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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
It has never been more imperative for the savvy publisher to embrace these tools and platforms, and begin using them to build exposure for their authors and their own brand. Processes like search engine optimization, or “SEO,” increase visibility of a website or web page in a search engine’s search results. The spike in web traffic that SEO could create for a publisher’s website or online presence is remarkable. Ignoring this digital revolution is the equivalent of ignoring thousands of dollars in added revenue, and the best part of all is how cheap and how easy it is to get started.

Social Media
Signing up for social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube among others, is free, and the account creation process consists of user-friendly walkthroughs and simple step-by-step instructions. These websites have incorporated tools and features into their construction that are specifically designed for professional and commercial use.

Facebook
Facebook allows you to create customized “Fan Pages” – perfect places to showcase new books, increase publicity for authors, and post interesting content aimed at growing an online fan base of followers.

Twitter
Twitter is ideal for notifying large groups of people about upcoming events, such as book signings, author interviews, book fairs, and other publicity campaigns proven to raise awareness and subsequently increase sales.

Pinterest
Relatively new, Pinterest is already the 3rd largest social media organization behind Facebook and Twitter. Even more impressive, Pinterest generates more consumer-driven sales and profitable income for its users than Facebook and Twitter combined, thanks to its unique photo-sharing design and a visually based, attention-grabbing layout.

Using Video
With over 4 million views a day, YouTube has blossomed into the undisputed epicenter for online video sharing, and as such has become an integral factor in content distribution and online marketing. If a picture is worth a thousand words – a video is worth a million – views, that is. Anyone who has seen video of a cat playing a keyboard or babies doing hilarious things knows first-hand the mass market appeal and effectiveness of a video that goes viral. It’s up to progressive publishers to take what they learn from these cyber sensations and apply it to their own marketing and PR strategies.

A professionally created video book trailer highlighting an author’s new book has the same effect online that a well-constructed movie trailer at the theatre has on an audience – both build “hype” for their products and help sell books or tickets. Author Marketing Ideas (AMI) has just launched READ THIS!, a book review show with episodes aired regularly through YouTube. It’s a perfect example of how publishers can combine video and social media to raise awareness of authors and their works.

Though it might all be a little overwhelming at first glance, the statistics are there: never before has social media marketing, SEO, and the use of streaming video content been so important in an effective business plan for publicity and branding. We at AMI are here to help you, the publisher (or the author), to better understand these exciting new developments. It’s our job to help you navigate this changing landscape, and we are ready and willing to lend our expertise to your cause!

Our AMI Support Team is always here to help. If you have any questions or comments on the above, we would love to hear from you.

You can email our team at: Support@authormarketingideas.com

Good Luck!

Patrick Morgan
Campaigns Manager for AMI

Congratulations, Dave!

This post outlines five great fact-based reasons for using videos to promote your books. Videos can be used for posting author interviews, discussing book content, as well as to create book trailers.

Higher Retention Rate- Videos on web pages make them ‘sticky’. Essentially this means that the visitors coming to your page with video content stay on that page longer. Official studies suggest that people stay 2 minutes longer on pages with videos as compared to those without any videos. A longer stay often results in more conversion and return visits.

Higher Search Engine Coverage- Videos are liked not only by humans but also by search engines. Over the years, Google and other search engines have learned how to index video content more accurately. This means that videos are searched better by them and shown more frequently in search results. A webpage with video content is 53 times more likely to appear on Google’s first page results.

Higher Conversion- This is the factual statement that persuades more people everyday to adopt videos as part of their marketing campaign. Videos do increase conversions- sales conversion, email click through rates, lead generation and overall engagement. In some industries, surge in conversion has been as high as 85%.

Higher Interactivity- The internet is full of options. Every web page has only 8 seconds to impress and hold a viewer’s attention. Unless you have a genius copywriter who can paint pictures with written words, most of your web pages will struggle for attention. That’s where videos come. They engage readers and enhances interactivity. No surprise that 68% of top-50 internet retailers use videos on their  most important pages.

Higher Virality- Social media lives on content that is circulated by the users. A recent study proved that videos are three times more likely to be shared on Facebook than usual status updates. This also holds true for many other social media sites, such as, Twitter.

Authors are in great position to use the power of videos. You have great content to utilize: you can simply record a professional looking self-interview, talk about your book, or even just put together some interesting PowerPoint slides and turn that into a video and upload on YouTube.

Our AMI Support Team is always here to help you and if you have any questions or comments on the above we would love to hear them.

Everyday there are new articles and blog posts about the social media craze. It’s time to give a more optimistic look into social media and what it can do for the non-traditionally published authors. Here are 4 reasons why you should have a Facebook/Linkedin/Twitter/Pinterest profile when beginning your career as an author.

1.) Develop Your Publishing Methods:
Social media profiles allow you to define how your book title is portrayed. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profiles are all easy lookup initiatives. This seems like a no brainer, however according to The Marketing Study, despite a knack for technology, 93% of authors don’t  understand online marketing/publishing. It seems like the entire writing population is on Facebook but only 34%t have LinkedIn profiles and even less with Twitter or Pinterest.

2.) Show Your “Organizational Fit” with the Publisher/Buyer:
Social media is all about marketing voice. If a publisher can look at an author’s blog or LinkedIn profile and see that your genre/content matches with the publishers, it could get you a contract. In a recent study it was reported that 68% of published authors were contracted by publishers because of a social networking site, which gave a “positive impression of their genre and content fit.”

Social media is as much a resource for published authors as it is buyers. It’s surprising how much information is on Twitter or Facebook that give insight into marketing culture. Connecting with publishers/buyers socially can help narrow down your list of target market candidates to pitch to so you focus on just those relevant to your cause.

3.) Establish Yourself as a Social Connector:
Believe it or not publishers could consider your social influence an advantage against competitors. By establishing a credible online reputation you become valuable to buyers as a brand ambassador. It’s important for publishers to have these “ambassador” type published authors both internally and externally. Potential buyers will think about the relationships you’ve built through your social presence when they’re deciding if you are a good candidate for their needs. Social Media is all about making real connections between a published author and their audiences – both with publishers and readers. A great way to make these connections is through trust and friendship created through social networking.
Let’s put it this way, if your social influence is established enough- buyers will come to you.

4.) Global Recognition is in High Demand. Not Published? No Problem.
Social Media is a skill. More and more authors are recognizing the necessity of social branding and opportunities are being created to incorporate it into all aspects of business. Publishers are searching for web-savvy authors skilled in communication and analytics. Social media profiles give visible proof of your abilities. It shows buyers your book potential, when you might be otherwise overlooked. Social media gives a leg-up to non-traditionally published authors without the prior publishing experience that the traditional buyers use to look for.

It’s a new era for publishing and the fact is the future is in your hands. Isn’t that refreshing?

P.S. Get your free Digital Footprint Evaluation today! What do people find when they look for you online? How easily do readers ‘stumble’ upon you and your book? Let us do a complimentary survey of your online presence and give you a comprehensive evaluation of where you stand compared to other authors from your genre.

This post discusses specific tips for authors to make their sites search engine friendly. Keeping in mind that SEO can be a technical subject, this post will lay emphasis on exactly what you as an author should be focusing upon to leverage maximum benefits from your SEO efforts.

Here are some benefits of search engine optimization:
1. Your website/blog will be easier to find online
2. Faster website loading time
3. Better networking with other site owners
4. More visitors

Now, when the benefits are obviously hard to ignore, let’s focus on some basic things to keep your SEO efforts up to date.

1. Identify Your Site Keywords:
Every site or blog owner should identify a set of keywords that best represent the content of the site. Search engines use these keywords to place your listings in their database. They use this info to display your site when searched using the keywords. So, if you write about science-fiction and the supernatural, you have to identify some general keywords relevant to the genre. Make sure to use these throughout the site.

2. Write Content With Keywords:
Once you have identified some relevant keywords for your site, it’s important that you use these in your posts. Obviously, every post will be different but it helps to have some common ‘tags’ to use repeatedly as often as you can. The title of the posts, tag clouds, and  link texts are some of the best places to use your important keywords. Make sure you are consistent with your choice of keywords.

3. Interlink Your Posts:
Websites and blogs are simply a collection of pages linked only by hyperlinks. Two posts of your blogs are part of your blog as long as they are linked together. Consider your blog as a book and all the pages linked together just like the spine thread of the book joins all the pages together. In terms of SEO, your task is to name and label these pages relevantly so that the search engines know what each page is about. Secondly, interlinking posts using relevant keywords maintain coherency and consistency, which are two very significant SEO properties to have.

4. Network With Others Online :
Online networking is similar to offline meeting with fans and friends, except that you can’t leave your business cards online. So how do they keep track of you? There are two ways of networking – one for those who come to your site, and a second for those you go out to visit. Visitors coming to your site should be able to bookmark your site in their social bookmarking tools and should be able to subscribe your blog or site as a RSS feed or an email newsletter. To network with people you go out to meet, you should do the same – subscribe and bookmark. When visiting other blogs always make sure to leave valuable comments with your site’s link. This is akin to leaving your business card.

SEO is an ongoing process that you should keep learning about and continue to apply to your site and blog. The key is consistency. Hopefully, this post will help you get started on an exciting journey to improve your site’s search engine results over the next few months.

P.S. As part of our 2013 new year resolutions the AMI team is dedicating themselves to educating and empowering our authors and clients. There is nothing more powerful than a knowledgeable author. This will be the first of many helpful blog style posts we will be sending to our authors over the upcoming months. We hope you enjoy these and please let us know if there is anything in specific you would like to see written about in this series!

What’s important is whether a site once built is doing its job. This is a critical question as a lot of authors do not understand what exactly to expect from their author website.

Below is a quick checklist to see if you have a good website designed, and whether you are getting the best out of it:

1. Get Feedback On the Site’s Design and Usability:
Your site’s design is the first thing that your visitors will notice. Design can be a subjective thing but when you are offering your website to be read by the general public there are certain standards to follow. Maybe you like a specific color but think before using it excessively in your website’s fonts. Consider readability and ease of access. Your author site is not meant to showcase your design prowess but to allow readers to access your writing in the quickest way possible. You must ask for feedback from a group of people to assess the usability factors of your site.

2. Test the Loading Speed:
Website loading speed is a crucial factor that a lot of people are not aware of. A lot of simple mistakes can slow your site and that can really put off readers. Some of the causes are too many large images, wrong code, and videos embedded in the page rather than linked from Youtube, Flickr, etc. There are plenty of online tools that you can use to test the speed of your site. These tools will also offer easy to implement solutions.

3. Install Google Analytics and Check the Stats:
This is a very crucial bit of advice. Google Analytics is a completely free service that will give you stats about your site visitors. It tells you exactly how many people viewed your site, which pages are popular, what are the referring sources and which keywords are being used to find your site. All this data is vital to your site’s success. All of this is presented to you in a very user-friendly and non-technical format.

4. Test your Contact Page Forms:
Out of many options that you can offer your visitors to get in touch with you, your “contact” forms are the most important. Most visitors will use the forms rather than emailing you directly. It’s amazing how many sites have faulty contact forms. The forms need to be tested regularly. Another tip is to not make them lengthy. Keep it simple and quick for visitors to get in touch with you.

5. Subscription Options:
Social media has changed a lot of things. People do not access online content the way they used to. You have to offer your site’s content in a variety of way so that everybody can access it using their choice of method. Some of the options are email newsletters, RSS feeds, Facebook updates on new posts and mobile-friendly site design.

All the above tips require little technical understanding. However, common sense and logical thinking can help you learn a lot of new things that you can apply to make your site effective.

P.S. As part of our 2013 new year resolutions the AMI team is dedicating themselves to educating and empowering our authors and clients. There is nothing more powerful than a knowledgeable author. This will be the first of many helpful blog style posts we will be sending to our authors over the upcoming months. We hope you enjoy these and please let us know if there is anything in specific you would like to see written about in this series!

Our AMI Support Team is always here to help you and if you have any questions or comments on the above we would love to hear them.

As always there are right ways and wrong ways to use Twitter. It is not the technology but the people using it that render whether it useful or not. Twitter is a great way for authors to connect with their readers on a day to day basis and keep them updated with the latest happenings regarding your book or to build your “expert” status on a particular subject.

Below are some helpful beginner-level tips to get you on the right path to ultimate Twitter success.

1. Sign-up And Just Get Started:
If you are one of the rare people who are yet not apart of the Twitter community, its time you should be. If you already have the account but rarely use it then this is a great time to add this to your 2013 Resolutions. Make sure to complete your profile in a professional way, e.g. use an appropriate photo, add links to your site/blog, fill in the tag lines and complete the bio-section.

2. Search For People To Follow:
This is an important step and must not be overlooked, even if you have had a Twitter account for some time. We all have that person in our life we secretly monitor on Facebook or Instagram regularly if not daily…or even twice daily (um did I say that ?!). The point is you want to become an almost icon like figure for your readers. You want them to follow your digital footprint daily and obsess over you and your opinions. So find people from your niche that already are doing this and follow them to learn their strategies for creating this sort of persona on Twitter.

3. Don’t Follow Everyone Under the Sun:
Finding the right twitter account holders to follow is significant for two reasons. First, if you follow too many people without thought, you are going to have to read all of their tweets and this can really drain your time. Secondly, choosing only the right people to follow gives you the best chances of networking effectively. Even more important is that it gives you the inside scoop on your target market. Literally we can’t stress how powerful this is – if you have the knowledge on how your readers act, think and feel there is nothing more game changing than that. There are plenty of online tools to help you search for the right people and profiles on Twitter, e.g. Hoot Suite.

4. Follow Conversations Not Just People:
Twitter is about conversations more than people. You have to always be on the hunt for relevant conversations happening on Twitter. Tools such as Tweetdeck allow you to monitor conversations in real time. Finding relevant conversations and joining them is a great way to be heard by the people you want to reach. These could be your readers, agents, publishers, and fellow writers.

5. Engage and Participate:
Following upon the previous point, Twitter is about interaction and engagement in conversations happening around the globe. People you follow, and those who follow you, need to be engaged continuously. One of the reasons Twitter strategy fails is due to the declining interest level that happens because of lack of participation.

6. Do Not Spam:
Just like every other social media channel, please do not spam your audience on Twitter. Being a writer your natural tendency is to create content. When it comes to Twitter remember that it is a micro-blogging platform for a reason. Respect that. For every post you pitch or mention your book you should have 5 other posts related to your niche (e.g. opinions, articles you want to share, cool author related websites, etc.)

All the above strategies are simple yet effective if implemented with long-term goals. You are building a brand on Twitter, you are creating a “following” and this will serve you for a long time. Remember the key is to be consistent! Good luck and may you uncover the world of Twitter and how it can fuel your success when it comes to the marketing of your book!

P.S. As part of our 2013 new year resolutions the AMI team is dedicating themselves to educating and empowering our authors and clients. There is nothing more powerful than a knowledgeable author. This will be the first of many helpful blog style posts we will be sending to our authors over the upcoming months. We hope you enjoy these and please let us know if there is anything in specific you would like to see written about in this series!