Online Promotion – Get This Right to Succeed
By Deb
I subscribe to all kinds of Internet marketing “stuff” (the technical term) and one of those is a newsletter from Clayton Makepeace — yes, that’s his real name. He’s a copywriter extraordinaire. One of his staff members wrote the following article that points out the “right” way to take care of your customers. He addresses this article to business builders. If you haven’t already started thinking about your writing as a business, it’s something you’re going to have to do eventually.
For those of you wanting story ideas, take the scenario he describes, an actual dinner out with friends, and let that be your inspiration.
The Name Sucks – Everything Else Was Incredible
Fellow Business Builder,
This past weekend, I spoke at a three-day small business conference in Cochrane, Alberta. A hop, skip and a jump from Calgary where I live, the 45-minute drives takes you into this incredible little mountain resort town called Cochrane.
The host of the event took out the speakers for dinner on Friday night to this place she had been raving about.
The Trough is an eclectic upstart that has figured this service business out. I realize last week I wrote about Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant lessons, but this weekend was a sign that the owner has maybe been watching some of the “Kitchen Nightmare” shows and learned a thing or three.
Considering they just opened last year, their two recent awards as one of the top 10 new restaurants in Canada shows how good of a start they got off to.
When you first walk in, it is Continue reading this post »
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Online Book Promotion Needs This
By Deb
When Oprah closed her famous “Book Club,” people didn’t stop reading, but we lost a premier go-to place for getting inside author’s heads and lives and into the behind-the-scenes of a book. This article from WIRED should cause a giant, cosmic gong to sound in any author’s ear who wants a book promoted. Read on.
…while Oprah might have closed her club, the Internet can and already does to some extent spread that work of sorting, evaluating and recommending among hundreds, maybe thousands, of volunteers.
“Perhaps online sites don’t have Oprah’s cachet or charisma, but they can provide a welcoming environment for many kinds of readers,” Long said.
For alternatives to be successful, they must understand that book club members are not just consuming books.
“Reading groups are engaging in a productive dialogue with books and each other that enables them to rethink and re-envision who they are in the contexts of their ongoing personal and social lives,” Long said.
And that goes far in explaining why Oprah’s recommendations pulled so much weight.
“She took you into the lives of authors and made the reader a part of that original experience,” said Terrence Cheng, author of Sons of Heaven. “Sites need to mimic that experience by offering exclusive content and insight into the creation of literature, through personal essays and photos, audio and video content, message boards, chat forums, etc.”
Readers need what Oprah gave them, Cheng said: a personal experience with the book rather than a marketing pitch. Read entire article
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The Business of Writing – Making All the Pieces Fit
By Deb
Or – Benefits of Networking
Have you ever tried putting together a jigsaw puzzle that you were convinced had missing pieces? If you’re like me, you start with the outside border, then find the four corner pieces and all the flat-sided ones. When I can’t find all the flat-sided pieces, I start thinking, if it’s this hard in the beginning, how much harder will it be near the end? Do I even want to bother?
But then I realize I’m being hasty. I’ve made SOME progress: I’ve found all four corners; I’ve put together several multi-piece flat-sided sections. So I persevere. Little by little the border takes shape, until finally all the outside pieces are connected. Now I have a framework for assembling the rest of the puzzle.
I get a sense of satisfaction from that accomplishment, but my ADD brain then looks at the other 900+- pieces jumbled in the box and I groan. Now the long, drawn-out, boring part begins.
First comes the color sorting process, requiring repeated reference to the box lid. This includes the challenge of deciding where to store the various colors. In addition, I turn each piece face up so I can see it.
Without the puzzle’s photograph on the box lid, this process would be an exercise in futility. Each piece would have the potential to fit with every other piece of similar color. Or not. A piece might be a bridge between one section and another.
For longer than I care to admit, even to myself, my quest to master online marketing (OM) has been, and continues to be, not unlike assembling a large and intricate jigsaw puzzle. I must learn how, (not necessarily in this order) to:
- market my fiction
- develop and sell information products of my own
- sell other people’s products as an affiliate
- develop and promote a blog
- tap into the promotional potential of the latest holy grail: Social Marketing
- design a website
- edit graphics
- write sales copy
- research markets and niches
- learn search engine optimization (SEO)
- decipher the arcane rituals and practices of pay-per-click (PPC) ads
- monetize my web pages with Adsense, Amazon, and the like
And no matter how much I learn, no matter how many concepts and skills I master, the path continues to be a (seemingly) never-ending series of inexorably steep learning curves.
AAARGH!
It’s enough to make my hair turn gray! Oh, wait. It’s already done that.
Every once in awhile I get an “Aha!” moment when I’m tempted to shout, “Eureka!” But then I realize I have yet another skill to be mastered, and after that something more. (This only happens to people who can’t afford to PAY others to do all the “grunt” work.)
To return to the jigsaw puzzle analogy, as far as my online business is concerned, I have the puzzle design as a reference (business blueprint), my framework is in place (a rough outline of my business plan) and some of the colors are sorted (all the little pieces). And it’s those little pieces, some visible, others twisted around, still more upside down, that are the building blocks of any online business and where the bulk of the work occurs.
These are my grouped pieces:
- training materials on every major and little nit-picky aspect of marketing
- private label rights articles and products to modify and use as my own
- website templates
- website creation software
- ready-made graphics
- virtual gadgets
- blog widgets
- javascripts
- audio creation and editing programs
- video creation and editing software
- image/photo manipulation programs
- word processing software
- fiction writing tools
At this point in an actual puzzle project, I would have several small-to-medium “floating” sections completed, but no idea how any of them connected to the others. Trying to do it all alone is certainly doable, and at the end, one can say, “I did it all by myself.” But what if putting it together was not the final goal? What if assembling all the pieces and making sense of them were part of a greater scheme of things?
There is a fiercely independent streak in most Americans. It reminds me sometimes of a three-year-old who has discovered the concept of “mine” and “me do.” A toddler needs to master this stage for future skills to have a solid foundation. But some people never move beyond the need to go it alone and take all the credit. None of us is skilled in everything. Okay, maybe your brother-in-law thinks he is, but the rest of us have strengths we should capitalize on and shortcomings no amount of training will turn into strengths.
Rather than beating ourselves up for what we can’t do, why not try something smarter, faster, and more effective than trying to be a superman-marketer and hating the result? Networking solves a multitude of problems and builds great relationships at the same time. The goal is to find other, like-minded people whose strengths fill in the gaps of our skill sets and our skills do the same for them.
Some informal Skype conversations with fellow participants after a weekly webinar hosted by marketer supreme Lynn Terry of clicknewz.com and an excellent forum with loads of information and lots of helpful people, including Lynn herself at http://www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum have lead to some joint ventures and greatly reduced my frustration level. People here are genuinely eager to help where they can. My goal is to find people who “play” at what I struggle with. And I can return the favor.
From my networking, I’ve had more “Eureka!” moments in the past month than in the past year. That’s why synergy is so important. The whole is greater than the mere sum of its parts.
So get out there and network, make connections. You’ll need them, if not now, in the near future. Build bridges, make friends, develop partnerships. You and they will be stronger for it.
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Story Ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part Four
By Deb
From the blog Read Write Web, a guest post by TK Kenyon, author of the book Rabid, covers the topic
Internet Marketing for Novel Writers
Here’s an excerpt:
…Over 195,000 new novels are published by traditional publishers in the U.S. every year. Of those, 70% sell fewer than 500 copies. Yikes.
To be in the other 30% of authors, you must seize every promotional advantage you can, especially by using the web and other new media. My first novel, Rabid, sold out of its first print run of 10,000 copies in under two months and is currently chewing through its second print run, which is better than average.
To sell your book, (1) inform people that you and the novel exist, (2) interest readers enough to buy your book, and (3) build a relationship to keep them coming back for more.
For all this, the Internet is the perfect medium… Read entire post
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Story Ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part Three
By Deb
Book promotional expert extraordinaire, Arielle Ford, who has worked with big name authors like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neale Donald Walsch, Dean Ornish, Jon Gordon, Gary Zukav, Louise Hay, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and more, has created a guide for writers who want to know how to start writing a book. Learn more in this YouTube video.
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