Keyword Search and Article Marketing Content - Tips for More Effective Book Marketing

By Karen Cioffi

As an author you may not realize the necessity of keywords. You may feel they’re something a marketer or affiliate marketer needs to be aware of. It’s their area of business and their problem to find these mysterious words that help increase the ranking on search engines. But, that’s not really the case, not by a long shot.

Authors and book marketing go hand-in-hand. This area of online marketing is like any other and needs to use the same strategies to be effective.

While it’s true keywords don’t hold the same power they did a couple of years ago, they are still important to SEO and CDO (content discovery optimization).

Today, if you are promoting you and/or your book, service, business, or product, you need readers to now several things:

• Who you are
• Where you are
• What you have to offer
• Why what you’re offering is what they need
• Why you’re qualified to be offering this product/service

Yes, there are a lot of requirements that need to be met in order to be successful in this ever expanding and competitive internet arena.

One of the basic strategies used to get noticed is writing or providing content – this is considered article marketing. I’m sure you’ve read or heard a hundred times that “content is king.” It is absolutely true. Imagine being a spec in the sky . . . so tiny and far away that you are invisible to the human eye. Well, that’s you in the internet universe.

So, how do you get a flickering light going and build it into a steady strong beam?

Valuable Content and the Keyword Search

The only way to get on the internet radar is to create valuable content, provide it regularly, and make sure it is keyword effective. As I mentioned, content is essential, without it you don’t have a chance. But, even with it, you need to fine tune your ‘must read information’ with keywords.

Don’t fret though. Finding and using keywords is not difficult to do. Most of it is really common sense, using words you would use to search for your topic.  But, a keyword tool affords a much larger pond to fish from and is search engine specific.

For this article I plugged in the word “keywords” at freekeywords.wordtraker.com (a free tool). The number one phrase for this keyword is “keyword research,” number two is “keyword analysis,” and number three is “keyword.” I really didn’t have to do a search to realize the word “keyword” would be there, I didn’t know, however, that “research” would be part of the number one phrase. Knowing the number one keyword phrase provides valuable information; this also means it is a highly competitive keyword.

The Long Tail Keywords

To make your keyword rich content even more effective look for what’s called long tail keywords.
These are words that will move you away from the general querying crowd—and the heavy competition.

For example, if your niche is children’s writing your key words would be: writing, children’s writing, and possibly children’s fiction and/or children’s nonfiction.

To elaborate on these keywords - to get more specific and narrow your target audience - you might use: writing for kids, children’s fantasy chapter books, picture books, middle grade fiction books, or kids’ nonfiction magazine articles. You get the idea; you need to focus in on your niche. Instead of aiming at the outer rim of a bull’s eye, go dead center, or at least very close.

To get started in this area of book marketing, try a free or ‘free trial’ keyword search tool from the three listed below:

http://wordstream.com/keywords/
http://keyworddiscovery.com
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

I hope this helps you move forward in your book marketing efforts.

Originally published April 2010 at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com


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Creating Content - 10 Online Repurposing Formats

By Karen Cioffi

The internet is teeming with people trying to sell their products or services. And, most marketers spend a lot of time creating and building their email subscription lists. As we know, marketing is all about the golden list and traffic, traffic, traffic.

The primary method of getting traffic to your site is through information . . . creating content. You need to create quality content and provide it on a regular basis. Generating ongoing content and promoting it to the articles directories and your social networks is time consuming, so you should develop a strategy to make each article you write pack a wallop.

While your article should be valuable, ‘pack a wallop’ doesn’t refer to its ‘quality,’ it refers to its ability to be repurposed.

Repurposing content has been around a while, but isn’t always used to its fullest potential. According to Jeff Herring, the highest paid direct response internet marketer, there is a psychology to repurposing, it’s “the ability to look at one thing and see many things.”

In a webinar, Herring mentioned that when he looks at an article he can see it in a number of formats, including: TV, radio, video, and combination products.

To make the most use out of your marketing time, this is the strategy you should invest in. Don’t let an article simply be an article – repurpose that article. 

Creating Content: 10 Online Repurposing Formats:

1. Expand on your article and turn it into a report that you can offer for free as an incentive for readers/visitors to join your mailing list or offer it for sale.

2. Take bits of your content and tweet, tweet, tweet. Take information packed sentences and schedule them for tweets throughout the month.

3. Create a podcast or other form of audio out of your report. Again, offer it for free or for sale.

4. Combine a bunch of articles on a particular topic and turn it into an ebook. You can do the same with this product - offer it for free or for it sale.

5. Turn your ebook into a live chat workshop or class. After the live event, you can copy and transcribe the chat – then combine the transcript with the ebook for a combination product. And, you can create a podcast out of the live event. These new products can be sold over and over and over.

6. Turn your ebook into a live teleclass. Be sure to record it to ensure that all your time and effort put into creating the teleclass can be reused or sold with no additional effort.

7. Turn your ebook into a live webinar. Do the same as with the teleclass, be sure to record it so it can be reused or sold.

8. Turn your ebook into an ecourse. This content format is a good way to get subscribers – those interested will need to sign-up to your mailing list to get the course. Or, you can sell it.

9. Query radio hosts. Most radio hosts are always looking for guests with information to offer their listeners. Offer to be a guest and present your content.

10. Create a video and upload it onto YouTube. Herring recommends http://screener.com; it’s a free service that allows you to record up to five minutes using screen capture.

Creating content and having it in so many formats widens your potential customer base. Think about it, some people like to read, others love watching videos, some like the instructional format of teleseminars or webinars, and those pressed for time would rather listen to content while driving or exercising.

Remember that any information you are sharing or selling should have links back to your site, landing page/s, or affiliate landing page. As with your article content, make all your information and information products ‘out there’ count - make them continue working for you.

If you write content, most often it has a purpose: to sell something. Lead the reader or listener to your product or service and have a clear call to action upon their arrival.

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Article Marketing Reprint Strategy – Pros and Cons

Article Marketing Reprint Strategy – Pros and Cons

By Karen Cioffi

Offering your articles/posts/e-books to be reprinted by others might be a valuable marketing practice.

While it seems most authors don’t allow their articles/posts to be reprinted by others as part of their article marketing practice, I have come across a couple of writers/marketers who generously do allow this practice. They allow their posts to be reprinted by other writers to be used on their blogs or in their FREE newsletter. Obviously, anything being offered to reprint should never be reprinted in something you are selling, such as an ebook or report.

I’m surprised that more writers don’t take advantage of this reprint strategy. The benefits seem obvious – let’s look at four of them.

Four Benefits of Allowing Reprints

1.    You have written something that someone else views as valuable.
2.    You increase your visibility.
3.    You increase traffic back to your site.
4.    You never know who will see that article/post or where it will end up.

What About Giving Your E-books Away?

I have also seen this reprint practice utilized with e-books, and it peaked my interest. These informational e-books plainly state in the beginning of the content that readers may freely pass it along. This technique generates additional visibility and is a great promotional tool and marketing opportunity.

In fact, I recently started taking advantage of this marketing practice with one of my e-books.

Article Marketing and Content Reprint Word of Caution Here
Please remember, it’s essential, when taking advantage of a writer’s reprint offer, to always keep the article or e-book intact. Be sure to use the author’s byline and/or any other text and links that they have as part of the bargain.

The reprint strategy is a win-win situation: the author increases his visibility and you get an article to use on your blog or in your newsletter, or you get a free e-book to offer on your site.

Reprint Strategy Drawbacks

Obviously, there are a couple of circumstances in which offering or using reprints isn’t advisable, such as: you wrote the article specifically for a magazine or ezine and publishing elsewhere is restricted, or you may not want to use an article with a byline that will send your reader to a site that offers the same services you do (a competitor’s site).

One other possible drawback to this particular article marketing practice is dilution. What this means is that if you have your article available on a number of sites, when someone does a search for the topic of your article, it may not be your site they end up going to.

In addition, search engines will usually only pick up and categorize the first print of an article, unless it’s revised to avoid this situation.

But, all-in-all, this is a practical online marketing plan.

Why not try this marketing practice. It will be a supplemental tool to be used along with your article directory postings. These two strategies combined will certainly generate and increase visibility and traffic back to your site.

Note: For any type of article marketing you do be sure to include at least one link in your bio/tag at the bottom of the article that leads back to your opt-in page.

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Need to build or increase visibility and traffic to your site? Check out:
Creating and Building Your Author Online Presence
http://www.karencioffi.com/author-online-presence-ecourse/

And, for more writing and marketing tips visit http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com

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Having a Marketing/Promo Plan on a Budget by: Stephanie Burkhart

THE MUSTS:
These are a "must" for authors:

I must have a marketing plan.
I must have a marketing budget.
I must have patience.

It takes 3-5 years for a new author to really establish themselves as a presence. Some like Amanda Hocking get lucky, and while I do think a little "luck" plays into selling books, most everyone's luck has a solid marketing plan behind them.

What's a Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is what you, the author, is willing to do to get your name out there. I've lumped marketing into two separate categories: Social Media and Personal Contact.

Here are some things you can ad as an author to your marketing plan:
SOCIAL MEDIA:
1 Join Twitter
2 Join Facebook, make a fan page, and join book groups on FB
3. Join Goodreads
4. Talk on the Amazon Message boards
5. Join Yahoo Groups that are targeted toward your writing audience
6. Send out press releases
7. Organize a blog tour
8. Solicit book reviews
9. Pay for an ad on a web related site.
10. Join writing organizations. For example, EPIC, RWA and SCBWI.
11. Enter book contests
12. Join Pinterest

PERSONAL CONTACT
13. Get involved with your local library
14. Go to a conference
15. Organize a book signing – this doesn't necessarily have to be at the local bookstore. You can organize one at your local coffee house or a local festival

There are probably a couple of other items you can include in your marketing plan that I might have missed, but this is a pretty comprehensive list. A good marketing plan incorporates the above items. Think long term – 6-12 months after your book is released and be patient.

Also realize that a marketing plan requires a marketing budget. That might be challenging in today's encomy. Me? I try to budget between $50-$100 a month. That's not a lot so I have to stretch my budget as best I can.

Things that cost:

Conferences
Blog Tour giveaways
Bookmarks/Postcards
Ads on web related sites
Joining a writing organization
Entering contests

You have to take a look at what you can realistically do timewise and budgetwise.

Remember to designate time for certain things and stick to it. For example:

1 hour for writing, 30 mins for editing, and 1 hour for marketing/social media. That's 2 ½ hours. Modify it to fit your schedule.

Have patience with your plan. Remember your sphere of influence: you, your family, your friends, your acquaintances, the rest of the world. The goal of your marketing plan is to reach out to the rest of the world.

Over the next couple of months I'll take a detailed look at the pros and cons of the 15 aspects of marketing that I mentioned. It's going to be a fun ride.

Comments, suggestions, and feedback welcome.



Stephanie Burkhart is a 911 Dispatcher for LAPD. She's also a romance and children author. Her books, The Giving Meadow and First Flag of New Hampshire are published with 4RV Publishing.

FIND ME ON THE WEB AT:
WEBSITE:
http://www.stephanieburkhart.com

TWITTER:
http://twitter.com/StephBurkhart

FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/StephanieBurkhartAuthor

GOOD READS:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4031660.Stephanie_Burkhart

YOU TUBE CHANNEL:
http://www.youtube.com/user/botrina?feature=mhee

Book Promotion: 20 Strategies That Will Broaden Your Reach

While most of us already know the book promotion basics, there are also a number of other avenues you can take to broaden your book promotion reach and make your promotional efforts more effective.

20 book promotion strategies you can use to promote to a wider range of potential customers:

1. Make use of your website’s opt-in box. Provide a weekly or monthly newsletter that offers information your reader/subscriber will value. Along with the information, you can offer your books for sale. Building your subscriber list is a key marketing strategy.

2. Use article marketing and social networks to broaden your reach, and be sure to provide links that go directly to a designated landing page for the sale of your book/s.

3. Book virtual book tours with tour services or create your own. Try to get guest spots on sites that are geared toward your target market.

4. Create trailers for your books and post them on sites such as YouTube. You can try your hand at creating a trailer for free at http://OneTrueMedia.com. If attempting this seems a little overwhelming, you can hire someone to do it for you.

5. Create postcards, business cards, and flyers with your book information and cover. Include the link to your book’s site or your author site.

6. Contact your local newspapers and request they do an interview or a feature on you as a local author.

7. Request book reviews from reputable reviewers and ask them to post the reviews on your Amazon and B&N selling page, Goodreads, Shelfari, and other sites that can help promote your book. Post them on your own site/s as well.

8. Enter competition. Winning a contest, or getting second place or mentionable awards is a great way to increase interest in your book/s. Be sure to enter reputable contests. Also, check out your state book lists

9. Put out a request in your groups to be a guest on blog talk radio shows that feature authors. While it’s good to find those that feature authors in your genre, it’s also a good idea to broaden your reach and shoot for shows that are diversified.

10. If you’ve established yourself as an expert in your field, you can give teleseminars or webinars. This is a proven strategy for increasing your subscriber list, thereby increasing your selling reach.

11. Give free or reasonably priced workshops. Again, this is a proven strategy to increase your subscriber list with people who are interested in your topic.

12. Create a how-to-course and offer it in daily or weekly segments through emails. You will easily boost your subscriber list through a course. It also guarantees that those who subscribe for it will open your mailings.

13. Have a 2 for 1 sale and promote the sale through all your social networks and a press release. Everyone loves a sale.

14. Create and publish press releases on a regular basis. You can report on your teleseminars, how-to-courses, workshops, news, sales, etc.

15. You can also look into associations, businesses, groups, schools, and other avenues that may be interested in your book. This is also a great way to sell in bulk.

16. Sell through catalogues. This may take a bit of research, but the benefits may be more than worth the effort. Do an online search for ‘your genre’ book catalogues.

17. Become a part of joint ventures. Publicists may be looking for authors to be partners in their book promotions. You help promote their authors’ books, and you’re listed in their content, usually by offering a free or discounted book, or e-book. There are also different situations. Again, this can be worth the effort.

18. Think about having your book included in book clubs. Again, do an online search.

19. Look locally. If you’ve written a children’s book see if your local toy store, baby store, or children’s clothing store will be willing to offer your book for a percentage of the selling price. If you’ve written a cook book, talk to the local bakery owner or coffee shop. And, don’t forget doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices, beauty salons, and so on. Don’t be afraid to seek out facilities that may not be an exact match. Establishing this type of partnership is a win-win situation.

20. If you have the funds, find out what a publicist or professional book marketer can do for you.

Remember: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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Karen Cioffi is an author, ghostwriter, and editor. For more on writing and marketing visit http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com and sign up for her FREE newsletter, A Writer’s World. You’ll get TWO free e-books on writing and marketing in the process, and two more free e-books just for stopping by.

Writing for Free – A Means to a Visibility End

I have come to the conclusion that the most time consuming aspect of writing is keeping up with all the useful information that is made available through everywhere from business sites to personal blogs. It seems everyone is offering free information. I have already spent entire days just surfing through sites and reaming ideas, strategies, tips, and so on. It really is endless.

In the writing world everyone tries to and actually needs to keep their work and names visible. Whether you’re selling books, or services, or another product, you need to reach the potential customers. Providing information is a primary means of accomplishing this. The information you provide creates an informational funnel leading readers back to your site/s.

One useful tool to create an information funnel is the blog. New blogs are popping up everyday with free tips and advice. According to statistics from August 2011, there were 131,709,724 active blogsites.

The blog has become a great vehicle to bring you to the reader. It is an excellent way to show readers what you have to offer. The information you provide will hopefully not only draw readers, but keep them coming back for more. Using my own blog as an example, I found that if I don’t offer beneficial information, I lose followers.

Another vehicle to bring you to the reader is the free online magazines. This is where you can write and have your articles published. While you don’t get paid, you do get published. Although it doesn’t have the credibility of paying markets, it is a great way to hone your craft, expand your visibility, and establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

One more source of visibility is writing guest blogs or articles for other blogs or sites.  Often the writers are looking for new and fresh content for their sites or newsletters.  If the offer arises take advantage of it, or ask bloggers if they would be interested in a guest blog from you.

Every marketing teleseminar and workshop I have been to encourages writers offer information through blogs or free online magazines. According to marketing experts the name of the game is visibility. Free information draws readers. I can confirm that this is true because I make it a point to attend all the free teleseminars and teleclasses possible. 

The businesses that offer this free information want to draw you there so they can sell you their services. This is understandable. It is a win-win situation; they acquire some new customers and you, whether you take advantage of their services or not, receive valuable information.

The best strategy is to start out offering free tips and articles until you can provide your own expert information and advice.  It’s important to remember that this free information will draw readers and show them that your posts and articles are helpful and needed. Once you feel comfortable enough that the information you are providing is of substantial value you can offer it in the form of e-books, newsletters, teleseminars, workshops, or other means for a fee.

But, to what extent should a writer offer their services for free? 

While taking this path of visibility it’s important to remember that submitting to free ezines or guest blogging is not just a lack of financial gain, it’s the time loss incurred while preparing these articles – this is called opportunity costs, the cost of choosing one path over another, and the related loss of opportunities because of that choice.

You should consider writing for free as an investment in your writing career and as an effective tool to attract clients or buyers.

It should also be noted that even when you reach the point of being considered an expert, it’s still a good idea to publish articles in the free ezines for continued visibility and as a means of drawing new readers/customers to your sites and services. And, don’t forget that while you’re providing free information you can also be submitting articles to paying markets.

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Karen Cioffi is an author, ghostwriter, and freelance writer. For writing and marketing information visit Karen at 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 just for stopping by.

Book Promotion: Creating an Informational Funnel

When thinking of book marketing, there are a number of rungs on the marketing ladder. The first involves creating a quality product, in this case a book. You want a book that you’ll be proud to offer for sale, and a book that customers will want to buy.

Once you have a finished product/book, you need to move onto the promotion basics. This rung on the ladder involves establishing a presence - you’ll need to create visibility and a platform. To do this, the first step is to get a website or blog. Next, you will need to join writing groups in your genre, groups in your target market, and other social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook.

After you’ve established a presence, the next step is to create an informational funnel leading back to your website. The purpose of this funnel is to bring traffic and inbound links, to your site.

The more traffic to your site the greater your visibility in the search engines. More traffic also means a greater chance of visitors purchasing what you’re offering.

When it comes to an informational funnel, content rules. Here are three strategies to increase traffic to your site.

1. Add Content to Your Blog
Make your presence known by offering information in the form of content on your blog. Content is what will make you an expert in your niche, genre, or area. But, just posting the content to your site will not create the traffic you need. Each time you publish content to your site, you need to let your social networks know about it.

Tweet it and post about it to Facebook and your other social networks. Be sure to always include a clickable url link that goes directly to the article. This is a part of inbound marketing – it leads visitors back to your site through an information funnel.

In addition, using effective keywords in your posts and the post titles, related to your site’s platform, will help the search engines index your content.

2. Article Marketing

Once you feel comfortable with adding content to your blog, you can now venture out into the article marketing arena to capture a larger audience. While most article directories have guidelines, they are fairly lenient. Follow the guidelines and post an article to one, ten, or a hundred different directories. Most of them don’t require original articles, so you can use articles you’ve posted on your blog.

Usually you will be allowed to include a brief bio in the form of a resource box. Make it short and sweet. Be sure it links back to your website or blog, whichever you want the traffic to go to (if you have more than one site).

Those who click on the link will be creating inbound links to your site which is a feature Google and the other search engines like. In fact, quality inbound links are an important aspect of search engine optimization (SEO).

3. Offer to be a Guest on Other Quality Sites

Another avenue of inbound marketing is offering your articles to other quality blogs or sites; you become a featured writer on the site by providing a guest article. It might be viewed as visiting another neighborhood. The particular site you are featured on has its own set of visitors, thereby broadening your visibility.

Do your research though, before you approach bloggers. Make sure the fit is right by checking prior posts on the site. In addition, when you approach the blog owner to ask about a guest post, let him know that you are familiar with his site.

And, be sure to always make it a win-win situation. Let the blog owner know that you will promote your feature post, and you might mention that you’ll include his site in your newsletter.

Finally, self-edit all your articles before you post them or send them off.
Tip: Using content to draw visitors back to your site is inbound or organic marketing. It is free, and it works by creating an informational funnel leading back to your site. In order for inbound marketing to work effectively, you need to provide valuable content on a regular basis.

My next post, June 6th, will be: Book Promotion: Visibility and Platform Basics

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Karen Cioffi is an author and ghostwriter. 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.
Author of Walking Through Walls.