Showing posts with label marketing tool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing tool. Show all posts

Your Book—The Best Business Marketing Tool

Everyone is looking for the silver bullet to propel their small business into the stratosphere. Yes there are many possible tools and shiny objects. One solid tool which gives and gives yet is often ignored is right in front of you: a book.

The book works for you 24/7 and promotes you as a business owner and expert. There are great books and there are poor books. To be successful you need to strategically take these three steps before you write your first word:

1. What is my area of expertise as a small business owner?

2. List 10 benefits or advantages you can give to others from your unique skills and viewpoints.

3. Return to your list and think of stories or personal experiences you have had to illustrate these advantages.

You have just created the outline for your book. People love stories and takeaway lessons from your experiences. I wrote a book for Joe Leninger who traded for ten years in the Eurodollar Pit of the Chicago Mercantile and made a million dollars every year for ten years. Our book, Lessons from the Pit, was built around stories and lessons. You can write the book yourself then go to an editor to get it polished. Or you can speak your book. A book will build credibility, get you speaking gigs and much more. The key is to create value for your reader. I suggest a 40,000 to 50,000 word book which is about 200 pages. This length has substance yet is not overwhelming to the reader.

Whether you publish your book with a traditional publisher or self-publish it, I encourage you to write a book proposal. Editors and literary agents use this specialized document to evaluate your idea. If you write one, you will have the tool you need to successfully approach them. If you do the book yourself (self-publish) a book proposal will help you develop a business plan for your book. I’ve written many proposals and read many more of them. You can learn the details using my free book proposal checklist at: http://terrylinks.com/bookcheck If I can help you, reach out to me. My email address is in my twitter profile. 

Todd Ordal has written an example of a solid business book called Never Kick A Cow Chip On a Hot Day (Real Lessons for Real CEOS and those who want to be). Notice Todd’s different title and his quality writing combined with an excellent cover design and a growing presence in the marketplace. I acquired this book for Morgan James Publishing. You can learn a great deal studying the details of this book. Then do likewise with your own business.
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W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor at
Morgan James Publishing, lives in Colorado. A former magazine editor, Whalin has written for more than 50 publications including Christianity Today and Writer’s Digest. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Terry has over 165,000 twitter followers.


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Use Images Carefully - They May be Copyrighted and You Could be Sued

By Karen Cioffi

It’s funny, a couple of months ago I accidentally deleted a lot of my images in GooglePlus. Because of this accident, the images in the blog posts at Writers on the Move were deleted. The grey generic circle took their place.

At the time, I was annoyed with myself and warned everyone to be careful when deleting photos in their Google+ accounts. Using images is an effective way to make our blog posts more engaging. It’s an effective marketing tool.

Well, I recently read two SCARY articles from bloggers, one a PR company, who were sued for using copyrighted images in their blogs without permission. In both cases, it wasn’t done intentionally, but none the less they were sued for a significant amount of money and had to pay.

I don’t copy images off the internet to post on my blogs, at least not that I can remember doing. For years, I’ve used image services like, BigStock.com and buy images when needed. I also use Microsoft Word’s Clipart. And, lately, I’ve been creating my own images, like the one above. I bought the image of the rabbit holding a sign then added the "Be Aware" and background color.

Going back to the articles I read, it was mentioned that even Pinterest could be problematic. Comments mentioned that Pinterest protects itself and if you are caught repinning an image you don’t have the copyright to, you’ll be on your own.

I haven’t read the fine print on the site, so don’t know for sure. It’d be interesting to find out though. I’m thinking of eliminating my boards that could be a problem, like my Around the World and One Day. I love the images on them, but they’re not worth possibly being sued over.

So, should this concern ordinary, run-of-the-mill bloggers?

YUP!

This isn’t just a scenario heavy-hitter sites need to worry about. It’s something anyone blogging with images needs to be concerned about, unless your 100% sure your images are safe.

I’m including the links to both articles because I think everyone should be warned about this. Ignorance of copyright laws won’t save you. Adding attribution or taking the image down won’t save you. It’s time to rethink image use before it’s too late.

You’ll learn a whole lot more from these articles:

"Bloggers Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Pics on Your Blog - My Story"
(Read the comments also for tips on safe images)

"How using Google Images can cost you $8,000"

I love to know what you think of this using images in your posts. And, it'd be great if you share where you get your images from.



Online Marketing - Commenting on Blogs is an Effective Marketing Strategy

Contributed by Karen Cioffi

You may be an author or writer who takes the time to comment on other websites. This is an effective online marketing strategy. It builds bridges to other blogging neighborhoods, it forms connections, and it helps increase your visibility.

But, after using this strategy for a short while, what if you don’t seem to see any difference in the traffic to your site or the comments on your posts?

Should you continue commenting on blogs?

YES, absolutely. Commenting on blogs is still an effective marketing strategy, in fact, even more so than before. Getting a ‘post conversation’ going and sharing content is high on Google’s list of what bloggers and marketers should be doing. Today, it’s all about creating optimized content that readers find valuable enough to share to their social networks.

Knowing the effectiveness of this marketing tool, I try to use it as often as I can. And, recently I left a blog post comment on a high-traffic, high-quality site. When I comment on a site, time allowing, I usually browse the other comments. On this particular blog CommentLuv is used and one of the post comments in particular seemed to be informative, so I clicked on the author’s latest post link. Doing this, it brought me to a site with great content and I actually tried to subscribe to the email post feed. Unfortunately, it seems the feed wasn’t enabled, even though the site owner had the opt-in for it. But, that’s another story.

Commenting on sites that offer the commenter’s last post link  is an excellent way to broaden your reach and easily bring visitors back to your site. Just like I clicked on that commenter’s link, based on an effective post title, the same can happen to you. 

 
CommentLuv is a commenting system plugin for WordPress. Simply click on ‘Plugins’ in your WordPress dashboard, go to ‘Add New,’ search for the plugin, and install and activate it. That’s it.

This is a WordPress plugin; I'm not sure if it can be used on Blogger.  When this post was originally written, it could be. But 10 years later, I couldn't find any information on it.

Hopefully, Blogger will add CommentLuv to its gadgets to make blogging with a blogger site more effective.

In addition to the obvious benefits of commenting, such as broadening your marketing reach and making connections, the activity you create online is picked up by search engines. This includes comments.

Make commenting on blogs an important element of your online marketing strategy.
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MORE ON ONLINE MARKETING

Keyword Search and Article Marketing – Tips for More Effective Book Marketing
Memes and Themes
Being Social can Bring Extra Promotion

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P.S. To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).

Karen Cioffi, Children's Ghostwriter, Rewrite, Coach, and Author Online Platform Instructor

 


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10 Common Challenges Many New Novelists Face

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