Cindy Ratzlaff

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

Social Proof for Authors

By Cindy Ratzlaff

In personal branding and book marketing, one term keep cropping up, social proof. Let’s look at what social proof is and how it can best be used to accomplish an author’s primary goals on social media; creating awareness of his or her book and driving purchases of said book.

What is Social Proof?

Social proof relates to the number of followers, friends, subscribers and connections an author has on their social networks and website. It also relates to the number of social interactions one has on their various social profiles. Every platform has an algorithm that surfaces your posts to more people based on the volume and velocity of engagement. So a post that has 30-40 likes and 10-20 comments within a few hours will most likely be seen by significantly more of your fans than a post that gets 5 likes over 3 days.

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7 Ways to Build An Author Platform – A Checklist

By Cindy Ratzlaff

When an author submits his or her manuscript to a publisher, there are several things to go into their decision on whether or not to publish the author’s work. First, of course, is “Is this a well-written book that people will want to read?” The very next question is “what is this author’s platform?”

What is an Author Platform?

An author platform is a suite of sites, tools or outlets through which an author can assist the publisher in creating sales for his or her book.

The publisher wants a partner in the author.

  • A speaking tour with sales opportunities at the back of the room is considered a potential platform.
  • A regular radio show with national distribution or being a frequent guest expert on a national television show is considered a piece of a sales driving platform.
  • Being a previous bestseller is also a part of an author platform.
  • Having a very large e-mail database with a healthy “open rate” could be the type of platform item that could convince a publisher to publish a book.
  • And, so could a large and engaged social media following.

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How To Create A Marketing Calendar | Business Strategy

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Every small business, entrepreneurs, author or brand needs to plan their marketing in advance in order to budget their resources. But what if you don’t have experience creating a strategic, goal-oriented year-long marketing plan? No problem. You can use the tips and tools listed below to map out your strategy for the coming year and take advantage of the natural promotional cycles built into every business niche.

Create a Marketing Calendar Like a Pro

Creating a marketing calendar puts a brand or product front and center so the marketing efforts reach the ideal customer or client. A marketing calendar provides a blueprint for a product launch, helping you develop brand awareness and increase visibility and cement your position as a thought leader in your niche.

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

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15 Simple Mostly Free Facebook Marketing Tips to Try Today

By Cindy Ratzlaff

With more than 1 billion people on Facebook, the sheer volume of potential clients and customers makes this platform worth your marketing efforts. But building a following and making sure they see what you post has become a bigger challenge as Facebook continues to tweak the algorithm in favor of advertising and big brands. But do not abandon the platform just yet.

Here are a few nifty, mostly free, tips and tricks to help your content attract, engage and retain a fan base so that when you have something to sell them, they’re still listening. For more ideas on the specific how-to aspects of content marketing on Facebook, you can employ most of the ideas in 8 Ways to Get Your Posts Seen in the News Stream easily.

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4 Ways to Jack Up Your Customer Experience Marketing

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Social media has entered the grammar school years and is no longer an infant. Businesses who’ve been using social media well are learning that the journey from friend and follower to loyal customer must be a skillfully curated one. The customer experience must be crafted, nurtured and adjusted to fit the tastes of the fan base if a purchase action is to be solicited at trail’s end.

In the infant years, it was enough to make an offer on Facebook or Twitter and provide a link to purchase. That still works, sometimes, for brands who have already established trust and have a history of delivering on their brand promises. If, however, you’re new to social media marketing or are an emerging new brand without a long track record and hundreds of reviews to do the selling for you, paying attention to the environment you create will decrease the time between “hello” and “yes, please” in turn fans into customers.

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Facebook Rolls Out Threaded Page Replies Feature | Social Media Marketing

By Cindy Ratzlaff

by Cindy Ratzlaff

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.

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Turning Likes into Leads and Leads into Customers

By Cindy Ratzlaff

The promise of social media as the top of a profitable funnel can be the shiny object of marketing tools. Converting “Likes” to leads, however, requires a strategic use of social media rather than thinking of social media simply as a broadcasting tool.

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.

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How to Use the Facebook Business Page Post Scheduling Tool

By Cindy Ratzlaff

Maximum visibility for your business or brand is both a marketing and a publicity strategy.  Here’s a tip that’s easy to implement from my Maximum Visibility Playbook favorites for the week.

The Facebook Post Scheduling Tool

Facebook now allows business page admins and owners to pre-schedule their posts up to 6 months in advance. For entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs, this is a time saving tool that will make their social media efforts easier and more efficient.

The help center on Facebook outlines detailed directions, but here are the highlights.

 

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*Author Platform* Building Checklist

By Cindy Ratzlaff

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.

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