Tag Archive - Social Media

News You Can Use – April 24, 2012

April 24, 2012 in News You Can Use with 6 Comments

How to Pay a Ghost – Great post on how ghostwriting works.

A Noah’s Ark for Books! – Brewster Kahle is storing a copy of every book ever published. Spending millions on storage and scanning. Fascinating.

Search Google by Reading Level – Refine your searches! Who knew Google could do this too?

Yet Another Supreme Court Case Concerning Book Sales - This time dealing with the “grey” market of reselling used books.

BookTango – A new social reading site. Check it out!

The Dirty Secret of Overnight Success – I love this article. Read it and then get back to work.

News You Can Use – Feb. 21, 2012

February 21, 2012 in Grammar, News You Can Use, Trends, Writing with 4 Comments

My Favorite Article of the Week – Please read it and make your agent happy.

What Publishers Can Learn From the Airlines- Andy Le Peau of IVP renders a very clever take on what publishing could look like if they would only emulate other industry practices.

Amanda Knox Signs a $4 Million Book Deal – Sigh…Think about it for a second. In 2005 a relatively unknown senator from Illinois got $1.9 Million for two non-fiction books, his name was Barak Obama. And right before he took office as president he signed a $500,000 advance deal for a children’s book. Former President Bill Clinton got $8 Million up front for his memoir. And former President George Bush received $7 Million for his Decision Points memoir.

Do You Ignore Issue of Copyright? – This article shows the complexity of copyright when going from one country to the next. For example, Hemingway is public domain in Canada, but not in France. Do you even care?

Men are from Google+, Women are from Pinterest – clever article

Adult vs. YA Dystopian Novels – Interesting look at the phenomenon of dystopian novels in today’s YA market. And if you don’t know what that means, click the link.

25 Subordinating Conjunctions – I was afraid to read the article too. Clever help for flat writing.

 

7 Ways Agents Measure Social Media

February 20, 2012 in Agency, Branding, Business, Guest Post, Marketing, Steve with 32 Comments

Guest Blog by Thomas Umstattd

We are thrilled to have Thomas Umstattd as our guest today. His company built our web site and we unabashedly recommend their services. Thomas built his first website at the age of 13 and taught his first web design class at only 16 years old. He has been helping authors and small businesses use the web ever since. Thomas currently serves as the CEO of Castle Media Group LLC, a company that builds websites for world changers.

He runs AuthorMedia.com a resource for authors who need help with technology and need to develop an effective social media strategy. As an award winning speaker, Thomas teaches all over the world where his friendly speaking style blends multimedia and audience participation. His combination of experience and youth give him a unique perspective that can help you use the web in a whole new way.

If you have a chance to take his classes at a future writers conference don’t hesitate. Sign up!

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In the old days all you had to do was tell an agent or publisher “I’m on Facebook, Twitter and I have a blog” and they would be impressed with your online presence. Now publishers are getting more sophisticated in measuring your online presence. They are realizing that not all blogs are the same and that the size of your Twitter following does not directly correlate to influence.

This post goes over 7 ways agents and publishers will measure your social platform in 2012. You may also want to check out 7 Things Agents & Publishers Look for in Author Websites (2012 Edition).

1. Number of Facebook Likes

What is it?

The number of Facebook likes indicates how popular your author page is on Facebook. Notice I am not saying “Facebook friends.” There are only an handful of ways to advertise your book to your friends effectively without sounding like a shill. Fan pages offer much more effective tools for selling books.

Why are fan pages important?

Facebook Fan Pages are better for authors for 3 very important reasons:

  1. Facebook Ads – You can’t buy Facebook ads targeting your friends. You can buy ads targeting just your fans. These targeted ads are some of the most effective advertising you can do for your book. You also can also use ads to get more fans.
  2. Unlimited Fans – Your personal page is limited to 5000 friends which limits your growth somewhat. Agents and editors really want to see Facebook pages with 10,000+ fans.
  3. Landing Pages – Fan pages have the ability to have landing pages that can call visitors to take a specific action such as sign up for your newsletter or buy your book

How do you boost your fan count?

  • Answer the question for your readers: “What is in it for me? What do I get out of liking your page?”
  • Advertise
  • Add the Facebook icon to your website

Read: 10 Ways to Boost Your Facebook Fans

2. Facebook Engagement

What is it?

Facebook engagement is the degree to which people are reacting and responding to you on Facebook. It also is an indication of how many people see your status updates on their Facebook streams.

Why is it important?

Having a lot of Facebook fans is of little value if those people ignore everything you post. The higher your engagement the more fans you will be able to convert into readers.

How do you measure it?

The easiest way to measure Facebook engagement is to look at the “# of people talking about this” on the left-hand side of your Facebook page.

How do you improve engagement?

  • Ask questions
  • Put fill-in-the-blanks
  • Share positive news (people don’t like complaining or bragging)
  • Post interesting images.
  • Care about your fans.

3. Number of Twitter Followers

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging social network that has become popular in the author community. It is a way of posting short messages to your followers or to specific Twitter users. The number of people who follow you on Twitter is an indication of how popular you are on Twitter.

How do you improve your Twitter following?

There are two ways of growing your following on Twitter. The effective way and the easy way. The easy way is to follow other people. There are even some automated tools that will do this for you. The problem with this method is that this sort of follower uses Tweet Deck to ignore your tweets. It is not uncommon to see someone with 10,000 followers on Twitter and none of them retweet tweets or click links. Following strangers on Twitter gives you phantom followers.

The effective way to gain a following on Twitter is to post Tweets that are so interesting/helpful/funny that people are compelled to retweet them. A retweet is a forward of your message to someone else’s followers, many of whom may have never heard of you before. The more of your retweets they see the more likely they are to check you out and follow you on Twitter. This is what we do on @AuthorMedia and we have been growing at around 50-100 followers a week and we don’t auto-follow. These are folks who actually want to hear what we have to say and don’t just want to inflate their following.

Read: 12 Ways to Get More Twitter Followers

4. Twitter Engagement

What is it?

Twitter engagement is the degree to which your Twitter followers pay attention to what you have to say on Twitter.

How do you measure Twitter engagement?

There are four primary ways to measure engagement.

  1. Retweets – What percentage of your followers forward your messages on to their followers?
  2. Bit.ly+ clicks – What percentage of your followers click the links you share on Twitter? You can check this by adding a “+” to the end of any bit.ly link to see how many clicks it has received.
  3. Follower Ratio – How many people do you follow back? An author who is following 20,000 people and has 18,000 followers is not nearly as attractive to publishers as an author who is followed by 7,000 people and only follows 150 people.
  4. @replies – Some authors’ Twitter profiles are full of a lot of one-way communication. They post and post about themselves and their writing. Other authors spend a lot of time answering reader questions and engaging readers 1 on 1 using Twitter’s @reply feature. A lot of back and forth @replies is the sign of a healthy Twitter page, particularly when those @replies are to a lot of different folks.
  5. Listings – How many times have people added you to a Twitter list? This is an indication that they 1) read your tweets, and 2) find them helpful. Publishers are impressed to see you listed in a lot of Twitter lists.

How do you improve Twitter engagement?

There are no shortcuts here. Excellence in Twitter, as in all things, takes hard work and is not for every author. The majority of authors waste their time on Twitter talking to other authors. They key is to connect with readers and join the conversations they are already having on Twitter. Don’t be that guy at the party who charges into a conversation and starts shoving business cards at everyone.

Read: 7 Steps to Becoming a Twitter Ninja

5. Number of Blog Comments

What is it?
Comments are responses to your blog posts and they generally come in the form of questions or reactions.

Why are comments important?
Responses indicate visitor engagement. Some websites get visitors who come for a few seconds and then bounce away. This counts as a “visit” in your analytics but these sorts of visitors don’t buy books. The kind of visitors who would take the time to leave a comment are the same kind of folks who would buy your book. The number of comments indicates how passionate readers are about you and your writing.

Why would someone pay to read your book if they won’t read your blog for free?

3 Quick Ways to Increase Your Comments

  1. Make commenting easier. Avoid making people type in squiggly letters or doing math.
  2. Ask questions in your posts
  3. Be controversial.

6. Followers on Third Party Social Networks

What is it?

A third party social network is a social network other than Facebook & Twitter. They include, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GoodReads, StumbleUpon, Foursquare, Gowalla and dozens of others.

Why are they important?

They may not be. The key is to convince agents and publishers that your following on xyz social network is both significant and likely to buy your book. It is unlikely your Foursquare friends are going to buy your next romance book. But the folks who follow your romance book reviews on GoodReads very well may buy your book.

How do you grow your following on third party social networks?

First, don’t get on every social network. Pick the ones your readers (or ideal readers if you are unpublished) are already using. Go to where the party is already happening. Second, provide some sort of value to those folks that is related to your writing. If you write about parenting, give parenting tips and answer parenting questions. If you write about cooking, share recipes. If you write fiction, talk about other fiction and stop spending as much time with social media and go work on your novel.

Read: How To Get More Followers On Google Plus

7. Klout Score

What is Klout?

Your Klout Score is a single number that tries to capture both the size of your following and your degree of influence over that following. In a sense it is a one number summary of the other 6 metrics in this post.

Why is Klout important?

Klout is the easiest thing for publishers and agents to check, which means it will probably be the first thing they check.

5 Ways to Boost your Klout Score

  1. Add all your social profiles to your Klout profile.
  2. Invite your followers to connect with you over Klout and give you +K
  3. Give +K unto others as you would have them give +K unto you.
  4. Unfollow people you don’t care to listen to.
  5. Pick a theme for providing value around the web and stick with that theme.

Read: 7 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Klout Score

 

News You Can Use – Feb. 7, 2012

February 7, 2012 in News You Can Use with 9 Comments

Author Says McGraw-Hill Cheats on Royalties - Details of a pending lawsuit.

What is Pinterest? -  The latest craze in Social Media Networks. AuthorMedia shows you the simple steps to sign up and tips on how to use it in the next article below.

Three Ways an Author Can Use Pinterest – Last week an editor told me how she was following a couple of her authors on Pinterest and how much she liked it.

5 Ways to Break Out of the Social Media Doldrums - Well said by Aubre Andrus.

10 Ways to Ensure No One Will Read Your Blog Post – Ali Luke give great insight

How Hard Can it Be to Write a Kids Book? – Sally Lloyd-Jones helps dispel a common myth.

A very cool six minute video envisioning a future technology. Imagine computing being done on glass walls, desks, and even in National Parks. From Corning. By the way, Corning makes the “Gorilla Glass” that you find on the iPad2.

The Perils of Social Media

January 9, 2012 in Business, Guest Post, Marketing, Publishing, Writing with 28 Comments

Guest Blog by Tosca Lee

Our guest today is Tosca Lee, author of Demon: A Memoir and Havah: The Story of Eve. She is also the co-author with Ted Dekker of the NYTimes bestseller Forbidden. The next book in that series will be out this Summer. A sought-after speaker and former Mrs. Nebraska, Tosca was a senior consultant for a global consulting firm until turning to writing full-time. She holds a degree in English and International Relations from Smith College and also studied at Oxford University. Please visit her web site at www.toscalee.com.

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Facebook. Twitter. Shoutlife. LinkedIn. Dopplr. Google+. Plaxo. Blogger. WordPress. Shelfari. Goodreads. Writer’s loops. Conference loops. Endless loops.

By the time I finish updating my status, writing my blogs, tweeting, pasting my bulletins, my newest pictures, my URLs and YouTube links, recruiting friends, recommending friends, sharing reads, rating reads, ranking reads, ranking friends, tagging friends, responding to posts, responding to friends, responding to blogs, ranting, reblogging, re-bulleting, re-accepting (plants, gifts, pinches, bits o’ karma, flowers, flare, tickles, candy, drinks, siege warfare by angry goats and lil green patches–what the heck is a lil green patch anyway??) it’s time to repost my status–and respond to those responding to my status who are reading their walls, shuffling friends, organizing bookshelves, recommending contacts and waging mob wars.

By then, the day is over. I have missed my hair appointment, my deadline and a conference call, needed to go to the bathroom three hours ago, blown off dinner, ticked off my friends (who live in town and did not check my wall to see why I never showed up), neglected my Significant Other, alienated my family, and defaulted on my mortgage.

I’m already grossly behind on an article and some reading, on projects for friends and the synopsis I owe my agent… and yet I cannot tear myself from Facebook because I might miss something important–say, another lil green patch–and then I will have gone from being behind with writing, reading and work, to being behind with the relational fiber of my life that is supposed to make the reading, the writing, the work all meaningful.

***
Bouncing back and forth between the social, networking and professional sites I signed up for to catch up with friends, connect with readers and promote my work, it’s plausible that I might never have time to write another book–or if I do, it’ll be 360 pages of 140-character one-liners.

I don’t know half the people in my extended network, but they came highly recommended. And even though I may not actually know Marlene in Dekalb, I’m fascinated by how white her teeth are in her picture and the fact that her relationship status just changed from “In a relationship” to “Single.” I’m wondering if they broke up or she forgot to change it before her last boyfriend. And if I know any friends of friends willing to dish.

I’m fascinated by hub friends, who seem to know and be on everyone’s page, horrified at how many colleagues know schoolmates who have seen me do stupid things, appalled friends’ exes who never had the decency to settle down more than one degree away.

It gets a bit uncomfortable–I worry if raucous friends will offend the straight-laced among my network (or vice versa). I wonder whether I’ll say something dumb that will haunt me forever–or at least until it scrolls off the new bulletin list, pushed down by the newest rants, requests, ramblings or reciprocal idiocy of others.

The only way to know, of course, is to stay pasted to the screen. I find that trolling for feedback is an especially convenient time to spy on high school friends and frenemies, the real lives of people I only see in suits, my exes, my readers (it seems only fair), my colleagues, my neighbors. And I am at peace with my virtual social life, holed up like a voyeuristic hermit, my picture neatly made up in the window as I sit stinky and unkempt at home in my sweats.

One of these days, God willing, I’ll start a new project. Crickets will chirp from the void that was my blog. The status line of my Facebook page will stare blankly at no one. Invites will turn kudzu on my homepage, and my Shelfari shelves will grow dust. Concerned friends will send notes like morose pings into the ether as I wrestle with metaphors and confront the empty page, wishing I could trade my Roget’s for the tiniest lil green patch or bit o’ karma.

***

Tosca just sent you a lil green patch.

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