Simple Ways to Promote Yourself Online
In as much as I’ve taught Internet marketing and publicity classes, the idea of marketing
yourself online is still very confusing to a lot of people. Let’s face it; our company has a
department dedicated to this. Why? Because stuff changes all the time on the Internet; if we
didn’t have a dedicated department researching this and reading all the “geek stuff,” we’d
never be able to keep up. But for right now I want to give you the bottom line basics because at
the end of the day, we all need to start somewhere and the best place to start is online.
Blogging: If you don’t feel like you can do anything online or you don’t have the time for
extensive promotion, the quickest and simplest thing you can do is have a blog. A blog is a great
way to keep your site fresh (search engines love sites that are updated often) and a blog is a
great way to reach your reader. If you don’t have a blog or haven’t blogged in a while, take
heart: start somewhere and plan to blog a minimum of twice weekly. You’ll need at least two
posts a week to keep it current. The biggest problem though with new bloggers is deciding what
to blog about. Well, here are some ideas:
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Talk about trends in the industry you’re in (this works even if you write fiction, talk
about the publishing industry…)
Review other (similar) books – this is a great way to network with other people in your
market
Blog “in character” – readers love this!
Develop your next story on your blog: you can ask for reader feedback on story
direction, characters, etc.
Lend your voice to a “hot” industry issue or controversy
Comment on other blogs or feature them on your blog
Interview people on your blog
Talk about the elephant in the room: if there’s a looming issue in your market, why not
offer your insight on your blog?
Feedback and blog comments: if you aren’t getting people commenting on your blog, don’t
despair, it takes a while to get folks commenting and offering feedback, but the more you can
tap into issues your reader cares about, the more comments you’ll see popping up on your
blog.
Publishing content: The internet has really opened the door to publishing and pushing a lot of
content online. Whether it’s articles, audio, or video, there’s a home for all of it on the ‘Net.
Consider doing article syndication as a good place to start pushing content online. Here are
some basic guidelines for article syndication:
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You don’t get paid for this syndication. This is always the first question I get when I talk
to authors about syndicating their articles, book excerpts, or tip sheets. You post it
online for others to use and promote you, what could be better?
Your articles need to be helpful, not self-promotional. The more helpful they are, the
more likely they are to be used. Yes you can mention your book but my
recommendation is to keep any and all promotion of it to your byline.
Article titles are important. Remember that the title of your article must be a
description, don’t make people guess what you’ve written about. If you do, you’ll find
your pieces aren’t as popular as you’d like them to be.
Articles should be a minimum of 500 words, max of 2,000. Generally the most popular
pieces are around 1,000 words. Don’t forget your byline and web site address. Also, and
very important, get those articles edited before they go out on the ‘Net. Once you send
them out, you can never get them back.
Participate: when it comes to online promotion, it’s really about participating. Think of the
Internet as one big cocktail party. Go strike up a conversation with someone who you’d like to
get to know better. Here’s a great way to do that. First, go to Technorati.com and find the top
five blogs in your market, then watch them for a week or so and when you’re comfortable with
what they’re talking about and the angle of their message, start posting comments and offering
your own insight into their postings. Bloggers love comments and by participating you’re doing
two things: you’re doing some virtual networking (aka cyber-schmoozing) and you’re promoting
yourself via the link back to your site that’s part of your post every time you comment.
Conduct your own blog tour: after you’ve done some virtual networking and gotten to know
some folks in your industry you’ll want to contact them to see about guest blogging
opportunities. Guest blogging is pretty simple, you post an article on a site (sometimes it’s also
a Q&A) and you respond to comments that come in during that day or week that you’re guest
blogging. Be ready to host a blog tour of your own and unless the content is really off-topic
from your site, I recommend that you consider it.
Blog carnivals: if you haven’t participated in a blog carnival and you’ve been blogging for a while
then head on over to http://blogcarnival.com and get started. Honestly, it’s super easy. Just
find a category/topic that you can speak to or have blogged on and submit those blogs for
consideration. It’s a great way to virtually network and publish more content online.
Help promote the good stuff: do you get Google alerts on yourself? If you don’t, you should and
here’s why: how else will you know what people are saying about you online? Google alerts is a
simple way to monitor the cyber-chatter and get in touch with folks who review your book or
feature you on their site. You can also go to Technorati.com, plug in your name, company name
or title of your book and see what you pull up, then you can subscribe to the syndication feed of
the search (just hit the RSS button and it’ll automatically subscribe you to that feed). Once you
have your feeds all ready to go you’ll want to promote all the good stuff. How can you do that?
Well first off offer a cyber thank-you to whoever mentioned you, reviewed your book or
featured you on their site. Next, link to their site from your blog and finally, go to a few social
bookmarking sites and bookmark these postings for enhanced exposure. Here’s how you do
that: go to either Digg.com, Stumbledupon.com, or Delicious.com and create accounts (this
takes just a few minutes). Then follow the instructions to bookmark a blog post or page on the
site that’s featured you. This will help drive interest (and possibly traffic) to the site (which site
owners will love you for) because you’re placing it in a public bookmarking system.
There’s a lot more you can do online, the possibilities are really endless but what I’ve found is
that the confused mind doesn’t take action, so the simpler you keep it, the more you’ll do. If
only one thing on this list appeals to you that’s great. Keep in mind, doing one more thing this
week than you did last week keeps you moving forward and helps you continue to create
marketing momentum for your book!
Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally
recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry
and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books,
including Book to Bestseller which has been called the "road map to publishing success." AME is the first marketing
and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically
works with social networking sites, blogs, Twitter, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message
into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book's topic, positioning the author in his or her
market. In the past 15 months their creative marketing strategies have helped land 10 books on the New York Times
Bestseller list. To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at
http://www.amarketingexpert.com.
Copyright  2010 Penny C. Sansevieri