Monday, March 19, 2007

Book Promotion 101: Using Ticker Countdown Clocks to Announce Your Release

In my blog travels this morning, I happened to land on one of my favorite PUMPED UP blogs, Kathy Holmes' Women's Fiction with Attitude, and I found something that really made me sit up and take notice. Everyone's heard about those cute little ticker countdown clocks that you can put on your blog to announce anything you want to announce really, but I really liked the way Kathy used the ticker she found at CarribbeanMag.com. If you go to that link, you can see all kinds of tickers that you can put on your blog (even attach to your emails!) to announce upcoming trips and vacations. But, what Kathy did was look beyond this and came up with an idea to use this as a great promotional vehicle to announce her new book, Real Women Wear Red, that will be released on March 27th. And what really makes this so unique is that her main character will be going on this cruise which sets off the beginning of the book! How appropriate!

Tickers are not new, but I was really impressed with the way Kathy did it being as her book is all about a cruise that her characters embark on and the friendships and bonds they form with one another. Makes me start thinking of ways to use this to announce my upcoming books!

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Saturday, March 10, 2007

How Do You Lure Customers to Your Blog?

As you all may or may not know, I blog a lot. If I'm not making blog posts, I'm reading blog posts. That's about when it dawned on me just exactly why it is I revisit some, and others I don't return.

When I open up a new blog to read, it's for content. If it's too philosophical, or too multi-dimensional to the point I don't know which land I'm in, I tend to keep on trucking.

But, that's just me. I'm sure there are a lot of bloggers that go for that and that's fine.

When you are setting up your blog to promote your ebook, you know the basic rule is to keep that audience. If the wrong audience lands on your blog, no matter what you do, no matter how many search words or feeds or tags you have, it's not going to make a bit of difference to them because they are there for content. You might have lured them in with your search words or your feeds or your tags, but if it's not the place they want to be, they're going to be history.

But, there will be those who land on your blog and stay there and the reason for it is that you have provided the content they were searching for.

Content, people, content.

If you are an author and you are solely trying to promote yourself, it's quite okay to talk about your life as an author who actually has a life outside of writing. Maybe I want to know what you did last Saturday night after you closed up your laptop. Maybe I want to know about that fantastic trip you took to Naples to celebrate that NY contract. Maybe I find it cool to find out how you struggle with motherhood and writing, too.

Content, people, content.

But, when I happen to land on an author's blog and find that they're talking about political stuff, for example, that is in no way related to their ebooks, I wonder what in the heck they are doing. They are confusing me. I land on their blog to find out about their lives, or their books, and they're going off about things that aren't even closely related. But, then again, that's just me.

But, what you need to think about is, I am your customer. I have landed on your blog for one reason or another and if you do not have the product or the content I'm looking for, I'll find it somewhere else. There are far too many blogs in the blogosphere that I don't have to stop there.
Focus.

Make each blog post count.

Draw in that audience.

I picked up a magazine today that was about a conference for a particular restaurant chain, and inside I found out that the speakers they had scheduled were talking about the very same thing I teach in here. The power of online marketing.

I would like to quote an excerpt out of this magazine which really hit home. The title of this article was "Marketing is Everything and Everything is Marketing."

And here's the first paragraph as that is all that is needed to prove this point:

"Do you know what your business needs to be successful? It isn't location, it isn't hard work, it isn't a great team, and it isn't just an awesome product. The only thing absolutely required to be successful is customers."

Think about it. You can have the most fantastic product (book) in all the land, but if there are no customers (audience), you have a product that is going nowhere.

Audience.

If you want to be successful, you need your customers more than anything.

What I would like to do now is ask you, how do you bring in your customers to your blog? Give us those tried and true secrets as to how YOU lure customers to your blog, and on Monday, I'll highlight some of your answers on my book promotion blog at PUMP UP YOUR ONLINE BOOK PROMOTION at www.pumpupyouronlinebookpromotion.blogspot.com. Please leave your comments on the book promotion blog to be eligible.

Have a nice week-end everyone and PUMP UP THAT BOOK PROMOTION!

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

PUMP UP Your Blog to Sell Your Books Workshop

Just to let you guys know I haven't disappeared from oblivion, I'm conducting a free book promotion workshop at my new PUMP UP YOUR ONLINE BOOK PROMOTION BLOG at www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.blogspot.com. See you there!
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