I Help Authors Get Discovered Online
This week’s Indie Author Update contains every topic from Pinterest hashtags to selling books when you don’t have an audience. How? Keep reading to find out!
Go Local: Marketing Books to Targeted Communities by Jane Friedman: “When I hear professional publicists and PR people offer advice to authors, one theme that comes up again and again is: start where you are. Use the power of your community—and the people you know—to gain momentum.”
Google and Facebook are similar in one way; they frequently tweak their algorithms. It’s only Google that changes its algorithm for SEO.
And while Facebook announces its algorithm revisions without assigning names to the changed algorithms, Google does assign monikers to its changes.
In August 2012, Google introduced its mighty Pirate update, followed by one of the most famous updates in September 2014, Panda. You could practically hear SEO experts wail across the internet as they anguished over what the changes would mean for them and their clients’ websites.
This week’s roundup is a potpourri of great posts from the blogosphere. Be sure to check out the Twitterific writing links and suggestions on how to overcome writer’s block. The Buffer blog always has informative posts and the one listed here summarizes all the changes that have occurred in social media lately. Finally, it’s important that as writers we learn as much as we can about search engine optimization so that our books can enjoy the readership they deserve. I hope you like this week’s selection of posts on Twitter, SEO, Pinterest and Writer’s block.
Twitterific Writing Links by Elizabeth Spann Craig: Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine(developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.
10 Big and Recent Changes to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that You Should Know About for a Better Social Media Strategy from Buffer Blog: Social media changes so fast that we often miss the small differences on each platform we use. Every now and then I find it really useful to do a roundup of what’s been changing on the big networks lately. Here are ten changes I found that took place in the last couple of months, which could be useful for your social media strategy.
Changing Face of SEO in 2014 from The Yogi Blog: The year 2013 brought a number of significant changes to the SEO and digital marketing arena with most of the changes coming from none other than Google. Grim as it may seem, Google is urging internet marketers to change their strategies in 2014. In fact the changes in Google in 2014, encourages effective content; both textual and media. Brand Management strategies would need some “quick fixes” and tricks in the next fifteen days. Developing quality content and enhanced tactics were the compelling changes made in 2013. Following are the repercussions of these changes and what they mean in the remaining 11 months of 2014 – a future of SEO/SEM and Keyword marketing.
How to get the most out of Pinterest for your small business from Digital Trends: Remember that guy who created the perfect wedding for his wife using her Pinterest? No. Well remember that time you got a bunch of new customers using Pinterest? You should. It’s happening, this internet giant is making the jump from time-waster to marketing tool with the rest of it’s social media friends, and it is time for all small business owners to get on board.
5 ways to get through writer’s block or content marketing fatigue from Buffer Blog: When you’re facing a blank page with no idea what to write, it’s hard to imagine how you’ll ever get to the other side of a finished piece. I’ve gone through this a few times, so I thought it might be helpful to share the methods that have worked for me.
About the Author: Frances Caballo is a social media manager for writers and author of Social Media Just for Writers: The Best Online Marketing Tips for Selling Your Books and Blogging Just for Writers. Presently, she is the Social Media Manager for the Women’s National Book Association-SF Chapter, the San Francisco Writers Conference, and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+.
Practical Tips for Marketing Your Books on the Social Web
photo credit: ~Ilse via photopin cc
Over the past several weeks, I’ve shared numerous social media applications with you. Some are used for curating, others for scheduling, and still others for analyzing your return on investment (ROI).
Despite the long lists of applications I’ve covered, there are other applications (There will always be more applications!) that I haven’t written about and deserve attention. Why? Because these applications can boost your SEO and improved SEO translates into more recognition for yourself and your books and more sales.
Are you wanting more recognition for your books? Are you wondering how to improve your website’s SEO? These six applications will help you rise to the top on Google.
Good old SlideShare has been around for quite some time. I started using it a few years ago and within the last six months have really grown to appreciate this tool. If you’ve ever prepared a PowerPoint presentation, or if you plan to create one soon, you must use this application. Post your PowerPoint first on SlideShare, and then receive the html code you need to add it to your website. Of course, you can always post the link to your slides on any social media network.
It’s amazing how much further your message will spread with SlideShare.
YouTube’s Audience Retention Report
What’s the cure to information overload? Short videos, of course! But you don’t want to just pump out videos; you want to make sure that you’re producing entertaining videos that people will love and that are effective in reaching your target market. You also want to ascertain that you don’t lose the audience you’ve worked so hard to attract. This is where the YouTube’s Audience Retention Report comes in. It will report on two types of retention:
Videos go a long way in enhancing a website’s SEO.
This application will provide real-time statistics that measure the performance of your Facebook page. You can also compare your page to other author pages – a great feature. There is a free version and a paid version for $29/month. Like-a-lytics and SproutSocial will also analyze your page but they won’t provide comparisons. These applications help to improve your SEO by showing you if your efforts are working or if you need to adjust your messaging.
Formerly Pinerly, this application works like any other social media scheduling app. Instead of bombarding your followers with your pins all at one time, you can schedule your pins similar to the manner in which you schedule your tweets. This tool will also provide data on click-through rates and repins. Pinterest is excellent at driving traffic to your website so always be sure to pin your own images.
Now owned by Facebook, Instagram is a great way to share photos with your friends, readers, and colleagues. Social media is increasingly becoming a visual environment and Instagram is the perfect social media tool for our world today. For example, you can snap pictures of the city where your novel is based. Or you can capture a scene that reflects your novel. It’s fun to share your ideas visually with your friends and readers.
Similar to Evernote and Dropbox, Pocket (formerly Read it Later) allows you to find content, save it to the application, organize topics, and then read the posts you saved from any device including your PC, iPhone, iPad or other devices. In addition, Pocket offers a social media sharing control center. That’s cool! And having great information that it categorized will help you to better store information for sharing on social media platforms. Don’t forget to add your own blog posts to your cache.
What new application did you discover this past week?
Also read:
8 Social Media Tips Just for Writers
Grow Your Twitter Tribe – and Find New Readers – with Hashtags
About the Author: Frances Caballo is a social media strategist, trainer, and author of Social Media Just for Writers: The Best Online Marketing Tips for Selling Your Books and Blogging Just for Writers. Presently, she is the Social Media Editor for the Women’s National Book Association-SF Chapter, the San Francisco Writers Conference, and the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+.
