Book Marketing Strategy: Blog Commenting and Sharing Posts

Book Marketing Strategy - Blog Commenting and Sharing Posts 

By Karen Cioffi

As manager of a marketing group I'm always on the outlook for ways to generate and increase visibility, readership, and subscribers . . . and increase traffic. I find it interesting that people in general don't seem to get some of the very simple marketing strategies they can use to increase their own visibility and that of others at the same time.

One of the simplest marketing strategies to use is commenting on blogs, quality blogs in particular, and sharing those blog posts through all available clickable social networks.

Many writers/authors don't realize that when you comment the relevant comment, you may very well draw traffic.

Aside from the search engine visibility aspect of commenting on blog posts and sharing them, this strategy establishes connections.

By clicking on a blog's SHARE links, you form a connection with that blogger. Since, the majority of bloggers pay attention to who's commenting on their sites that blogger will actually see YOU, thereby forming a connection.

Tip about the service you're using to leave that comment: Always make sure you add your name and website address when applicable. If you're using Blogger, be sure to complete your Blogger profile information, which should include your links.

While this may take a couple of minutes to initially set up, it's more than worth it, because each time you comment your name and link are visible and usually clickable.

Also, by sharing informative, interesting, or entertaining posts, you provide a service to those who follow, friend, or connect with you. This simple act creates a relationship between you and your followers or connections, establishing you as a source of information, and if it's informative content you're sharing, you'll enhance your expert status. And, building your expert status or authority is a key element to building traffic and subscribers.

According to an article in SearchEngineWatch.com, "Social Signals and SEO: Focus on Authority," it's all about "building your own audience and establishing your own authority."

Some of the most popular sources to share information are: Twitter, Facebook, GoolePlus, Linkedin, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Technorati. If you know of others, please share!

As an interesting side note: A StatCounter Global Stats report shows StumbleUpon as the top social media site in the U.S. from August to September 2011.

Okay, back on track.

As the website or blogsite owner it's your responsibility to have SHARE buttons in place. If they're not in place, a visitor to your site can't share the post. Adding SHARE buttons is a simple task with content management tools, like Wordpress and Blogger. 

In Blogger, just scroll down the Gadgets list in Design and find a SHARE gadget.  In your WordPress’ Dashboard go to Plugins, Add New, then do a search for SHARE plugins and find one that you like.

A newer element and ‘marketing plus’ of Sharing is that with Google Penquin, ‘shareability’ is now a key element of ranking.

So, to increase your own visibility and help your fellow writers/authors/bloggers, SHARE those posts you read. Even if you don't have the minute it takes to type a relevant comment - CLICK ON THOSE SHARE BUTTONS!

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Karen CioffiMulti-award Winning Author, Freelance/Ghostwriter, Editor, Marketer
Writer’s Digest Website of the Week, June 25, 2012

Book Promotion: Create a Website or Blog

I know I mentioned my article for today would be Book Promotion: Visibility and Platform Basics, but I forgot it's 6 pages long and 2300 words - I'll be turning it into an ebook.  

Instead, I took the first section of that article and tweaked it just a bit for:

Book Promotion: Create a Website or Blog

The first rung on your marketing ladder is to create a quality product, in the case of an author, that would be a book. You need to create an engaging story, be part of a critique group, make sure the manuscript gets edited, and have a knock-out cover.

Creating the book might be considered Research and Development under the Marketing umbrella, and the foundation of a marketing strategy.

The second step or rung on the marketing ladder is the actual book promotion: creating a platform and brand for you and your book. This is accomplished through visibility. A platform is a means to let readers know what your area of expertise is.

You may be shaking your head and thinking you don’t have an area of expertise, well the very first step to establish yourself as an expert is to create a website or blog.

Here are four steps that will help you create an effective website or blog:

1. Your Domain Name

Choose your domain name carefully and think ahead. Marketing experts always advise using ‘your name’ for your domain name. You can always create sites that are specific to each of your books or a particular niche, but your name should be your main or central site.

On the other hand, if you write in a specific genre, you should include that in your domain name. If you’re a children’s writer, maybe: Children’s Books by Your Name, or Picture Books by Your Name. The more specific you make your domain name the more likely those searching for that genre will find you.

Simply put: If you sell shoes and your domain name is John Smith how will those searching for shoes ever find you?

And, be sure to use appropriate keywords in the subtitle of your site.

2. Choose a Website or Blog

There’s no way around this one – you must create a web presence. The first tool in your visibility toolbox is a website, and it should be created before your book is published. You can choose a website or a blog and you can get either type for free from sites such as Wordpress.com or Blogger.com.

If you find the thought of having to create a website daunting, go for Blogger.com; it is very user friendly and good for beginners. And with its updates, it has a number of features much like a website.

One of the drawbacks to Blogger though is you cannot upload ebooks or pdfs to link to in order to offer them for free or sell, so if this is something you’ll be doing, you will have to find a hosting site like WordPress.

3. Simple is a Better Strategy

Marketing expert Mike Volpe of Hubspot.com points out that it’s more important to spend time, and money if necessary, on content rather than a flashy website design; simple works. In fact, simpler usually leads to a higher conversion rate. The conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who buy your book, product, or service.

Volpe also stresses that you should have control over your site. This means you should be able to manage it. You don’t want to run to a web designer for every little change you want to make to your site, or to do something as simple as adding content.

To reinforce this ‘simple is better strategy,’ Google says that milliseconds count in regard to your page load time. If your page is slow to load, you’ll get a poorer score with Google.

Tip: Should you decide you do need help to create a site, don’t hire an expensive web designer. Look for someone who wants to establish themselves as a website creator, or someone who does it in his spare time, you will pay much less. And, try to make arrangements that will include the designer teach you how to manage your own site. This will make updates, changes, and posting much easier, and less expensive.

4. Make Your Site Optimized for the Search Engines

If you choose a WordPress site, go through the dashboard and sections carefully, and fill in how you want your site to work. There are also a number of plugins for WordPress that will help your site get noticed and indexed by the search engines. If you’re not sure how to do this, it would probably be worth the investment to hire someone to do basic search engine optimization (SEO) for your site.

It's not uncommon for writers to need help with websites and SEO, it's impossible to be proficient at everything. Thankfully, there are those who know the ins and outs of optimizing websites, if needed take advantage of them.

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Karen Cioffi is an author, ghostwriter, and freelance writer. For writing and marketing information visit (http://karencioffi.com) and sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World. You’ll get 2 free e-books on writing and marketing in the process, and two more free e-books just for stopping by.
Check out the Walking Through Walls site:
http://walkingthroughwalls-kcioffi.blogspot.com