a Business!

An Author who had already two well-written books out, however, unfortunately with a vanity publisher, who did NOTHING to promote these wonderful books, contracted with us.  Part of our agreement was that we fully market his new book, but that he has to have at least a small platform, e.g. social media accounts at Twitter, Goodreads, Google+ and a current author website. We also needed these accounts to send our huge follower-ship towards this author, and to increase his visibility, which was almost zero.

We set up two Skype sessions to help him to set up these accounts properly (less than two hours in total) and also created 30 – 50 posts and tweets for him. This way, he did not even need to think about what to post, just copy and paste.  My advice to him was to open two folders, create files with all posts in order to be able to copy / paste them onto social media, and another one to store all book marketing images. Just basics …

His Answer to me in an Email:

“I can either be an author who is able to create and write OR I can go to school to learn another subject, ie., computer technology. I cannot do both, because my personal headset doesn’t permit room for anything Stressful VS. Writing. I’m of a highly creative personality, very high strung and full of anxiety to keep up with all of this.
So, I guess the choice is yours to either take the pressure of the social media off me or abandon me. Twenty minutes is enough time to put me over the edge and destroy my ability or eagerness to write. I’m sorry I cannot be all you need me to be. All I can do is what I’m good at: writing.”
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My Polite and Patient Answer:
“As I said, it is a one-time-job to set up these accounts. But we need to do it now, before the book launch. Don’t worry, I help as much as I can. We were so short to have finished the necessary steps of your platform. Google was the last of the social media sites… we have to set up, before connecting them all to save time. Let’s have a break until early next week – and write to your hearts content.”

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But I Was Certainly Not Amused:
Well, can you imagine that any of the big publishers has the knowledge to help their writers with platform building – or is investing time (read: money) to help their authors with social media?  Certainly not!

The opposite!  First thing when you pitch a book to an agent or trade publisher, they will ask you: ”What’s your platform?”

And if you, as a writer, don’t have at least 2,000 followers on Twitter / Facebook, and a website / blog, not to speak about an email newsletter list with hundreds of addresses, a publishing contract will be out of the picture – no matter how good you write.  They are looking for someone with visibility and authority, who has a proven outreach to a target audience. Why? The short answer is: The book’s success.
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Appreciate Every Opportunity to Learn!
… especially if you receive free training from a marketing professional. Writers are also well-suited to write blogs articles. After all, writing is what they like to do, and in order to produce a blog post, they have to write. Web content and blog posts are the substance from which social media posts can be drawn. And they can be writing examples for future readers.
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Don’t be Arrogant to Your Readers!
If you like writing so much: it is a wonderful hobby and for sure very satisfying to create with words your own masterpieces.  However if you want to make lots of money with your books, and you want to have them published, invest a little bit effort to meet your readers.
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Meet Your Readers – Either in Person or Online.
Don’t be the equivalent of a store sales clerk who tries very hard to avoid eye contact with customers, or doesn’t answer the customers friendly greeting. If you are a shy person, write prequels, short stories, blog posts and sample chapters of your books and publish them on your website and on social media.
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Every Business has to Start with a Plan.
If you want to sell your book after writing it, answers to these questions could partially substitute a “business plan”. And if you want to find a publisher or a literary agent – answering these questions before your first meeting is even more important:
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  • Is there a need for your book? Does it fill a void?
  • Why would someone buy your book? What’s their benefit?
  • Will your book always be interesting in the future?
  • How big is your market and what is the demographic of your readers?
  • Who will buy and read your book? How many people?
  • Could your book idea be turned into series?
  • Would your book have a regional or international audience?
  • Who is your competition and how well did their books sell?
  • Where and exactly how will you market your book?
  • How easy can you reach your readership and how large will it be?
  • How many (real) friends / followers do you have on Social Media?
  • Do you have an opt-in email list on your website/blog or already an email newsletter?
  • Could your book be sold in bulk to a company/organization to promote another product or service?
  • In what magazines or newspapers articles, TV shows, radio shows, websites and newsletters could your book be marketed?

Publishing houses can only sell a considerable amount of books and make money when lots of people know about the author and his or her work – provided the author is able to spread the word about the book to a huge audience.
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***Why should someone consider to publish your book when you, the writer, didn’t even think about the future of this book, and who will be its readers?***
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What is an Author Platform?
…. which is not only important for authors who want to sell their manuscript to a trade publisher, but equally or even more important for independent writers who want to author-publish:

Authority: What other articles or books, blogs or articles for newspapers or magazines have you written previously? What’s your credibility? What are your credentials?
Proven reach: For example the size of your e-mail newsletter list, your website traffic, blog comments, high-profile reviews, testimonials or references for your writing from bestseller authors in your genre.
Visibility: What communities are you a part of? Who knows you? Who is aware of your work? Where does your work regularly appear? How many people see it? Who do you influence?
Target audience: Being visible to the right audience for the book you are publishing. For example, if you wrote a book how career women can combine work and parenthood, you should have a large target audience of parents, career women, mommy-bloggers, maybe even kindergarten teachers or psychologists.
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How Can You Grow Your Platform:
Publishing or distributing quality work online, on blogs, newsletters or websites, or articles in magazines and newspapers, taking part at social networks, producing podcasts, webinars or videos for your target audience. Speaking at and/or attending events where you meet new people and extend your network of contacts and your visibility.
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Don’t Give Up – it All Takes Time:
Write content and reach out: Building your author platform belongs to the same project as the book you write.  Use your creativity , and again: write lots of content, such as guest posts, blogs and short stories for weblogs, websites, magazines, and newspapers. Reach out to potential fans of your writing – one reader at a time.
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Bestselling Author Russel Blake:
“Nobody with a brain goes into business with no money, no research, no plan, and no time or effort. That’s the harsh truth. Book selling is a retail business, and retail businesses are promotions intensive. Promotions are a necessary fact of life in book publishing. You have to generate noise – the product won’t do it by itself. There are millions of books out there. Yours are just more books.”

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Have Fun Meeting Your Readers.
Becoming an author-publisher is a long term commitment and requires hundreds of small steps on the path to success! Read more about author platforms, how to establish it and become a successful author, no matter how you publish:

Don’t Give Up! It Just Takes Time!

How to Create Your Author Platform

A “NEW” Way of Book Marketing

 

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How to Create a Social Media Blitz

Social-Media-Blitz


Social Media
 is meant for networking, not for advertising.  However, sometimes there is an exemption, such as a book launch, pre-sale campaign, Amazon Free Days or a Kindle Countdown sales campaign, that you want to announce as often as possible to reach all your followers.

Here is how you can accomplish this without getting your posts or tweets kicked out due to spamming:
.
1. Step:  Connect Your Social Media Accounts

As more writers are engaged in Social Media and as more platforms they use, as easier it gets!  You write the posts – snippets from your blog or short announcements only once, but then you copy and paste them to several of your Social Media sites. Here are some examples:

Goodreads: Import your blog. Authors are the only members of Goodreads who can have blogs, and author blogs are a great place to start a conversation. You can add a link to your personal website or blog.

Google+: Connect your Google+ account with Twitter and everything you post is pinged to Twitter as well. How to set it up via ManageFlitter is explained in this blog post.

Pinterest: Connect with Facebook and Twitter, using their “setting” function.

LinkedIn: Connect your Twitter account with your LinkedIn page

Got 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.
Now you just 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.
More on https://www.savvybookwriters.com/how-to-import-your-linkedin-contacts-to-google/
.

2. Step:  Add Sharing Buttons to Your Blog

How can you multiply the amount of posts and tweets for your campaign and get folks to share your posts or website content online?  Make it easy for them to share what you have written with their social networks – and forward it to their followers and friends, and these also forward it to their friends and followers …. You get the idea!
The best way to start this process is to include clickable buttons to offer the idea of sharing front and center, and make it incredibly simple for your readers to post your link to LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and most important: to Google+, and many other social networks, such as Tumblr or StumpleUpon.

.

3. Step: Join Bit.ly or Any Other Link-Shortener

You might know Bit.ly as a tool to shorten lengthy URL’s, such as this posts’ web address from: http://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/benefits-of-using-bit-ly-for-social-media/

to: http://bit.ly/NbQgkw

When someone clicks on the Bit.ly shortened version, they are then redirected to the original long URL. Best of all: you can post to several Twitter and Facebook accounts with ONE click.

.

4. Step: Join as Many Google+ Communities as Possible

Posts within a community are indexed by Google and will be found in organic search results –
which means higher ranking for you on Google’s Search Engine! However, do some networking before you post about your campaign for the first time and don’t spam the communities, rather choose those who allow self-promotions.  Best of all:  you can start your very own community, where you can post at your discretion! Important is only that you have lots of followers there.
.

 5. Step:  Write & Publish on More than one Blog – plus LinkedIn

Use this new, free feature to get more exposure for your writing and your books.  This is how it works:
If you go to your LinkedIn homepage you will need to look for an “share an update” box in the upper part of your page and look for a pencil symbol next to the paper clip.  If this is visible, you are ready to publish on Linkedin!

Hover over the symbol and it will show “create a post“.  If you click it, you will be taken to a page ready to put your title in, write a new post or paste an article from your blog, website or a previously created content.  It means you can start publishing articles, images and links to potentially 300 million users on LinkedIn.

.

6. Step:  Create Author and Fan Pages

Tips for Your Professional Amazon Author Page
Once your book goes live on Amazon you are eligible for an Amazon Author Central Account – and your very own web page on Amazon! Best of all: There is no advertising on your site, just a large image of your book(s), your reviews and your book’s description.  Get more tips here.
Amazon is not the only place where you can have an author page: Google+, Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest etc., they all offer a second page, dedicated to your book or you as an author.

.

7. Step:  Get as Many Quality Followers as Possible

No matter which sites you join, create an attractive profile, complete with an avatar that shows a favorable and professional portrait and an attractive bio.  Display links to your Social Media accounts in your email signature, your blog or website, business cards – just everywhere.
Re-tweeting and re-posting your followers is a non-brainer. Be generous in linking and re-tweeting others. You do not have to sit all day long on your computer to do this.  Check tweets once or twice a day and pack interesting ones into Buffer who will spread them throughout the day.
.
– Share only valuable content.
– Be generous, inspiring, entertaining, provide useful links.               – Provide content that people are proud to provide to their own followers.

.
Be selective when choosing followers, avoid commercial account, celebrities and others who will most likely not re-tweet / post your content.  Never buy any followers, these are robots who will not help you.  As an author look for readers, book bloggers, reviewers etc.  and thank everyone who is helping you to get the word out.

.

8. Step:  Write Several Blog Posts Ahead of Your Campaign

Write at least three to five articles about your campaign or your book – either on several of your own blogs or as a guest blog.  Use several angles to get the message out, and write about the benefit of the reader / buyer!  Use for each of your blog posts a different image.  Use the headline and link of each of your posts during your campaign, under a variety of links as explained in the first tips of this article. Example:  FREE TODAY: The Wolf’s Moon,  ebook, 408 pages, 99 reviews – get this fascinating suspense #Thriller  Amazon.com/dp/B0077F0DFI

To get more posts / tweets out, you can exchange the main link with the links of every country your e-book is sold in.  E.g. you might create twelve completely new tweets.  And on top of that if you add to each of these tweets a recipient at the end of the message, for example:  @ebookPR or @ebooksIntl, you are able to expand your tweets into hundred or thousands more…

Don’t forget to take advantage of the Buffer function that can spread your blog posts over the day – or Hootsuite.com and Futuretweets.com.
.

9. Step:  Schedule Your Posts at the Best Times

There are several tools you can use: You can for example schedule on Hootsuite or on Futuretweets.com, (or both) or on other providers, such as Twitterfeed, Buffer and Twaitter.com (now Gemln).
Posting links to Twitter between the hours of 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time will give you the highest click rank, especially early in the week.  Meanwhile, sending a tweet with a link after 8:00 p.m. should be avoided — as should posting links after 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.  My own experience so far with both, Google+ and Twitter is:  8-9 in the morning, 11-12 around noon, 3pm and 5-6pm.  One last tip:  when you post on your Google+ timeline, you can also add a personal email to all your followers – hopefully you have lots of them!

.
Take Advantage of these Time Savers – and Reach more Followers

Using all these tactics should allow you to post your campaign at least 15 – 20 times per day, without ever repeating the link to your book or your message.  However, I am sure, as a reader and a subscriber of our blog posts you knew about these tips already.

 


9 Steps to Reach More Followers in Less Time

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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 $179 for three months – 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 1,130 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, Facebook etc.

 

7 Online Marketing Trends for 2015

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Online-Outlook

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The year 2015 is just two weeks old, and you might have read a couple of predictions already in the last days and weeks.  Here are some in terms of digitally marketing books.  Knowing the new trends as an author will help you to change and succeed in presenting yourself and market your writing to an online audience.  These  are my seven predictions for 2015:

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#1 Content is King!
Great content will compensate for the “Facebook problems”. They tremendously decreased the number of news feeds from (business) users and the way businesses can be seen in users news feeds, which forced account owners to change their marketing strategy on Facebook. Businesses will need to find good writers and turn to content marketing in order to compensate the decline of Facebook organic reach.

What it means for author-publishers:
Write short, 300 word articles for your Facebook book pages (not your personal ones) instead of “book ads”.

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#2 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Will Depend on Content Marketing
No more SEO tactics and tricks anymore – which will also improve the search experience of Google users. One of the many contributors to a high ranking on Google is how many websites link back to your site.

What it means for author-publishers:
They can get SEO through blogging, e-books, and resource guides, in order to fully take on content marketing. Way more importantly: write more on Google+ up to 500 words.

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#3 Sharing / Follow Buttons are Imperative!
Get a higher chance of increasing the amount of visitors and also increase reader engagement. In an earlier blog (March 2012) we wrote about the necessity of sharing plug-ins and explained that these sharing buttons can mean up to seven times more visitors.
Blog-Share-Icons-Top-Side Features such as social sharing buttons and social login can do just that.

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure you have all the social media follow buttons (where you can be found), and the sharing buttons for all Social Media on the market. After all there are still people on MySpace…

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#4 Tweets Need to Be Optimized for Twitter’s Search Engine
Similar to GooglePlus, the inclusion of the right keywords in tweets will allow you be more visible in search queries. Using the right hashtags, links, and images will set you up to be more optimized for Twitter searches. With the recent Twitter search engine changes, Twitter achieves one of their long-standing goals of allowing people to search through every tweet, ever published.

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure you have at least 2-3 hashtags on each tweet you post.

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#5 Target Audience Will Be More Important
Authors who do nothing but sell, sell, sell, will get ignored, dismissed and overlooked by followers and readers. Yes, the internet offers marketers the opportunity to have a very large audience. But you need to choose and pick your target audience: book lovers, readers, book reviewers etc.
and really interact with them. It also means dedicating more time to answer reader questions and provide more value online.

What it means for author-publishers:
Choose your following carefully and understand the meaning of Social Media – being SOCIAL and NOT constantly talking about your book!
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#6 Data Driven Marketing Will Be Essential
Trade Publishers and Online Retailers have the potential to capture massive amounts of data related to sales, personal customer information, purchase history, search activity and many more. Data that has proven to be very valuable for them. Authors on the other hand rarely know who their readers are when selling through online channels only.

What it means for author-publishers:
Diversify, diversify, diversify!  Don’t sell through online retailers only. Use your website or blog to sell your books and get your customers data.  There are dozens of ready-to-go online stores available, called “e-commerce” which can be installed in your existing website or blog – relatively easy and quick.  The benefit: Much higher revenues, faster payments and most important: you know who are your readers.
Get in touch with your readers: Install a sign-up form on your website and contact potential readers directly through email newsletters. Offer value and get your future (or present) readers to know. Don’t give your readers data to online retailers for free! Get the data yourself. There are many more tips for getting to know your readers, but this will be a different blog article. Stay tuned.

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#7 Blogs and Websites Must be Mobile Friendly
In 2015 visitors to online presences are growing to over 50% of all users worldwide. Think also about the growth of wearable tech, which is another reason why your website should be mobile friendly.  So, it’s a no-brainer that your blog or business’ website needs to be mobile-friendlyRead my former blog on this topic: 5 Tips How to Create Mobile-Friendly Blogs and Websites.

  • Provide Quick Access,
  • Provide Short Landing Pages
  • Provide a “No-Zoom Page”
  • Provide Value
  • Provide Simple Forms

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure your blog or website is optimized for mobile. And if that sounds to “nerdy” get an affordable freelancer on Elance.com who can do it for you.

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Conclusion:
The need to stay on top of these growing trends will be a priority for all authors in order to make sure their efforts will help to establish their brand, using digital platforms. Valuable tips we provided here on this blog in the last two years will help you to become even stronger in 2015 and we will continue to inform you about everything that could boost the success of your books.

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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 1,160 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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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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Are These YOUR Five Excuses?

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Power-or-sleep

Power or Sleep?

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The new year is just a month old, but what about your resolutions?  Are you sticking to them or do you have excuses why not? The less commitment you have to your resolution, the less likely you are to keep it. Are you really committed to write more – books, articles or blogs – and to establish your author platform and brand?  
Believe me:  it is do-able!  This is by chance my blog number 1,000 in 30 months. Sitting every day for an hour or two and write, 7 days a week, took me a couple of weeks or months to get used to, but soon it became a daily habit to write about a variety of topics – and have fun doing it : )
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Are These Your Excuses:

“I cannot find the time to write.”
Well, this is the truth: There’s no such thing as “finding time”. When you plan to write a book, you need to block out parts of your time to get it done. It might mean to avoid TV watching or to get up at 5am to write. Set up your writing as a priority! You have to create time focus on your project. If not, then forget about writing a book!
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“I don’t know where to start on my book …”
Make a layout, a frame of your novel, note details. Research, research, research… Where do you start?  Sitting in your chair every day at the same time. Start writing. Keep sitting. Write more. Your brain will come to expect it. Your mind will begin to loosen up, and cooperate.

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“I need to be inspired, in order to sit down and write.”
Truth: Inspiration often strikes while we write. So, sitting down and starting to write, or at least to make a layout, or write a short story is a great start to get into the “mood”. If you want to be a good writer, start by writing every day for at least a couple of hours

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“I don’t have time to market my book … I don’t know how or don’t want to do Social Media …” 
You can write as a hobby, no one forces you to sell your book!  And if you have lots of money, just buy advertising on TV or in magazines or hire a media publicist for thousands of dollars – even so they take on authors only, with huge amounts of followers on Social Media and lots of 5-star reviews for books.
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“I don’t have time to learn about the publishing business”
Why not just take on writing as a hobby – and forget about publishing!
Regardless of whether or not you work with a publishing consultant to learn about the business, it is something that MUST be done to ensure your book reaches the public. To have the most success: Before you write or at least before you finish your book.
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Starting a book (business) takes huge amounts of hard work and time, so you better enjoy doing it. Building a business is all about learning new subjects, you are eager to work on, or in hiring a bit professional help and together creating something you will be proud of.
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Psychologist Gary Foster, gives these tips for New Year’s resolutions:

  • Set small goals that are realistic, achievable and clearly defined.
  • Set specific plans that are simple, achievable and can lead to short-term success
  • Aim for and celebrate small short-term successes.
  • Build a simple and structured plan that answers the what, when, where and how questions.
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“Don’t let your New Year’s resolution flop (again). If you want to succeed, plan your goal in 12-week increments,” advise Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, co-authors of 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months.  “It is much more feasible to keep a commitment for 12 weeks than to keep it for 12 months. At the end of the 12 weeks you reassess your commitments and begin again,”
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Another consideration:  Are you a writer first? Or are you writing for money first? If you are writing for immediate income, writing that pays quicker, then choose writing for magazines, the internet or for newspapers, copy writing, resume writing, grant writing etc. which will provide much faster income.

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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 $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! 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 980 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.
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Tagged: discipline, Freelance Writing, New Years resolutions, self-publishing, social networking for writers, writing