branding – Page 7 – President of Outskirts Press

“How-To” Videos on YouTube for Self Publishing Authors

Over the past several posts I’ve been discussing different methods a writer — or anybody, really — can use to add video content to a YouTube channel for the purposes of self promotion, book promotion, company promotion, and/or search engine optimization. We have already discussed television commercials, book videos, book teasers, and platform videos.

The final method I’m going to discuss is the creation of “how-to” videos. These are typically low-budget, self-made, videos you shoot in the comfort of your own home using a home video camera, such as the affordable $200 “flip camera.” Set-up the camera on a mini-tripod aiming at your mug, add a main light source and a secondary light source (so both sides of your face are illuminated), and then record away.

So then the question becomes, what do you record? It depends upon the content of your book, or the purpose of your video channel. Non-fiction authors have an advantage here, since the content of their books are more conducive to “how-to” videos. But even fiction and poetry authors can create how-to videos by drawing a connection between the content in their books and a self-help concept. For example, an author of romantic fiction or poetry could record a series of “how-to” videos about how to behave on a first date, or how to dress for a fancy dinner, etc.

The point is, how-to videos are relatively popular on YouTube and do not need to feature expensive production values. In other words, the value is high in relation to the entry-barrier, which is low. Another good idea is to feature the work or ideas of someone else, and then provide the appropriate attribution. This serves two purposes: 1) it gives your videos some credibility and 2) it may even persuade that other individual or company to promote your video to THEIR marketing lists, increasing your video exposure tremendously.

Lisa Orrell, a marketing coach, did just that with her “how-to” video that discusses methods for increasing book sales on Amazon. Her video highlights ten of the tips I explain at length in my book Sell Your Book on Amazon. Instead of canniblizing my ideas, she plugs my book very nicely in her video, in such a positive manner, I’m likely to promote her video (and therefore her company) to my lists. Kinda like I’m doing now. The result? She creates a great video and gets further exposure for her business. In fact, the very nature of the way in which she leveraged these exact marketing concepts in her video impressed me so much that we partnered with her to offer a Social Networking Webinar to our authors. It’s coming up on November 2nd, and the details are in our blog here.

Here’s her “how-to” video:

branding, marketing

Author Platform Videos on YouTube

The fourth method for self publishing authors to add content to their YouTube channels is through the creation of “dynamic Google videos.” Frankly, at Outskirts Press we have just recently begun playing around with this. So it is not an “option” we officially offer, per se. At least, not yet. Instead, we use it in-house to recognize certain authors, grant perks to others, and in general offer something “extra” to select authors for one reason or another.

The creation of the video itself doesn’t have a lot of value — Google makes it incredibly easy to make these videos yourself — so the value we bring to the Platform Videos we produce for our authors is through the distribution of them to our social networks and video channels, which by and large, receive more traffic (and therefore more “views”) than an individual author’s channel.

Google has created this dynamic video generator to help Google brand THEIR value as a search engine. But with the right creative effort put behind it, our Author Platform videos successfully communicate the value Outskirts Press delivers by helping self-publishing professionals establish expertise and credibility in their field through the publication of high-quality books.

Here is an example:

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Book Video Teasers on YouTube

The third option for adding content to your YouTube channel if you are a published author falls under my definition of a “book teaser.” This option is similar to a book video trailer, although not as long and not as customized. At Outskirts Press we produce book teasers for our authors for just $99 and provide them with the high-quality MP4 file to help them get their video channel underway. We also offer the same service for authors who published elsewhere for $109.

Book teasers are short, only 30 seconds or less in length, and in that manner they share some similarities with the first option I discussed, television commercials. But that is where their similarities end. Commercials typically feature full-motion video and professional voice overs, and as a result, a much higher budget. Book teasers typically have none of the above. They serve more as a standardized video announcement that a book is now available.

Nevertheless, for an author seeking content for their YouTube channel and their other online marketing efforts, a $99 book teaser sets them on the right path. Here’s an example of one.

Outskirts Press published authors can order book teasers within their Publishing Center by clicking here.

If you published elsewhere but still want to learn about (or order) a book teaser, click here.

branding, marketing

Creating YouTube Content for Self Publishing Writers

Last time we discussed the first method for adding content to your YouTube Channel — professional video production. An expensive option and not really an option for most people.

The next option is much more affordable and is the method most authors use. They hire a company to produce a book video trailer for them — or if they have the capability and the software, they create a book video themselves.

Book videos are typically 1-3 minutes in length and their purpose is to generate some excitement about the author and the book, in the name of generating book sales. The style of book videos vary greatly, as do their production costs, which can range from $300 to $20,000 or more (yes, really). Some book videos are interviews with the author. Others are static camera shots of the author reading a passage from the book.

At Outskirts Press, our philosophy is that book video trailers should be like movie trailers – fast and exciting. We produce one minute to 1.5 minute book video trailers for our Outskirts Press published authors for $399 and then distribute those videos to video sites like YouTube, Meta Cafe and others on behalf of our authors. We also “blast” new videos throughout our social network on our blog, Twitter, and Facebook. Of course, the author also receives the video file to pursue his/her own video marketing endeavors, too.

With the introduction of our a la carte marketing solutions for writers, we now offer the same book video & distribution service for authors who have published elsewhere, although their cost is higher than it is for our authors. In fact, our authors currently receive a 50% discount for publishing with Outskirts Press when it comes time to order a book video.

Here is an example of a book video trailer we produced for one of our authors recently. And it just won the September “Best Book Video” contest that we ran through our Twitter account (more on that in a future post).

Authors who published elsewhere can order a book video and distribution package from Outskirts Press by clicking here.

Or, Outskirts Press authors can receive a 50% discount by ordering the same service from within their Publishing Center by clicking here.

branding, marketing

More on self-publishing, YouTube, and advertising

A number of posts ago I mentioned our YouTube branded channel and the functionality called “overlays.” I also expressed some frustration that in order to show an overlay on our videos we had to indicate that ads could appear on our branded channel. My feeling was that part of the reason behind branding a channel on YouTube was to have control over the appearance of other advertisements, and yet, I wanted to be able to display overlays. It seemed as if I couldn’t do one without authorizing the other.

I was able to get that issue addressed by an actual human being at Google, and here’s what I found out: Adsense ads appear on branded YouTube channels if one or more of the videos on that channel featured “claimed content.” Claimed content is YouTube’s classification of videos that may or may not feature copyright protected materials (images or music). YouTube uses a pretty impressive algorithm to identify potential copyright issues at the uploading stage, but it’s not perfect. So once I cleared up that misclassification for a few of our book videos, we were able to set up our YouTube branded channel to display our overlay (which now features our $500 promotion) and at the same time no longer display any other ads. The system — after some effort — works!

branding, marketing

The YouTube Branded Channel for Self Publishing

With my last post I mentioned how productive September was for our social networking tactics. I started with YouTube and I’ll continue with that topic for this post although I first wanted to mention that my general recognition of our strides in the social networking realm also included some improvements we’ve made to our blog and toward our efforts to attract more followers on Twitter. And I’ll discuss those in the coming posts, too.

But back to YouTube, and the branded channel.

As you can see from the screen shot below, a branded channel provides a lot more control and functionality, as displayed by the buttons along the top which read, respectively: Post Bulletin, Settings, Themes and Colors, Modules, Video and Playlists, and Branding Options. And through these six buttons, you can control many elements of the appearance and functionality of your channel. Ours admittedly has a ways to go. The banner for example, was not designed for the size of the banner YouTube required, so for the sake of immediacy, we took a pre-existing banner (I think the same one we used for our blog) and artificially enlarged it. That works on a short-term basis, but the fact is that doing graphic manipulation like that “stretches” our logo and causes the whole thing to look just a little bit fuzzy. We also have an opportunity with the background that we’re currently not taking advantage of, so until we can devote time to do that “right” – we’re sticking with a “blue” background. At least it comes close to matching our color scheme.

Much of the additional functionality is largely the same as a “normal” YouTube channel. The spotlight video box plays a pre-selected video, and new videos are listed in chronological order in which they are uploaded. Not shown in the screen shot is a branded advertising box the “branded channel” affords us along the left-hand column lower down on the page.

Across the bottom of the video that is playing in this screen shot is a reference to the promotion we were running in September (when this screen shot was taken). This one is for 30 free books, which was our September promotion for the Diamond publishing package. This is called an “advertising overlay” and I’ll talk about this next time.

If you don’t yet have a channel on YouTube, you should start one to promote yourself, your company, your book, or whatever. And then, see if you can get a Branded Channel. I’m not personally familiar with how that happened for us, but I think it was the result of Google recognizing how much we spend on advertising and setting it up for us, either out of a) customer courtesy or b) their desire to get us to spend more.

Amazon, branding, marketing

Altering the Amazon cover graphic

Yet another posting referring to the screen shot I took of an Amazon search results page which displays two larger graphics for my most recent book, The Highly Effective Habits of 5 Successful Authors. Already we’ve discussed the importance of adding a Kindle edition to secure two such listings, and the importance of not having a white cover, lest it get “lost” among all the Amazon screen clutter.

But what do you do if you have a white cover? Or what do you do if you want to increase the size of your book cover on Amazon (as I have done with many of my books). You change your cover graphic on Amazon…

I wrote on this topic a while ago, where I detailed the advantages of increasing the size of (and/or changing the color of) the Amazon cover.

Take a look over to the right and see the cover of the second edition of SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON (it’s right below Self-Publishing Simplified).

That’s how the cover looks of the actual book. But, strangely, that’s not how I want the cover image to look on Amazon. And this has to do with online marketing in the new millennium, combined with the aspect ratio of books in relationship to the aspect ratio of the graphic footprint Amazon uses on its sales pages. In other words, a 6×9 rectangular book cover is not OPTIMAL for use within a 260 x 260 square space, which is the graphic footprint Amazon allocates for product images on its detail pages. Showcasing portrait-shaped books results in a graphic that is 260 pixels HIGH, but only uses 50% of the available WIDTH. In other words, most book covers on Amazon sacrifice some of the space Amazon is giving to them. And let me tell you, with the number of shoppers on Amazon, that is some expensive square-footage going to waste.

So, the solution is to provide Amazon with a different graphic other than the “actual” graphic of the book cover – one that is square rather than rectangular. Of course, most books are rectangular (portrait) so this means you must ”change” the appearance of the cover. You can either “squash it” so that the entire cover fits in a space that is 33% shorter. Or you crop off a portion of the cover in preference of greater online sales. I opted for choice number 2.

So when SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON was first published in its first edition, I manually uploaded an alternate “square” cover image (doing anything “different” through Ingram or Amazon requires some manual intervention). By “square” I don’t mean boring — rather I mean that it utilizes ALL the space Amazon allocates for the image, thereby making the cover image “bigger” than other cover images within search results, or even within Listmania or Guide listings (see the image of Sell Your Book on Amazon along the left-hand side of our screen shot for an example).

Of course, the more observant readers may also notice another difference between the Amazon version of the graphic above and the “real” version to the right — other than the shape. Yes, the Amazon version is a nice garish YELLOW. And this brings me to one of the most wonderful things about marketing on the Internet — you can have your cake and eat it, too.

What do I mean by that? I would never design an actual cover of a book to look like the image above. It’s too… well, “ugly” for lack of a better word. I don’t want ugly babies, because I submit my babies to contests and awards and I want them to have a chance to win. But sadly, what makes an effective cover “in person” is not always the same as what makes an effective cover online. That yellow sure is ugly, but when you’re scrolling through 25 books about self-publishing on Amazon’s search page, guess which image your eye is going to see first? The big ugly yellow one…

In other words, yes, you can have a great actual cover that wins lots of awards and you can have an image on Amazon that attracts lots of attention. Having your cake and eating it, too.

This marketing tactic isn’t just reserved for authors of “Amazon books” either — Outskirts Press is going to soon launch a new a la carte marketing service to help any author perform this function, regardless of where you decided to publish your book.

Previously on this blog I’ve provided other examples of this, and here’s a good link to one of those…

Amazon, branding, marketing, self publishing

The Amazon Kindle and Search Results

In the last posting I began analyzing this screen shot, which is the first page of the Amazon search results for a particular phrase.

I’m using my latest book as an example to demonstrate the actual positive effects of completing some basic Amazon promotion tactics. Let’s specifically look at three elements of this screen shot:

there are two of the same graphics in the top 10 (thank you Kindle edition)- repetition matters
the cover graphic isn’t white – see how book #1 and #6 get completely lost?
the cover graphic is significantly bigger than all the other covers on the page

Let’s discuss the duplication effect, seeing two covers of the same book. Relatively easily, my book is garnering twice the exposure and therefore, hopefully, receiving twice the attention from Amazon shoppers browsing this list. In other words, my book has twice as much potential to be “clicked on” because the cover is appearing twice. Getting two cover images of your book to appear on an applicable search term phrase on Amazon is as easy as adding an Amazon Kindle edition of your book (the money you make from sales of your Kindle Edition may even be more icing on the cake — in fact, it may even start to be the cake itself. Three of our top 5 selling books in any given month are often the Kindle editions, and they’re all fiction.) Any fiction author looking for a way to level the book marketing playing field shouldn’t do anything before adding a Kindle edition to his book.

We’ll talk about the other two points from this screen shot next…

branding, ceo, marketing

Self publishing writing services

Version 4.0 of the new Outskirts Press website launched on Memorial Day weekend with 4 writing options available for authors. I’ll be the first to say I wanted to launch with more. But, as with everything this complicated, it became a matter of compromise and resources. We had to launch over Memorial Day weekend — I think a previous post discussed why — and we needed to draw a line in the sand about what we could realistically go out of the gate with.

We launched with the search-optimized title suggestions and the article ghostwriting.

Professional search-optimized book title suggestions are just what they sound like. We review the author’s information and their proposed book title and then present them with 3 alternatives that take into consideration such concepts as keyword-embedded sub-titles and non-duplicative book names. I’ve seen first-hand the positive effect a properly titled and sub-titled book can have on online book sales. Sell Your Book on Amazon: Top-Secret Tips Guaranteed to Increase Sales for Print-on-Demand and Self-Publishing Writers is not just a mouth full; it is a carefully planned title that maximizes its exposure for particular keywords that are necessary for it to find its appropriate audience.

Article ghostwriting and distribution is just what it sounds like, too. We compose a 750-1000 word article on the subject/topic of the author’s choice that is related to his/her book, and then once the article is approved by the author, we distribute it to popular article banks. Article marketing is one of the most effective forms of online promotion because it combines “content” with “links” and “social propagation.” It’s a powerful one-two-three punch that can improve an author’s overall exposure across the internet. The downside is that most authors don’t have the time to write the necessary articles, nor the know-how to efficiently distribute said articles through all the proper channels. This option handles everything for the writer, conveniently.

We also launched Version 4 with pre-written, pre-illustrated children’s books for a boy and girl. We have offered these “instant children’s books” to our authors for a long time. These are basically a ‘taste’ of the power and convenience of POD publishing with Outskirts Press. For a minimum investment, an author can publish an already written, already illustrated children’s book featuring the names of their child (or a child they know) with a maximum amount of convenience (heck, they don’t even have to write the book!). The book receives online availability through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and even pays the author $2.00 in royalties for every wholesale or retail sale. Not only does it make a great gift, but it gives a writer an affordable opportunity to see if the convenience and value of on-demand publishing is right for them. The girl’s version is here and the boy’s version is here.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I wanted to launch with more offerings. For instance, the instant children’s books are currently limited to a single illustration set, featuring a Caucasian main character and an African American friend. We have other illustration sets drawn (featuring both children as Caucasians, and both children as African Americans), but those did not make it into the launch, for a variety of reasons not worth getting into here.

There are other writing options/services I wanted to have available at launch, and I’ll get into those next time. Who knows… by the time this posting goes live–I’m writing it about 4 weeks in advance–hopefully some of the ones I mention will already be added.

branding

Using HTML in emails without images

The solution to the HTML/TEXT email quandary that I have been blogging about of late is to use HTML email– since nearly every email client supports it nowadays– but not to rely heavily upon images, if you use any at all. Instead, use HTML tags to create color borders, blocks of text, enlarged fonts, and colored fonts. <ul> and <ol> tags are beneficial, especially since people like lists and it enforces some semblance of order to the email, and the bullet points especially have a graphical quality about them without being dependent upon image downloading.

If you must use images, use them sparingly and never use them to communicate content or the call to action. It’s best if they are aligned along the right edge of the email and that width and height specifications are omitted; that way, if they don’t load, the empty image box is as unobtrusive as possible.

With these techniques you can arrive upon a visually attractive email that…

contains your content
still strikes interest and offers some color branding opportunities
doesn’t run the risk of looking broken when viewed by the majority of email users who have image downloading turned off