Social marketing involves getting as many people on the Internet to find out about you possible This relies on two factors. 1. Making yourself highly visible so that it’s easier for people to find you and 2. Increasing your search engine rankings so that you’ll appear near the top of any lists related to your market.
Once people start finding your site you need to keep them around so that they will buy something. You do this by:
1. Give away something valuable to the people coming to visit you. This doesn’t need to be something that costs you anything. Information can be just as valuable as things with a market price. What you give should be related to why people have come to visit your site in the first place. All that research you did to write your book could be of great value to someone else.
Remember, you want to give away something of high perceived value. It might be worth giving away one of your books (your best seller) if it means people will buy everything else you write. You need to think about the long term benefits over the short term costs. A loyal fan is far more valuable then a one time buyer.
2. Be friendly and open. People should get to know you as someone that is both knowledgeable in your field and a person they would want to know. You need to be professional so that people trust that your books are of high quality and you need to be friendly so they will want to buy a book from you.
3. Don’t over sell your products. Often a short message saying something like “oh, by the way I have a new book coming out if you’re interested” is better then posting a long message about how great your book is. Link to the site where they can buy the book and allow them to decide for themselves if they want to check it out.
Only sell one thing per post. People get confused if they are offered too many choices. Link to the page they can buy that specific book and let them search the site for other books written by you if they want to. If you cycle through everything you have to sell every time you post you’ll be more likely to sell everything then if you try to sell everything at once.
Holly Jahangiri had some more information to add about Social Marketing.
First of all, you can sign up on every social networking site in the world, and shoot yourself in the foot by not understanding or respecting the community there.
Read these:
How to be as famous as a porn star (Without taking off your clothes)
Ask yourself – when it comes to those social networking sites, web sites, and blogs – “Would anyone in my industry actually pay money to sponsor this?” (Maybe you don’t want sponsorship, and that’s fine – but are you offering anything of enough value that someone might WANT to sponsor it and consider it a worthwhile investment?)
Now, go read this:
Confidence…The Root of Success
Resolve never to complain or worry in public, ever again (or start an anonymous blog, or a restricted access blog, where you can vent and whine and moan to your heart’s content – we all need that outlet, from time to time, and I figure it’s better to inflict it on the blog and a few close friends than on the spouse).
It’s all a conscious focused effort (I think my biggest downfall is lack of focus), but it must be sincere and authentic (maybe “loves to dabble and explore like an Internet magpie” could be part of my personal brand…), too.
Whatever you do, don’t forget that everything you post on the Internet is public. Hello, World…
Social Networks
A social network is a place where you can post lots of different things and invite others to view what you have to offer. The sites are designed so that you can socialize with others easily.
http://www.authorsden.com/ NEW
http://www.jacketflap.com/ NEW
Social Bookmarks
These are sites that allow you to bookmark websites and news posts. Usually these sites will rank sites based on how often they are bookmarked. Having lots of bookmarks from different sources will help increase your rankings in the search engines.
Social Marker is not a social book marketing site, it is a site that allows you to post to dozens of social bookmarker sites at one time. First you’ll need to sign up to every site separately. Sign up to as many as you’d like. You don’t need to sign up to them all to use Social Marker.
Add This and Add to Any are free button services that allow you to put all your social bookmarking links into one convenient button.
http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com
http://www.bookmarktracker.com
http://www.danogo.com/bookmarks
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scuttle
http://www.valent-blog.eu/social-bookmarking-reloaded
Content Sharing
These are sites where you can post your research and other information that people might be interested in reading. Add links to a lot of different websites that will add to the information you have posted and then slip your own website in there as well. Most of these sites don’t like blatant advertising so make sure the information has some true social value.
Creation Sharing
Videos, pictures, and audio files can add an extra dimension to your books. Use these sites to add multimedia to your blogs and websites. Search engines love video sites so pass the links around as much as you can. Make sure you website appears in your video. You should make sure you mention your site in your audio files as well. Large images, like book covers, should also have a link to your site somewhere. Again, don’t over market yourself. Just let people know where they can find you and leave the decision to them.
Videos
Tube Mogul is not a video site, it is a site that allows you to upload your video to several websites at once.
http://www.gofish.com (child friendly site)
Videocast
Images
Audio and Podcasts
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ NEW
http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html
Blogging
Blogging sites are great places to link to everything else you post on the net. As blogging sites tend to have a higher ranking in the search engines then your own site, it is well worth opening several blog sites and passing links around.
http://www.blogcatalog.com/ NEW
Articles
If you write non-fiction, these are great sites to get information about a lot of different subjects. While you’re there, post a few articles of your own. These sites don’t usually allow direct links, but you can post your information at the end of the article and let people find you that way.
Wow!
What an incredibly detailed and useful list. Very good information. Thank you.
Thank you for all the information. Wow, that had to be quite a job, but it’s appreciated.
Vivian
Well, I had all these links lying around anyway. It’s about time I put them together in one place.
Thank you for your comments, I’m glad you find the list useful.
Danogo also has a social network where you can do blog posts and upload videos for marketing, kind of like myspace.
Fantastic reference! Thank you.
It is still great to have them in one place where we can all just click and go – thanks for doing this E
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Elysabeth Eldering
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com
Coming soon the Junior Geography Detective Squad series, State of Wilderness, a 50-state mystery trivia story -
Thanks so much for compiling these and explaining the ins and outs of social networking. Great information! I appreciate your hard work.
I’ve added Danogo.com to the list. Thank you for the suggestion.
If any one knows of any sites not on this list, let me know so I can add them. Also let me know if any of the links are broken or if a website has disappeared.
Thanks for putting all of the links together in one place, George. I’d heard of some of these places but certainly not all of them.
Another blogging site is http://livejournal.com – I do my personal blogging there.
Ok, I’ll add that to the list.
You are a Prince!!! Thanx for taking the time to do this. It is appreciated by all of us that are internet challenged and simply would never have found even a tiny portion of these.
I’m honored that you chose to quote me. And that you changed your theme so the blockquote would be more readable…does that make me an “influential blogger”?
Seriously, thank you for tying all these great resources together in one easy reference.
Great list…a few on there I didn’t know about,like Social bookmarking. That sounds like a huge time saver, so I rushed over to sign up. Thanks!!
Holly, I thought your post had a lot of helpful information that would benefit people looking into marketing themselves so I was happy to add it.
Lisa, Social Bookmarker is a great site for allowing you to put bookmarks on several sites at one time.
Social Bookmarker also allows you to add a banner on your site or blog that links to as many social bookmarking sites as you want to add to it. This will encourage your readers to bookmark your site.
Wow! Great information here. I still have so much to learn!
Great Information blog ! Thank you for keeping up the good work. I look forward to returning to your blog, and learning more from you ! http://www.uoha.com