blogging – Page 3 – President of Outskirts Press

blogging, self publishing a book, Uncategorized

How to get featured on our app – Become a bestseller

Last week’s topic covered tactics an author could pursue to get featured in the “Blog” category of the Outskirts Press app. This week, we continue the topic. We have already established that the best way is to focus on being featured in one of these blog categories:

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

So far we have discussed Author and Book Spotlights. Today we’ll talk about getting listed on the Monthly bestseller list.

Obviously, we love showcasing our successful books, and in most people’s eyes, ending up on a “bestseller list” is a good sign of success. There are all kinds of “bestseller lists” in the world nowadays. There is the New York Times Bestseller list, there is the Amazon Bestseller list, and there are individual bookstores’ bestseller lists. The value and “prestige” associated with all these lists vary by who you listen to and who you believe. But believe this, in a world where 1 million books are published every year, getting on ANY bestseller list is better than not getting on one. It validates your book in at least some quantifiable manner. And that’s more than most people can say. Well… most people haven’t even published a book, so you’re already ahead of the game.

Every month, we compile our own bestseller list, which are the ten books that we sold the most of, listed in alphabetical order. For example, our July bestsellers were featured on our app beginning August 16th and are still being featured. This list is impossible to predict from month to month, which means it is anyone’s game. Sure, we have our athletes (Marvin A. Russell) and doctors (Dr. Anthony Ebeigbe and Dr. Patrick Olomu) on the list in July, but we also have selections of books that prove you don’t have to play for Notre Dame, or teach in its classrooms, to have a bestseller.

And having an Outskirts Press bestseller is a sure way to get featured in our app. Tomorrow we’ll discuss Virtual Book Tours, the first of the guaranteed ways to get featured.

blogging

Blogging tips – How to build traffic for your blog – Part 3

To continue this week’s topic, the stats from WordPress suggested to me that rather than following the “social scientist’s” idea of multiple (shorter) blog postings through the day, it was more preferable to post shorter blog postings multiple days in a row. When I did that in May, the result was the highest number of viewers for my blog thus far. I continued posting shorter blog postings more often in June. And here’s what happened:

In two months (between April – June) I nearly doubled the traffic to this blog. In fact, the “darker” shade of blue is the April bar that I “cut and pasted” to superimpose over June, as a comparison. July’s figures are there, too, where you can see a slight increase over June. But that is encouraging in its own right. As you work to build traffic for your own blog, you should work on developing specific tactics that significantly increase traffic from one month to the next (as my blog did between April and May, and again between May and June) — AND, you want to make sure not to lose that traffic once you have earned it. Continue to give compelling content and information (or entertainment) and react to the statistics provided to you by your blogging platform.

blogging

How to increase blog traffic – Part 2

To continue yesterday’s topic, I changed my blog posting schedule starting in May to post shorter blog postings 3-4 days in a row, rather than continuing to follow the “social scientist’s” recommendation of posting short blog postings throughout the day. I did that in April and my traffic actually decreased (and not just because April has fewer days than March).

Once May was over, I looked at the stats again. May became the highest traffic month since my blog’s inception (up to that point at least)…

Let’s just say, I was so encouraged by the results that I continued doing it in June, where the increase in blog traffic between April and May could build upon itself and continue growing. Let’s look at June’s stat’s next time…

blogging, branding, compare self publishing companies

3 Tips for Conducting Research Online – Tip #1

Most people nowadays do research on the Internet. When you are seeking opinions there is no better source; EVERYONE has an opinion and everyone is either “blogging,” “tweeting,” or “Facebooking” it. Yes, I just coined the term Facebooking – feel free to use it.

But the problem with the Internet is that it is difficult to find facts. The lost art of journalism is truly becoming a lost art and let’s just say “Fact Checker” isn’t the number one sought-after position on Monster.com these days. Even Wikipedia uses “social opinion” to shape and shift “facts” — although they also require corroborative evidence or support from encyclopedias and/or newspapers for much of their new content. Isn’t that ironic? I wonder what Wikipedia is going to do for corroboration when encyclopedias and newspapers are out of business.

But until then, a consumer researching a product or service online finds herself in the wild, wild west. So all one can really do is follow a few simple tips:

Tip #1 for Conducting Research Online: Determine the source

Look at the source of the information and ask yourself if it seems biased or impartial. Outskirts Press, for instance, is a part of a fiercely competitive industry without much regulation or policies. As a result, the competitive environment is ruthless, savvy, sometimes unethical, and even downright nasty. The same can be said for many other industries, and the larger the companies get, the more unbelievable the information and tactics of the companies involved.

So if you, as a potential customer, are looking up a business on the Internet and run into a blog posting or a website claiming Business XYZ is “bad” or “a scam” or in some other way not on the up-and-up, then it is up to you to determine if the source of that information is truly impartial, or whether they have ulterior motives. You’d be surprised how many businesses post inaccurate, unsavory, or maliciously libelous statements about their competitors behind the anonymity of blogs or in the name of journalism. Just look at the PR “smear campaign” Facebook initiated upon Google for a recent example (more on that later) . In other words, due diligence is essential.

Tip #2 next time…

blogging

Blogging statistics

Yesterday I introduced this graphic, which is a graph of the unique visitors to this blog since its inception on January 2010.

Contrary to my hope, April’s numbers weren’t higher, even though I was trying a new tactic of mulitple blog postings per day. So in May, I will be posting once a day again, but multiple days in a row. Basically, I’ll take the same concept of shorter blogs more frequently that the “social scientist” suggested, and just spread them across multiple days. We’ll see if that results in a “Jump” similar to the one you see in March of 2010 and again in November of 2010.

We do a lot of “Management by Statistics” here at Outskirts Press, which means we track just about everything we can, and then analyze the results to determine tactics to continue and tactics to cease. It’s really not that hard of a concept, but you’d be surprised how many businesses don’t do this. Analyzing the results of this graph above tells us that two particular events occurred which lifted the overall viewers of this blog to new levels each time. One occurred in March of 2010 and another occurred in November of 2010. I’ll discuss more about statistical management in the future…

blogging

The power of public polls on blogs

As of today, over 250 people have voted for the winner in the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Award on this poll:

If you haven’t voted yet, now is the time. It has been interesting watching the results change as a result of specific marketing efforts. When the poll first opened on the 15th, it was publicized to our social community and a part of our widely-distributed e-mail newsletter. After that initial salvo, preliminary polling results had Doris in the lead, followed by Frank, and Robert in the #3 position.

Then, a couple of days ago, it seems Frank made some specific marketing efforts to increase his votes. Perhaps he conducted his own email campaign, or perhaps he notified his own circle of friends, family, colleagues, etc. He hasn’t informed us specifically what he has done, but the proof of his efforts is in the pudding of the polls. As of today, when I write this, his book has surpassed Doris’ in the public poll percentages. Congratulations, Frank! An author’s publishing platform is determined largely by marketing prowess. We shall see if Robert and Doris can keep pace with marketing efforts of their own through the rest of April.

By the way, this is a good lesson for marketing books in general. If you make a marketing effort, you will see tangible sales results. Just like the authors of our Top 10 bestselling books in March.

More about polls and their use on blogs in a few hours…

blogging, self publishing, self publishing a book

Vote for the Best Book of the Year 2010

You may have noticed with the previous poll that the very right-hand edge of it was “cut off” by the width dimensions of this blog’s theme. WordPress allows you to set three different poll sizes, and that poll was set to the maximum, which does fit on our Outskirts Press blog, but doesn’t fit in its entirety here.

The next poll, however, fits on both. This is the poll for the Best Book of the Year Award 2010 and its $1,500 Grand Prize. I summarized the finalists in a previous posting here.

Or for more details, you can visit each of these respective blog postings for details about…

Now it’s time to vote. We’re taking votes through the end of April and the winner will be notified in the first week of May. Good luck to them!