A Little Linked In Tip! | Customizing URLs on Profile

If you are using Linked In, here’s a small tip you can utilize to make the links in your profile more enticing.

On your profile there is the option to add the URLs to your personal and company websites:

If you click ‘Edit’, you can add in your own URLs.

The options you have for filling these out are: Personal Website, Company Website, Blog, RSS Feed, Portfolio or ‘Other’.

If you want to customize the title of your website to make it more enticing than ‘personal website’ or ‘blog’, click on ‘Other’ and you will then have the option to add in the name of your site (middle box), as well as the URL (end box).

On your profile, your websites will then be displayed by their name:

Voila! Easy wasn’t it?

7 Things You Can do Right Now to Improve your Author Website | Book Marketing 4

Author Websites & Blogs

Websites and blogs are expected of authors (as well as every other business owner/ retailer) these days. A site doesn’t have to be anything complicated. But it does need to include certain elements. Here are the 7  most important aspects of an author website from my experience:

1. A contact option visible on the home page (not just Social Media links or a contact form.) An actual email address! To avoid spam spell it out eg: awesomeperson at awesomenet dot com. I thoroughly dislike not being able to find the contact button within 0.3 seconds of looking. Make it obvious.

2. Your book cover image(s), to familiarize people with your product. Make it clickable to Amazon or wherever you make the most sales. I use the Amazon showcase plugin for wordpress.

3. Writing samples/ Free chapters. And make it a good one, representative of the book or your writing. Don’t be afraid to give away free content – it’s what gets people hooked and wanting to purchase the whole thing. That’s why Kindle samples are great, as is the Amazon Look Inside Program. Readers can see only as much as they can in a brick and mortar bookstore so don’t get your knickers in a twist about giving away too much. It helps more than it hurts.

4. A  Media page – If the press want to work with you, make their frantic lives easier. Below is a screenshot from my Media page. I learned all I know about media pages from the awesome Peter Bowerman.

5. Social Media Links: Display (very very visibly) Twitter, Facebook, Linked In profiles if you have them. Also add an RSS feed so that people can add you to their Google reader etc.

6. Purchasing Options: If they want to buy your book, make it easy for them! Don’t make readers type the title or ISBN into a search engine. People are inherently lazy. Show them where and how they can get your book with one click. Whether you include a price or not is something you might wish to A/B test (see below), making sure to track conversion rates using Google Analytics (also see below).

7. Sign up form: What happens if Twitter and Facebook die tomorrow? You want some other way of contacting the readers and followers you have worked so hard to procure. Plus, by collecting email addresses you can send out newsletters or updates, reminding them about your book, updating them on tours or your next book or sending them special offers. I use an autoresponder through MailChimp and I have mad love for their site. (Free up to 2,000 subscribers)

3 Other things to consider with your Author site:

1. Landing Page A/ B testing: A/B testing is basically having two versions of your landing page to test which one is performing better. How do you measure performance? By seeing which version of the page results in more conversions (defined by book sales, clicks onto Amazon, newsletter sign ups etc). There are so many elements on your page that you can A/B  test, and the key is to change one small thing at any time. You’ll be surprised at how small tweaks can result in big changes to your conversion rates. Some ideas;

• Font style & size
• Placement of call to action (purchase button, sign up form)
• Product description
• Headlines & subtitles
• Website colors
• Product pricing
• Images
• Amount of text

A/B testing is wayyyyy too complicated for me to go into detail here. I’ll leave it to the experts at Smashing Magazine.

2. Google Analytics

Or other stats site. You’ll never know what you are doing right, or wrong unless you have detailed stats in place telling you where your traffic is coming from, how long they are staying on which page, and where the top exit pages are. I rely on Google Analytics like a student relies their tutor or supervisor. It tells me what’s working and what isn’t.

3. Does a website need a blog?  Content matters for your SEO (Search engine results) and if it doesn’t pain you too much to do it, it’s a good use of time.

If you don’t have much time for regular blogging, make it count instead – Killer posts that are revisited over and over work better than fluffy ones. I spent about 10 hours on my most popular post. Seriously. Others take me 1 hour. Killer posts work better.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on Author Websites. Know of any good ones? (Shameless plugs welcome – if the site is decent).

Social Media. Facebook Works for Me, Twitter Doesn’t, & One Surprising Site that Really Works | Book Marketing 2

This week I’m talking about book marketing for my non-fiction titles. This is post 2 of this series: Book Marketing: What is Working & What Isn’t.

There is so much out there about book marketing through social media that I don’t want to embarrass myself by churning out stuff that is much more eloquently written by the experts such as Marian Schembari in this post. So I’m keeping it fairly short. At least I’ll try to.

Image via smartech.blogetery.com

1. Twitter  - Is it working?

Undecided.

Twitter is a great way of keeping on top of industry trends, reaping knowledge, learning from the pros, connecting with fellow authors and networking with people that would otherwise be simply unreachable (or very difficult to contact).

But in terms of selling books I’m not so sure.

How I use Twitter: Each morning I write a wedding-related blogpost, check my Google alerts for interesting wedding-related content that’s worth tweeting about and then I spend about 10 minutes scheduling tweets about both of these things. One directs traffic to my blog, one doesn’t, but I really try hard to add value from my account, and not just tweet self-serving messages. I recently read a great post by Jane Friedman about this. I wish certain wedding industry professionals would sit up and take notice. Here’s a quote from her article;

It seems to me that a lot ‘Twitterers’ (Tweeters?!) have their own agenda, to sell their own stuff. Then again maybe it’s just this particular industry. I have a handful of brides-to-be following my @glowingbride Twitter account, and lots of industry professionals. Are these people even listening to me? I wonder, and often. I know for sure that I need to alter the bride/vendor ratio to improve this.

Checking my Google Analytics I can see that Twitter is actually pretty bad at getting traffic to my site (less than 0.5% of my total traffic sources), which has surprised me.

How long it takes: On top of the 10 minutes it takes to schedule tweets I spend about 10 minutes interacting with others, so all in all I spend about 20 minutes (professional) time on there. That’s not a huge chunk of my time, but given the traffic I’m (not) getting, I question it’s value. I’ll definitely be considering how to improve my value, and return, in the future.

(For reasons why I do think Twitter is awesome, see my post Twitter for Haters.)

2. Facebook Fanpage

Is it working? Yes

(This is not my Facebook fanpage. If it were I might have a bazillion followers too.

via Victoria’s Secret)

For some reason, while I have about the same number of followers on my Facebook fanpage as on my Twitter, I get 10 x more traffic to my blog (about 5% of my total) and much better quality traffic (defined by time on site and pages viewed). Referrals from FB spend 700% longer on my site than the site average!!

What the heck?

This is a real mystery to me since I write essentially the same stuff (I use Hootsuite as my social media ‘dashboard’ to schedule messages that then go out on FB & Twitter simultaneously).

Is it the images that can be seen on FB that entices more people in? Or is it just a little less hectic and self-serving than Twitter?

The why’s of why Facebook seems to be bringing me traffic, which in turn brings awareness to my book (that’s a long and windy tunnel, but a tunnel no less) and Twitter remains a mystery. All I know is, Facebook seems to be my friend.

3. And Now for a (Not so) Secret, Surprisingly Effective, Social Media Site That is Working for Book Marketing.

via www.reddit.com

Reddit – Reddit is a site for people who love to read about certain subjects. People join topic- groups and then submit links about that topic – be it articles, blogposts, images – anything that is relevant. Other members of the group then vote on the quality of the link submitted, so there is a competitive element that prevents people from submitting drivel.

Recently I submitted 3 links from my blog – articles that were relevant for brides to be as well as women in general (beauty and health). I submitted them in the wedding planning group and women’s group, and saw a high volume of traffic, and good, quality traffic that spent a long time on my blog come my way.

I suppose by nature, Reddit users are people who like reading. They are actively looking for new, interesting blogposts, so it’s really no surprise that the site brings more traffic than either FB or Twitter. Similar sites include Digg and Hackernews and while I haven’t explored any of these sites fully, I think the potential for attracting traffic from these sites is hu-bloody-mongous.

All you have to do is register for an account, find the most suitable category for your link, and get submitting away. Remember to submit only good, interesting, valuable content. Spamming will get you worse-than-nowhere.

Final Thoughts: I mentioned her in the intro, but it’s absolutely worth repeating. If you wish to follow a true Social Media maven who is as entertaining as she is knowledgeable, go and read Marian Schembari’s blog. She’s got everything you need to know about Twitter up there and more. Oh and go follow her there too.

For great book-marketing related Twitter advice, go and stalk the awesome Jane Friedman. She writes the blog There are No Rules over at Writer’s Digest. Regular consumption will be great for your health.

Anything I missed?

8 Reasons Even Haters Should be on Twitter

Twitter is not just for telling everyone what you ate for lunch and bragging about your weekend. Nooo friends, Twitter has real value – for everyone.

Yup you heard that right. Everyone. You should be on Twitter even if you think it’s some vain, boring, overrated, over-sharing micro-blog. Which for some people it is – but you don’t have to tell everyone that you didn’t brush your teeth this morning or follow the people who do.

Thanks John Mayer for TMI.

There are better ways to use the service, and here are my personal fave reasons;

1. Job searches – follow the companies you want to work for, and get a feel for their company philosophy and important insights into their daily operations. Search for people working there and form a relationship with them by responding to their tweets. Seek out the experts in the industry you are looking to go into/ are already in. You’ll gain the most relevant insight into the field from these Tweeters.

In addition: Follow employment agencies or tweeters dedicated to help job seekers. You’ll here about jobs in live time, and can get your resume in first – potentially one of the biggest advantages you’ll have. Here is a great list of 55 Job Search folks to follow on Twitter courtesy of Meg Guiseppi. I also recommend doing searches and following streams on the job you are looking for ‘e.g. Copywriter or Marketing Director’ and see listings of job postings as they are released.

2. Making Connections Research – a friend of mine admits to Twitter – stalking people she wants to contact for work or personal reasons for a week before getting in touch. By then she has a good idea of the way they conduct themselves, their sense of humor and how busy they are that day/ week/ month.

3. Contact your favorite authors, chefs, golfers, people you generally ‘heart’ - This is my personal favorite reason. Nothing beats getting a personal message from someone who wrote a book you have fallen in love to say thanks for reading. I have had conversations with Jamie Oliver, personal hero Peter Shankman and numerous authors who I respect and admire.

4. Hear breaking news first – When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March I was beyond terrified. With so many friends and family in Japan at the time (and on the East coast no less) I was frantically waiting to hear from friends as well as reliable news sources. The Western media was getting so much information wrong, and there was limited time and access to write emails and blogposts – but enough for friends to tweet that were okay, and what the actual situation was like.

5. Promoting your brand & your self. Get the word about your brand or product out there. I use twitter to market our books using the #GMAT and #wedding tags, with links to our blog, site or Amazon page. Quite often these get re-tweeted, we get more traffic and our books get attention. It’s like free advertising.

6. Keeping up with blogs – Sure I have Google Reader. But Twitter alerts me to blog posts I will find interesting without having to check it. It’s the perfect way to break up the day – check Twitter, read a blogpost or two and get back to work. Admittedly sometimes this snowballs, so if you worry about social media being a time suck, this is probably not a valid reason.

7. Complain to companies and get heard - When British Airways lost my luggage the week of my wedding and gave me the absolutely worst customer service I have ever experienced, boy did I let them know about it. When I was disappointed because the baristas at Starbucks were talking (annoyingly loudly) about things no one else in the coffee shop wanted or needed to hear, I had a little moan to Starbuck’s twitter account. It’s like filling in a feedback form, but far more conveniently.

And finally…

8. Have you heard of keeping a gratitude journal (aka as Oprah’s 5 a day?) In a nutshell it’s the idea that when you regularly express things you are grateful for, it shifts your brain to focus on things you love about life instead of the things you don’t. Oh and it makes you feel good. Well since Twitter has a 140 character limit, it’s the perfect place to participate in this everyday in just 30 seconds. Follow my lovely friend P.Waltz and her account @5thingsaday to share your 5 petits plaisir.

What about you? What value do you get from Twitter, and what are your personal reasons for using it? Also if you have any hesitations for using the service, I’d love to hear why.