Facebook and Your E-book

With a market reach of over 500 million users, it is not difficult to understand why many e-book authors look upon Facebook as an opportunity to market their e-book products. However, marketing your e-book on Facebook is not as easy as it looks.

Unlike other forms of advertising, social media marketing is built around the concept of social interaction, a two way dialogue where information is shared between individuals or peer groups. The thing to remember about social networks like Facebook is that they empower users to question, challenge and offer opinions on a diverse range of topics, including your e-book.

While Facebook may offer e-book authors the opportunity to promote their e-book to a wider audience, the issue of how to manage social discourse should never be far away from the author’s mind. If managed badly, authors could quickly find their e-book generating negative press which could adversely affect sales. And herein lays the conundrum for authors looking to market their material on social networking sites.

The key to successful social media marketing is to think ‘relationship’ rather than ‘promotion’. When it comes to planning your e-book’s SMM strategy, try to establish a set of goals that take into consideration the following:

· Know your audience – where do they hang out and why? Get to know them

· Connect – how do you plan to connect with your audience? What channels and tools will you use and why?

· Opportunities – what opportunities can you create for dialogue? What topics, other than your e-book, are likely to engage your audience?

· Position – how do you plan on finding common ground with your audience? Don’t burden them with the ‘I’ syndrome. The constant use of ‘I’ will simply drive your audience away. Empathy is the secret to finding common ground with your audience.

· Time – How do you plan to manage the social interaction balance?

Once you’ve established your SMM goals, try to be an ‘ambassador’ in your market niche. Respond to criticism positively and not defensively. Remember, your audience will have an opinion on what you have to offer, good or bad. Whatever their opinion, take the opportunity to thank your audience for their input. This will create a positive twist on any negative criticism you may receive by turning it into an open appreciation of your audience’s time and energy in reading your material.

Social networking sites are about interaction, not promotion. So interact in a way that builds your credibility as an e-book author who listens rather than promotes. Sales will come after you’ve built up enough credibility with your audience.

Quality over Quantity: The secret to a good article marketing campaign

Article Marketing is one of the most cost effective ways of launching your e-book promotion. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about an article marketing campaign.

Before you launch your article marketing campaign you will need to plan what you are going to write about and decide upon which directories will host your material.

When it comes to writing articles you need to think about content, style and the word length of your piece.

Article length should be no more than 500 words long, as online users tend to have a short attention span. Your article should be descriptive, almost journalistic in style. Moreover, your article should impart useful and actionable information, pointing to your expertise on the subject you are writing about.

Write a series of articles rather than just one off pieces. This will help to build your authority as a steady source of quality information on a particular topic.

Once you’ve written your articles, you will need to think about how you are going to distribute them.

Writers new to article marketing tend to submit the same article to a multitude of article directories. This is a mistake, as search engines use filters to prevent duplicate content from showing up during searches. Posting the same article to different directories is just a waste of time.

Each article you submit to a directory must be unique. By submitting unique articles to individual directories you’ll reduce the chances of your material being filtered out by search engines.

Submitting articles to too many directories is another common mistake made by newbie article writers. While quantity may seem appealing, it will not help your cause or lift your status as a renowned writer.

Instead of using a scatter gun approach to distributing your material, you should select four or five top directories as your main distribution channels. The emphasis is on quality rather than quantity. (Here’s a list of the top 50 article directories from which you can choose your distribution channels: http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php)

After you've posted your articles you should monitor their progress. This will give you a picture of how many people are reading your material, of what works and what doesn’t work. You can then use this feedback to develop new ideas for any future articles you intend to write.

Although article marketing can be time consuming, it can also help you to build a loyal following for your written material, effectively making it easier to promote your next e-book.

Writing E-books: The Hottest Marketing Tool on the Web

With so many e-books available on the Web, the need for a dynamic marketing tool to make your e-book offering stand out from the rest of the crowd is a must. However, selecting the appropriate marketing tool for your e-book is not easy given the array of competing marketing tools available to you on the Web. Your choice of marketing tools range from pay for click advertising, blogging, article marketing, forums, social networks and online video, to name but a few.

Of all the online marketing tools available on the Web, online video represents the most versatile, most cost-effective and most value-added asset you can choose. If you are not using online video to promote your e-book, then you could very well be missing out on a lot of potential sales.

Here are six reasons why you should be using online video to promote your e-book:

· Online video has the power to engage your audience faster than any other medium

· More and more people are tuning into online video: In the UK alone, the number of people watching online video went from 6 million in 2006 to over 17 million in 2010

· There are over 50 free to upload video sharing sites on the Web

· Youtube, alone, has more than 490 million unique visitors every month

· Youtube and Google Video are not just video sharing sites – they are search engines

· Youtube is the second largest social networking site after Facebook, with over 15% of the social networking market

Creating online video need not be difficult, as most PC’s and laptops come bundled with video making software. Software such as Movie Maker or I-Movie is not complicated to use, and you can create a short video clip within the space of a few hours. You don’t even need a video camera as you can use screencast technology to capture images from your computer screen. For those of us bereft of video editing skills, I’ve discovered that a PowerPoint presentation set to music is an effective way of creating online video.

The point is: you don’t need to be a Spielberg to create online video, nor do you need to create an Oscar-winning blockbuster. All you need is a short video clip, of no more than 1 minute, to announce the publication of your new e-book.

Online video, if entertaining and informative, has the potential to go viral. For example, Pepsi Cola created a funny video clip that attracted over 26 million viewers over a very short time span. The clip lasted no more than a few minutes. Now that is what I call viral marketing at its best.

Creating an online video and uploading it to any one of the free video sharing sites will increase your e-book’s exposure to a broader audience.

Online video will also help you to create a brand image for your e-publishing business, a must if you want to become a bestselling e-book author. But, more importantly, online video will empower you towards a better rapport with your readers. Furthermore, the growing popularity of online video amongst Internet users translates into a better opportunity to build a more dynamic online presence for your e-book, which in turn equates to more sales.

Why not give your e-book the online video promotion treatment? The results might just surprise you.