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Do you get twitchy at the thought of Twitter? Do mailing lists make you want to write an angry letter to the editor? Do QR codes sound like French to you?
Let Katie Davis sort out all the ins and outs of publicity for you. In her new book, How to Promote Your Children’s Book, Katie covers everything possible in a whirlwind tour of the current landscape of publicity. It’s not an in-depth tutorial, but a rapid fire survey which helps you understand the possibilities of each publicity effort, so that you can prioritize where you want to put your efforts.
Here’s a look at the Table of Contents
Plotting Your Strategy
Are you Out of Print?
Where are You?
Join Up!
I’m a Twitter Twit!
Give More Than You Get
Being Selfishly Unselfish
Your Website and What’s Wrong With It
Working with a Designer
The Secret Sauce
A Fake Angry Letter about Facebook
Ways to Build SEO
Mailing Lists
Blogging
Newsletters
Book Festivals
School Visits
Book Store Appearances
Skype Visits
Love Your Library
Printed Giveaways
Book Trailers
Shine the Power of YouTube
Contests
Launch Parties: Real v. Virtual
Unexpected Ways to Promote
QR Codes and How to Use Them
Media
Do’s and Don’ts
The End. . . of the Book
Questions and/or Feedback
Resources
Independent Book Stores
Book Bloggers
What has Katie left out? Nothing!
BTW, the Book Trailer chapter mentions my ebook, The Book Trailer Manual.
So, go and read and prioritize your publicity efforts for your next book!
Giveaway
Here’s the thing. Katie has offered to giveaway a copy of this new resource for publicity. Leave a comment below with the URL of your favorite book trailer. I’ll look them over, pick MY favorite book trailer of what you offer and decide who gets the giveaway. Deadline to post is midnight on Monday, February 20.
Today, everyone should be rolled over to Facebook’s new Page features. Why should authors care? Because it gives us new ways to interact with each other and with our readers.
LIKE my Facebook Page: I know there are neat, nifty little buttons you can put here so you can LIKE my Page without going there. Alas, I’m part geek, but not enough to have figured this out YET. Instead, PLEASE CLICK through and LIKE my Brand-New Page! BTW, I went with DarcyPattisonAuthor as the name of my page, so the URL is now http://www.facebook.com/DarcyPattisonAuthor.
Photos at the top. Some time ago, Facebook Profile pages switched to pictures at the top and the Pages are doing this also. These are randomly displayed, but you can X out the ones you do NOT want to appear. The photos are drawn from those you upload and those you Tag with your PageName. It will NOT include photos posted by those who like your Page.
Use Facebook as your Page. When you login you can switch and surf around Facebook AS YOUR PAGE. This means you can LIKE other Pages, post comments as your Page and function as the entity, Author. You can NOT post on profiles, only other Pages.
Email notifications. You can choose to receive notifications when people post or comment on your Page.
Featured Pages and admins. Hurrah! If you have Pages for each of your Books, you can feature these on your Page, thus linking all your Pages together in a coherent fashion. You can feature your publisher, your illustrator, your favorite organizations, etc. If multiple people are involved in the page, say for an anthology, you could feature each of those authors (if they have pages). It’s a nice networking tool
Mutual connections: When someone visits your Page, they will see which of their friends also likes your Page, as well as other Pages that both they and your Page like.
Profile picture size. Profile pictures were limited to 200×600 px, but that’s reduced to 180×540 px. What do you think of my new pic?
Navigation. Gone are the tabs at the top, replaced by the Links on the left-hand side, exactly like on a profile. Tabs are swapped out for the personal info that used to be under your pic. Make use of your Info to highlight what is important.
Custom “tabs”/Links to additional pages on your Page, now) can be created with iFrames. This is important enough it gets its own section below.
Book Trailers: Is It Budget or Aesthetics that Matters?
On my sister-site, BookTrailerManual.com, I’m having a discussion with Melissa from YABookshelf about teen book trailers. What’s the most important thing in the success of a trailer? Is it the budget, how much you spend on the trailer? Or is it the idea, the aesthetics with which you approach the book trailer? Come and join the conversation.
Of course, you know by now that for author promotion, you should be on Facebook. But frankly, I find it to be confusing. Yes, I easily figured out how to sign on and create an account. I figured out how to upload pictures and how to post on someone’s wall.
Is that all there is?
No. When you think about using Facebook as a tool for book promotion and publicity, you need to go deeper. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have good Help. It’s hard to figure out where to go. You’re faced with a wall of posts and, what? I’ve found some of the important pages for you.
Individual Account v. Fan Page v. Group Page
My Facebook Avatar
The first decision you should make what you want to do on Facebook: Promote a book, hook up with friends/family, hook up with colleagues.
Individual Profile: Just sign up.
Pros: Easy. Privacy controls allow you to set who sees what, and who can comment. For example, several editors have their pages set to No Comments. If you have some popularity and get too many comments, you have options.
Cons: You can only have 5000 friends. If you have some popularity and think it will grow, then you should opt for a Fan Page.
Tips on keeping business/family separate: You could create two accounts, using two different emails. That’s what I did, because no one told me there was another option. Instead, you just create Friends/Lists. On your home page, left hand navigation, find the Friends Link and click. Then, in the middle of the page, at the top, look for the Create a List. There, you can create a List of Friends, a List of Writer Friends, etc. When you upload or post, you can decide WHO gets to see what. For posts, there’s a tiny link at the bottom of the posting box. For photos, look for these privacy controls when you upload.
Unfortunately, Facebook is not forgiving. You make an ill-advised decision early–when you know so little about how it works–and you’re stuck. I’m keeping my two separate accounts; but I wish I’d know about the Lists so it was easier.
Pros: Unlimited friends. You can customize the page with any sort of app you want: discussion board, calendar of events, etc. There are tons of apps available, check them out.
Cons: People must LIKE the page first and you have to get them to do that. Once they do, your posts here will show up on your friends’ walls. But what they post on their individual walls will NOT show up here. It’s more of a one-way street.
Group Page:Go here for more information. These pages are more like clubs. A group page is still tied to YOU as an individual, while a fan page is operated as something very separate.
Obviously, these aren’t exhaustive comparisons. Here are some great comparison charts.
Most of you know that I’ve also written The Book Trailer Manual.
Inquiring minds have asked: “Why don’t you have a book trailer for the Book Trailer Manual?” (Thanks for the question, Joanna!)
It’s the idea that is so hard! But finally, here is the first one. Yes, the first of many. As I explain in the Book Trailer Manual, videos on YouTube usually have a half-life of only 3 weeks. That is, most views of the video will come in the first three weeks, with only long tail views after that. Because of this short shelf life, I recommend a new trailer about every three weeks for the first six months your book is out.
Congratulations to the Goodreads contest winner, Kristin Wing. Kristin is an aspiring writer herself.
And Congratulations to Joelle. The contest garnered 1384 entries, an amazing number of people who were interested in her book. Clearly, it’s a good venue to get some interest in your fiction.
There are times when you just want to weep at the friendships expressed in publishing. Thank you. Thank all of you for participating.
The last count on the Facebook Event page was over 725 people participating. If everyone did just one thing this week, that’s amazing. But I know some did five or six things every single day. Wow!
Today’s task for Random Acts of Publicity: For your friend or friend’s book do some kind of networking through a social media channel. Friend them. Like Them. Get Linked In. Network in some way.
Friend Me or Like Me: Social media is all about networks. Friend Me on Facebook (I’m at DarcyPattison) is a basic request from which all other things flow. For fan pages, be sure to “Like” them. This follows for GoodReads.com, LibraryThing.com, LinkedIn.com or any other social media.
Events: Participate in an event you are invited to. If it’s a local event and you’re thousands of miles away, at least stop by the event site and write an encouraging note.
Network: Suggest to one friend that they may want to be friends with a couple other friends. Try to be deliberate about this and not just random, matching up people with like interests.
Today’s task is Word of Mouth: Tell one person about a friend’s book
You want to tell someone about a friend’s book. Great!
What will you say?
The Message and The Conversation
There are two things to think about when we talk about books and using word-of-mouth to help promote a book.
First is the message, or what we tell people about a book, or the message that advertisers try to get across to an audience. Second is the conversation that people have about a book. Oddly enough, these are not always the same.
In his book, The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited, Emanuel Rosen discusses an example of this. When Proctor & Gamble wanted to promote their new Clairol Herbal Essences hair dye, they found a difference in the message and the conversation. In the advertising–the message, women wanted to know that the dye produced vibrant colors, that it worked and that it smelled good. But when they went to friends to talk about the dye, when conversations occurred, it was about getting reassurance about the color choice.
When we do reviews of books (tomorrow’s topic), we’re giving information, the message. But when we tell someone about a book, we’re often talking about how it felt to read the book, what were our impressions and emotions.
Example: Suzanne Collin’s new book, Mockingjay is just out and here’s a bit of the current conversation about it. I chose this blog because it asked questions and got responses from readers – a conversation. Also read some of the (at the time of writing) 392 reviews on Amazon. Some of these are giving information or a message; others are entering the conversation. Both are important in word-of-mouth, but they can be very different.
Finding Topics for Word of Mouth
So, I think it’s worth thinking about what topics we can talk about when we discuss a certain book. Giving people a topic to talk about is important. Here are some ideas, illustrated with my friend’s book, In Defiance of Hitler by Carla McClafferty.
Portable Ideas
What you say about a friend’s book needs to be portable. Can you pass it along easily? This could be conversations, email to forward to a friend or to like on Facebook.
This is a Holocaust book that ends in triumph.
Clear Ideas
Clarity trumps everything in messages about books. What is the one thing you want to tell someone about a friend’s book? Express it in the clearest way possible.
Harvard-educated journalist helps Jews escape from Nazi-occupied Germany
Repeatable Ideas
Phrases that are catchy in some way are easily repeated.
Add a Comment
Today’s task for Random Acts of Publicity: For your friend or friend’s book do some kind of networking through a social media channel. Friend them. Like Them. Get Linked In. Network in some way.
Friend Me or Like Me: Social media is all about networks. Friend Me on Facebook (I’m at DarcyPattison) is a basic request from which all other things flow. For fan pages, be sure to “Like” them. This follows for GoodReads.com, LibraryThing.com, LinkedIn.com or any other social media.
Events: Participate in an event you are invited to. If it’s a local event and you’re thousands of miles away, at least stop by the event site and write an encouraging note.
Network: Suggest to one friend that they may want to be friends with a couple other friends. Try to be deliberate about this and not just random, matching up people with like interests.
Guest Post by Joelle Anthony
Here you go. http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/5228-restoring-harmony
Giveaway on GoodReads.com
Last week, we talked about book giveaways in general. Today, we have a case study on book giveaways on Goodreads.com. Thanks to Joelle Anthony for this guest post.
On Your Site OR On GoodReads?
Book giveaways have become a great way for authors to draw people to their websites, and almost every day, several new announcements for contests pop up on Twitter and Facebook. There are usually more giveaways going than a person can keep up with though. Also, giveaways through blogs are often complicated and/or demanding for the person who wants to enter and can be time consuming for the author too.
It seems like many authors only want to give books away if you become a follower of their blog, retweet, fill in a form, or post about the contest on your site. If this works for them, and people don’t mind doing it, then I think that’s fine, but I personally like the ease of doing a book giveaway on Goodreads.
Goodreads Makes it Easy
For the author, Goodreads handles almost everything. There are a few requirements though. For example, your book has to either be coming out, or has only been out for six months or less. You can give away ARCs (advance reading copies) or actual books, but you do need to say exactly what you’re giving away, and ebooks are not allowed. You can read all their terms and conditions on their site. http://www.goodreads.com
It’s also easy for people to enter, which increases the entries. If you have a Goodreads account, and you see a giveaway you’d like to enter, all you have to do is click one button. If you’re chosen as the winner, you’ll get an email from the author asking for a mailing address. That’s all there is to it.
The nice thing about giveaways at Goodreads is that the site promotes them, they pick the winner, and they simply email you the winner’s information at the end.
Get Results at GoodReads
Also, the sheer numbers of entries can’t be beat. I’ve seen bloggers give away my book and have as few as twelve or thirteen entries and other more popular bloggers garner maybe as many as two hundred, but my first giveaway on Goodreads netted two thousand and seven entries.
In conjunction with this guest post, I listed a giveaway for my book Restoring Harmony on Goodreads one month ago. After ten days, I had over six hundred entries. Many of these people who entered also added my book to their To Be Read lists. I doubt all of them will actually read/buy it, but even if only a few do, those are probably readers I wouldn’t have reached.
Cross Promote
You can increase your entries, and thus your exposure (the more entries you get, the more actively Goodreads promotes your giveaway) by posting links on your own website, Facebook, or tweeting about it on Twitter. I do a reminder on Twitter and FB once a week during the contest, and the number of entries definitely jump when I do this.
So if you have a recent or upcoming release, I urge you to try listing a contest. Publishers can do the giveaway too, so you may be able to get your publicist to provide the book so you don’t even incur
You’ve seen book giveaway contests on numerous blogs, and it’s probably been on your mind to try one on your own. But in the back of your mind, you may be wondering: What if I hold a book giveaway contest, and no one comes?
Fear not—I’m here to share the ins and outs of these contests and how they can actually help you drive traffic to your blog.
Get a FREE book! See Joelle Anthony’s Book Giveaway Contest for her novel Restoring Harmony on GoodReads!
Low cost. Whenever I hold a book giveaway contest, a publisher or author has provided a free copy for the contest or for my review. Very rarely do I purchase a book and decide to give it away. Because I’ve had my blog for two years, people often contact me about review copies. If you haven’t had your blog for very long, you can contact publishers and authors yourself or find a discounted copy to give away.
Plan the date. Probably the best days to hold a blog contest are at the beginning of the work week—Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. However, you can look at your own blog stats and see which days you have the most traffic to decide when to hold a contest. Once you have your copy and choose your day, let the fun begin!
Plan the contest and your posts. What are you going to do for your post? Book giveaway contest posts can be a review of the book, an interview with the author, or a guest post by the author. A book review can work well for a contest—especially if it’s a book you really enjoyed. If you can secure an interview with the author, these are often popular—everyone likes to hear what an author has to say about her book and the writing process. Guest posts are, of course, nice for you because they are less work. It’s really up to you which kind of post you write for the contest.
Plan your contest rules. The important thing is that you remember to post your contest rules. Most book giveaway contests are just comment contests where people leave a comment about the book or even a question for the author. So, your rules will say something like: “Leave a comment or question on this post by Friday at 8:00 p.m. CST to be entered into a drawing to win this book. One person will be chosen randomly using Random.org. Please make sure to leave an e-mail address with your comment. Books can only be sent to addresses in the United States and Canada.”
Some bloggers will allow “extra entries” if the entrants subscribe to the blog, follow the blogger on Twit
WHAT: Random Acts of Publicity 2011
WHEN: September 7-10
Last year, I declared the week after Labor Day, as Random Acts of Publicity Week. It’s coming back this year on September 7-10. Here’s a quick summary from last year and we’ll update it with lots of fun this year!
Random Acts of Publicity 2011
Are you like me? I always promise myself that today I’ll write a review of my friends’ books and actually post them on Amazon or Library Thing or GoodReads or somewhere. But do I? No. That’s about to change!
I know how wonderful it is to see new reviews on Amazon of one of my books. I know that it’s better to give than to receive. During the Random Acts of Publicity Week, I vow to put these two things together and give friends some support for their books.
So, I’m declaring next week, September 7-10, 2011, as the RANDOM ACTS OF PUBLICITY WEEK, a week when you do something to promote a friend’s book, or to promote a recent book you’ve read. Four days of promoting others’ books should be great fun.
Why this week? We all know that the holiday shopping season is when people buy things, including books! We want our Amazon pages and other publicity in place before that season starts. So, September is a great month to help others by reviewing their books and doing other Random Acts of Publicity.
Look for more in the next few weeks. For now:
Spread the word. Let others know about the Random Acts of Publicity Week. (Copy the banner if you want and post it on your site.) Read or re-read books. Plan the books you want to promote. Have you been waiting for a good time to read your friend’s book? This is that good time. Check it out; buy it; read it before September 7.
Any suggestions for this week? Help me plan it! Want to do a guest post on this, or plan a related day on your blog?
I’ve been working on an eBook (pdf), The Book Trailer Manual, which will be available starting August 15.
That means, of course, that I should create some book trailers. Right?
My teen fantasy, The Wayfinder, is now available for Kindle and for iPhone (StanzaApp/Smashwords). Perfect. I decided to use it as a guinea pig.
So, here are my trailers. I used the same stock images for all of these, just experimented with different programs. There’s a slideshow from Photobucket, a short trailer using Animoto.com , and a trailer made with Vegas Movie Studio HD.
Now an EBook
In the teen fantasy novel, The Wayfinder, Eleven-year-old Win, an apprentice Finder, must go into the mysterious Great Rift to find the Well of Life, the only hope of healing the Heartland of plague and freeing himself from grief.
First, a Quick Review of the book from Booklist
Winchal Eldras is an apprentice Wayfinder, a member of an elite group of people who can locate anything or anyone. When Win’s little sister slips out of the house one foggy night, he tracks her to the edge of the Great Rift, where his fear of heights causes him to freeze, and she falls to her death. Bereft, Win retreats into himself. Then a prince of the Heartland arrives with news of a rapidly spreading plague and taps Win to journey through the Rift to find the Well of Life, whose waters are the only cure. With resignation, Win begins the arduous trek, joined by Lady Kala, a royal gazehound with her own special powers. The pair winds its way past a giant eagle, a deadly crocodile, a venomous tatzelwurm, and other dangers. The relationship between the haughty dog and the boy is handled well, growing from mutual abrasiveness to bonding. The plot is simple, but the adventures will keep readers turning the pages. –Sally Estes. Booklist
And Another Quick Review from Locus Magazine
“In this YA fantasy, a boy with special talents has to face the thing he fears most in order to find a cure for a plague that threatens his home and kingdom. This basic boy-comes-of-age quest is nicely fleshed out with details of the people and their world. Winchal has the Wayfinders talent that lets him find things, including his way in the dense fog that frequently blankets his town–a talent so useful it has its own guild. Winchal is a promising apprentice, but is terrified of heights, and is stunned to be chosen to go on a quest into the nearby Rift, with only a telepathic dog–an imperious breed owned only by royalty–for a companion. His adventures follow familiar formulas, but have a charm of their own, for a very promising first novel that holds hints of being only the first in a series.” Carolyn Cushman, 15/2000. Locus Magazine.
Author Alexis O’Neill has just released a video for one of her back-list titles. Most authors promote heavily newly released books, but don’t do much for titles a couple years old. I’ve asked Alexis to explain why she’s focusing on her back-list books and give us a few tips about back-list promotions.
Q: What is the title and when was it published? Can we see the trailer?
Q: Did the book receive any awards, special recognitions, etc?
This book is a companion book to The Recess Queen (Scholastic 2002) and they are often purchased together. Both are books about the ups and downs of friendship – one featuring girls the other, boys. While The Worst Best Friend hasn’t received awards, The Recess Queen has won many, including Children’s Choice in two states and a nominee in seven others.
Q: Do you have newer or forthcoming titles with the same publisher?
No.
Q: Why did you decide to promote this particular book at this time? Have sales dropped and you just wanted to give it a boost? Do you expect your efforts to help keep the book in print?
As long as a book is in print, it’s alive! My friend, Tina Nichols Coury, created a book trailer for the launch in 2008. She recently approached me and asked if she could try another slant on the trailer, and I said. “Go for it!” Among other differences, the first trailer is narrated, the new trailer has only background music.
Just think of this: a book is back-listed within six-months of publication. That’s hardly enough time to get the word out about it. I think that our promotional efforts should keep on going as long as the book is in print. And I think that fresh material on a variety of platforms introduces your book to new and diverse audiences. Look at how popular Twitter and Facebook have become in just the past two years. Having fresh material is an “excuse” to post a new link.
There is no magic bullet for promotion, so expecting a book trailer to do all the promotional heavy lifting for you is crazy. Frankly, what keeps my books in print is that I’m invited to do tons of school visits every year. (Bully and friendship themes
Cynthia Leitich Smith is the New York Times and Publishers Weekly best-selling author of ETERNAL and TANTALIZE (both Candlewick).
Her award-winning books for younger children include JINGLE DANCER, INDIAN SHOES and RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME (all HarperCollins).
Cynthia’s upcoming releases include HOLLER LOUDLY (Dutton, Nov. 2010), BLESSED (Candlewick, Feb. 2011) and TANTALIZE: KIEREN’S STORY (Candlewick, Feb. 2011).
She is a member of faculty at the Vermont College M.F.A. program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her website at www.cynthialeitichsmith.com was named one of the top 10 Writer Sites on the Internet by Writer’s Digest and an ALA Great Website for Kids. Her Cynsations blog at cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/ was listed as among the top two read by the children’s/YA publishing community in the SCBWI “To Market” column.
For PR Notes today, Cynthia will talk about increasing traffic on her website.
Cynthia Leitich Smith
Q: Cynthia, your site is one of the most popular children’s literature sites on the internet today. Let’s talk about how to get traffic to your site. It’s not enough to simply put up a website, you have to make it something that people want to come to. Do you track your traffic? How? What kind of traffic do you get? Per month? per year?
CLS: Thank you! The main site received 2.8 million unique visitors in 2009, and my blog, Cynsations, is the largest feeder after Google. Traffic typically dips between mid-July and mid-August; however, it doesn’t suffer (and sometimes even profits) from major holidays.
Q: List 3 things that have helped increase the traffic to your site. Have any of the social media sites been responsible for a large lift in traffic? What sort of posts get the best traffic?
CLS: Promotion, Content and Neutrality.
Promotion. The blog is cross-posted to Blogger, LiveJournal, and MySpace. It’s also syndicated to facebook and JacketFlap. In addition, I tweet the URLs to my posts. These strategies have all been successful, as has the fact that I typically include PowerPoint slides of the blog (at its various locations) toward the end of my real-space presentations.
I’m honored to say that my readers tend to respond most enthu
The first thing you should do for book publicity promotion is a website. I know. Most of you have one.
But let’s do a check to see if it’s the most effective it could be.
1) Put your name into a search engine. Great. Your website came up first (I hope!).
2) Describe your latest book in 4-5 words. For my forthcoming picture book next year, Prairie Storms (August, 2011, Sylvan Dell), I might list these words: prairie weather animals kids book.
Put those words into a search engine. Does your site come up on the first page of the results?
Can Anyone Find Your Site?
It’s no use having a website, if no one finds it! Tweaking your website to make sure search engines find you is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Last year, I did lots of tweaking and it doubled the traffic to my site. Yes, doubled it within six months.
I’m not going to do a whole tutorial on SEO here, you can find those online, as well as books devoted to the subject at your bookstore. Here, I just want to talk about keywords.
Keywords for your book
When I listed those words for Prairie Storms, I just pulled some out of the air, but I won’t do that when I create the website this year. I’ll look at statistics, because the online world is all about statistics.
First, you’ll want to use a tool like Google Adwords Keyword tool to help you find the right keywords. For this tool, you put in words that you think someone will use to find your book. For example for Prairie Storms, a teacher might use these keywords: weather unit lesson plans.
Try this with me. Go to the Keyword Tool and put in those words, one on each line.
I like to click at the top of the Local Monthly Searches column, so it will sort the results in descending order from the most searches on down.
Here are the top 3 keywords:
Weather – 68,000,000 searches / month
Plan – 20,400,000 searches / month
Lesson – 9,140,000 searches / month
Wow, lots of people are looking for weather related stuff! But if there are 68 million searches/month for “weather,” how many could I reasonable expect to come to my site? None. If you don’t show up in the top 30 results for a search term, very few people will click on your site. Page ranking is the term used to refer to how well a page on a website ranks on search engines. If you’re in position 10 for the keyword, “weather”, that would be fantastic.
What I need to do then, if find phrases where I might could get a high rank. In the Keyword tool, you can do this by putting phrases in brackets; also on the left-hand column, click on the Match Phrase; on the Contains column, I only want to see results for “weather lesson plans”. Searching for [weather lesson plans] there are 8,100 local searches/month. The competition is low enough that I could probably rank high on it.
Before I create the website for this book, I�
For some time, I’ve been very interested in the ins and outs of marketing, public relations, social media, etc. I’ve thought about doing a separate website; instead, I’ve decided to write a PR Notes column on Wednesdays.
Your story. I’d love to include your PR story in a guest post or I’d be glad to send you a Q&A. I’m looking for stories of how you produced a book trailer, sent out press releases, turned a book signing into a great event, etc. What are you doing to bring attention to your work or to a specific book? Any special tips for using Twitter, Facebook, etc. for publicity?
Questions. I’d also love to answer your questions about PR. Ask and I’ll research and get back to you. Ask here
Meanwhile, I’ll start with an interesting chart from CMO.com the site about digital marketing. Click on the chart to go to CMO’s site and download a pdf there. Or find the CMO’s chart here.
The chart has four columns, which represent possible goals for digital marketing. Customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site, and SEO (Search engine optimization).
If we translate that to the book publicity world, we might get:
Talking with our readers, name recognition, traffic to site and SEO.
Looked at that way here’s the social media sites that the CMO chart recommends. In other words, you must ask yourself, what is the goal of your promotion efforts and choose your sites accordingly.
Talking with our readers: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube Name recognition: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Digg. Traffic to your Site: Digg and Stumbleupon. SEO: Flickr, YouTube, Digg, YouTube, del.icio.us
What do you think? Does the CMO chart cross over to book publicity? Which sites do you find useful for which goals?
The Worst Best Friend (Scholastic 2008).
How to Write a Picture Book