Cindy Ratzlaff

Bestselling author, award winning brand marketing and social media pro, Cindy Ratzlaff, creates sales driving campaigns for authors, books and publishers.

Expanding Your Brand

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Brands must evolve and expand or they’ll end up losing market share to competitors. Kodak decided to stick with film. You know how that story ended. But how does a brand create logical brand extensions, products and services that are within their wheelhouse, without stretching their human and financial capital to the breaking point. They frequently take baby steps.

When Oreo wanted to capture more of the cookie market, they created the chocolate Oreo and the double stuffed Oreo.  They didn’t create wagons.  Many authors, entrepreneurs and small business owners struggle with their portfolio of services or products.

You are a brand.  Your products or services are your brand offerings.  When you add something new to your offerings, that becomes your brand extension.

Let’s say you are a successful author.  You’ve written a great book on marketing.  You’ve promoted the book with advertising, personal appearances, traditional media and even social media.  Your brand, to the consumer, is “marketing expert.”  Now you’re ready to add something new to your services.  You might add consulting, coaching, webinars or live trainings.  But if you were to add a cookbook to your brand, you’d have a great deal of work to do in order to bring people along with you as you evolve your brand from business to baking.  BUT, if cooking is your passion and you’re using cooking as a metaphor for blending, mixing and creating a product, you’d have a brand extension.  If the book were about your favorite cookie recipes, you’d need a new branding strategy.

It’s possible for a personal brand to evolve and include a wide variety of products and services.  However, adding things far afield from a brand’s original DNA is best done once the brand is mature and the brand leader (YOU) is well established and has a strong and loyal following.

A Self-Evaluation is Your Road Map for Action

For the rest of us, annual evaluation and planning for our emerging brand life cycle is an exercise worth doing.  As you plan your growth, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Where’s the money? What is my most profitable offering right now? In other words, what are people buying from me now?  When people are willing to part with their money to purchase your products or services, that’s the simplest and purest market research.
  2. Customer needs: are my current clients or customers asking me for additional information or services I don’t yet provide?  If those services or products are within your skill set, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit.  Put energy and time into providing your current client base with what they are already asking you to offer.
  3. Next offer: after I’ve delivered my first product or service to a client, and I know they are happy, what do I want to offer them next?  This is the beginning of your funnel.  Take note of the needs of your clients. See if there are natural additional ways to serve your client base.  Repeat this question after every new product or service to create additional offerings.
  4. Brand extension: once you’ve developed a client base the trusts you and is thrilled with what you offer, you can begin to stretch your brand. This is best done in increments.  Taking our example, the marketing book author might now write about sales by making the connection in the consumers mind between sales and marketing and letting marketers know they also have to be salespeople, especially if they are entrepreneurs or small business owners.  Next, our expert might branch out and claim mind share as a provider of information about product development, distribution and even sourcing.  He or she might divide upcoming product offerings into categories that provide deep knowledge in the how-to aspects of each phase of creating new products or services. Then our expert could create speeches, live events, webinars, DVD series, more books and other creative delivery systems for those new products.

Brand development is like story telling. Don’t try to take your reader from “Once Upon a Time,” to “the wicked witch was dead” in two steps. Tell the full story. Lead the consumer through your thinking process by offering logical, helpful, inventive product and service development. And, every step of the way, double check to see that your brand development is ringing true with your customer base. Brand storytelling is marketing. Your ideal reader or client isn’t interested in a one sentence story that shouts “buy my product, buy my product.” Your idea consumer wants you to paint a picture or a solution, entertainment or convenience that your product will introduce into their lives. They want to see themselves using the product, reading the book or enjoying your services. Your story should reveal a path from where people are now to where they could go if they do business with you.

When you’re clear about your intentions and you have your marketing story polished, then you can add a brand extension that will resonate with your fan base.

 

Bill Gates Tops the Scrabble Leader Board | Facebook adds Subscribe Option to Profiles

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I admit I have no idea if Bill Gates plays Scrabble on Facebook; yet. But I just might soon enough.

Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button.  So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request.  Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages.  You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button.  Why should you or your brand care?  You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle.  However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile.  This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts.  If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see.  For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button?  Why or why not?

*Author Platform* Building Checklist

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Building a loyal, engaged fan base takes time and commitment. Ideally authors would begin building that fan base during the writing process so they could share their journey with the growing fan base.

Besides writing the book, building a fan base is the author’s second most important job.

Fans who know and like the author would watch and take part in the creative process as the author posts about writing, finishing chapters, editing, creating a book proposal, finding an agent, and the exciting ups and downs of submitting the proposal to publishers.  Fans would celebrate with the author as the book is sold and continue their behind the scenes journey through editorial suggestions, jacket design, marketing and promotion plans and ultimately reward the author by purchasing the book at publication time.

I’d like to see publishers give every author a base building checklist with their contract and strongly encourage the author to begin or continue building a strong social presence during the time between contract and publication.

The elements of a good platform building checklist could include:

1.  A Facebook profile in the author’s name.  Building a following on Facebook starts with your inner circle and grows.  Inviting those closest to you, the author, is the ideal place to start spreading the word about your book.

2.  A Facebook fan page for the book.  There are many applications and bells and whistles that can only be used on a Fan Page.  Additionally, a Facebook fan page is indexed by Google and is, therefore, a powerful opportunity to increase the author’s ability to be found in a search–both for his or her name and for the topic and keywords that best describe the book. Live links to the author’s website, on the information page, help keep moving fans toward the home base. iFrames custom designed tabs can be used to create a rich experience, including selling the book directly from Facebook, offering live author chats, a look at rave reviews, and regular updates on the author’s tour or live events.

3.  A Twitter account in the author’s name.  Twitter is a broadcasting and engagement platform that helps introduce an author to a large audience and invite them back to the author’s homebase for a deeper conversation and relationship.

4.  A YouTube Channel in the author’s name.  Almost every author can benefit by creating a home for their videos.  What videos some authors might be asking?  The ones you need to create.  Interviews, messages to fans, reports from the book tour, other short videos that help the fan or reader feel as though they have a relationship with the author.  Authors can even make their still photos into short, professional videos using a free and easy to use service called Animoto.

5.  A blogsite or website.  The blog or website is the home base and all of an author’s interactions on other social sites should eventually invite the author back to that home base to take an action.  That action can be purchase the book, sign up for the newsletter, check out the live events calendar or leave a comment with a question.  Here authors can run contests, giveaways, and increase interactions with fans to build a strong subscriber base.  Using multimedia such as video or audio messages combined with photography will increase fan engagement and help create a desire to revisit the site often.

The key to platform building is consistency, authenticity, value and creativity.  Post daily.  Share your personality. Give readers something they can’t get elsewhere–your work.  Make your fans and followers feel as though they’re in a special club.  Call them by name when you respond to their comments.  Thank them for taking the time to comment.  Let them know you’ve seen and heard them.  In other words, building a social platform is similar to building a friendship circle

Authors, keep writing, and add some social writing to your daily activities to create a vibrant fan base of readers eagerly waiting for your book.

What fan building activities do you regularly engage in?  Do you have ideas you’d like to share with this community?  Please let us know.  We’d very much appreciate the time it takes to leave your comments and will respond to every one.  Thank you.

5 Twitter Tips for Authors and Publishers | Maximum Visibility Playbook Tips

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The book is written and ready to publish. So how do you and your publisher spread the word, create excitement and ultimately drive people to take the action of purchasing and reading the book? These days a well-rounded social media strategy must include Twitter. Twitter is a nimble, real-time megaphone ready to create both ambient awareness (“Oh, yeah, I heard about that book…) and advertorial awareness (I read a great review of that book).

Twitter is to a social media campaign what PR is to a book marketing campaign.

Twitter, however, is not a marketing campaign.  Twitter is part of a full strategic campaign and acts as a megaphone to blast your message to millions of people and invites them to your website, Facebook page or other venue for a deeper conversation. A book marketing campaign needs distribution, point of purchase display, publicity, an advertising concept and a highly motivated author. With those things in place, Twitter can:

  • Share the author’s excitement with followers in real time.
  • Direct people to a link to buy the book.
  • Blast out late breaking news such as media appearances & live events.
  • Share excerpts from the book either in short snippets or via a link to a longer passage.
  • Encourage others to spread the word.

Here are 5 quick tips and techniques that any author or publisher can use right now to enhance a book marketing campaign.

1. Move content. Use Twitter to move content from your Blog and your Facebook posts to your Twitter fan base by installing the Twitter app on your Facebook fan page. This will auto-tweet everything you post on Facebook, with a link back to your Facebook fan page to read any post longer than 140 characters. If you are auto-importing your blog to your Facebook fan page, it will also be tweeted out to your followers automatically, again with a link to continue reading. This serves a couple of purposes. First, it shares content on three different sites, increasing the number of potential readers for every post. Second, it invites Twitter users back to Facebook to become fans whenever they click on the shorten Twitter link. Third, Facebook will have a live link to the post on your blog through Networked blogs. So one post introduces your Twitter fans to two additional points of interaction with you.

2. Increase SEO. Each Tweet is a unique URL and is viewed by Google as fresh, unique content. This Google juice makes it more likely that potential readers and fans will find you and information about your book. Google now serves up Twitter mentions and references on page one for most searches. Strategically include the name of the book, the name of the author, the genre or topic of the book in your tweets. These are your keywords for search engine optimization. Think about it this way. What would someone enter into a Google search to find you or your book? Those are your keywords. Use them strategically in your tweets to help readers find you.

3. The Big Ask. Bestselling authors such as Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jeffrey Hayzlett and Guy Kawasaki all give their fans an emotional shareholders stake in their book projects. They talk about them for months before publication. They ask followers opinions on titles, book jacket design and topics. They share nuggets of what’s to come. They thank followers for helping them through the process of creating a book. Then, when the book comes out they simply and honestly ask their fans to help them spread the word about the new book, and people do, by the thousands. Creating a community that is emotionally invested in you and your work is a powerful marketing strategy but can’t be faked. Authors must be engaged and genuinely enjoy conversing with their followers about their area of expertise. They must have, and display passion. And, this kind of loyalty and relationship building cannot be done overnight. Authors, especially authors with multiple book projects, should consider Twitter engagement to be a regular, daily practice.

4. Google’s Real Time search: Google now allows you to search something called Real Time. So Google your name or the name of your book and in the left hand navigation bar, choose Real Time. There you’ll see if any Twitter conversations include your name or the name of your book. Next authors and publishers can click on each Twitter account mentioning the book or author, follow them and thank them for their comments. A savvy author will then engage that Twitter account in a deeper conversation, turning the casual chat into a fan building opportunity. All of this is, of course, done on a very public platform. The advantages of this are that other Twitter users see you, the author or publisher, engaged in fun and interesting discussions about your book, your passions, your travels and your life. This becomes an opportunity to attract new fans and new readers. Followers are surprised and delighted when authors notice and thank them for their support. This strategy can create a life long fan who will help you spread the message about your work.

5. Tweet Ups: Whenever an author is speaking, doing media or making a bookstore appearance, there is an opportunity to create a Twitter event or a Tweet Up. Plan ahead, just as you would for any event and use an event organizer like Eventbrite or MeetUp to manage your guest list, RSVP’s and invitations. Create a real call to action for the event such as making a special announcement or having a desirable guest speaker or even a high end sponsor offered door prize. Giving followers an early heads-up about a special event with the author is like a VIP pass. Followers want, and need to feel they have a special relationship with the author.  Now, here’s the most important thing. When you create opportunities for followers to meet authors in person, the author must be willing and able to engage in conversation, thank the followers for their support, and spend some time with them. These are mixers and they are social. Authors who cannot or who are not willing to be social should avoid this strategy.

You’ve no doubt noticed a theme in this post. Twitter is a cocktail party and the author can be the guest of honor. But, it’s better if the author is the host and treats his or her followers as the honored guests.

If you found this post useful, please leave a comment. It’s important to me to know what you think so that I can create articles that are useful to you. For more Twitter tips, techniques and strategies, click here. And, thank you for finding me and reading this. I appreciate the time it takes to follow a link and read a blog.

Building an Author Platform | Publishing House Secrets

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You’ve got a great idea for a book, have created an outline, done your research and you’re ready to find an agent and sell your book to Random House.  Having been one of the people who sits at the table, reads your manuscript, proposal or outline and decides whether or not to buy your book, let me tell you the first questions we ask ourselves.

Publishers want to know.  What is your platform?

We need to know how you are going to sell your book.  As a publisher, we’re going to provide professional editing, design services, expert sales people and great distribution.  We’ll put marketing dollars toward selling you book and work hard to give your book the visibility it needs in stores and online so that YOUR fan base can find it and buy it.  It all starts with you.  The publisher wants to know, before they buy your manuscript, what you bring to the table in terms of a ready made audience.

  1. Do you have a radio or television show with a lot of viewers and great ratings?
  2. Are you a celebrity?
  3. Are you a lecturer with many firm bookings for the coming year?
  4. Do you head a vast organization whose members will want your book?
  5. Are you social media savvy with more thousands of followers?
  6. Do you have a large database that can be utilized to rally your fan base to purchase your book?
  7. Have you previously published a bestselling book?

Gone are the days when a publisher could easily take a risk on an unknown writer.  Although that still happens, thankfully, it happens less frequently than one would wish.  So how do you make yourself a more desirable publishing partner to attract the attention and investment of a big publishing house?  You create and execute your own pre-publication marketing plan.  This is a good strategy even if you are self-publishing…in fact, especially if you are self-publishing.

Here are just a few things every author and would be author can do to being now to build a platform that will help promote your book at publication time.

  1. Create a Facebook Profile so you can easily connect with everyone you every met.  Those people are the most likely to want to purchase your book and support your newest endeavor.
  2. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your book so you have a professional page with your book title that will be indexed by Google, increase your SEO and give you a proper place to talk about the making of your book.
  3. Start a Twitter account in your own name.  Every tweet is a unique URL and again, online is all about search.  Every tweet is new content, all new content increases your Google juice, the more Google juice the more people will see your name and find your book.
  4. Write a blog.  Do it on WordPress or Blogspot because both of those platforms are already optimized for search.  You need a blog to communicate longer thoughts than can be done through either Facebook or Twitter.  Additionally, your blog can be reproduced as a “guest blog” on sites with more traffic.  This, of course, increases your visibility and the likelihood that readers will find your book.
  5. Make videos.  Talk about your book or your area of expertise.  Tell or show viewers something they don’t already know that fits in with your book theme or ideas.
  6. Write a book club guide with questions and discussion prompts.  Put it on your blog as a free download for book clubs.
  7. Make your own book trailer for free with a program called Animoto.  Upload it to YouTube, Facebook, and your author page on Amazon.com, as well as your blog.
  8. Offer yourself as a guest on Blog Talk Radio shows, webinars, teleseminars or any other outlet where your most likely audience already gathers.

These strategies take time to implement.  Most of them are free.  Once you write your book, your new job is marketing.  Having a well plotted strategy will help.  What platform building ideas are you employing?  I’d love to know.

Five Questions with the Expert | Children’s Literacy Icon Mrs. P

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Mrs. P’s photo by Jacqueline Veissid

While businesses, public figures, celebrities and authors know the importance of adding social media to their outreach strategy in order to bring their message and brand to the more than 500 million users of various social platforms, the age limitation for participating on some social media platforms has made it challenging to use them to reach children directly.  One team understands that reaching the influencers and the parents is more important than speaking directly to children in a marketing campaign.  The creators of MrsP.com mastered the art of the conversation and are demonstrating the importance of relationships and partnerships when it comes to growing their brand and spreading their message.

The face of MrsP.com is Kathy Kinney, best known for her nearly decade long portrayal of the role of Mimi Bobeck on The Drew Carey Show.  She is well on her way to creating another iconic character in Mrs. P, the fantastically quirky ambassador of reading who shares her love of books through an engaging and interactive website for children.

A cross between Mr. Rogers and Pee Wee Herman, Kathy Kinney’s Mrs. P brings books to life as she reads classic children’s stories in a series of webisodes.

Her talking fireplace, magical bookshelves and games are designed to appeal to emergent readers up through tweens (the scary book room will particularly appeal to this age group).  Mrs. P, herself, graciously agreed to be our guest this week for “Five Questions with the Expert” and share a few of her thoughts about using social media to spread her love of reading. In fact, she was so delightful, she answered a bonus question!

RATZLAFF:

You have a fabulously interactive destination website for children. How are you using social media to reach young readers?

MRS. P:

I’m not trying to reach my young readers directly since most are under the age of 12, but rather their parents and the other adult influencers in their lives — teachers, librarians, literacy advocates and organizations. I have found blogs to be a very effective way to spread the word about Mrs. P, whether as a guest blogger or by enlisting their sites to announce events like my annual writing contest. I’ve been using Twitter to meet these bloggers and fans. But I’m not really interested in showing up Shaquille O’Neal and getting the most Twitter followers in the world, but prefer to connect with people who share my same passion for literacy. I try to have personal and meaningful conversations with my followers and love to share articles about the tremendous importance of reading to children. As much as I’m tempted, because I love to talk about myself, I try not to make it only about me. I’m also proud of the give-and-take on my website. If someone posts news about Mrs. P on their site, we will re-post their story on my site, introducing them to our audience.

RATZLAFF:

How do you separate your Mrs. P persona from the business side of running a website?

MRS. P:

I like to keep focused on my mission as Mrs. P, which is to spread the joy of books and reading. When I receive invitations for interviews, appearances, and business relationships, I ask them to contact my business partner, Dana, who handles that side of the house. She considers the validity of the inquiries and deals with the technical details so that my online presence can just be about Mrs. P’s mission – and having fun!

RATZLAFF:

Can you describe a day in the social media world for Mrs. P?

MRS. P:

I try and ensure that there is something new and fun on my Facebook site several times a week. I have a much smaller audience there than on Twitter, where I make an effort to engage with my followers every morning and evening. I also coordinate with my “elves” to make sure my website has fresh news and engaging messages on my “Did you hear…” page. I’m lucky because there seems to be so much good news lately about my site that I can share with my audience.

RATZLAFF:

Is there any one social platform that performs better than others to help you connect with the influencers who help you spread your literacy message?

MRS. P:

While Mrs. P has very active Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and You-Tube accounts, I do think that Twitter has been the most effective. For example, Everybody Wins! USA, a literacy organization for which I am an honorary board member, will occasionally build Tweet campaigns with us, and together, we grow our audiences and spread news about the importance of literacy.

RATZLAFF:

Have you incorporated video or audio into your social media strategy?

MRS. P:

Video has been a key element in our social media strategy. The team at Mrs. P created a fun music video called “Listen Up, Kids” to get young people excited about reading. We made it available as a free download on iTunes. I asked our fans to post it on their blogs and Tweet about it, and in the first day, we had 25,000 downloads! We also posted it on YouTube to let people know it was free. We had a similar experience with the winning entries from my writing contest. Again, we had over 22,000 downloads the first day by using social networking to spread the word. I think if you have a strong mission and are also willing to give something meaningful away for free, it’s a powerful combination. It’s certainly worked well for Santa Clause over the years, and it’s also built a great deal of awareness for the Mrs. P brand.

RATZLAFF:

I heard a rumor that Mrs. P has plans to create mobile apps.  Any truth to that rumor?

MRS. P:

Oh, yes. The mobile world is a wave I really need to be riding! So in September I will launch a free (there’s that wonderful word again!) Reading Challenge app for the iPhone. It will be a fun and engaging way to test reading comprehension. And it’s yet one more way to bring awareness to literacy and to my website.

Parents, librarians, grandparents and teachers can find Mrs. P on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and of course children can visit her magical library, choose a book from her shelves and have Mrs. P read them a classic.

Facebook for Authors

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Facebook has emerged as a driving strategic tool for authors to use in marketing and promoting their own book or books. This platform is free in terms of initial investment, but very expensive in terms of time. An author, or any other business person for that matter, can make costly errors in setting up and using their Facebook presence IF they do not understand the nuances of Facebook. Here are my top recommendations for authors, speakers, solopreneurs and other business people to consider as they prepare to enter the social media fray.

Facebook is effectively, in addition to being a micro-blogging and communication platform, a search engine. One of the reasons an author needs to be on Facebook is to increase his or her visibility and therefore, help readers find his/her work. Facebook provides three different types of pages to choose from and each has rules, advantages and disadvantages.

Personal Profile
A personal profile is, by Facebook’s own terms of use, a page for people to list themselves by their real name and interact with friends of their choosing. People who connect to a personal profile are referred to as “Friends.” It is against Facebook’s rules to set up a personal profile for your business, your book, your dog or a dead saint. Facebook can, if it chooses, close fraudulent profiles and all the work you’ve done to create that page will be lost along with all of your friends. I recommend that you set up a personal profile, adhering to all of the rules before setting up a Facebook Fan Page (see below). Having a personal profile and setting up a Facebook page from that profile will allow authors to utilize more custom application on the Fan Page. A Fan Page can be created without first creating a personal profile, but doing so limits the customization options available. If the Facebook rules don’t convince you to do this properly, there’s another good reason. A personal profile can only accept 5,000 people as friends. At 5,001, new friends will start receiving a message from Facebook stating that you are over your friend limit and cannot accept any new friends. Trust me and set up your personal profile first.

Facebook Fan Page

Fan Pages are best option that Facebook provides for creating a branded social media presence for you the writer.

This is best option that Facebook provides for creating a branded social media presence for you the writer, for your book, and for your career. People who connect to a Facebook Fan Page must click the “Like” button in order to receive updates from the Page. Once they “Like” a page, they are still referred to by most people as Fans. Because you followed my advice and set up a personal profile first, you can now create custom tabs for your Facebook Fan Page such as “About the Book,” “More about the Author,” “Tour Schedule,” or whatever custom information you’d like to make available to fans. Facebook allows a Fan Page to have an unlimited number of Fans. This is good news for an author or speaker who is working to amass the largest possible list of followers and spread the word about a new book, appearance or project far and wide. Authors can even create an opt-in box and invite fans to subscribe to an e-newsletter, all from a Facebook Fan Page. Facebook Fan Pages are indexed by Google and therefore, they increase an author’s search engine ranking by putting out new, original content regularly.

Facebook Groups
People who join a Facebook Group are called Members. One advantage of Facebook Groups is that they can be made public or kept private. At this writing Facebook Groups are not indexed by Google and that is the single biggest reason for author’s to create a Fan Page over a Group. Unlike pages, groups allow to send out “bulk invites” so you can invite all your friends to join the group. With Pages, you’ll have to invite people individually. Groups are good for spreading a message or brand name through viral marketing, because any group member can also send bulk invites to his or her complete list of friends. But, and this is a big but, Groups are not indexed by search engines yet and that is my number one reason for recommending Pages over Groups to promote an author and his or her work.

I hope this look at Facebook options helps authors, speakers and entrepreneurs start right and maximize their promotional efforts on Facebook. I strongly recommend that all authors create profiles and pages for their work and look forward to answering any questions about the use of Facebook to promote books.

5 Overlooked Visibility Strategies to Improve Your Social Currency

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Some very simple visibility strategies are overlooked and forgotten but can go a long way to jump starting your social currency.  An important visibility strategy for your brand is to continually add reliable, actionable information to your website and social media sites so that body of writing published under your name attracts the kind of potential customers who are seeking exactly what you offer.

5 simple things everyone can do to create brand visibility and increase social currency.

Pretend that you are the customer and you’re looking for a vendor, speaker, author or someone who can create or implement something that serves your immediate needs.  Most likely you’ll head to Google or Bing or YouTube.  What words do you put into that search box to find what you’re look for–you and your company?  Those are the keywords that you’re going to want to include in the messages you are creating online.

Creating an active presence on line reinforces your status as a trusted thought leader in your area of expertise and increases the chances that customers will find you.  Because we all learn in different ways, it’s a good idea to put out your message in a variety of formats so as to engage the widest possible audience.

Let’s look at five great visibility strategies to improve your social currency, engage different consumers, help people find you and keep you on the cutting edge of marketing.

Video Marketing: Adding video to your website, Facebook page, YouTube Channel and even Twitter page is a great way to increase engagement with your fans, followers and potential customers.  These video messages do not have to be long, nor do they need to be professionally produced.  A Flip HD Mino video camera for under $200 can take short, high quality video and loading it to your social media sites is a snap.  Take the Brand New Brand You pledge and add one video to one of your social media sites this week.  Send us a link and we’ll take a look and share your message with our followers.

Audio Marketing: Change it up and make your sites interesting for your customers and clients.  Post a short audio message about some upcoming event or a quick tip.  You can do this right from your phone to your Facebook page with apps audioboo.fm.  Do you have a sale or a special? Share your enthusiasm in your own voice.  Doing this accomplishes two things.  First, it let’s your followers know you are a real person.  Second, it embues the information with urgency and importance.

Photos: Facebook is one of the largest photo sharing sites in the world.  People love to look at photos on line.  Do you have a particularly great looking store window, special display, or attractive entry to your office?  Share a photo and invite people in.

Guest Blog: Write an article in your area of expertise for other blogs to run.  Target blogs that speak to your desired customer base and offer to write and informative article that will be of interest to their fans and position you as an expert.  A recent guest blog I did about my new book on Oprah.com turned into a a 400% increase in website traffic and 1,800 new unique visitors.

Comment: This is an overlooked and underused strategy.  Follow and read blogs from industry leaders.  When you read something you enjoy, leave a comment along with your website link.  But don’t just leave a “great blog,” comment.  Add something to the conversation.  Reference a blog you’ve written that adds new insights.  Suggest additional resources to learn more on the topic.  In other words, be a thought leader by providing value to the conversation.  Do this regularly.  Become a regular reader and comment often.

These are just a few quick tips for building your platform as a thought leader in your industry and increasing your social currency.  What are you doing to create conversations about you?

Publishing Secrets for Authors | Five Questions with the Expert | Writer Alisa Bowman

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This week I’m launching a new blog series called Five Questions with the Expert.  Each week we’ll look behind the scenes at how an expert in the field of book and or magazine publishing is bringing his or her work to a wider audience, and hopeful share some insights into how you can, too.  Our first expert is blogger and writer Alisa Bowman who has just parlayed her wildly popular blog into a book publishing deal.

Alisa has a gift for creating bestselling books.  She has ghostwritten and collaborated on six New York Times bestsellers. Her works have collectively sold more than 2 million copies.  A former magazine editor and newspaper reporter, Alisa has written for Better Homes & Gardens, Women’s Health and many other national magazines. The concept behind her blog, Project: Happily Ever After, won her a book deal with Running Press and her book will be published in January 2011.

Five Questions with Expert Alisa Bowman

Writer, Author, Blogger Alisa Bowman

RATZLAFF:

You have a well-read blog that you’ve been able to spin off into a book deal.  What’s different between blogging and crafting a book?

BOWMAN:

This will sound like a giant, “duh,” but a blog is the short form and a book is the long form. It’s similar to the difference between running a 5-K and running a marathon. For the former, you can probably run the race without any training. For the later, if you try to run it without training and preparation, you’ll end up in the medic tent.

But that’s what many bloggers try to do when they attempt to take the leap from blog to book. Thanks, in part, to online courses and workshops that encourage this, they mine everything from their blog, slap it all together in a logical order, and write a few transitions. Voila, they call this a book. While it might technically be a book — it has 60,000 words sandwiched between two covers — it’s not going to be a book that sells. The best books have a personality (a strong voice) and a hook. They can be summed up in one sentence (the so-called elevator pitch), and they fill a deep need in the reader. They solve a problem–whether that problem is boredom or the need for an escape (for novels and memoir) or something more physical (like diabetes), and they solve this problem in a unique, memorable way.

I have a ghost writing background, so I’ve written many more books than the one that is branded with my blog. (Notice, I said “branded” with the blog and not “based on” the blog). I’ve penned more than 30. For each one of them, I followed a similar process, and that process starts with studying the competition. When I was thinking about the Project: Happily Ever After memoir, I bought and read nearly every memoir that had ever been written. I studied them. I thought about what made some successful and others not so much. More important, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how mine would be different. How would I tell a story about my marriage in a way that had never been told before? How would I address marriage in a new, refreshing way, one that would resonate with readers? What was the one sentence that would tie the entire book together, the one that I could say on TV, “This book tells the story of ….”? To distinguish Project: Happily Ever After from other relationship books, I wrote about topics that most people don’t write about. I wrote about how I was so unhappily married that I planned my husband’s funeral. I wrote about the fights we had over how to fold the laundry. I wrote about sex, and how I dreaded having it. More important, I wrote about embarrassing things: about the envy and jealousy I felt when my husband was unemployed, because, deep down, I wanted the opportunity to be the person on the recliner who watched TV all day long. In writing about all of that, it’s my hope that I created a book that stands out from the others on the shelf. I hope I wrote the first book that allows unhappily married people to feel normal. It’s also, as far as I know, the first relationship book that uses a true story as a parable that others can learn from, complete with tips and a marriage improvement guide at the end. Oh, and it has a happy ending. Oddly, that’s different, too. Most marriage memoirs either start or end with a divorce

RATZLAFF:

How did you grow your blog following from launch to the kind of following that was attractive to a book publisher?

BOWMAN:

In the beginning, I told all of my friends about it, and I begged them to read it. That didn’t work so well. So then got depressed. Then I obsessively checked my blog stats, as if doing so would somehow elevate them. That depressed me even more. Then I read about building a following and everything I read said the same thing: write good content and the following will come. I have to say that advice is pretty much spot on. The following doesn’t come overnight, mind you. There are some bloggers who go from zero to a million visitors in one year, and then there are the rest of us who capture a following slowly over time. But great content is definitely the most important part of the equation. You can’t write a half-assed blog (just as you can’t write a half-assed book). If you don’t put your heart and soul into it–if you are not absolutely passionate about it–potential readers will notice, and they will go elsewhere.

Other techniques that helped included:

  • Hiring an SEO (search engine optimization) expert to help me make my blog more Google friendly
  • Guest posting on larger blogs
  • Getting quoted in the media. One quote in a CNN.com article about Jon and Kate sent 10,000 readers to my blog in just one day.
  • Networking with other bloggers who have promoted my blog to their following, and I’ve done the same in return. I highly recommend blogging conferences, especially the smaller ones like Blissdom and Type A Mom. They allow you to meet other bloggers who will remember you–and who you will remember. These smaller conferences foster a true camaraderie.
  • Writing somewhat viral “list” posts and promoting them through social networking

RATZLAFF:

How often do you post on your blog?

BOWMAN:

I used to try to post everyday, because I’d read somewhere that all good bloggers do that. You know what? I have a full-time freelance writing career and a family. Posting everyday did one thing: it burned me out. When you are burned out, you don’t produce good content. At least I sure don’t.

So now I try to post 2 to 3 times a week. Some weeks, I get on a roll and feel super inspired, so I post more often. But I don’t smack myself on the butt and force myself to post if I’m having a busy day or if I’m not feeling it. I give myself a break.

RATZLAFF:

What other activities do you engage in, online, to help your blog readership grow?

BOWMAN:

I have a strong Facebook presence. It could be stronger (I still don’t have a fan page!), but it has definitely allowed me to capture a secondary blog audience. I’ve friended just about everyone I’ve ever known: high school and college classmates, former co-workers, blogging buddies, fellow freelance writers, family members, friends, and people who I don’t really know but who are in the same networking groups I am. I also allow my blog readers to friend me. My blog feeds into Facebook, and this has allowed all of those contacts to stay up with my blog without going to it. It’s a softer sell than emailing my friends and asking them to check out my latest post. And now most of my friends do read my blog. More important, my fellow freelance writers generally keep me in mind when they are writing about sex and marriage, and they call me to get my take.

I’m also on Twitter, but as most people who follow me know, I’m quite sporadic about my presence there.

RATZLAFF:

What’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to new bloggers?

BOWMAN:

I have three tips:

  1. Be you. Too often people try to copy super successful blogs. This doesn’t work. You have something unique to offer the world. Find it and put it out there.
  2. Be courageous: If a topic scares you, you should definitely write about it. We’re usually scared to write about our weaknesses and our failures, but other people love to read about those topics because it makes them feel stronger and more successful. If you don’t believe me, read Penelope Trunk for a while. She has a huge following, and it’s because she makes her life sound like a daily train wreck.
  3. Be willing to break the rules: Be a nonconformist. No rule was made to be followed 100 percent of the time. For instance, people will tell you that blog posts should be short. You know what? My most popular post to date was 2000 words long. People will tell you that you should post every day. You know what? Tim Ferris only posts once a week and he has more than a million readers. People will tell you that you need to stick to your niche. You know what? Many successful bloggers don’t do this 100 percent of the time. Again, study Penelope Trunk. Her blog is supposed to be about career advice, but usually it’s about her screwed up relationship with this farmer she’s dating and sort of marrying but also sort of not marrying. (Yep, you’re so going over there now, aren’t you?)

I love hearing how writers are crafting a living from their talent and I hope these insights from Alisa are useful to you.  Be sure to visit Alisa on her blog, her Facebook profile, her website and her Twitter Account.  Say hi and let her know you met her here.  Alisa is a great example of a writer who knows how to Create Conversations about You!

Book Publicity | The Top Ten Things Book Publicists Want Authors to Know

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You’ve handed in your manuscript, completed all the edits and now your job is done. You’re thinking that now it’s up to your publisher’s publicity machine to make your book a success. Wrong.

In most houses that publicity machine has been downsized while the number of books needing publicity and promotion has stayed the same. What’s left is a hard-working group of thoughtful people who truly love books; who would spend all the time in the world to get the word out if it was humanly possible; and who need an author’s cooperation, participation and good-cheer now more than ever before. Remember that these overworked people want your book to succeed.

How does one get to be the author whose publicist tells others: “this author was great to work with,” “the author knew the right people and really helped me get the book into important hands” and I would walk through hot coals for my author?”

It’s essential that authors view themselves as a partner in the publishing process and that includes the marketing and publicity portions of the book publishing cycle. To that end, I’ve enlisted veteran book publicist John G. Ekizian to join me in creating this list of The Top Ten Things Book Publicists Want Authors to Know.

Before you turn over the responsibility for communicating your book’s message to the world, remember.

1. You are a brand.

2. Your book is your first product.

3. Your reputation is on the line and if your first product doesn’t succeed, launching new products or books will be much harder.

4. Therefore, you must be a full partner in promoting your book, finding and alerting potential readers and in general, creating conversations about YOU.

Here’s what can you do?

1. Mobilize your friends, family and fans. They really do want to help—but you have to tell them how they can be most helpful. Start with your immediate fan base, however small. Give them early copies of your book or galleys—or even a PDF of your manuscript. Ask them to read it and give you their feedback. Ask them to write a short review and to post it on Amazon.com, BN.com and Borders.com. Tell them not to gush, but to relate why the book moved or informed them. Ask them if you can post their review to your website. Ask them to give their opinion on your Facebook Fan Page, on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Start close to home and create buzz that can build.

2. Influence the influencers: Create a list of the top 25 people in your area of expertise or who write in the same field or genre as you do. Find, read and subscribe to their blogs. Comment whenever they write something that interests you. Become visible, let them know you’re a fan, offer them new content from you whenever appropriate, such as being a guest blogger. You should also consider finding and following them on Twitter and Facebook. Again, interact with them. Pass their blogs, tweets and posts on to others. In other words, hang out on line with people you admire and who you would love to have read your work. After establishing an online relationship, you may have an opportunity to offer them an early galley or ask them to give you a quote. But first you need to be a part of their community and genuinely engaged with them.

3. Find your natural audience: The biggest marketing mistake most people make in book promotion is to assume that everyone will be interested in their book. Books that sell usually begin selling to people who are really interested in the topic. Want to sell a cookbook? Go after the person who has a shelf full of them. Who really cares about your topic? Think about it this way. You were attracted enough to this topic to write a book. Where would you go to learn about you? Would you find the kind of information in your book on CNN? Then that’s your natural audience and you and your publicist should target CNN. Are you writing about romance and mystery? Then maybe CNN may not for you. Every author we’ve ever worked with believes their book is right for Oprah. Not all books are right for Oprah. Watch the shows, see what kinds of guests they book and then make sure your publicist knows which shows most often present the subject matter most similar to your book.

4. Facebook Fan Page: Please create a Facebook Fan Page for yourself. Every author needs one. Name it for yourself, the author. You might call it John G. Ekizian | Author, Speaker. Use your name, then the upward slash and a two to three word qualifier. Those keywords will be useful in identifying you to potential friends and fans and will be Google searchable. Then create a tab with the name of your book. You can add video interviews or author chats that you create yourself. You can use the Events application to invite fans to your personal appearances. You can post news and information about reviews as they come in. This is a wonderfully rich and free tool. Please don’t overlook it.

5. Advertising versus publicizing: Every author wishes that their publisher would place full page ads in the New York Times Book Review for their book. Realistically the more that $75,000 (conservatively) that these types of ads cost isn’t a good investment for your publisher in terms of return on investment. In other words, they’re not recoup $75,000 in books sales from that ad. Publicity is a better investment of marketing dollars because a television appearance, a national publication, a radio tour or other major media can reach far more people than a one-time advertisement in one publication.

6. Webinars and teleseminars: These are the new virtual author tour and can help you reach hundreds and perhaps thousands of potential readers without ever leaving home. A webinar allows participants to view your computer screen and hear you talk as you show either a slide presentation or demonstrate something online. Many webinar hosts also allow for the audience to see you at times during the presentation. Teleseminars are via phone and are audio only but listeners can ask questions via a type-in pod. Both can be very interactive and allow people who might otherwise have not been able to “meet” you, come and hear you talk about your book.

7. Your 30 second pitch: When your publicist meets with national television producers and editors at major publications, he or she has 30 seconds to sell you and your book as a potential story or segment. Help your publicist hone your message down to a short, potent sound byte. Does your book “save lives through new research that proves sound waves are harming children,” or does your book show us “a brand new way to lose weight while you sleep.” These are silly but you get the idea. Think in headlines.

8. Op-Eds: Writing original opinion page articles can be a very effective way to increase an author’s visibility and by association help promote your book. The piece cannot be about your book but must be an opinion about some current affairs topic in which you might be considered a thought leader. For example, if you’ve written a book on World War II, you might write an opinion page article on the lessons learned or overlooked from World War II as we escalate troops in Afghanistan. You’re by-line would include Author of, the title your book. You may not mention your book in the article but positioning yourself as an expert will help you publicist book more media for you. You are sharing your ideas and information because you’re an expert. This part of a visibility strategy.

9. Create Your A List: Pick 10 media targets that you feel are right for your book and learn everything you can about them. Watch the shows, read the magazines and newspapers. Write down the name of the reporter or host who most often seems to be reporting on topics that are similar to your book topic. Share this list with your publicist who rarely has time to watch this much TV. He or she can really use your research skills. This is an excellent way for you to partner with your publicist.

10. Radio: Please don’t forget radio. Both broadcast and internet radio are great ways to reach people who might like your book. Blog Talk Radio and other internet radio platforms are reaching large numbers of people, are archived and accessible on demand and live forever on the internet. Please do not turn down internet radio interview opportunities because you don’t think they are worthy of your time. In fact, while your publicist is working hard on connecting with traditional media, why not reach out via Twitter and Facebook and put together your own Blog Talk Radio tour. Just start talking about your book, offering yourself for interviews, searching and following anyone with a Blog Talk Radio show and engaging with them on your topic.

BONUS TIP: All placements are not equal. You need to get your idea across or the placement is pointless. Working with a talented publicist can help you hone your marketing message into several succinct sound bytes that will be picked up and repeated both online and off to increase your outreach and brand visibility.

Publicity creates conversations about YOU. Be a full partner in making that happen to give your book the best possible opportunity to reach an enthusiastic reading audience.

Get a free copy of "How To Create An Author Brand," a step-by-step guide for developing your brand message.