seobridges.com

Replaced by simple marketing savvy, the era of the undiscovered novelist is over. Most self-published books go unnoticed, allowing room for the outward facing best-selling novel published by Random House, Houghton Mifflin, or other major publishing houses. Though, every once in a while, a book goes from self-publishing disaster to publishing marvel.

For most people, those stories won’t happen, but those who market themselves well have a better chance of getting their book noticed than those who don’t. This means authors want to find their target audience, but first they need to know who their target audience consists of and how to connect with them.

To connect with your target audience, you’ll want to identify what authors your audience reads. And the best way to do that is to determine what authors you write like, using iwl.me.

Just take an excerpt of your writing, paste it into the box, click analyze, and iwl.me will tell you what author your writing is most similar to. Then, find out how and where those people connect with those authors, similar authors, and one another.

It might be tempting to use or overuse Twitter, Facebook, or Google+; but consider that you might find your audience on a niche social networking site for writers or the author’s personal social networking site.

For more book marketing tips, check out these blogs:

25 QR Code Book Marketing Ideas

The Power of Book Reviews

James Patterson’s Personalized Social Network

Amazon and the Book Jungle

Niche Social Networking for Writers

Book Trailers: Fundamental vs. Supplemental Media

On Stephenie Meyer

Book Marketing and the Art of Availability

James Patterson on Facebook

Analyzing Tom Clancy

JK Rowling’s Web within the Web

Jodi Picoult: The Twitter Queen

Stay Social, My Friends!

Erick

Over the last couple of years, SEO Bridges has served a two-fold purpose. To generate income and to be a marketing engine for myself and my writing. When I started writing my novel, an author friend suggested I begin marketing. I had wanted to start a business, and I figured starting a business that allowed me to focus on the needs of readers and writers would help me market myself and my writing.

Over that time, I have treated myself as I would any other client. Or at least that has been my goal. For the first year, @SEOBridges maintained a larger following than @ErickWrites. Then, my personal Twitter feed began to outgrow my business Twitter feed. I had adopted a new strategy. I started to focus more on conversations, rather than just dissemination of information.

Once I started doing that, I found more Twitter followers who Tweeted well and just liked to chat. Now, as I continue to chat, I am changing my Twitter strategy once again. I will continue to use Twitter to find conversationalists and get into conversations, but I will also use it for market research.

If you feel your Twitter strategy has become mundane repetition, you might want to consider changing your Twitter strategy. If your Twitter strategy is all about you and not about your followers, you might want to change your Twitter strategy.

Have you considered changing your Twitter strategy? How has your Twitter strategy changed? Is your Twitter strategy working for you? Do you have a Twitter strategy and what is it?

Stay social, my friends!

Erick

Last night, I met with a writer friend, who is getting ready to publish the first part of his book about a zombie apocalypse on his website. He wants to create interest by allowing people to read it online without the hassle of buying an e-reader.

During our conversation, he asked how he should go about branding what he calls “Outbreak 0”. That’s the virus in Lazarus Walks that causes people to turn into zombies. Branding is all about buzz, and buzz is all about name recognition.

Twitter’s a great way to get a conversation going. I set up some literary lists on my account you might want to follow: Writers, SD Writers and Friends, and Writers & Literary People. You will also want to follow hashtags like #AmReading, #AmWriting, #AskEditor, #AskPublisher, #AskAgent, #PubTip, and #WriteChat.

You can find more popular literary hashtags on this blog. And if you’re writing a book about a zombie apocalypse, the most popular zombie related hashtags are #Zombie, #Zombies, #livingdead, #horror, and #undead.

Along with following conversations your audience follows, start a new conversation with hashtags to brand yourself and/or your product. For my friend, since he wants to brand “Outbreak 0,” he might use #Outbreak0. The more you create name recognition, the more you create buzz; and the more you create buzz, the more you brand yourself and/or your product.

Hashtags allow you to join a conversation and eventually start a conversation without interrupting the conversation in progress. Think of hashtags as road markers on the road from buzz to branding.

Stay social, my friends!

Erick

Last week, I read this blog. It inspired me to think about the value of social media, e-readers, and e-publishing. As writers and thinkers, we have a responsibility to the future. Or more accurately, we have a responsibility to preserve history. We must make published documents accessible for future generations.

Do you think they’ll use the same technology in 2511 we use now? Is publishing our most valuable information in such a way that is likened to thousands of authors 500 years ago writing a trillion documents on papyrus, shredding each document into 10,000 pieces, and strewing those documents across the earth the best way to preserve our history?

In that blog, the author jokingly theorized that perhaps future generations might study Kanye West’s tweets. Do you think civilizations 500 years from now will consider what he tweeted, in the midst of zillions of gigabytes of information, that valuable? I’d argue that in the 26th century Kanye West and Lady Gaga will be celebrated, if they are known, in the same way we celebrate minstrels. Do you consider lyrics of a minstrel from 500 years ago valuable? Do you know any?

I theorize ancient civilizations had better means to preserve their most valuable documents. Though, just as we publish in a way that is the most convenient and cost saving for us, perhaps they published in the same way.

What do you think? Is e-publishing likened to thousands of authors, writing trillions of documents, shredding each of those docs into ten thousand pieces, and strewing them across the earth? Or is e-publishing likened to the advent of the printing press? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Stay social, my friends!

Erick

No matter whether you’re a social media novice, aficionado, or expert, there is bound to be something in this book you can glean from. It’s a great resource for teachers and students, and it covers all of the basis from blogging to the importance of a social media plan.

If you’ve read this book, let me know your thoughts. I’d love to glean from you, and learn what has and has not worked. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can buy it below.

The Social Media Survival Guide by Deltina Hay

You can learn more about Deltina by visiting her website, Social Media Power, or following her @Deltina.

Stay social, my friends!

Erick

#QR#Codes connect print media to digital media by allowing smart phone users to scan them like bar codes that send them to a Web page. When programming them, consider your audience’s whereabouts and needs. They’re most likely not at home or near a computer. They’re probably at a bookstore, library, book reading, or coffeehouse.

Ideas of how to use your QR Code:

1. Offer online coupons.

2. Send thank you message for attending an event and offer coupons for their next purchase.

3. Offer coupons only applicable for purchases at that event.

4. Post a video or podcast about you, your book, or places or characters in your book.

5. Post a book trailer.

6. Send an SMS message thanking readers for buying your book.

7. Set-up a Web scavenger hunt or other mobile game.

8. Set-up an app that updates readers about upcoming speaking engagements, book signings, or other events.

9. Offer coupons to restaurants, movies, or other places.

10. Point them to your Facebook fan page, Twitter feed, or other social media site.

11. Embed them throughout your book. Point them to longer URL in your footnotes or endnotes.

12. Point them to quotes or short reviews.

13. Help potential readers purchase your book online.

14. Preset it to go to a video of an event you’re at, and upload a video later.

15. Offer a recommended reading list.

16. Offer your newsletter.

17. Offer video interviews about you.

18. Embed your contact information. Ask readers to send comments or questions.

19. Set-up an augmented reality webcam of a weekly book chat.

20. Set-up your own social networking site.

21. Set-up a survey and offer coupons for completing it.

22. Set-up a questions page and answer questions in upcoming video chats.

23. Set-up a photo sharing site and upload photos from an event.

24. Allow your readers to sign-up for group messaging and schedule group chats.

25. Offer Groupons for purchasing your book.

Can you think of other book marketing ideas for QR codes?

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Authors, book reviews are a great way to let people get to know more about you and/or your book(s). Readers, if you’re an aspiring author, there are places online where you can post book reviews; and they’re a great way to let people get to know more about you. Here’s a short list of sites where you can read and post book reviews.

Amazon – For you readers who want to let people get to know you even better, Amazon lets you post video reviews. You can go through and edit your reviews at any time, and Google indexes reviews.

Goodreads – Whether you’re an author, aspiring author, or an avid reader, this social networking site should be one of your big three (Facebook and Twitter being the other two).  Not only can you write reviews, but you can also follow people and their reviews.

Barnes and Noble – They offer editorial and customer reviews.  Rather than only allowing you to give books a bulk rating, you can rate books according to 15 categories. They don’t connect with any type of social networking sites, but Google indexes reviews.

Powell’s Books – Along with editorial reviews, you can add reviews. The bad news is only editorial reviews connect with social networking sites. The good news is Powell’s Books connects with several social networking sites, along with Facebook and Twitter.

There are other Book Review sites, but those are the best ones where writers can market their books online for free and aspiring authors can begin marketing themselves. I’ll give honorable mention to RedRoom, but RedRoom is to GoodReads what Bing is to Google (a nuisance).

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Here are a few great videos on how to get your idea from thought to the bookstore shelf and into potential readers hands. The first video will give you some great insight as to the overall book marketing process, the second will give non-fiction authors a great outline for writing a book proposal, and the last one will help guide you through how to find out how your book’s doing on Amazon.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Here are some videos on book marketing by American Marketing Experts. Penny Sansevieri gives some great advice on building your audience organically, the importance of using Google Alerts to monitor yourself and your site, figuring out who your audience is, knowing what your audience wants, the importance of branding yourself, and more.

Each video offers a wealth of information, and I’m sure you’ll become a better book marketer for watching them. They’re about 10 minutes each, but there’s no law that says you can’t do something else while you listen.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Jodi Picoult is the author of 18 books, and her newest book House Rules is ranked as the 28th best-selling book of 2010. Not enough traffic to her site comes from Twitter for Alexa to count. She doesn’t use Twitter to market herself or her books, rather she just converses with her 20,000 followers. She doesn’t use Facebook, but 23.53% of traffic to Jodipicoult.com comes from Facebook. Here’s the Tweet she sent out on 11/7/10: “No, I have no Facebook page. I use Twitter instead.” And she uses it well.

On her website, visitors can find podcasts, interviews, and photos and videos. For those who want to get to know Jodi more, she, or her publicist or someone pretending to be Jodi, writes a newsletter. If you want to talk about her books with other Picoult fans, you can go to the yourSpace page. Don’t scroll down, just look toward the bottom (the URLs are all the same). You’ll notice the blue link “Go to Jodi’s message boards” toward the bottom.  I don’t know how active she is on those boards.

What can we learn from Jodi Picoult and her use of social media? Out of every best-selling author who uses social media, Picoult uses it in the most real and honest way. She tells people what’s on her mind, she engages with her fans, and she garners the respect of millions. Here’s the lesson: Don’t allow social media to cause you to become someone you’re not.

Stay social, Jodi and my other friends.

Erick