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

By Cindy Ratzlaff March 12, 2011

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.

11 Ways to Use Twitter Lists to Increase Brand Visibility | Maximum Visibility Playbook

By Cindy Ratzlaff January 29, 2011

One of the most often repeated objections to the social media platform Twitter is that it’s a loud, noisy and crowded platform and it’s difficult to find, follow and gather followers who are actually interested in your brand or product offering. You can increase your chances of finding these pre-qualified followers, those most likely to want what you offer, through a strategic use of Twitter lists.

Twitter lists are an underused secret weapon in social media marketing.

Use Twitter lists to find people to follow and to group influential people together on Twitter so you can quickly and easily see what they’re tweeting every day. Twitter lists can also be used to demonstrate leadership in your area of expertise and provide something of value to your followers by offering them a convenient way to follow others. And, for those with locally based businesses, Twitter lists can be a powerful tool for alerting people to your area of influence, location and specific interest.

Here are 11 ways you can immediately implement the power of Twitter lists in your business.

1. Connect with Industry Leaders. Create your first Twitter list and call it (Your Industry Here) Superstars. Go to your Twitter account and enter the name of one of the most admired leaders in your industry in the search bar at the top of your screen. Click on the “Follow” button under the picture or avatar of @industryleader. Next click on the downward arrow just to the right of the “Follow” button and a drop down menu will say “Create a List.” Click on “Create a List” and a pop-up box will appear. Here you can name your list “@MyIndustry Superstars.” Underneath you’ll have the option to describe your list. Enter: “People and organizations in My Industry that are helpful, show leadership and really know their business.” Then click “Save List” in the lower right hand corner. Now @industryleader is on your list. Your new list will appear on their Twitter profile page, at the top right hand side of the page under “recently listed in.” People added to your list will know that you consider them to be a superstar or whatever attribute you’ve ascribed to your new list, giving you visibility with top industry leaders. Contintue to add to your new list as you find and follow other inspirational or educational leaders in your field. As you add new followers, put them into lists such as “My Industry Resources.” Keep your most important keywords in mind when creating lists and incorporate them whenever possible. Your lists will each have a unique URL and are, therefore, indexed by search engines.

2. Attract a Local Based Following. Use Twitter Lists to find and follow quality leads in your local area. Go to the search bar on your Twitter Account and type in #yourcityname. Click on one of the Twitter accounts that comes up mentioning your city. First add this person to a new list called “MyCity Resources.” Next, look to see what types of other lists mention this person. Look for lists that fit your “resources” concept. When you find one, click on the list link. You’ll be taken to that list’s page. Across the top of this list, you’ll see the words tweets, following, followers. Click on Following. A screen will pop up with the Twitter names of everyone on this list. Go down the right hand side of this list and click “Follow” for those accounts you want to add to your “resources” list. Once you click follow, you’ll also need to click the downward arrow to the right and check the box that tells Twitter to add this person to your “resources” list.

3. Use Newly Created Lists for Visibility: Go to your homepage on Twitter. You’ll see these words across the top of your screen: Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches, Lists. Click on “Lists.” Choose one of your newly created lists and click on it. Now, the only tweets showing in your stream will be tweets from people on this particular list. You can quickly scan their activity and choose someone to retweet, comment on, praise or ask a question. Simply mouse over the bottom of the tweet you’ve chosen and you’ll have the option to retweet or reply. Do this for at least one or two different people on your list every day to increase your visibility, to demonstrate a desired relationship or connection with this Twitter account, and to be seen engaging with resources and leaders in your area. Make sure your tweets to these accounts add value, and not noise, to the stream.

4. Share Your Lists: Share your growing “Resources” or “City” list several times a week on Twitter to attract people in your local area and people interested in your business. Click on your list. Copy the URL of that list from your browser window. Paste the link into the “What’s happening?” window on your Twitter page and send this message: Check out this great list of fun places to visit in MyCity! If you need to shorten the URL to fit it into the tweet, go to bit.ly, shorten the link, then copy and paste the new shortened link into the tweet.

5. Add Yourself to Your Own Twitter Lists: Increase your visibility by adding yourself to your own Twitter lists. Just as we recommend going to the pages of other Twitter users to find lists to follow, they’ll be coming to you. When they click down the list and follow people, one at a time, we want them to find and follow you. To do this, enter your own @yourtwittername into the search bar at the top of your screen. When your twitter name shows in the stream, click on it. The right hand side of the screen will now show your profile. The words “Edit your profile” will be on the left and our familiar downward arrow on the right. Click on the downward arrow and check off the boxes for any and all lists to which you’d like to add your own Twitter name. It’s that easy.

7. Connect with Others and Make Yourself Known: Request to be added to appropriate lists of other leaders in your industry or city. When you find a list that you’d love to be on, send a @DM or @reply to the person and say “I’d love to be added to your New York City Businesses” list! You can reciprocate by adding them to your lists to complete the connection.

8. Broadcast Your Lists to the Listed: Let others know when you add them to your lists. Whenever you add a particularly high profile or valuable networking contact to a list, Tweet to them and tell them. “@IndustryLeader, I just added you to my Industry Superstars list.” Then include the URL. You’ve engaged with them, added them to a list, promoted your list and increased your visibility all while building a relationship with them.

9. Follow Whole Lists at Once: At the top of every list, there will be a button that says “Follow This List.” This will copy the entire list and make it available to you on your page so that you can check it regularly. It does not, however, follow each individual user. Use this for very large lists from professional organizations you might want to check in on but don’t necessarily want to see individually in your stream every day. This will create a link from your page directly to the Twitter account that created the original list. A small icon of their avatar will appear next to the list on your page. Strategically, this is another great way to honor the original list builder and is a valuable way for you to connect with very large lists and high profile creators.

10. Increase Your Lists: Invite Twitter followers to be included on your lists. “Hey Philadelphia. Let me know if you want to be on my new “Philadelphia Resources” list.

11. Broadcast Accolades: If you’ve received awards or been praised in the press, let others know via lists. Create a list that includes everyone who received accolades and name the list appropriately for that award.

I invite you to take a look at examples of these Twitter strategies on my Twitter account, and please let me know if you’d like to be added to one of my lists. If you use Twitter lists in a unique and powerful way, please share your strategies here so we can all employ them. If you found this article helpful, please leave a comment.

6 Easy Ways to Start Using Social Media Marketing | Social Media Checklist #1

By Cindy Ratzlaff December 21, 2010

The sheer volume of social media technology platforms could make a grown man or woman weep as they try to navigate the landscape and place themselves or their brand in the marketing mix. Here’s a quick down and dirty checklist of social sites you need to include in your first round as you stake your space in the social media world and build your brand’s social currency and visibility.

Isn’t it time your brand reached out beyond your current base and joined the social mix?

Facebook: More than 500 million users. Enough said. You need to be here with a Profile, at the very least, and preferably with a Fan Page.
Twitter: Come on. It’s 120 character micro=blogging. You can find the time. Note: Each tweet can be 140 characters but keep it to 120 so others can Retweet you and help your info go viral. Set it up and commit to posting regularly to grow your social influence.
LinkedIn: You simply must be on LinkedIn. It’s the yellow pages of business professionals and it’s becoming more interactive and important every day. Resolve to sign up, build out your work history and information slowly and join the digital workforce.
Blog: Content is king and some sort of blog—be it WordPress (my favorite) or another solution—is a necessity. You need a platform to post interesting and useful information in more than 120/140 characters and in an open forum. You can link to your blog on Twitter and Facebook to drive additional interest in your content. Blogs can be short, long, written, audio or video. Whatever content delivery system fits your personality and brand is the right system.
Calendar: Keep a notepad of ideas that occur to you throughout your day. These can be your posting or blogging inspirations. Whatever you do, or whatever product or service you provide will be of interest to your readers, fans, and followers. Make an editorial calendar once a month and let this serve as your social media marketing checklist.
YouTube: YouTube is the second largest search engine around. Habits are changing on line and people are flocking to YouTube with their “how-to” and “who is” questions. You don’t have to be a celebrity or even a polished professional to reap the benefits of being on YouTube. Create slide shows, photo and message montages and video messages and house them on your own YouTube Channel to increase your social visibility.

Social media is like a megaphone to help you rapidly expand the reach of your branding and marketing message. But you have to be there to use the power of this medium.

How to Increase Your Twitter Following

By Cindy Ratzlaff December 14, 2010

The question I’m asked most often is, “How did you grow your Twitter account to more than 47,000 followers?” So here’s my list of what I do every day to create a follow-worthy Twitter account.

Consistency, frequency, specificity, likability and careful monitoring will help you build a powerful Twitter presence.

Consistency and Frequency: Because the Twitter news stream is fast moving, getting your brand message noticed requires that you be present with new messages every single day and several times per day for best results. I try to post at least five times per day during peak user times. When I do this, my account increases by 50-75 users per day without any additional efforts on my part. I use a site called Hootsuite to schedule my posts so that even if I’m otherwise engaged during the day, my posts will still be present.

Specificity: I want to attract clients and customers who are interested in learning how to use social media to promote their brands. Some of those clients will hire me as a speaker and others will hire me as a consultant. Therefore, I focus the majority of my Twitter activity on education based marketing. In other words, I share what I know freely to demonstrate my knowledge and attract people who want to know what I know. I tweet about classes I’m teaching, speaking engagements I’ve done, social media tools I find useful, social media marketing strategies and digital gifts. I use the Twitter yellow pages, Twellow, to find new Twitter accounts to follow. I follow about 100-200 new accounts daily, carefully selecting accounts that use the same keywords that are of interest to me. In this way, I’m building a following of people interested in my area of expertise.

Monitor and respond: You’ll learn what your followers want to hear from you by monitoring your account for feedback. When you get no feedback at all, that’s a message. Change your output regularly until you hit upon that portion of your brand message that resonates with your followers. Check out the link called “Lists” on your Twitter profile. This will tell you a lot about who your followers think you are. After all, your brand is not what you think it is. Your brand is what your followers think it is. Every day I check the @replies on my Twitter account and respond to anyone who reaches out to me. I check DM’s as well. I follow anyone who follows me and I unfollow anyone who does not follow me back within a one month timeframe. I want my Twitter account to be actively engaged people, interested in conversing and sharing ideas, so I’m not afraid to trim the account and delete those who are not interested in a two-way conversation.

Likability: People do business with brands that they know, like and trust. So personality is very important in your social media outreach. I try to intersperse tweets that show who I am as a person, my sense of humor, my inquisitive nature, my pleasure in chatting with and helping others along with those education based tweets. The kind of client I am trying to attract will want to work with someone who is smart, fun and nice. I regularly mention people by name in my stream. If someone reaches out to me, I’ll reply with both their Twitter handle and their real name to let them know I’ve noticed them and appreciate their conversation.

Thought leader status is afforded to a brand who shares new information, links to sites that will be useful to followers, gives advice, discusses breakthroughs in their industry and provides information about live events that might be interesting or educational. If you do these things daily, your Twitter following will grow rapidly. How do you grow your Twitter account? Let’s share our ideas and tips with one another here.

Top 8 Thought Leaders I follow on Facebook and Why

By Cindy Ratzlaff September 18, 2010

As any professional will tell you, keeping up with professional journals, lectures, whitepapers and the like is a significant part of staying current on your business. Social media makes this a little easier and instead of pontificating on this point, I thought I’d demonstrate by taking you through what I read everyday and why and share how this fits into my MVP Strategy or Maximum Visibility Plan for creating powerful awareness for your brand.

Here’s a list of the top 8 thought leaders I’ve book marked in my A-list.

Every morning I log onto Facebook, first thing. There I’ve set up a Facebook list called A-listers. This list captures those thought leaders that share great links, create important content and whose interpretations of my business arena are important to me. I click on this list which filters my news stream on Facebook to bring in just the posts by the people on my list. Then I can quickly scan this list and see if there is anything I’d like to share with my fans. I make it a point to give a nod to the originator of the content and to the person who brought it to my attention. Why? First, because it’s the right thing to do. Secondly, because by doing so, I demonstrate to these thought leaders that I value their contribution, appreciate their content and continue to look to them for leadership. I claim a place in their community as an evangelizer of their brand. Thirdly, my name appears in news streams loosely associated with their name. This is something called ambient awareness. I didn’t originate the content, but I passed it on and named them. My name and their name are read together by more people as the content is reshared. In other words, I endorse their work and introduce them to others, thereby sharing valuable content with my fans.

Who do I read and why? Here’s a list of the top 8 thought leaders I’ve booked marked in my A-list.

1. Mashable: Mashable is my number one read because he and his highly credible team of uber tech and social media obsessed reporters are 100% on top of all things related to technology, people in technology, applications, social media, and virus attacks. They give me the how, the why, the who and the what and keep me in the loop. If you follow only one blog on social media, make it Mashable.

2. Mari Smith: Mari Smith is the Facebook guru. She continues to invest her time and talents in knowing every nook and cranny about Facebook and she is a serial sharer. She’ll tell you everything she knows and more. She’s funny, generous, gifted and worth your time. By calling Mari a Facebook guru, I actually do her a disservice because she’s more than that. She’s an expert in relationship marketing, whatever the platform. Trust me. Add her to your everyday reading list.

3. Dan Schawbel: Dan is the Personal Branding Guru and author of Me 2.0, and his insights into the brand that is you are simply brilliant.

4. Darren Rowse, ProBlogger: Darren’s tag line is “Build a better blog.” He’s not kidding. Daily posts with actionable ideas for creating a more vibrant blog that people will read and want to follow. I bow to his brilliance and read him every single day without fail. He’s an evangelizer for the blog as your core content base and other social media sites as your syndicators and I think he’s a rock star in both information and delivery.

5. Adam Urbanski: Adam is the king of marketing strategies and is someone who truly understands how to connect the social aspects of social media to the deliverables of selling. He’s a consultant, teacher and businessman who delivers real content that can be implemented by businesses, solopreneurs and brands alike.

6. Read Write Web: This is a blog that does reviews of new technology products, comparisons and analysis. It’s ranked by Technorati as one of the Top 20 blogs in the world for a reason—simply stellar information delivered in easy to understand and digest bits. Go there now.

7. Miles Austin: Miles writes a blog called Fill the Funnel and his pithy, eclectic mix of commentary, review and hot news are all about web tools for sales.

8. Natalie MacNeil: Natalie’s blog She Takes On the World by Natalie MacNeil which gives great career advice to women. I like her style, content and message very much.

There are many, many more that I read during the course of my week but these are my never miss blogs. They keep up current, energized, engaged and motivated. What are your favorites?

Reputation Management | Crisis Management

By Cindy Ratzlaff September 1, 2010

One of the biggest concerns companies have about venturing onto social media is a fear that detractors, competitors or others who dislike their brand will comment publicly, venting their problem and leaving open the door for a lot of negative viral buzz. Their thinking is that if they aren’t on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any of the other major sites, those naysayers or disgruntled types will have no public venue through which to flog them. The fatal flaw in this strategy is that angry consumers or clients don’t need a homebase through which to damage a company and it’s reputation. They have their own homebase through their individual social media platforms. When a plane is stuck on the runway for more than three hours, hundreds of passengers will take to Twitter with the hashtag #Airlinenamefail or something similar and soon enough thousands will be aware of their plight.

Your brand is what your customers think it is, not what you think it is. So listen, engage, and if the message you want is not the message they’re repeating, alter your strategy.

If a company stays away from social media so as to avoid negative online feedback they will accomplish two things:

They will be unaware of problems that might have been easily resolved but when left alone may become much bigger problems.
They will be miss a valuable opportunity to fix minor problems and turn cranky customers into happy evangelizers.

Mashable wrote an excellent post recently sharing three terrific examples of how major brands monitored, managed and resolved (or not) some important brand missteps and criticism.

Bottom line: The conversation about you is going on with or without you. You can only influence it if you are aware of it. Every company should be active on Facebook and Twitter, at the very least, to monitor and influence their brand reputation. Every company should have a google alert set for their key words and get that digest daily. Every company should search their brand name or the name of their current campaign on Twitter daily.

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

By Cindy Ratzlaff July 6, 2010

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

By Cindy Ratzlaff June 24, 2010

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

By Cindy Ratzlaff May 14, 2010

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?