It's time for the Book Marketing Demystified book marketing & promotion chat here on
SheWrites!
First things first: how many of you use article marketing now?
Article marketing is a healthy and easy way to provide a greater presence for you and
your work online. It is an efficient way to extend your platform and leverage the articles
you are writing for your blog and others.
Let's begin with the basics...
When you write an article, there are some simple ways you will want to post it - whether
it is something for a print magazine or if it's electronic. If you have written an article for
a publication, be sure to secure the link. If it is a print publication, be sure to ask for the
online link to the article. Note: You may need to follow-up more than once to get it.
Once you have the link, do your basic posting across your social media networks
including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Now I know we haven't yet covered LinkedIn
in depth (we'll be talking all about it in 2 weeks!) So for now be sure to post the link to
your status on LinkedIn so it is visible to your connections.
Now once you've done these posts, be sure to "reprint" the article on your blog as a blog
post. Indicate where it originally appeared and be sure to include a link to the publication.
This is a great way to feed your blog with something you've already written. This also
keep samples of your writing right on your blog so viewers can see where else your
writing has appeared.
There are a variety of sites where you can further post your article and make it
"searchable" for the Internet search engines...
StumbleUpon.com is a great site where you need the link in order to upload your article.
Like others I'll be talking about, StumbleUpon is a repository for articles. Digg.com,
Delicious.com, Technorati.com and Reddit.com are great opportunities for you to share
what you write as well. If you use the ShareThis software package in conjunction with
your blog software platform, some of these may be directly accessible from your blog to
share the article.
A couple more: Newsvine and Buzz Up!
Now here are some tips for using these:
First, read through your article and identify keywords that you think people might search
on that are present in your article. Buzz Up! and Delicious use your Yahoo! account as
their sign-in info so log into Yahoo! before you share the articles here. If you don't have
a Yahoo! account, you'll need to set this up first to use these 2 sites (Buzz Up! and
Delicious)
Posterous.com is another place where you can also post your articles. In order to post on
Posterous.com, send an email to post@posterous.com with your article. You can post
just about anything here: video, music, text and so on. For any questions re: what to post,
please see the Posterous FAQ at http://posterous.com/faq
There are even more places to post your articles: ArticlesBase.com, EzineArticles.com,
ArticleDirectoryOnline.com and GoArticles.com *Note - these sites are not connected
to your ShareThis buttons if you use this on your blog you will have to go to each
individual site and upload the article manually
One note for GoArticles.com - Please review the guidelines here to see if you’d like to set
up an account here and distribute your articles here:
http://www.goarticles.com/author.html
If you're thinking about ... what articles could I write? Think about the audience that
your book is for... what can you write about in a 300, 500, 1000 or 1500 word article that
is in alignment with your book or writing genre or topic? This is a great brainstorming
exercise! Another great exercise is to get together with some of your writing pals (maybe
over some great tea!) and talk about what each of you thinks the others could write about.
This way you don't have to come up with some article ideas all on your own :-)
There are also distribution sites that can support you with the mass distribution of your
articles. CAVEAT: You will need to make sure you have an account set up on each of
the sites you will be distributing to PRIOR to using these types of distribution sites.
A popular site is PING.FM. Sites like this are free and require you to set up an account.
Inside the site, you will find a variety of websites where you can distribute your article.
Remember: when you use something like a PING.FM, you're going to see A LOT of
sites! Before you distribute to them, you have to set up an account.
(Q: Are you talking about that have been published elsewhere that you can then
distribute or do you mean writing articles on your topic specifically for distribution
through these channels?
A: You can use these sites to distribute previously published AND new articles you write.
the key is you will need a link (either from the publication or post the article to your blog
to create a link) to leverage these sites)
Article marketing is a powerful way get a greater presence on the Internet beyond your
social media marketing. Oftentimes I get asked about what else can I do besides social
media? Article marketing is a "re-purposing" activity that takes advantage of what you
have already written (in many cases) and provides you with a world of other ways to
redistribute or further distribute what you wrote.
The key to article marketing is organization. Decide what you want to write about and
for which publication (including your blog). Create accounts on the sites where you'd
like to distribute your articles. Consider using a distribution site like PING.FM or others.
Note: there are also other systems that will charge you to distribute your articles. Weigh
the benefits and read what they are offering closely.
Here are a couple of specific sites that you may also want to post on and where you will
need to set up your own account:
If you want to connect with editors and want to post in a place where your article may
attract interest from this group, post it on authorconnection.com. Be sure to also set up
your profile here.
Other sites that are specific audiences: mainstreetmom.com, www.howtoadvice.com
You can also use sites like www.amazines.com.
*Note: when you use these sites, know that others may want to use your articles in their
ezines and other publications. Be sure that your account or profile is completed so your
info is available.
--> One last yet IMPORTANT tip: at the bottom of your article include a sentence that
says something like: "If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to visit my website at
(URL) or sign up for my newsletter (LINK)."
When you do this, you can drive traffic to your website or newsletter simply by using
article marketing. After all, if they liked what you wrote, they'll probably enjoy seeing
more of what you produce.
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Q. Could you talk about your thoughts on pursuing bylines in traditional print
publications. In terms of book promotion does the effort involved in submission pay off?
A. The best answer is ... it depends :)
First, it's more important to make sure that the traditional print publication (or online site)
audience is congruent with the reading audience for your book. If it's not, it may not be
worth the time and effort you'll put into it as the people you'll be writing for will not be
the people who would take an interest in or buy your book.
Do an audience assessment and also find out the circulation of the publication too. If
you're going to pursue it, you'll want a wide net to cast so make sure the publication can
support you properly with some good numbers of the right audience.
If you're not sure if it will pay off, give a probationary period before your commit to
anything long term. I'm a big fan of testing to see what kind of results I can get. 90 days
is a good test period. That way you can publish at least once a month (3x) or more if it's
more often to see if it's going to work for you and your book.
CAVEAT: For the test, be sure to take a measurement re: your website or blog stats and
also monitor your book sales numbers during the period. You're going to need to be
diligent about tracking your results
Suggested homework for the week:
Take one of your articles and post it on at least 5 sites that I mentioned in today's chat.
Set up your accounts and profiles and select which ones IN ADDITION to your social
media sites (it should be 5 more than these) you'll post on and then set an appt in your
calendar to do it.