Category: marketing

marketing, search engine optimization

How do Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears do it?

Ashton Kutcher has 5.8 million Twitter followers and appears to “tweet” a 140 character (or less) message 4-5 times a day at least.  Britney Spears has 5.9 Twitter followers even though she “tweets” what appears to be just about 4-5 times a week on average; and she even has help doing that.

Certainly being a big name celebrity doesn’t hurt, but what these two Twitter aficionados have demonstrated is that consistency with Twitter updates is one of the cornerstones to attracting followers.  That’s all well and good if you don’t already have a full-time job; but as most mere mortals soon discover– Twittering consistently and frequently can be a lot of work.

How do they do it?

Well, I can’t speak for them (having an entourage probably helps), but for the rest of us, it helps to rely on a little bit of automation and a little bit of strategy.  At least, that’s what we do at Outskirts Press to find the time to manage a somewhat realized “social networking footprint” while still devoting the majority of our time and resources toward efforts that benefit our clients the most (ie., producing award-winning books).

First let’s discuss the automation. We use three aggregators frequently: Ping.fm, Feed Burner, and Tweet Deck.   The first two are among the “tips” I discuss in detail in my upcoming book “0-60: Accelerating Your Online Marketing Efforts” and they also play a role in my upcoming presentation on the same topic at the Self Publishing Book Expo in New York on the first Saturday in October.

Ping.fm allows you to broadcast a single message simultaneously to about 50 different social networking sites. It requires an up-front time investment to set-up those sites initially with a profile, password, username, etc.  But once those sites are set-up, Ping.fm allows you to “participate” on all of them relatively efficiently.   Of course, part of the advantage of Web 2.0 is that it is a “two way conversation” and that is where Ping.fm has its drawbacks. Sure, it is very efficient at initiating one way correspondence, perhaps too efficient, because those messages then require some manual participation to moderate and respond to the “two way conversation” that results.  Managing 50 social networking sites is beyond our company’s resources; perhaps your company is in a different place. So we pick and choose the channels we invest time and energy in.  Not coincidentally, they are the most “popular” channels like Twitter and Facebook, etc.

Feed Burner and TweetDeck offer similar time-saving social networking tools, albeit in a different capacity than Ping.fm.  And that’s why we use all of them, rather than being able to rely on just one.

Automation and aggregation are only half the battle.  Strategizing and scheduling the composition and distribution of social networking messages is equally important and we will discuss that next time.

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…

Amazon, marketing, self publishing

Self publishing book marketing services

I have been discussing the differences brought about to our business model with the introduction of Version 4 of our website at Outskirts Press.  The main difference is that we are starting to offer a la carte services to writers regardless of where/how they publish their book(s).  Of course, authors publishing with Outskirts Press get deep discounts.

I previously summarized the Writing Services. We also introduced a la carte book marketing services with the launch of Version 4 on Memorial Day weekend, and like with the Writing Services, we launched with a limited number of available options as a compromise to maxed resources and an aggressive launch date.

Out of the gate, the Marketing Solutions “aisle” of our new site featured 7 items:

  • 5 hours of Personal Marketing Assistance with one of our professional marketing experts
  • 5 Celebrity addresses and pitches with our Celebrity endorsements option
  • 500 customized bookmarks
  • 500 customized postcards
  • 500 customized business cards
  • 5 large posters (roughly 2 feet by 3 feet)
  • 25 small posters

We quickly added the Amazon Kindle Edition within a month after launch, since it is one of our most popular marketing services month in and month out. To encourage authors to publish with us, we offer deep discounts to our authors on all our new a la carte services. For instance, authors who have published their book with Outskirts Press can get an Amazon Kindle edition for 25% less than someone publishing elsewhere.   Even still, at $135 it’s the lowest price I was able to find for what we deliver (although I didn’t spend hours and hours looking around). And the best part of the deal, and one few of our competitors can match, is that the author keeps ALL their profits.  Amazon pays them directly, so they know Outskirts Press is not taking any of the Kindle revenue. We’re not even involved in the financial loop at all.  This alone is enough reason for many authors at competing publishers to eschew their publisher’s Kindle edition (if they offer it all) in preference for ours.

But with 8 marketing solutions available on an a la carte basis, we have a long way to go to introduce ALL the marketing services and products available to our authors. And a growing number of authors from elsewhere are starting to join us on that journey. We welcome them, and are excited to be helping them.

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.

marketing

The HTML TEXT email compromise

I previously touched upon the dilemma facing email marketers when it comes time to decide whether to send their marketing emails as an HTML email or a TEXT email.  As a solution, many marketers have embraced the idea of asking the recipient which they prefer.  The marketing team usually poses this question at the same time they are soliciting a registration (name, email address, etc) from their website visitors.  And since space on the online registration form is often scarce,  the question is often posted in a barely intelligible way–looking as if a cat briefly danced across the keyboard instead of an actual question:  “HTML? TXT?”

Here’s the problem: Many people either don’t understand that question, or don’t know the answer to it.  Sure, for all of us reading blogs and getting our news from RSS feeds, the idea that someone might not know the answer to this might strike us as silly.  But at Outskirts Press, we can track without fail a statistical fact – the more questions we ask on a registration form, the lower our conversion rate is. Add a “hard” question into the mix, or one that requires the person to make a “choice” and the conversions plummet.  People know their names and email addresses, but beyond that, marketers have to weigh the advantages of knowing more information about the user against the disadvantage of a decreasing conversion ratio.

People simply don’t like being asked questions they don’t know the answers to. Additionally, many people still have an uncertainly about computers that leads them to the conclusion that offering no answer is better than offering an incorrect one.  So guess what the path of least resistance is for a potential new client who doesn’t know the answer?  They leave your website without registering and go somewhere else.

Another solution some marketers embrace is sending a text email which contains nothing more than a link to a website where the “real” content resides in all its glorious HTML beauty.   The email may try to contain a benefit statement or some other brief incentive to motivate the recipient to click on the link, but rarely is enough effort put forth into the email — no surprise — because all the effort has been put into the HTML webpage being linked to.   The problem is, this solution lacks the content of text emails and lacks the beauty of HTML emails.   In other words, ironically, the solution intended to work for everyone works for no one.

There isn’t a 100% effective solution, but there is solution that embraces a compromise and as a result, makes it the best overall tactic to address this email marketing problem, in my opinion. What is it? I’ll talk about that next…

marketing

HTML or TEXT based email?

This is one of the most oft-discussed topics among online marketers — which is “better” for email marketing?  Sending emails in normal text format or “sprucing” it up with HTML and images?

There are pros and cons to each choice.  Text emails are “boring” and run the risk of being ignored just because they look like too much work to read.   But they have a higher deliverability success rate and you can always be sure that your recipient is seeing your email exactly as you have designed it — since no design is necessary.  The only true hurdle with text-based email is keeping various monitor resolutions in mind when composing emails with “hard returns” to be sure that sentences either wrap automatically, or do not “split” mid-line.

HTML emails often rely on images to make a drastic, impressive first impression.  And when it works, it works well. HTML emails are just more “fun” to receive and read, for lack of a better word.  Here’s the downside, and it’s a biggie — many email users–I would wager the majority–don’t receive emails with images, even if they have HTML compliant email clients.   This is because for some reason, all major email clients, including Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and others, load with email images turned “off.”  They say this is a security precaution.    The path of least resistance, therefore, is to leave images turned “off” which is what most people do, even if they are aware it is a “switch” they can toggle themselves in their settings.    Have you ever seen an HTML email that is 100% images with your images-setting turned “off?”  I’ll bet many of you have.  The email looks broken.   How much consideration did you take before deleting it? Probably none at all.

This is the dilemma for an email marketer.  How do you harness the benefit of HTML emails without accepting their disadvantages?  There are a number of options and I’ll discuss those in the near future…

marketing

Email marketing value

Speaking of email marketing, one of the main considerations is “value.”   While everyone likes a “bargain” it is equally important to include actual information in your email correspondence, and not just promotions.   In order to make the information valuable to the recipient, it has to be as specific to the reader as possible.

This means, you need to know enough about the recipient as possible so that you can tailor messages to them that they will find relevant.

And here you arrive upon the first Catch-22 of email marketing.    You must know enough about them without invading their privacy and without asking them too many personal questions.  Easier said than done, right?  Invading privacy is a no-no and asking too many questions will cause them to answer none.

Most “professional” websites learn something about their users in a variety of ways. Some do it with the users knowledge and some do it without.  Most websites, in fact, do both. Some non-personal but technical information may be collected by websites you visit in order for the developers to improve their user’s experience by knowing what platforms are most predominant, what browsers their users use, and what monitor resolutions their users use. 

Some of the more unscrupulous websites out there may even extract your contact information (your email address) without your consent.   If you are designing a website for your business or as a published author, you should compose a “Privacy Policy” that indicates the information you acquire from your visitors.   For example, at Outskirts Press, when individuals register on our site, we ask them for the answers to a small number of questions. This is as up-front as you can get.  Authors who divulge this information know they are providing us with personal information willingly. Our job, therefore, is to respect that information and provide the author with valuable information in exchange for their information. And we’ll talk more about that in a future post…

marketing, publicity

Getting emails through spam filters

At Outskirts Press we contact our authors quite often via email.  Many authors thank us for the motivational and inspirational emails we send when they are still writing their books.  Once authors begin publishing with us, we keep them up to date on their progress throughout the process via email.  And once our authors have published, Diamond and Pearl packages include 2 years of marketing follow-up via the Marketing C.O.A.C.H.

So, you could say that successful email communication is a cornerstone of our business.  And we’re not alone.  Email marketing is one of the most successful (from an ROI point of view) promotional tactics a business can adopt.  And nowadays, more companies are using email as a standard element of their customer service procedures as well.

But sending a “successful” email is not without its hurdles.  Frankly, I don’t even understand all the complications, but recently we did experience an interesting example of Yahoo’s spam algorithm that I would like to share.  This involved our recent email newsletter congratulating Irv Sternberg for his most recent book, The Persian Project, being recognized as our “Best Book” award winner.

The first paragraph of that email originally said this, and this is version that appeared on our blog and on our website:

“In December 2009, Outskirts Press announced a monthly promotion in which we were seeking the best manuscript to publish for the author without cost. Once published, the best book would receive a refund equal to 110% of the publishing fee. That’s right! Free publication and an “advance” of sorts, just like a traditional publishing contract (only with us, our authors still kept all their rights).

A lot of manuscripts were submitted and a lot of books were published. We reviewed the published books among all those December manuscripts and have decided upon what we feel is the best all-around publication.”

Those two paragraphs prevented the email newsletter from making it through Yahoo’s spam filter. In order to “get through” Yahoo’s spam filter, the content had to be changed to:

“In December 2009, Outskirts Press sought the best manuscript to publish for the one talented author without cost.  Once published, the author of the best book would receive a refund equal to his publishing package price, plus a bit extra.  That’s right! Outskirts Press picked up the publishing cost and paid an “advance” of sorts, just like a traditional publishing contract (only with us, our authors still kept all their rights).

A lot of manuscripts were submitted and a lot of books were published. We reviewed the published books among all those December manuscripts and have decided upon what we feel is the best.”

Notice the subtle differences:

  • Yahoo’s spam filter wouldn’t allow us to “announce a monthly promotion” so instead we “sought the best manuscript.”
  • The author couldn’t “receive a refund equal to 110% of the publishing fee” and instead he received “a refund equal to his publishing package price, plus a bit extra.”
  • Strangely, we couldn’t call it the “best all-around publication” and could only refer to it as “the best.”

In a later section of the same newsletter, we referred to Mr. Sternberg as a “consummate professional, the best selling author of four award-winning novels, and a tenacious marketer.”  However, in order to get through the spam filter, we had to change that summary to: “consummate professional and a tenacious marketer.”

Are there conclusions to draw from this? Certainly.  Yahoo’s algorithm frowns upon verbiage used commonly in spam, such as phrases like “best selling” and “monthly promotion” and almost any number that is followed by a percentage sign (%).

Another consideration of email marketing is the daunting task of delivering an HTML formatted email with images to an email population in which the majority–most unknowingly–have image downloading turned “off.”  But that’s a topic for another time…

marketing, search engine optimization

Email marketing

Regardless of whether you are an author or a business owner, you should be comfortable with email marketing.  Its low cost combined with its performance makes for an appealing ROI (return on investment). In fact, the only marketing endeavor we have better success with at Outskirts Press is SEM (search engine marketing), or in other words, PPC (pay-per-click) marketing.

Email marketing is an ongoing effort, and one we spend a lot of time and energy on.  There are millions of articles on the Internet about how to do it right and how to do it wrong, so I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of CAN-SPAM regulations, opt-out best practices, opt-in mailing lists, or any of those things.

Instead,  over the next few postings, I’ll summarize some of the things we have learned — mostly through trial and error — over the past 8 years, that have helped us refine our current email marketing efforts.