Facebook rewards brands for posting pictures by giving those posts higher EdgeRank.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that social media users love inspirational or educational quotes. Your brand can benefit from the quote craze, garnering exponentially more likes and shares than the tip or quote alone simply by creating an attractive poster for the quote. By poster, I simply mean placing the quote on a nice background or block of color to create a pleasing that others will find desirable to share.

I tested free tools this week and here are my recommendations for the time strapped and/or technically challenged amongst us:

Free Tools to Create Quote Posters

Quozio

Quozio was so simple I was able to create a simple quote poster in seconds and post it directly to Facebook. I wish it would let me choose one of my pages versus just posting to my profile, however. A workaround is to do a screen capture of your final quote board and simply upload that screen capture to your Facebook business page. I’ve demonstrated that on my page here.  I could also Pin it or send it to myself or someone else in an email. This tool requires no learning curve, a limited palate of backgrounds and I’ll definitely use this in the future. The bookmarklet for your toolbar will allow you to create a quote the moment an inspiration hits you. The “Keep it” feature saves your quote posters in the “My Quotes” section and you can revisit and use them whenever you need to. This is a free account and just requires you to register by creating your own password.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is not really a quote making tool but I’m including it because with this simple two step process, you’ll love the results, and it’s free.

1.  Upload three photos from your computer to PicMonkey and press “auto-fill.”  PicMonkey will place your photos into a collage that you can download to your computer as a jpeg.

2.  Next open a new powerpoint presentation and drag or insert the jpeg into a blank slide.
Finally, add a text box to the image and enter your quote.

3.  Now take a screen capture. On a Mac you hold down Shift and the Command button and the number 4 to get a cropping tool that will help you capture just a specific area on your computer. You could also drag the original PicMonkey image into a word document, type your quote underneath and do a screen capture that includes the typed quote.

PinWords

Pinwords has some very nice fonts and templates. There does not seem to be any option to upgrade and take off the Pinwords.com logo from the lower left, however. So this is more of a personal tool rather than a business at this point although the site says it is in Beta and hopefully a white label option will be available at some point.

Here’s what the final image looks like on the website Pinwords, and you can see options on the right hand side for sharing. I was quickly able to add this poster to my Pinterest Account and I think I’ll use this again in the future.

Recite This!

Recite This! is a simple, straightforward template that prompts you to type in your quote and pops it into a pre-made template. They have a terrific, very creative set of templates that makes poster making child’s play. Here’s a fun example of one I made in just seconds. You can add your URL in the text and use these images on social media, to dress up a blog post or even in marketing materials such as a landing page or splash page.

BONUS TOOL

Another of my favorite tools for creating images to use throughout social media, although not free, is The Print Shop 2. Ideal for teachers and parents who want to create cards, simple graphics to accompany lessons or make posters for book sales, this tool is just up my alley. I was able to learn to use it quickly and it was inexpensive. You can use your own photos or photos and illustrations from the program. And the best part? No branding from the program. You can see great examples of the way I use this program every day to help build the following for Queen of Your Own Life on Facebook. Each of these vintage images was enhanced with the Print Shop 2 program.

Social media is increasingly visual and an emotional connection to your potential customer is a business tool that can be as effective as advertising. Images help us connect with our ideal audience at an emotional level. Every author, entrepreneur and business needs images to help their posts stand out in social media. Try these free quote making tools to help turn your thoughts into posts that cause your followers to press “share” and help your ideas gain the viral buzz they deserve.

Do you have a favorite graphics creation tool?  Let’s start a list.

Facebook is rolling out the new threaded replies feature today on an opt-in basis. This is a feature brands should find useful for directly responding to comments to create a more personal, meaningful conversation on their business pages. The new feature is called Replies or Reply Links. This feature will allow a page, especially in a very active conversation, to reply right under a particular comment rather than farther down the thread.

Mashable has some good examples with visuals, and here’s a quick screen shot of the message Page admins will receive to turn this function on.

According to TechCrunch a pre-launch memo from Facebook said:

“Facebook replies “may appear differently to each person based on their connections,” Facebook writes. So, for example, if you as a viewer happen to know some of the people in a particular thread, that thread will jump to the top for you, as Facebook assumes you’ll be more likely to want to jump into that conversation. Apart from this, weight is also given to posts that have a lot of likes and a relatively high number of replies. Conversely, threads or comments flagged as spam will drop down the list, and Facebook says it may also “down-rank” comments made by frequent spammers.”

Be on the lookout for your page invitation to turn on replies. Facebook intends to roll this out to every page by July.

To enable the Replies feature on your business page, go to the Admin Panel, click Edit Page, Manage Permission and then Turn On Replies.

I’d love to see how you and your brand are using threaded comment replies on Facebook. You can leave a link here or let me know on Facebook.

Every entrepreneur should have binders full of women (and men) who are resources, teachers, strategists, leaders, contacts and potential partners. Social media provides the digital version of a binder through Facebook Interest Lists and Twitter Lists. G+ has circles and Pinterest Boards. We’ve got Evernote to capture and save links, sites and notes and digital contact lists on our mobile devices that act as simple Customer Relations Management, or CRM, tools.

The resources, education and support I’ve gleaned from my Binders Full of Women = priceless.

Here’s a peek inside just one of my personal “binder,” my Top 18 Top Women to Follow for Business Advice. Each of these women share their expertise, advice, resources and opinions so freely that you’ll feel like you’re getting a mini-MBA just by adding them to your stream. These are in no particular order and every one is provides such valuable information, guidance and inspiration, I recommend you take time to visit their websites and see if what they talk about will help you grow your business.

Top 18 Top Women to Follow for Business Advice

Marie Forleo Marie’s YouTube Channel, Marie TV, has nearly three million views and is a great example of matching the platform to the messenger. Marie was made for TV and she delivers her business advice in such an accessible way that you leave her channel thinking “Yes, I can.” Marie isn’t just a pretty face. She has the chops to back up her advice with real world results. She’s an author, a highly sought after speaker and her A-List address book is the envy of the industry.

Ali Brown When you follow Ali Brown you don’t just get Ali Brown–which would be amazing enough. You get Ali Brown’s whole team. Ali was featured on ABC-TV’s Secret Millionaire but she doesn’t keep her strategies on business a secret. She pays it forward by gathering the best coaches and teachers around together in one spot and consistently sharing top notch information and motivation for women in business. While some of Ali’s business coaching is available only through private programs,  she makes a lot of  high quality trainings and advice, free and available to everyone. Recommended for any level entrepreneur.

Mari Smith Mari lives her message as the relationship marketing pied piper. Mari shares so many strategies and resources that you can discover something new every day. She answers questions, tackles new tools, hosts regular free webinars and has more positive energy than anyone I know. Mari’s tips, strategies and techniques are perfect for beginners and advanced marketers alike. Her heart-centered, cheerleader style delivery makes learning fun and the quality of followers and friends in her various social circles are a fantastic an added bonus. Following Mari Smith is like getting your M.S. (Master’s in Social).

Sally Dedecker lives and breathes the book publishing business. Her deep knowledge of the industry means she understands the ramifications of every change in this rapidly changing industry. Sally is the driving force behind UPublishU, the new self-publishing education day at BookExpo America. She’s smart, connected and if you’re an author, reader or publisher, you’ll want to put Sally on your radar to keep up to date and in the know about the evolution of e-publishing, self-publishing and traditional publishing.

Lena West is a force of nature. She’s a powerful speaker and appears regularly on the Spark & Hustle Tour with Tory Johnson. She talks regularly about the art of influence; how to create it and how to use it to grow your business. She knows what’s she’s talking about and has been featured in major national media like The Wall Street Journal and CNN.

Pat Fortin Mussieux is an author, speaker and coach. Pat models the “if I can do it so can you,” philosophy, sharing her own personal story in a funny, inspirational way. Pat has a laser focus that can help you cut years off your learning curve just by watching, engaging with and taking to heart the pearls of wisdom she shares every day. I want to be Pat when I grow up.

Shelly Kramer in her own words is  “a marketing/digital strategist, geek, tech lover, idea generator, gadget addict, WWF-loving, wordsmith-y kinda gal.” THAT is why I follow her on Twitter. A like-minded digital soul sister, she has an insatiable appetite for what’s hot, what works, what’s new and how it all works together. She’s my geek girl crush and she’s got mad skills.

Francine Allaire has a business pedigree that makes her my secret weapon. She’s a partnership genius who understands that the fastest path to business success is knowing how to create a winning opportunity for both parties in a business transaction. Francine has the ability to look at a challenging business problem and see the clear path from the starting block to the bank. She’s able to take complex concepts and strategies and pull out the plain language and make me understand it. Whether she’s guiding CEO’s to make better choices or revealing the values of collaboration to entrepreneurs, when Francine Allaire speaks, I listen.

Anita Campbell is the founder and CEO of Small Business Trends and her flagship site is a treasure trove of information for any kind of small business from start up to growth phase. Her newest venture, Biz Sugar, is my secret timesaving strategy for finding and sharing great business tools and tips quickly and easily every morning on Twitter. Anita saves me time, points me to valuable information and makes it easy for me to share that information with my followers. Three cheers for Anita who makes my day easier just for knowing her.

Ronda Wada wins my Woman to Watch award. Her intuitive business coaching helps women uncover “The Business in Your Soul™.”Ronda is developing her own brand and brand extensions as she’s helping others do the same, teaching women to tap into and trust their own intuitive guidance, helping them filter the noise and find their true voice and modeling what it looks like to take action and create success when purpose and passion meet forward motion. She’s the next break out star in motivation and inspiration for women in business. Follow her now. Thank me later.

Suzanne Evans will have you on your feet yelling her signature phrase “Hell yes!” She’s a speaker, motivator, coach and an inspiration. She knows only one way: forward. She doesn’t believe in no and she does believe creating five and six figure incomes is possible even in a down market. Just following Suzanne will raise your serotonin levels and you’ll find yourself smiling as this funny, smart drill sergeant challenges you to be all you can be.

Fauzia Burke understands what it takes to hang up your own shingle. She created FSB Associates after a successful career in book publicity with legacy publishers and turned her focus to new media opportunities for authors at exactly the moment when print was disappearing and national TV and radio opportunities for authors were few and far between. Fauzia built on the massive skills she’d developed in book publicity to become one of the premiere web marketing agencies for books and authors. A frequent industry speaker and a HuffPo blogger, Fauzia and her team are influence connectors for books and authors.

Pam Brossman is the creator of She Experts. Pam harnessed the power of video to create her brand at breakneck speed. She had a vision and she used video marketing as the jet fuel to get that vision out of her head and into the world with such clarity that following Pam is like following a map. Watch, learn and replicate to save yourself time, money, frustration and burnout. Be sure to take your vitamins because Pam is moving and shaking and you’ll need every ounce of energy you can get.

Susan Hobson brings the discipline and strategies she used as an elite athlete to her coaching practice focusing on mental performance. Susan played with the National Women’s Hockey league and holds 4 post graduate degrees and certifications. She understands the psychology behind success as well as the strategies to achieving it and this is one amazing woman. So if you want to get to your goals faster and sustain your business success for your entire career, get on board the Susan Express.

Lisa Sasevich teaches high impact sales conversion strategies for entrepreneurs. She specializes in helping business owners create irresistible offers and getting clients to say yes, on the spot, without being a sales-y over-the-top pushy person. This is a valuable skill and she is the mistress.

Rachael Jayne Groover is an international speaker, author and the creator of The Art of Feminine Presence. Rachael Jayne believe feminine intelligence is an asset to be embraced as women build powerful, purposeful and profitable businesses. She’s a nurturing and encouraging voice guiding women in uncovering their own voices.

Lara Galloway is the Mom Biz Coach and I follow Lara for her time management brilliance. Lara is a work at home Mom who manages to build a large and influential following while still having a quality life. She’s my super hero. She tweets, posts, speaks, coaches, partners and still has time for a life. And she’s funny and nice, qualities I value above almost all others.

A. Michelle Blakeley is the founder of Simplicity Inc. Just Googling her name to make sure I had the right link to her website gave me a brand new visibility tip, leading me to a nifty tool called, Vizability. Enough said. If a Google search for Michelle gives you a new tool to make your digital life simpler and more efficient, stop everything and add her to your lists.

I have many Binders Full of Women and I’ll be sharing more of these lists in the near future. These 18 women to follow for business advice bring strategies, branding, marketing and success tools, tips and techniques into my social streams every day.  Let’s expand on this list as a service to one another. Who do you look to on a daily or weekly basis for quality advice and information to get to and stay at the top of your entrepreneurial game?

Entrepreneurs are people who have a great concept or product and a passion to bring it to market. But they may not be trained in all the areas necessary to survive and thrive in the start-up phase of a business. Not many people come to their own business with experience in sales, marketing, human resources, web design and development, supply chain management, graphic design, copy writing, creating a content marketing calendar and accounting.

So it’s not surprising that determining fair market value and setting the prices of the products or services an entrepreneur will deliver is one of the more challenging aspects of business. Many are not prepared for the fact that money is a culturally loaded area and entrepreneurs are often shocked to find they don’t feel comfortable having the money discussion with clients.  They worry their clients can’t afford them or they fear customers will think they aren’t worth the money. These feelings are normal but until resolved can stand in the way of growing a business.

If they don’t make the money decision ahead of time, entrepreneurs can find themselves struggling to close sales; hesitating over the question “what do you charge?” That hesitation and insecurity can lead the potential client or customer to doubt their own judgment in doing business with you. The best gift an entrepreneur can give themselves is clarity about their fees and confidence in the value delivered.

Resolving to value and charge for the service or product you provide is essential pre-launch work for every entrepreneur.

How to Set Your Prices

I have a formula that helps me set prices. Because I enjoy the creative process of client work more than I enjoy setting fees and prices, I use this formula to help me evaluate my new services and products and to set a price I can feel confident about each and every time.  Here are the steps I use to set the price of a product or service.

1. What is the transformation I am offering to clients, customers, buyers?
2. What would I personally be willing to pay for that transformation?
3. How many years of my business experience, training and successful client work went into being able to offer this transformation?
4. What is the cost to create and deliver that transformation to a client through this product or service? (creation, packaging, shipping or other technical factors in creation)
5. Is there a already a market for what I am about to offer or do I need to consider the cost of educating my current customer about the need for this product?
6. Will I need to acquire new customers or will my current client base be my primary desired end user?
7. How many units of this product must I sell in order for me to break even and/or earn a profit? (units can be hours of your time for coaches)
8. Is there competition for this product or service? If yes, what do they charge? Am I willing and able to compete for customers at or below that fee?

Once I have the answer to these questions, I decide on a fee and move on to the marketing phase of my launch.

Many entrepreneurs struggle with charging what they are worth for their own advice, knowledge and experience. The whole question of worth is wrapped up in feelings of fear, doubt, lack, and even empathy for potential clients.  These feelings make it is likely they’ll struggle when setting or raising their prices. Second guessing the worth of a service or the ability of your potential customer base to pay your fee can leave a service provider doubting themselves and that doubt can be communicated to clients and potential clients, leaving them feeling unsure, confused and wondering if they’ve made a good investment.

Give your clients the gift of your confidence, clarity and integrity by setting your fees in advance of your discussions with them. Are you charging what you are worth and feeling good about it?

Ranking through search engines like Google, Bing, YouTube and others should be one of your goals. After all, if people don’t find what you’ve written, you’re a diarist, not a teacher, coach or business blogger. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re creating products, services and content as a business and want to increase your search ranking and help new clients discover you, there are a few visibility and ranking strategies to keep in mind.

Helping potential customers and clients find you through search is one of your most important marketing strategies.

Five Strategies for Boosting Visibility Through Search

1.  Match Your Content to Your Brand Promise.  This is your number one strategy. Google and other search engines factor into your credibility whether or not people re-enter their search terms after being directed to your content. In other words, if Google recommends your content to someone who searches for “life coaching,” but finds that most of the people who click on your site need to search again because you don’t share any thoughts about life coaching, why to engage a life coach, what life coaching can do for people or any other relevant material, then Google will downgrade your reliability on this topic. Make sure that the content you are posting is a good fit for the keywords you are using. “Bacon” is a great search term. Everybody likes bacon. But if you don’t sell bacon, teach bacon recipes, share bacon-related news or in any other way talk about bacon, Google will penalize you for using the term “bacon” as a keyword.

2. Create a Positive Digital Footprint.  Create a detailed profile on LinkedIn with a keyword optimized bio, photo and clear descriptions of your current business as well as links to previous work. Connect your blog and consider connecting your Slideshare account so you can easily demonstrate authority by sharing presentations through Slideshare. Upload a current professional head shot and make sure that potential customers or client can easily identify you, understand exactly what you offer and connect with you. Create social media profiles with keyword optimized bios and the same or a similar photo on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and depending on your brand, Pinterest. Demonstrate authority in your field by communicating in your true brand voice on each of these platforms with consistency, clarity and authenticity.

3.  Pay Attention to the Metadata. The individual keywords and phrases you use as descriptions on social media sites, blog posts and websites are metadata. Metadata is what helps search engines find you and recommend you when people search for what you have to offer. When people are searching for what you have to offer on search engines like Google, they are highly predisposed to take an action. They’ve professed a need, hopefully been pointed to your home base and now it’s up to you to convert.  Think about metadata like digital breadcrumbs. You are leaving a trail so people can find you.

4.  Create a Path to Purchase.  You’ve optimized your keywords, left digital breadcrumbs, put out your welcome mat through social media and now you have people on your website. What do you want them to do next; sign up for a newsletter, buy a product, book a discovery session with you?  Make their next action step crystal clear and easy to take. Add your opt in box to the landing page. Welcome them to your site with a video that gives them an opportunity to know, like and trust you. Give them an incentive to stay through a free offer.  But you need to know and you need to project the exact next step you want people to take. Don’t leave them guessing.

5.  Dare to be an Actual Person. There are many sophisticate ways to help verify your authorship to search engines and these are two quick and easy ones I recommend doing right away.  Create a G+ account for yourself.  Hyperlink your G+ account to your byline (see above where I’ve done this) in your blog posts to help Google verify that you are who you say you are.  Link your YouTube account to your G+ account as well for the same reason.  Authority trumps nearly everything in search.

I use multiple tool to increase my visibility and ranking on my brand keywords, and you should too. Don’t rely on any one method of boosting your visibility, but instead diversify and help people find you on or through multiple platforms. Earned traffic is traffic that comes to you because people follow the digital breadcrumbs of your content and stay because you deliver what they want and need. Paid traffic comes to you through ads, promotions, partnerships and joint ventures. Paid traffic is a good way to increase your visibility but focus on earned traffic first and explore paid traffic when you’re sure your site delivers on your promise and your content creates repeat visitors.

All of these brand building strategies are relatively easy to implement and can help boost your visibility. Which one will you try first?

by Cindy Ratzlaff

A strategic alliance is a relationship between two (or more) parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need while remaining separate businesses or entities. Partnering with people or companies who have a similar customer base must benefit both parties equally and have full commitment buy-in from each partner.  When planned and executed properly, a strategic alliance can exponentially increase the success of a campaign or launch.

A winning strategic alliance benefits three parties; you, your partner and your customer.

In it’s purest form, there is a strategic alliance between authors, booksellers and publishers. They all benefit by the increased awareness for an author’s work when the author does publicity, the publisher distributes and promotes the book in multiple outlets and the bookseller displays the book, hosts an author event and/or hand sells the books by recommending it both in-person and on it’s website. This type of strategic alliance is institutionalized and everyone knows, by nature of their business, that they are implicit partners.

It’s not as clear, for most entrepreneurs, who would make an ideal strategic partnership for their niche.  Here are 5 tips entrepreneurs can use to find and leverage win-win strategic alliances.

Who Helps You?

Every business or entrepreneur uses the services of other businesses to execute or deliver their services. Go through your monthly bills and look for companies who offer services that your ideal customer might need. Your client is more like you than you might realize. If you sell tires, your client has a car. If they have a car, they need to change the oil. Who changes your oil? Contact that local business and brainstorm ways you can offer a discount during a specific time period on both tires and oil changes when purchased as a bundled offer. Then both companies can promote the message that customers will save money if they make these purchases now and each business introduces their customers to one another.

Who Do You Help?

Think about how you help your current client base. Do you offer professional photography or video editing service to help local entrepreneurs create digital collateral for their websites? You might consider approaching these clients to form a strategic alliance of local merchants to create a “Shop Local” campaign in their stores and online with signage, flyers and live links to each other on their websites. A special promotion giving new customers a discount could be part of the campaign and the partners could agree to each create a business card sized punch card that would encourage new customers to visit each business in the strategic alliance during the promotional period in order to quality for a grand prize drawing. Each of the partners could contribute a modest budget toward purchasing a grand prize that would be desirable to the common customer base. For example, local business owners might chip in to purchase a $500 gas card as the grand prize or a $500 Visa Gift Card; both prizes that all of their mutual customers would find appealing.

What Do You Offer to Their Customer?

Before approaching a strategic alliance partner, do a little research to make sure that what you have to offer is highly desirable to their customer base. A strategic alliance must provide value for both parties in order to succeed. That doesn’t mean you need to offer similar products or services. A good strategic alliance can introduce customers to a new product or service but that introduction needs to be perceived by the customers as a very valuable new opportunity brought to them by someone they already trust. Trust is the currency in this exchange and when taking your proposal to a potential strategic partner, make sure that your offer will reflect well on them, first and foremost.

What Do They Offer to Your Customer?

Let’s say you’ve done a terrific job of identifying a potential strategic alliance partner and you’re clear about what you could offer to their customers. Now it’s time to evaluate what they could offer to yours. Your customer database or store traffic are very valuable business assets. You must not squander their positive impressions of you and what you offer by recommending products or services to them that they don’t want, need or simply seem like promotion for the sake of promotion. Your strategic alliance promotion must feel be a valuable added offer on top of your usual products or services. It can encourage them to try something new. It can incentivize them to make a purchase now rather than in the future. But you don’t want to offer sky diving equipment to your aquarium enthusiast clients. In assessing a good strategic alliance, keep the end user at the top of the decision chain. Ask yourself if the combined offer would be valuable, interesting, and reflect well on you as a business resource?

What Next Step Benefits Both Businesses and the Customer?

Once you’ve sourced your strategic alliance partnership, decided on the combined offer, agreed on both the join promotion and the individual promotion, it’s time to decide the ideal next action you’d like your new joint customer to take.  Would you like them to “tell a friend,” register for a newsletter that alerts them to upcoming sales, try a new product or review a product or service? Think about the ideal outcome of this strategic alliance and create your follow up funnel to guide your new leads to take that action.  If growing your database or getting more “Likes” on your Facebook page is a logical next step, then ask. Simply say “If you liked this special offer, we hope you’ll like our Facebook page to be the first to know about upcoming valuable special offers.” Or, “We’re going to bring you more special offers throughout the coming year, so be sure to register for our coupons and discounts newsletter here.”

Where to Look for Strategic Alliance Partners

Susquehanna is a local bank that is very proactive about promoting their business customers products and services. They provide a place where business accounts can display their brochures, business cards or special offers. This positions them as a strategic partner in the success of local business, which is perfectly in alignment with their own business. When customers succeed, so do they. They are a part of the business community in which they are located. Think about who else might also have a reason to be interested in your success?

The Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies, the local trade schools, even grocery chains or office supply companies all benefit through your success.  Think about your community as an ecosystem. When one business is healthy, there is a ripple effect. Thinking about other businesses in this way can open up your mind to new strategic alliance partnerships.  Would it benefit your brokerage firm if you gave a free talk about how to use social media to promote small businesses?  Would your local college or high school like to host a panel discussion about marketing with you as the moderator? Would a relocation company see the value in offering a free consultation for your services in their “welcome basket?”

Not a local company?  No problem.  Your town or village is simply bigger than most. On the web or through social media, you’ll still find natural circles of interest where plenty of potential strategic partnerships are possible. A group of inspirational bloggers can add one another to a blog roll on their websites to introduce their current readers to new blogs they might enjoy. A website designer and a social media professional could mutually recommend one another through a strategic alliance.

Creating a winning strategic alliance for entrepreneurs and small business owners is as simple as keeping the customer’s needs front and center and making sure that the new, combined offer is twice as valuable as either partner could offer alone.

Have you created a strategic partnership that worked?  We’d love to hear about it.  Feel free to post a link to your strategic partnership offer and tell us a little about how your created a win-win situation for your mutual clients or customers.

If you write it, they will come. IF you go find them and lead them to it. ~ Cindy Ratzlaff

These three inexpensive, but effective, strategies will help self-published authors present their work to book buyers. As an author who has been published by a legacy publisher and as a self-published author, I’ve employed these strategies myself in both cases and can attest to their ease, cost effectiveness and efficacy.Author Central

Author Central is a free feature of Amazon.com and self-published books need to be on Amazon. Amazon is one of the most trusted online booksellers and people feel comfortable purchasing from Amazon. Being there is a key element in a good distribution strategy. Author Central provides authors with a page for their photo, bio, promotional videos, blog feed, Twitter feed, and promotional tour schedule. An Author Central page is indexed in search on Amazon and will be served up to book buyers searching for an author by name. It’s also a good tool for introducing an author to new readers. This is free to set up and every author should take advantage of this marketing real estate.  The author’s page on Author Central will appear at the bottom of the sales page for their book and gives readers more information about the author at point of purchase; right when they’re making the decision whether or not to buy the book.

Facebook

One billion users is a very large ecosystem and most authors already have a personal profile. There are several very sophisticated marketing opportunities on Facebook, but here are two free and easy ways to begin.  Upload a 403 x 403 pixel photo of the cover of the book to Facebook and write a post announcing the publication.  At the end of the post include the direct link to the page where the book can be purchased; Amazon, Barnes & Noble, author website or other. Next mark the post as “Life Event,” a Facebook designation found in the upper right hand side of the status update box. The choose “Published a Book” from the Life Event Options. Facebook will create a large, 2-column posting with this update and send it out into the news feed to nearly all of the author’s connections. This one action significantly increases the visibility of the newly published book within the author’s own circle of contacts.  Keeping a close eye on the comments for this post and responding with a request to help spread the word can mobilize the author’s friends and family to help with promotion. All hands on deck should be the self-published author’s watch words.

YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine, behind Google, and is owned by Google. Creating a Book Trailer, similar to a movie trailer, and posting it to YouTube gives the author a high value marketing piece to share on social media, in blogs and on YouTube itself. Authors can create a 30 second video that includes images, words, a link to purchase the book and even music without any special equipment or knowledge at Animoto. This wonderful free tool has easy to use templates that make creating a 30 second digital commercial for a book simple. To make longer videos, remove the Animoto logo and access a library of professional templates, authors will need a pro account, which is $240 per year, or click on the Animoto link above and get a 20% discount (full disclosure: signing up through that link gives readers a discount and I get a little something from Animoto).  I’ve been an Animoto pro user for 3 years and cannot recommend it enough for authors. Here’s a sample of one of the first Animoto videos I created. It took me 10 minutes. It’s fun, easy and authors can upload the video to their Author Central page, YouTube, Facebook and their website.

There is so much more that authors must do to market and promote their self-published books, but these three free marketing strategies are a good beginning. Create an author profile at Author Central, add a Life Event on Facebook and produce a book trailer video at Animoto to upload to YouTube and share around the web. In fact, I invite authors to share the link to their Author Central pages or Animoto book trailers below to promote their books to other readers and to encourage new authors to use free marketing and promotional tools.

Time spent creating a detailed marketing calendar directly correlates to your launch rate of success.

A well developed marketing calendar will ultimately save time, money and frustration in your marketing efforts. A calendar will keep you on track, give you deadlines, and help you plan budgets, human resources and product development. Building your calendar helps you think through all the steps of a launch and is worth the investment in upfront time to increase the probability of successful goal completion.

A good marketing calendar should incorporate all of your marketing activity and include detailed week by week activities for at the upcoming quarter, highlights for the next two quarters and broad stokes for the final yearly quarter. Additionally, I like my calendar to include planned upgrades for equipment, training and travel for live events. I also like to add a post-campaign review to assess successes and misses.

Traditional Marketing Cycles

Start with a blank 12-month calendar.  Every niche business or industry has a traditional selling cycle.  If you’re in the diet and health industry, you’re peak periods are January, April and August.  If you’re selling real estate, you know people like to relocate during the summer so their kids can start the new school year in their new school district.  If you sell calendars, you know that retailers buy in the spring and sell in the fall. You know the rhythms of your particular industry. Begin by filling in the monthly themes you might use to promote your product.  I’ll use book publishing as an example to illustrate some known selling opportunities. Use these to jump start your creativity and fill in at least one marketing opportunity for each month.

• January: Diet, Health, Fitness, Organization, Resolutions
• February: Heart Health, Black History Month, Valentine’s Day
• March: March Madness, St. Patrick’s Day, Women’s History Month, Garden Planning
• April: Women’s Fiction, Diet, Earth Day, Prevention of Animal Cruelty Month,
• May: Cinco de Mayo, Spring Cleaning, Mother’s Day
• June: Father’s Day, Graduation, Beach Reading, Vacation Ideas
• July: Family Reunions, 4th of July, Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining
• August: Back to School, School Sports, Professional Football
• September: Organization, Parenting, Educational Activities
• October: Breast Cancer Month, Men’s Fiction, Politics, Activism, Fall Travel
• November: Thanksgiving: Great American Smoke Out, National Adoption Month, Pre-Holiday Gift Ideas and Deals
• December: Holiday promotions, end of year sales, big percentage off sales, pre-new year special offers

Brand Specific Marketing Opportunities

Next, decide on at least one customized promotion for your product or service per quarter in the coming year.  For example:

• First Quarter:  Buy One, Get One at 50% Off
• Second Quarter: Bundled Offer – Get one free product with the purchase of any two products
• Third Quarter: Free Offer to Build Your Mailing List – create a downloadable free report, checklist, video or e-book of value to your ideal client and offer it to those who sign up for your mailing list.
• Fourth Quarter: Social Media Only Offer – create a special discount that is only visible on a custom app on your business Facebook page. Promote it through your email marketing and offline signage by saying “Like us on Facebook for a very special offer.”

Optional Calendar Strategies

Fill in any additional promotions, software and hardware upgrades and investments, training to add new skills for yourself and your staff, live events you’d like to attend for networking purposes, live events where you’ll  showcase your products and any other special activities you know you’d like to incorporate.

Calendar the Execution

Every entry in your marketing calendar needs to be supported in order to go from idea to revenue generator.  Assign dates  to both the creation and the execution of each step in your marketing plan. When you support a marketing strategy with a full campaign cycle of consumer touch points, you create the impression that your brand or product is “being talked about everywhere,” and that’s exactly what you want. For example, the following marketing activities can and in most cases should, be used to support each promotion:

Advertising: Where you advertise depends on where your ideal customer spends time. If your demographic is on social media, Facebook ads can be effective and inexpensive. If your customer is likely to search Google before making a purchase, Google keywords advertising will connect you and your customer at the exact moment they are looking to purchase what you offer. If your customer reads the newspaper, that’s the way to go or if your best clients subscribe to your newsletter, then a targeted e-blast with a special offer can create sales. Think about how your customer is currently finding you and amplify. Your best advertising may be to pay a referral fee to your already satisfied clients to recommend your services to their friends.

Publicity: Publicity can include interviews on radio, TV and in print as well as guest blog posts on high traffic sites. It can also be useful to create press releases to post to press release sites where smaller media outlets scan new posts for story ideas. Publicity can be self generated through creating videos for YouTube, blog posts, and podcasts. Every piece of content you create and post means a bigger digital footprint for you, your brand and your products.

Social Media Campaign: Contests, giveaways, special discounts and informative posts all create excitement and visibility for your promotion. On social media remember that people are more social and less excited by a hard sell. Create promotions that are fun to share, excite people with their value or make people smile. They’ll share more and increase your reach. Garnering likes, shares, retweets, pins, diggs, and other forms of approval and word of mouth are the holy grail of promotion. People are more likely to act on the recommendations of their friends.

E-mail Marketing: E-mail still returns good value for most businesses. Make sure your subject line is clear and conveys value and your offer is worth the time it takes your customer to read the email. Reward them for opening your email by making your promotion one that creates customer confidence and trust.

Events: Live events are are the perfect time to showcase your product or service. If you can demonstrate or provide samples of a product or can answer questions about your services, the live event should be added to your marketing strategy. Live events include conventions, conferences, workshops, webinars, teleseminar, meet-ups or any other gathering where your ideal customer can be expected to attend.

Point of Purchase Display: If your product or service is purchased online, then your point of purchase is a website and specifically a sales page. If it’s sold in a store or at the back of the room after your speech, then your point of purchase is a physical location. Developing a look and clear communications collateral to capture eyeballs at the point when your ideal customer first comes in contact with you and your brand is essential to a successful marketing strategy.

Distribution: Having enough of your product or having the bandwidth to deliver your services means planning ahead. Does your product need to ship? What are the printing and shipping costs? If your product is available in retail, are your retail partners aware of and ready for an uptick in demand during your promotional periods? Have you encouraged them to stock up during your ad campaigns?  If your product is a service, would you be able to deliver if more people signed up than expected? Can you deliver if fewer people sign up than expected?  These are questions you need to address before your launch so your marketing efforts are thwarted by a lack of product or ability to deliver.

Supply Chain: Make sure that your vendors or delivery systems are tested, ready for launch and that you have all the support you need to take advantage of the wave of demand generated by a well executed launch. For example, if you deliver a product virtually, are all your auto-responders written and ready to land in purchasers in-boxes thanking them for their purchase and directing them to the next action you want them to take?  Is your webinar platform able to handle a larger than expect crowd or can you upgrade to a bigger “room” if your launch is highly successful? Is your opt-in or sales page funneling interested parties into your email list and tagging them with the campaign that caused them to join? Or if your product is at retail, is your supplier ready for the increased demand, ready and able to ship quickly or do they need something more from you? Is your merchant account able to take credit cards and are they aware of the increased activity you are expecting so that they won’t freeze your account temporarily?

Going through the planning and development phase of creating a long term, and project by project, marketing calendar gives entrepreneurs a way to organize marketing activities and a blueprint for execution and accountability.

Strategic Influence Building

I showed him how to put each of those top 25 influencers into a Facebook Interest List, which we called A-List Influencers.  Now he can filter his news stream each morning and quickly scan the posts of the people he most wants to connect with and add to their conversations, comment, compliment, create value and in general develop a relationship with these highly desirable contacts. Facebook will always revert back to the standard news feed view but any time he wants to check in on his A-List Influencers, he can do so with just a click.

Less can be more on Facebook by using Interest Lists strategically.

Interest lists are Facebook’s built-in tool designed to allow anyone to filter the Facebook news feed so that you, the user, can see just those people or pages that are most important to you. You can create many different lists.  For example, an entrepreneur might have a list called “Entrepreneurial Tips,” and add the pages that give them the best business advice and ideas. Then each morning they can filter their news stream for an “at a glance” way to quickly scan the tips and ideas from their favorite sites.

Credit: @istock photo, Muharrem Oner, fotosipsak

An author might create a list called “Book Review sites,” and add just those people or pages that talk about books. Each morning, our author could  filter the stream to see just those posts and interact with, comment on, share or otherwise join in the conversation on pages and with people who are most likely to be interested in her own work. Then she can better find and form relationships with like-minded people.

What Interest Lists Can Do for Your Brand

Interest lists not only help you organize the content you’re most interested in seeing on Facebook, but they also give you a way to demonstrate authority in a niche and teach others to follow you on Facebook for useful advice and information about your niche. By creating your own interest lists, giving them clear, keyword rich titles, and filling them with people and pages that provide valuable content and inviting others to subscribe to your list. This accomplishes several things.  Your list provides a digital legacy for you as:

• a way for you, and anyone who subscribes to your list, to filter the news stream to see the posts of influential people
• a resource with a desirable list name such as “A-List Leaders,” curated by you, for influential people to be included on. I guarantee that the people you add to your A-List Leaders Interest List will be happy to be on your list.
• a one click solution for others to follow your list and see you, the creator of the list,  as a  valuable resource of information and connections
• a permanent place both on your own list (always add yourself) and as the creator of the list as the list is shared with the friends of those who subscribe to your list

How to Use Interest Lists You’ve Created

Here are just few easy ways to increase your visibility with Facebook Interest Lists.

Share the direct link to your new interest list on your profile, your business page and on other social media sites such as Twitter.

Promote the link to your newest resource on the homepage of  your website. You might even consider creating several lists and adding a highlighted box on the side of your website with a headline such as “More Great Resources to Follow,” so others can easily find and subscribe. You can:

• Share the link to your lists on your Facebook Business Page. Write a short description of the list so fans understand why this list is so valuable. Demonstrate leadership by sharing the resources available within this list.  You’ll grow your influence by sharing. Repeat this type of sharing whenever you add someone new and valuable to your interest list. Tag them on Facebook to let them know they’re included in your list.
• Tweet the link to your Interest List, one tweet at a time, to each of the influencers on your list saying something like “@BrandYou, I find your social media content so valuable I’ve added you to my Social Media Hot Off The Presses list.”
• Share the link to your list in presentations to clients.
• Add the link to your Interest List to your email signature.
• Promote the link to your new list in your email marketing as a valuable resource.
• Create a graphic with the title of the list and add it to your website with a hot link to the live list.
• Pin the graphic from your website to Pinterest.
• Promote your list through an update on LinkedIn.

By adding someone to a desirable list, you’re starting a conversation and inviting others to join in.  You’re praising someone and you are associating your name with theirs, ambiently, in the minds of followers. You can make your lists public so others can subscribe or you can keep them private.  A consultant might want to create a list of clients to keep up to date on client activity, but may not want to share their client list publicly.

Your lists, and those you subscribe to, will also appear in the Interests section of your bookmarks on the left hand side of your news feed. Simply click the list’s name to see all the recent posts and activity from the Pages and people featured in the list. This is a time saving tool and a visibility tool.

Facebook Interest Lists are a simple social strategy tool to save you time and frustration and to help you maximize your own person ROI on Facebook.  Are you using Facebook Interest Lists strategically to increase your visibility and grow your social influence? I’d love to see your lists and invite you to post a direct link to your favorite Facebook Interest List here for everyone to follow.

A conversion focused social media strategy should bring a lead into the marketing funnel, capture the lead, create the opportunity and incentives to convert the lead (through either a sale or a partnership or a request for further information), engage that new partner/client and motivate the partner/client to transform into a brand evangelizer by providing them with the tools and incentives to recreate the cycle.

Social Media is a massive permission based marketing opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Social media platforms are where a large pool of potential clients spend their discretionary time. Developing a brand messaging strategy to engage with these potential customers requires understanding the language spoken on each social platform and integrating the social campaign with off-line campaign.

Let’s look at a core marketing tool, Point of purchase or POP. In a grocery store, book store or other retail outlet, business owners assess the consumer’s shopping patterns within the physical store and place seasonal or promotional items in the spot most likely to be browsed by the shopper. POP pricing is set based on the #1, #2, #3 most visited spots within the retail store. For example, table displays in the center of the aisle directly inside of a bookstore or the end cap displays in your grocery store all catch your attention more than products on the shelf in their respective sections. So these POP opportunities are more expensive for the individual product producer.

But with social media, your brand can plan for high traffic POP at a fraction of the cost of retail placement. By combining promotions off-line with the focus on-line in social media, a business or brand creates the impression of being everywhere, being desirable and being important.

On-line entrepreneurs and small businesses with no physical store can plan a lead capture and conversion funnel on social media by thinking about the platform as the physical store. Paying attention to “traffic patterns” on your social sites is valuable market research about when, where and how to communicate, capture, convert, retain and inspire your social media customer.

Funnel tools, the engagement cycle and the unique social language combine to create a psychological profile of the ideal customer and a good social media strategy is constantly evolving based on that profile. Social media is a permission based marketing platform. Keeping that permission to promote is a top goal of the marketer. As long as the potential client allows a business to stay in their sphere through “likes,” comments and shares, the company has an opportunity to hone their message until they meet the needs and desires of their ideal customer and bring them deeper into the social selling cycle.

The Social Media Funnel

A social media funnel map strategy is similar to the in-person strategy and includes:

• attracting ideal client
• lead capture of highly interested
• segmentation of action takers
• target consistent offers to most likely to buy
• identify frequent buyers and make special offers
• approach power users for partnerships
• nurture success in partnership by providing tools, training and strategy leadership

Pre-Campaign Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask

Assessing the strategy for an individual social campaign takes into account specific goals such as recruitment, launching a new product line, increasing brand awareness, re-energizing an aging or under performing database. Pre-campaign questions for entrepreneurs and business to ask themselves might include and should address the following:

1. Who is the ideal end client?
2. Which social platform do they spend their discretionary time on?
3. What keywords speak most directly to their passions, needs, fears, desires?
4. Demographically, how comfortable are they with on-line purchasing?
5. Test #1: Can they be incentivized to provide their email for a gift, a contest, special offers or other goods and/or services?
6. Can your CRM identify which leads engage most often and move them into a side funnel for more targeted promotion?
7. Test #2: Can this “highly interested” funnel be converted to take a monetary action?
8. Segment the “highly interested” funnel list into an “action oriented” list.
9. Approach the “action oriented” list with solution to their most compelling desire; earn money, have more free time, get free products, build a business, attain social status.
10. Solve the compelling need through organization’s unique proposition.

A conversion based funnel cycle works because it moves a prospective client through a pre-set path of identifiers and rewards. Consistency and targeted delivery are core metrics in a successful conversion based funnel.