Writing, publishing, book marketing, all offered by experienced authors, writers, and marketers
Think You're Fast at Typing?
I don't usually spend time watching YouTube video, but a particular video lassoed me in.
I found this piano player who seems to have lightening in his fingers. And, it seems there are piano stations all over the place for anyone to play - in airports, in malls . . .
While this doesn't really have anything to do with writing or book marketing, it's an excellent example of the power of video. It made me stop and watch. Hey, I guess it does have to do with marketing after all. You've got to have something to GRAB the audience with and something that will hook them - keep them in place long enough for you to get your message across.
Try creating a video as part of your book marketing strategy.
Hope you like Boogie Woogie!
I'd be one of those people who stopped to watch!
If you watched it, we'd love to know what you thought. And, of course, please share!
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How to Run a Contest on Your Blog
Contests are a great way to generate content and traffic to your blog, as well as encourage engagement with your community. Plus, it gives you material to share on your social media sites.
A regular contest translates into low-maintenance, ongoing content. For instance, I run a contest every month on my website and community for writers: Write On Online. Anyone who posts goals on the website or Facebook page, throughout the month, is entered to win a book from Michael Wiese Productions, a screenwriting and film publishing company. A winner is chosen at random.
Here are a few easy options of free contests to run on your blog:
Photo Contest: Have entrants share an image, related to a theme or in some way, your business.
Essay Contest: Ask readers submit a story of a defined length on a specific topic.
Sweepstakes: This is the lowest barrier to entry. Your audience members simply need to enter their email address for a chance to win a prize at random. This is another way to add subscribers to your newsletter list.
To create a contest, you must also establish and publish rules, a deadline, judges (if applicable), and prizes ahead of time. Prizes can be as simple as a copy of your latest book or consulting time from your business specialty.
Now, here's the best part. Contest give you automatic blog posts, since you need:
- Contest launch and rules (you'll also want a standard page on your blog with rules)
- Deadline reminders (for early-bird and regular deadline, if relevant)
- Winner announcement and posts
Contests don't have to be complicated, they just need to be representative of your site.
What do you think? Do you run contests on your blog? What kinds of contents to you find most effective? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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The Importance of Imagination
Once, after being rather disparagingly called "reality-challenged," he said,
"I prefer fantasy-augmented"
--from Castle
So, if anyone ever disparages your imagination, ignore them. Or pity them. Your imagination helps make you a great writer, even if you have no zombies, aliens or conspiracy theories in your work. And if you ever start to feel stuck, it may be that you haven't been nourishing your imagination enough. It's like a muscle. Keep it exercised!
Five Tips to Create Physical Writing Boundaries for Optimal Health
Physical Boundaries are probably the easiest to define although they can be very hard to bring about. The best way to describe physical boundaries is that they are property lines. For instance, my desk, office, my locked car, my computer with password protection, money in my bank account, and my body are all physical boundaries.
One of the reasons that physical writing boundaries are the easiest to define is because they are external. It is easier to set up physical boundaries, and it’s easier to observe when someone has created a chasm in a physical boundary.
It is crucially important for writers to ensure that their physical boundaries are met and that they create some solid space for themselves and their writing.
There are several types of physical boundaries. They are as follows:
1. Computer Boundaries
Do you have to share your computer with another family member? This could cause a lot of difficulties for you. Also as a writer you have privacy issues that you will want to uphold too. This is all a part of your physical boundaries. You may feel infringed upon and unhappy to be giving your personal computer to anyone else, even if it is only on a borrow basis. So, keep your computer to yourself and don’t share it with anyone.
2. Noise Boundaries
Can you tolerate noise outside of your office as you write? Do you have to have the drapes drawn so that the sun and people passing by your house won’t be a distraction? How easily distracted are you by noise? Many writers are very easily distracted by noise and commotion. If you are one of them, develop the proper environment in which to write so that you are most successful. Take steps to ensure that you have the proper kinds of sounds as you write. You may want to have a CD of soothing nature sounds or music as you write. If you don’t know what makes you most productive, experiment a bit.
3. Exercise Boundaries
All writers need to exercise every day given their sedentary work at their desks. So, you must ensure that you get a bit of exercise every day. Exercising and writing will go hand in hand because the more you exercise the more productive you will feel. We all need a different amount of exercise to be at our best. So, experiment with what you need and then follow through for optimal health and productivity.
4. Furniture Boundaries
To be at your best and to do your best writing you need to have ergonomic furniture that is suited to your body and any physical requirements that you may have. If you have special needs because of arthritis or other stiffness, take time to buy exactly what you need to write at your best. It will give you GREAT dividends later on. And you will have gained a lot of self-knowledge about yourself as well.
5. Healthy Eating Boundary
One of the most important things that writers can do is to eat healthy foods. This will ensure that they are more productive and healthy too. Try not to eat a lot of carbohydrates or refined sugars. Also, make sure that what you eat is healthy and good for you and that keep your mind active and productive. If food affects how you think, take heart. Just learn to do all that you can to accommodate your needs so that you could be most productive at the desk.
Healthy writers must create these physical boundaries for themselves. In fact, you will be most successful if you take the time and patience to create these boundaries. So, take out some time today to reflect on whether you have these physical boundaries in place so that you can be healthy to write and be creative.
Writer can have a difficult time taking care of their health. It is therefore important for writers to guard their physical boundaries. Every time you do, you will not only be healthier but also much more productive and self-confident. Now this is a winning combination for all writers.
To learn more about create physical boundaries, double click on this link: Amazon.
Irene S. Roth, MA, (freelance writer and author) writes for teens, tweens, and kids about self-empowerment. She is the author of over thirty-five books and over five hundred online articles. She also writes articles for kids, tweens and teens and her articles have appeared in Encounter, Pockets, Guardian Angel Kids Ezine, and Stories for Children Magazine and Online. She also has four hundred and sixty published book reviews both online and in print.
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Conflating Promotion, Children's Lit and Promotion
Author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers
- Some offered a free e-book as part of a promotion and let people e-mail them for a copy. This is the least techy approach and it allows personal contact with readers. It also allowed us to collect and categorize our readers’ e-mails to use in later promotions.
- Some set up an autoresponder that sent our e-book directly to our readers’ e-mail boxes when they sent requests to an address we provided. This automated approach requires little but promotion from you after you’ve once set up the responder. I sent the first chapter of my novel using SendFree.com, but it could as easily been a full e-book.
- Some contributors sent readers to their Web sites where they found a link to download a .pdf file of our free e-book. E-books distributed like this are more effective if they include an offer or call-to-action—perhaps a discount on a series of your books—within its pages. If I did a promotion like this again, I’d include a contributor page in the backmatter that listed each contributor, her book’s title, and a direct link to an Amazon Kindle edition. The side-benefit for this is that traffic to your site soars and that helps your search engine optimization (SEO).
- ome contributors let others distribute our e-book as a gift to their clients, subscribers, or Web site visitors—either with a purchase or as an outright gift. When you use this method, you get to set the guidelines for its distribution because you provide the free e-book.
- If we were doing this promotion today, we could offer our free e-book through Smashwords.com. To make free e-book editions work for you, your book must include ads, links in the text, or both to entice readers to your Web site or to buy your other books.
- You may find other ways to distribute your e-book or alter these processes to meet your needs. You could even give out business cards or bookmarks at children’s bookfairs that give the links to the free e-book you are offering.
- Most of us set up a promotional page for the cookbook on our Web sites.
- One promoted it in her newsletter.
- Mary Emma Allen writes novels, but she also featured the cookbook in the columns she writes for New Hampshire dailies The Citizen and The Union Leader.
- David Leonhardt incorporated the cookbook into a Happiness Game Show speech he delivered over a dozen times.
- We all gave away coupons offering this gift at book signings. Because e-books cost nothing to produce, they can be given to everyone, not just those who purchase a book. Some made bookmarks featuring this offer.
- I put an “e-gift” offer for Cookbook on the back of my business cards.
- If we were doing this promotion today, we’d all blog about it and use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks.
- We treated the promotional book like a real book. We got blurbs and reviews. Reviewer JayCe Crawford said, “For a foodie-cum-fiction-freak like me, this cookbook is a dream come true.” That review popped up in places we didn’t know existed.
- We used them as e-gifts to thank editors, producers, or others online.
Writers on the Move Knows Why Blogging is Essential and is Looking for Members
In case you’re not familiar with Writers on the Move, we’re a writing and book marketing group utilizing content marketing to broaden our visibility and authority, and boost sales.
We have experienced writers and our content marketing strategy of choice is blogging.
The reason why we use blogging?
The marketing game is always changing, because of this, it’s important to keep up with marketing trends. One useful tool for this is Technorati’s Yearly Digital Influence Report.
According to their latest report, which is based on “over 6,000 influencers, 1,200 consumers, and 150 top brand marketers,” blogs are now heavy hitters with consumers. Blogs are regarded as trustworthy, they are popular, and they wield influence over consumer buying decision making.”
Another important finding of this study is that over 50 percent of consumers feel that smaller communities offer more influence. Even new sites were trusted over social networks.
From this study it would seem that people like connecting with other people, not crowds. They like the personal relationship, the kind of one-on-one relationship of the blogger that social networks don’t necessarily offer.
Why blog with Writers on the Move (WOTM)?
Anyone can blog, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get the visibility and traffic needed to get positive results. Well, WOTM has been around since 2008 and we’ve continued to grow and thrive for 8 years now.
The reason?
We keep track of current marketing trends and use them in our marketing strategies.
Doing this has given us a steady stream of monthly visitors and engagement. We often get notifications from AddThis and StumbleUpon that ‘we’ve got a spike in our website traffic.’ As a blogger, this is one of the results you want to see happen.
The purpose of this article?
We have three openings for new members in our group.
Each member in the group posts one article, once a month on an assigned day to the WOTM website. The posting day remains the same each month.
The benefits to members?
Visibility, authority, and being part of a group with seasoned writers and marketers.
So, if you’re a new writer or seasoned writer and want to take advantage of this opportunity, please let me know.
You can email me at:
kcioffiventrice –at—gmail--.com
Please put “WOTM Member” in the Subject box.
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Your Email Welcome Message - 4 Hot Tips
By Karen Cioffi
You know, many don't realize that email marketing is a huge part of book marketing. And, publishers are realizing this also.
It's the subscribers to your email list who are a ready made audience.
And, the very first email that you will send to your new subscriber is the Welcome Message.
A while ago, I listened to a number of five minute podcasts from marketing experts. This setup was an ‘ethical bribe’ to sign up to the campaign of the day. But, that’s another story.
One of the podcasts discussed the effective use of your Welcome or Thank You message when someone opts onto your mailing list.
I’ve written on this topic before, on how to optimize your welcome message. But, this podcast reminded me of a couple of strategies that are well worth passing along.
Information that should be included in your Thank You message:
A Reminder
The first bit of information, aside from thanking the person for signing up, should be a reminder about what they signed up for. You’d think this wouldn’t be necessary, but people are overwhelmed with all the information they get in their inbox that it’s easy for them to forget why they opted-in in the first place. So, give them a reminder.
I start my Welcome/Thank You message with:
Welcome to The Writing World and thanks so much for subscribing.
Here’s the gift promised. I hope you find it helpful:
Title of Gift
URL to download
This is also the place to let the subscriber know what to do. Does she need to click on a confirmation link to join? You might add: “There’s one more step. Please confirm.” Also, you might explain how to download the gift: “To get your gift, simply click on the URL and download The Title to your computer.
Make everything easy.
Let the Subscriber Know What She’ll Be Getting
You will also want to let the subscriber know that along with receiving the gift (ethical bribe), he’ll also be getting daily, weekly, monthly, or other scheduled emails with lots of helpful information. Here you’ll want to give a brief description of what he can look forward to. Maybe you’ll be providing writing tips, health tips, fitness tips, information on your books, great offers, or other information. Let him know exactly what to expect.
Unsubscribe Ability
Another important bit of information to include is to let the subscriber know he can easily unsubscribe to the emails. Email services, such as GetResponse, AWeber, and iContact, provide this content. You can tweak it if you like or leave their wording. This takes the pressure off the subscriber, knowing he can easily unsubscribe reduces anxiety.
Security
One more strategy to reduce anxiety is to let the subscriber know that his email address is safe and secure. Email services provide this content also.
Your Welcome message is a key email marketing element and should be part of your book marketing strategy. It affords lots of opportunity to build relationships with your readers and subscribers and to make ‘one time only’ offers. Take advantage of all you can do with the opportunities, but remember, the main goal of the Welcome/Thank You message is to do just that - genuinely thank the subscriber for giving you his valuable email address and being a part of your online world.
If you need to get your email marketing going, the first think you need is an opt-in box. I use Get Response. The have the best opt-ins and you can design them to meet your needs. I'm love them so much, I'm an affiliate for them. So, if you need to get your LIST started, get on board with GET RESPONSE!
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