Post by Lily on Jul 2, 2011 11:55:14 GMT -5
"Marketing 101 lesson, for those of you who don't know:
I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage all of you with Facebook accounts to post your page (that would be the exact URL that shows up in your browser window when you are on your page. For example, my author page on FB is: www.facebook.com/pages/Charlotte-Holley-Author/112012405517245) to the rest of the group so we can all "friend" each other. Then we can all "like" each others' author pages. It may sound silly, but the more followers (translate that to "friends" or "likers") you have on your pages, the more people will look and say hey! Things are happening here and want to follow you too. Everyone wants to go where the action is, and the more we support each other, the more others will support us. Post little notes and tidbits of encouragement to each other. It gets your name out there to more people!
Those of you who don't have Facebook accounts . . . well, I've told you before that you should have one (just like you need to be part of this Yahoo group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheGypsyShadowNews/] to receive updates and to interact with each other!) so I'm not going to keep preaching. Let me just say you are probably missing out on the single best free online community for promoting yourself. Link your Facebook pages to your Yahoo account (if you have one), your blog, your MySpace and Twitter and you have a veritable force working for you. Each post you make on your fan page will go to Twitter, Yahoo and MySpace so you don't have to spend your valuable time re-posting to all those sites. Link your blog through Networked Blogs (a Facebook app) and every blog post will go to all your other pages automatically. If you don't know how to do any or all of this, find someone who can teach you or get someone to do it for you. Yes, it IS that important!
Exchange reviews with each other! Every review you send to me, I post on your GSP page if the review is online so I can post the URL, or on our In-House review page. Then, go the extra step for each other and post those reviews to Amazon where they will be seen by the most people (once you have written it, it's a simple copy-and-paste process to post it elsewhere!). Oh, and you should, if you haven't already, open your Amazon author page so you can post neat stuff and information about yourself there to a potential audience that encompasses the entire world! To sign up for Author Central, you can use your Amazon account if you have one, or you can open one. Author Central: authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/home. Help each other reaffirm tags on Amazon. The more times different people choose the same tags for a book, the better chance that book has of coming up near the top when people search that particular keyword. We can help each other succeed, folks! And the side benefit to that is that it is the perfect form of passive self-promotion, for those of you who don't like tooting your own horn! If people see your name and read your reviews, that becomes brand recognition, and brand recognition leads to curiosity, which means people will start looking for you and what you have written. If they like what they see, they will buy! (hint, hint!) Oh, and have I ever mentioned the importance of tagging? TAG everything you put online (that means, add all the pertinent keywords you can think of to everything you upload). Why? Because all those keywords go to the search engines, and when people search those keywords, the item(s) you have posted with those keywords will come up in the search engine. This is a VERY good thing, because if people can't find you or your work, they certainly can't buy it.
Post (and tag) your reviews (both the ones you give others and the ones you receive) on your Facebook fan pages and on your networked blog (if you don't have a blog, GET one! LOL) and it will go to Twitter, and so on . . . Post interesting reviews and other interesting tidbits directly to the GSP Facebook page and then it becomes syndicated to GSP's Twitter as well. You have your own online network that's available for the taking. Go for it! We post all our titles with blurbs and such there and often feature a daily or weekly book. But we are busily editing your books, formatting your books, designing your cover art, posting your books, updating the GSP website and tons of other things. We have an incredible125 books available now, but there are only two of us! You can help us promote you by posting to our FB page."
www.facebook.com/Gypsy.Shadow.Publishing?sk=app_9953271133
