Sorry, but Blogger/Google + Partnership Feels Like Bunk

This will be in my SharingwithWriters newsletter but I didn't want to wait for subscribers to this blog to see it--just in case you, too, are a faithful user of Blogger:

Blogger is offering to let those who comment on your blog do double duty by including those comments on their Google + stream, all as part of the same post.  You would need to sign in to a link they give you to enable them to do so.  It sounds like a great idea but beware! If you do this, only people who also have Google Plus accounts will be able to comment on your Blogger blog. That feels very exclusionary to me--and not too smart!  Thought I'd warn you!

 

You may want to subscribe to my newsletter. I can't possibly repeat all the tips in the letter on this blog. I mean, some don't quite fit the focus of this blog. Then there's time. You know how it goes. But it's free, just like this blog. So let me know at HoJoNews (at) AOL (dot) com if you'd like me to subscribe you. Happy to do it.


-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Cash Mobs, Promotion, and Your Book

There's something new on the online horizon. So far it's being used effectively by small retailers, but I see no reason why it couldn't also be used by authors to sell books, or manufacturers to sell particular products and, though so far it has been a flashmob phenomenon, why couldn't it be adapted to online fan pages?

What is it?

It's called cash mobbing, but checks and credit cards are accepted.

It was started by buy-local advocates in the retailing industry. It uses any kind of media including the Web and traditional media to get loyal folks to support a local business on a specific day, sometimes at a specific time. They are encouraged to come spend a minimal amount of money out of loyalty (with, perhaps, a little self interest stirred into the mix), and people do. They come. They come to be supportive, to feel part of the crowd, because it's an event, because it's a fad.

Time magazine reports it was started in 2011 by Chris Smith who read that Groupon methods of increasing business using mass discounts might backfire because retailers or service providers couldn't sustain the discounts and remain profitable. And he liked the term "cash mob." The idea was to get people interested and he did. Time reporter Katy Steinmetz says, "100 of Smith's fellow citizens [in Buffalo, NY] each spent around $10 at a wine shop with local media in tow. He's been hosting cash mobs ever since." 

Then Andrew Samtoy tried it in Cleveland. And he is using @Cashmobs moniker on Twitter to promote these events. He is also incorporated as Cash Mobs, Inc. You could use his service—or do it on your own, but do think of your own name. Samtoy apparently has a stranglehold on "Cashmobs."  Yours could be the name of your book or store plus the word "mobs." Of course, if you go the do-it-yourself route,you'd need do your own promotion (which you'd probably need to do some of in any case!)

Do use the second edition of The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) to give you tons of ideas of how to attract the crowds. Let's combine a couple of mottoes. "Just Do It and They Will Come."

Online or in person.

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Signing Your Book Virtually

Once in a while I post an article or some other help from my SharingwithWriters newsletter. I just can't help myself. It give me a chance to show you what you're missing if you don't subscribe to both this blog and the newsletter. I mean, you wouldn't want to miss something that would help make your book soar, right?

 I'll even subscribe for you. All you need do is put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of an e-mail to me and send it to HoJoNews (at) AOL (dot) com. 

Anyway, here is a new resource for you. I see it being especially valuable for online readings or presentations:

A Little Book Signing Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, I’m dreaming about the importance of personal contact with readers—on blogs, through book clubs, etc. And I’m bemoaning that one can’t do that with e-books. And then I run into an entry in Dan Poynter’s newsletter about Kindlegraph.com and it includes a link to a video (http://screencast.com/t/qtGuelwX). I’m busy. I’m tempted to forget it, but I do it anyway. Then I can’t resist going on over to the Kindlegraph site and checking it out. So, I get suckered into it—for your sake. So I can tell you how easy it is, give you an idea of how it might work, and that, as nearly as I can tell, it is f r ~ ~ for the author. Find me at my own personal address (so far this signature feature is only for The Frugal Book Promoter): http://www.kindlegraph.com/authors/FrugalBookPromo .

Here are the upsides I’ve discovered so far.

~It’s a personal way to reach readers.
~When you get requests for your signature, you can personalize it. I. e., you can include a personal message to the reader, just as you would if you were signing at a bookstore.
~It’s frugal.
~It’s easy to negotiate.
~It is my understanding that it is f r ~ ~ to the readers.
~Evan Jacobs, the genius author who did this for us gets an affiliate fee when people “order” a signature, but it doesn’t cost the author or the reader anything. Fair is fair.

Here are the downsides:

~It is difficult for me to get the hyphen in my name.
~Is is more than a little difficult to get a true impression of your real-life signature. A disclaimer here. I am left-handed. That probably exacerbated the problem, but I think it is inherent in the hand/eye/computer/mouse configuration. Thus I finally used an “adopted” signature, which is a whole lot better looking than the one I tried to do on my own using a mouse, but still not beautiful. And it is certainly very different from my true signature.

Here’s what I don’t know.

~I don’t know if it will work; that is I don’t know if many readers will use it or if many even know if it is available.
~I don’t know how easy it will be for an author to find your book on the site. Evan says there are 3500 authors with 15,000 books listed so far and he says, “Readers can find books and authors either by navigating directly to an author page [using the URL provided by the authors in his or her marketing] or by using the search box. I'm also working on implementing additional navigation methods for genres, categories, and groups.”
~I don’t know (yet) how much promotion I will need to do to make Kindlegraph work for me and for my author.
~I don’t know if I want Kindlegraph to get the affiliate fees I now sometimes earn when I use my own affiliate account to sell my books or those of others. If you don’t use Amazon’s affiliate feature, this will not affect you one way or the other.

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

To Favicon or Not To Favicon. Chaz DeSimone Gives You the Skinny!

I haven't used a favicon yet, but it is a fantastic idea. Because I have no personal experience, I asked my fantastic (I kid you not!) designer of the cover of my The Frugal Book Promoter (see it at www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) to address the issue. I knew he could do a lot better than I.  I'm just here to tell you that even though I haven't used one, I can see how valuable they are.

By Chaz DeSimone

I read this article on how many folks weren't maximizing their branding with Title Tags, those little tabs at the top of your screen that label the sites you've visited: 
(http://publishingcentral.com/blog/publishing/what-publishers-are-doing-wrong-with-their-websites). I asked my fave graphic designer Chaz DeSimone about them because it was certainly nothing I could possibly do myself and here's what he said:  

Using title tags, also called Favicons, is probably one of the easiest things to do to improve search engine ranking and user-friendliness on a Web site, and yet so many publishing sites that I’ve visited have completely failed to capitalize on their title tags.

A surprising number of sites I’ve visited over the past few weeks had nothing at all in the title tag. An even greater number of sites had completely unhelpful and unrelated text as their title tag. This is a huge problem, since search engines use the title of a site as the link in search engine results, and Google in particular still uses the title tag as a ranking factor in their results.

But even if Google can compensate for your unhelpful tags, in an Internet where tabbed browsing is the norm, it is extremely important to use good title tags because that is what identifies your site in a browser’s tab.

In one my browser windows right now, I see three tabs. One has a descriptive text. The middle one just says "Home." The third has a favicon (logo) and descriptive text.

It’s obvious what two of these tags are, but what is that middle one? It’s somebody’s home page, but it’s not mine. If I were a customer who tabbed away to check something else then got distracted, this certainly wouldn’t remind me to come back and finish my purchase.

The tiny icon or logo in the third browser tab or URL field is called a Favicon (favorites icon). Since they are only 16 x 16 pixels (or 32x32 but ignore that option), you're either in luck or you're not, depending on your logo. If it fits into a square and is rather simple or at least recognizable that small, you're in luck. Carolyn, if you chose to use a coin from the book cover I designed for you as your Favicon, you're most definitely in luck.

Just for fun, type in several major brand urls to see their Favicons. Target.com is superb. Ford is really forced with wasted space but at least the oval and script suggest Ford. Panasonic's Favicon fails totally. Their logo is the entire word Panasonic, so their Favicon "P" is practically useless as it is totally unrecognizable as Panasonic.

According to the author of the article you sent me, the Favicon is inexpensive and easy to implement. Not so! The image must be massaged through various stages in Photoshop until it is most recognizable and most pleasing at 16 pixels square. Note that you can't really read the Ford Favicon; it is merely suggested and is successful thanks to familiarity.

Once the Favicon is designed, it must be uploaded by getting into the Web site's source code. If you're using WordPress there's a plugin to make the process simpler.

Designing a Favicon takes a couple hours; I would ask around to see if there's someone at crowdspring.com or even Craigslist who can do that inexpensively. It definitely is a good marketing tool. There are free favicon generators here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=favicon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

A fair price for turning a logo or imprint into a decent favicon is $50 to $300, depending on the amount of redesign involved and the designer’s level of sophistication and talent. My fee is typically $125 and up, although I always include the favicon in a brand identity project. The problem with that route is similar to how anyone with a computer can “design” a book cover. A good favicon requires all sorts of adjustments in Photoshop (and sometimes other programs) to appear striking and professional. Still, someone on a severe budget can get a favicon for free, and something in that URL bar is better than nothing.

~Chaz DeSimone (www.chazdesimone.com) is a graphic designer. Reach him at 310-902-3913 or at 12228 Venice Blvd #156, Los Angeles, CA 90066

PS: This article originally appeared in my Sharing with Writers newsletter. I don't republish all the tips and articles that appear there, so if you'd like to see them all and participate in some of the interactive promoting that goes on there, I guess you'll need to subscribe. (-: Just send an e-mail with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line to HoJoNews (at) AOL (dot) com.

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second ediction of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Can Pinterest Images Work for Authors? You Bet They Can

I just started using Pinterest. It’s the new social network that many are saying “I don’t get it” about--just like they did when they first ran into Twitter. Now we’ve all been Twitterfied.

I didn’t get it, either, but I've been applying lots of general marketing techniques to Pinterest and that gave me a bit of a headstart. Now people are asking me what I think of it for authors and I’ve been telling them that Pinterest is like any other promotion or social network. If you want something to be successful, you have to promote the promotion.

An example. I got started by telling my author friends on Facebook that if they pinned one of my books to one of their bulletin boards, I'd do the same for them. I have several different book boards. These are online bulletin boards where you categorize posts (images with little cutlines or blurbs)  that intrigue you. One of them is "Books by My Friends" where I pin these books to help give them extra exposure. I also pin images of gorgeous book cases, quotes, book-related cartoons, etc. on that wall to keep it interesting rather than just a wall of book covers, which they could find on Amazon.

I’m  offer you subscribers to SharingwithWriters blog (and visitors!)  the same deal, of course. But to work well, you really need to have a board showing your book cover—preferably with related images pinned on the same board.  You know, so I can find it and repin it when you follow me.

We're all in this together. (-: Find me at www.pinterest.com/chowardjohnson. Also notice how I separate out the books I write in different genres to separate boards. And how I sometimes repeat a book image on two different boards. As an example, the theme of my novel is rooted in tolerance so it appears on my Tolerance board and on my Literary and Poetry board.

I believe it's little techniques like these that can make a difference to a network that at first doesn't seem innately suited to the needs of writers. And don't forget to toss a little personal in about you. Your readers don't want to know what you ate for breakfast on Twitter, but if it's a great pancake recipe with a great food picture, they will want to know on Pinterest.

And yeah, its all about branding and finding those marketing angles I talk about in The Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo). You have to analyze your own book to understand the possibilities for marketing it, for branding it, for targeting your readers.

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second ediction of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog:

Increase Traffic to Your Site: Five SEO Blog Tips

A guest post today from Karen Cioffi, author and marketer. It's important for authors to understand that our promotions must be promoted, as outlines in The Frugal Book Promoter (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo). Promoting online using "SEO" (Karen explains below!) is tech--but it isn't hard.

Five Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog Tips to Increase Traffic to Your Site

by Karen Cioffi

If you’re new to the writing game, you may not be aware of some of the essential steps needed to actually get in the game--steps that will make your name and brand visible. And, visibility is a biggie if you want to increase traffic to your site and move forward in your writing career.

One very interesting fact about having content online is you never know who will end up finding it. It could be an agent, a publisher, someone who wants to hire you for your writing style. You get the idea.

Why is it important to become familiar with SEO blog tips?

Simply put, the answer is to generate visibility.

Writing is no longer a solitary career. Now, if you want to create and build visibility, along with readers to your site (traffic), you need to build a platform and promote it.

So, what are some tips to help you get started in the right direction?

Well, the very first and most obvious tip is to have a Web site or blog site. Once you have one set up, it’s your job to post content to it on a regular basis, no less than once a week, two or three times a week is better though.

It’s that content that will establish you as an expert in your genre or area. This will help you down the road, after you’ve traditionally published or self-published one, five, ten, or more books and/or e-books, and you want to expand your writing career.

So, here is the strategy (SEO) that allows the search engines, such as Google, to find your site and content and to categorize and index your content. This in turn makes it available to online searchers.

Five SEO Blog Tips:

1. Use a keyword in your article title. Try one of the free keyword search tools to find an effective keyword. I use http://googlekeywordtool.com/

A keyword, according to Compendium.com, is “any word or phrase a searcher might use to describe or identify a desired resource on the Internet.”

2. Use that keyword in your article’s subheadings, and be sure to bold or italicize your subheadings.

3. Use that keyword within the content--just don’t overdo it. You don’t want to stuff your article with as many visibility generating keywords you can fit in, search engines frown upon this practice. Your article needs to be an informative, engaging, and understandable read.

You primary focus should be to write for your reader.

4. When searching for effective keywords, look for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are words that will move you away from highly competitive keywords.

As an example, if you write business articles, a generic and highly competitive keyword might be "incentives." I did a Google keyword search and the keyword "incentives" came in at: 1,500,000 global monthly searches, and 823,000 local monthly searches. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to use a keyword with that much competition.

That’s where the long-tail keyword comes in.

If you used the keyword "business incentive," you’d reduce your competition to 22,200 global monthly searches and 14,800 local monthly searches. That’s quite a difference, and it narrows your target. Remember, you want to hit as close to your target market bulls-eye as possible. Writers could use "writers incentive." Look it up!

5. The final bit of advice in SEO blog tips is to let the social networking sites know you have new content. Post the content link to Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. You should also inform your groups. Get the word out. And, be sure to have a SHARE button so visitors can share the post.

~Learn about writing and marketing with Karen Cioffi at http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com. Sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World, and get TWO free site-related e-books for subscribing, and ONE more just for stopping by. For professional and affordable writing services check out http://dkvwriting4u.com

-----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second ediction of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog: