Plug Your Book! - Steve Weber (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📗
- Author: Steve Weber
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Most people don't purchase a book the first time they hear of it, but the sixth or seventh time they're exposed to it. The more frequently you can pop up in front of your potential audience--providing valuable, free content--the larger your audience becomes. When Internet searchers discover valuable content, they become prime candidates for buying a book from someone regarded as an expert.
The benefits of posting free sample content online grow by the day. Not only can consumers find you, but reporters and news producers increasingly turn to the Internet to find expert sources and story ideas. This can lead to exposure and credibility that can't be bought at any price.
Here are some good ways of providing sample content to burnish your reputation and achieve expert status:
Post question-and-answer content. # On your blog or Web site, summarize the best questions you receive from readers via e-mail, phone calls, letters or personal conversations. Publish them in a question-and-answer format. This provides interesting, valuable and easy-to-read content. Q&A content is simple to produce, especially if you're already producing the raw material by answering e-mails. When you post this content publicly, your entire audience benefits, instead of just one person (although you should omit personally identifying information where appropriate). Further, Q&As expand your audience because the format boosts your visibility with search engines. Many people searching the Web actually type questions into Google, such as "How to stop thumb-sucking." You can rewrite the questions for clarity, or even write the question yourself to help illustrate a point. You can use this same type of content to build an FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions, page on your site.One popular science-fiction author, Cory Doctorow, provides free downloads of the entire text of all his novels at his site, #www.CrapHound.com#. The resulting publicity far outweighs the cost of any lost book sales, Doctorow says: "It's about word of mouth. My readers have large social circles of friends whom they never see face-to-face."
An increasingly popular way to get exposure for your book is by contributing to online article banks. One of the most popular, #EzineArticles.com#, has more than 40,000 participating authors. Contributors aren't paid, but they figure the added exposure is worth the effort.
If your articles are accepted, they're featured on EzineArticles.com and made available for reuse on other Web sites, blogs and e-mail newsletters. Each article includes a "resource box" with links back to your site.
Although article syndication can provide great exposure, be selective about the content you contribute. Don't offer any content that appears on your site without first rewriting it. Search engines such as Google constantly filter out "duplicate content" from search results. If an article from your site appears elsewhere on the Internet, one of the Web pages probably will be deleted from search results, and chances are it will be yours. Search-engine experts call this the duplicate content penalty.
How duplicate content backfiresLet's imagine you've written a book about pottery, and to promote it, you publish a pottery blog. Last year on your blog, you wrote a nifty tutorial on fixing broken pottery. Word has gotten around, and now every pottery site on the Internet links to your pottery-repair page. Because of all these links, your page is the top Google result for "repairing pottery," "fixing pottery," and several related queries. That single page is your Web site's crown jewel, accounting for half your new visitors and a good portion of your book sales.
Now let's imagine you try to squeeze even more traffic from your pottery-repair article. You post it to EzineArticles.com, without changing much except to add the links back to your site. Meanwhile, you upload the same article to other syndication sites like GoArticles.com and IdeaMarketers.com.
Now you sit back and wait for the extra traffic, but the exact opposite happens--you see less traffic, not more. Now that your article appears on a bigger, more popular site, it's likely that Google will send searchers there instead of sending them to your site. Google has made a quick calculation of which site is more authoritative, and because EzineArticles.com has more links than your site, it wins. Google doesn't care that you wrote the article and have the Internet's best pottery site.
The lesson is, keep your most valuable content on your site exclusively. And if you're going to syndicate existing content, rewrite it substantially so the search engines don't penalize you for it.
Google's Adam Lasnik, the company's "search evangelist," offers two tips for avoiding the duplicate content penalty:
If you syndicate an article containing the same or very similar language that appears somewhere on your site, ensure the syndicated article includes a link back to the original article on your site. Don't include only a link to your home page or some other page.
Minimize boilerplate language on all your content. For example, instead of including lengthy copyright notices at the bottom of all your Web pages, include a brief summary with a link to a page containing your full copyright notice.
None of these safeguards, however, is foolproof. The only sure way to avoid the duplicate content penalty is by syndicating original material only, and keeping your best material exclusive to your site.
Really Simple Syndication# RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a Web feed that allows people to view summaries of your blog posts. Readers are automatically notified when you post new material. Most blogging software automatically publishes an RSS feed for you, or you can open a free account with Feedburner, which will publish an RSS feed for you with several enhancements: #www.Feedburner.com#Although an RSS feed makes your blog more visible, there are also a few disadvantages. For example, readers who can view all your blog content within an RSS reader may quit visiting your Web site, and won't be exposed to other types of content. You can minimize this problem by syndicating a brief summary of your blog posts, perhaps the first 100 words. Readers who want to continue would need to click through to your site.
BlogBurstBlogBurst syndicates content from member blogs to the Web sites of metro newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, the Austin American-Statesman, and Gannett papers. BlogBurst functions as a wire service, providing the newspaper sites with a rich variety of niche blog content, while giving the blogs wider exposure.
When a reader at the newspaper site clicks on a blog headline, BlogBurst displays the blog post along with advertising. Ad revenue is split with the blogger and the newspaper.
BlogBurst participants must publish their entire blog posts in their RSS feed, not just summaries. The content must be family-friendly, and updated at least once a week.
To enroll, see:
#www.BlogBurst.com/blogger/ add-blog.html#
Traditional media interviewsLanding national media exposure can greatly enhance your book sales, but many new authors don't have the resources to hire a publicist. One way to get exposure in newspapers, radio and television without hiring a publicist is #www.PRLeads.com#. Several times a day, users receive a list of queries from journalists looking for expert sources for the stories they're writing.
On a typical day, a PRLeads subscriber might see a query like this:
SUBJECT:
BUSINESS : Small Companies Going into International Markets � Boston Daily News
For a national newspaper, I'm writing a story on how small-business owners should make the decision to go into international markets. What factors should they consider? How can they evaluate the opportunity? How soon after establishing yourself domestically should you consider this? I'm looking for comments from experts, and examples of entrepreneurs who have been dealing with this issue.
Authors and experts with relevant expertise could send this reporter a brief e-mail, describing their credentials and how they can address the topic. Later the reporter might follow up via phone or e-mail for an interview. Subscriptions to PRLeads cost $99 a month. For more information, see:
#www.PRLeads.com/pr-leads- faq.htm#
Press releasesNot too long ago, press releases were terribly expensive because they had to be mailed--or faxed or wire-delivered--to traditional media outlets like newspapers. Then your message would reach a gatekeeper, like an editor, who might decide to trash your release. If your release were used at all, the final article could be totally different from your intended message, and your name or book title might not even appear.
Now dozens of inexpensive and free press-release distribution services can make your announcement visible to the entire world, exactly as you wrote it. For an additional fee of about $40, these services will post your news to sites like Google News, Yahoo News and others, providing even wider exposure.
When writing a press release, the most important thing is to focus on the _ reader_, not on you and your book. What problem does your book solve for the reader, or what kind of entertainment does it provide? Nobody wants to read an announcement that simply says Mrs. Y wrote a book about Topic X. Who cares? Tell your audience what's in it for them.
Here's an effective (but fictionalized) book press release that generates interest by focusing on readers:
American parents are furious with Hollywood for glamorizing stick-thin bodies, and many girls say they're self-conscious about their bodies as a result of movies, television and magazines. This national obsession with thinness is resulting in eating disorders and depression among millions of teens, according to Anita Jones, author of Nourishing Girls: Help Your Teen Develop Self-Esteem and a Healthy Body Image....
And here's the other side of the coin, a release that induces boredom by focusing solely on the author and his world:
In a newly released political thriller, ex-diplomat, military intelligence officer, college football standout and news reporter James McNeil authentically captures the hardball maneuverings and virtual mortality of Washington power politics. Critics give two thumbs up to Shotgun Diplomacy, the author's second novel....
For tips on writing effective press releases, see:
www.PRWeb.com/ pressreleasetips.php# www.eMediaWire.com# is a popular channel of press release distribution for many authors and publishers announcing new titles.Here are a few other popular press release distribution services:
www.PRNewswire.com www.Send2Press.com www.PRLeap.com www.eReleases.com www.BusinessWire.com Protecting your content#The Internet is a great publicity vehicle because it makes your content freely available. By the same token, the openness of the Web makes it easy for people to steal your work. An unscrupulous blogger or Webmaster can copy and paste your most valuable material onto his site within minutes without asking permission.
Every month or so, you should search the Web for some of the text from several of your pages. A Google search for a string of six to eight words within quotation
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