President of Outskirts Press

ceo, marketing, Social Networking Sites, start-up

Social media polls – looking ahead

Over the last couple of weeks we have held two different Web 2.0 polls on our Outskirts Press blog. The first poll determined that our clients wanted us to add a Social Media Market Research option to our growing selection of publication services. This option helps authors make the best, market-based decisions regarding their covers, titles, beginnings, endings, or marketing tactics, for example.

The second poll determined that our new and potential clients wanted us to offer a $300 “Mad Money” publishing promotion in October, which rewards new publishing packages with a $300 “line of credit” to use toward any pre-production service/option the author desires, including editing, professional custom cover design, Kindle edition, iPad edition, ghostwriting, or what have you.

But in both polls, the margin of victory between Choice #1 and the runner-up was fairly close. In the poll determining the next option we should launch, Market Research won by only 10%. It earned 50% of the votes while the Featured Book-of-the-Week option earned 40% (author apps earned the remaining 10%). And in the poll asking what promotion we should offer in October, Mad Money won by a margin of just over 1%. The instant 10% discount barely came in #2.

So while these polls helped us prioritize, the results certainly don’t prohibit the other options and other promotions from being offered. In fact, the Featured Book of the Week option’s showing with 40% demonstrated to us that it’s a highly-valued option also, so we are already working on it and will most likely have it available for our authors in October. We’ve always known the instant 10% discount to be a valuable promotion, so we will more than likely offer that promotion before the end of the year as well.

The poor showing of the Author Apps option did surprise me, frankly. But, to be honest, it was also kind of a relief. I was involved significantly in its pre-development here at Outskirts Press and now I feel confident re-prioritizing some of my other responsibilities and putting the Author Apps a little lower on the launch list, which will probably push it out to 2012 sometime. I’m loving these author polls. They help us give our authors exactly what they want when they want them. When you have so many things you WANT to do but a limited pool of resources with which to do them, this sort of insight directly from your clients is invaluable.

So if you’re a business owner, manager, entrepreneur, author, or other professional, I encourage you to start using polls on your blog or website, too. They’re easy content, fun for your visitors, and provide you with actual useful feedback that validates your customers and helps your business.

best self publishing

Two social media polls – Results #2

Over the last couple of weeks our Outskirts Press blog featured two different Web 2.0 polls seeking the opinions of our social media community. The first poll asked our community of authors, readers, and industry professionals what new option we should introduce and the final results voted for a Social Media Market Research option, which was subsequently launched a number of days later on our site.

The second poll asked our community what publishing promotion we should offer in October from among three choices: An instant 10% savings on our publishing services, $300 of “Mad Money” to spend on any pre-production option the author desires, or free Amazon Search Inside and Barnes & Noble See Inside submissions after publication.

Like the previous option poll, this survey was also a close race between 2 of the 3 options, with the Mad Money promotion squeaking out a very narrow victory. Make it so, the $300 Mad Money promotion will be the one we offer come October 1.

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Two recent surveys – Result #1

Over the last couple of weeks we have held two different Web 2.0 polls on our Outskirts Press blog. The first poll asked our community of authors, readers, and industry professionals what new option we should introduce from among three choices: An Author App for the iPhone, a “Featured Book-of-the-Week” option, and a Social Media Market Research option that allows authors to leverage the same polling process for their creative purposes (to determine the best cover to use, the best title, the best ending, etc.). It was a close race between the Featured Book-of-the-Week and the Market Research, with Market Research gaining a victory.

As a result of the poll results, we immediately went to work creating the option and launched it live on our site late last week. Since it is primarily intended for authors to gain market research insights regarding the production decisions for their book, the option is currently only a pre-production option available exclusively for our authors, but in time, we may open it up to ALL authors, as we are starting to do with many of our options. We’ll soon have the first of hopefully many Author Polls appearing on our blog for our community to participate in.

I’ll discuss the results of the other poll tomorrow…

Social Networking Sites

Advertising on Facebook with the Photoviewer – Part 3

Once you realize that the thumbnail image shown along the top photo strip row of the Facebook fan page is not identical to the larger image viewed when clicking on the thumbnail, a world of potential marketing and promotional opportunities presents itself. The trick is to make the photo strip image look pleasing AND to make the resulting larger image effective at whatever your goal is. In our case, we wanted the larger image to brand our company, Outskirts Press, and we wanted to offer some information about each package, along with a URL for purchase.

To accomplish all these goals, you have to know the image dimensions for the optimal large image and the dimensions for the interior space pre-determined by Facebook as the thumbnail portion. This is a little tricky because the larger image is optimal when it is square and the thumbnail image is optimal when it is rectangular. Complicating matters further is the fact that Facebook doesn’t take the precise CENTER of the larger image to generate the thumbnail image; it skews high.

Your full image should be 720 pixels wide by 720 pixels high at 72 dpi. The image for your thumbnail should fall into a space that is 535 pixels wide by 375 pixels high at 72 dpi. This “thumbnail” graphic should not be centered, but rather off-set 90 pixels from the top and 93 pixels from either edge. This leaves you with 255 pixels below the thumbnail image for marketing/promotional purposes — content that will ONLY be seen in the larger view. Use the bottom 190 pixels for optimal visuals, although you should also leave a blank strip approximatley 25 pixels high along the very bottom because this is where Facebook is going to add its “Like/Comment/Tag Photo” overlay boxes, and you don’t want that stuff interfering with your image.

Was that too confusing? Perhaps a graphic will help. If you follow the directions above, you’re left with a template that looks roughly like this:

Tomorrow we’ll see what our new “Diamond” package graphic looks like once we follow this template…

branding, Social Networking Sites

How to market on Facebook with the Photo strip – Part 2

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that the Facebook photo strip along the top of business fan pages offers a good branding opportunity and can also be used to effectively market or promote a product or service. Up until recently, we at Outskirts Press were only using the photo strips for the first part of that equation — branding. And we were losing the opportunity to market or promote when someone clicked on the image for a closer look.

Realizing the potential for what can be done with these images required first realizing that Facebook doesn’t “thumbnail” images in the traditional way. Typically, when an image is “thumbnailed” (meaning, made smaller), the thumbnail image is an exact duplicate of the “larger” image, just at a reduced size. But Facebook does something different, as seen by their use of the Profile Picture along the left-hand column, which also contains the square “avatar” picture. In other words, the Thumbnail for the Profile picture is NOT an exact duplicate of the image, but rather a pre-defined section of the larger image.

The Photo strip images work the same way. The thumbnail images shown along the top of the fan page are pre-determined sections of the larger version of the image that is viewed when the thumbnail is clicked. In fact, when an image is created correctly, the same image can be both a successful, “clean” thumbnail image AND a more promotional image.

For instance, with our 5 package graphics, I wanted to maintain the look and feel of the 5 gemstones in a row (shown below)…

… and at the same time, I wanted the user to see a more branded graphic for each package when viewing the larger image. I even wanted to include a “call to action.” All it took was determining the optimal image specs for both the “large” version of the graphic and the “thumbnail” portion of the same graphic.

And I’ll reveal what those settings are tomorrow…

branding, marketing, start-up

Facebook Photo Banner for Promotion and Marketing – Part 1

Those of you familiar with the Facebook Fan pages know that with the redesign that Facebook introduced at the beginning of this year came a 5-photo “photo strip” along the top of every Fan page. Our Facebook page for Outskirts Press used that strip to showcase the “icons” for our five publishing services, shown in the screen shot below:

I’ve mentioned on this blog in the past how that photo viewer strip allowed for a more aesthetic “branding” opportunity. For instance, in our case, Outskirts Press is often associated with the gemstone graphics, so placing those five graphics along the top row of our Facebook page worked well.

The problem is that when anybody clicks on any of those graphics, what they see doesn’t really MOTIVATE them to do much more. See below to see what I mean.

Not terribly compelling, is it? Next time we’re going to talk in more detail about how to modify those photo strip images so they work as promotional elements or advertising for the product or service your Facebook Fan page is about.

marketing

Book Video Trailers

There’s no doubt book video trailers are an exciting way to get extra exposure for your book. Statistics indicate that the Internet audience is “watching” the Internet more and “reading” it less. Book video trailers offer an excellent opportunity to engage those people and introduce your book to them in a medium they like. It’s such a good way to kick-start your online marketing efforts that we even offer Book Video trailer services for all authors, regardless of where they published their book (although Outskirts Press authors receive a 40% discount).

Outskirts Press authors who create their book video trailers through us are also guaranteed extra exposure on our iPhone app, since all the book videos we create for our authors receive exposure to a variety of networking and video sites like Twitter, MetaCafe, and YouTube. And since every video we place on our YouTube channel is highlighted on our iPhone app, this is one simple way for a our authors to receive exposure on our self-publishing app.

Cost and production values for book video trailers can vary greatly. Our competitors, for instance, charge in excess of $1000 (and sometimes much more) for 60 second book video trailers. This may help explain why our Book Video Trailers option is among our most popular marketing options, both for our authors and writers who have self-published elsewhere.

Here’s an example of one:

And this concludes the series of posts on how to increase the odds of getting featured in our free self-publishing iPhone app. The last category of the app is “Twitter” but that’s pretty self-explanatory. Do anything that we highlight on any of our channels and it is picked up by our Twitter feed and subsequently posted to our iPhone app, too. Easy!

best self publishing, self publishing a book

Self Publishing Authors Speak Out

For the past several weeks I have been discussing marketing tactics an author can take to secure more marketing muscle and “exposure” for his/her book on the various channels made available by his/her publisher. I’ve been using our company Outskirts Press, and specifically our free self-publishing app, as the primary example, although many of these tactics hold true for all writers, regardless of where they published.

Specifically, our app has four categories: blog, authors, videos, Twitter. For the past two weeks I covered the six different ways our authors can get featured on the blog category of our app. Today we’ll talk about how to get featured on the “authors” category of the app, which is updated on our app three times a week and provides an excellent spotlight for the authors who appear there. The app shares the author’s biography, comments about publishing with Outskirts Press, the front cover image of the book, and buttons to buy the book directly either from Amazon or the author’s Outskirts Press webpage. When a new author is featured, he/she also gets a plug on our Facebook page.

When you combine limited availability of promotional channels with the publication of around 150 books each month, one needs to establish “requirements” that each book or author needs to meet in order to be considered for promotion in the various channels. For instance, a few postings ago I introduced a new free opportunity we’re offering for our authors called the “Awesome Cover of the Week” spotlight. The requirement in that case, obviously, is that the book has to have an “awesome” cover. Of course, I realize that “awesome” is a relatively subjective phrase, but in our line of work, it is relatively easy to identify covers that do and do not fall into even the subjective areas of that definition.

So, how do we identify authors to feature in the “authors” section of our blog? It’s relatively easy, also — we feature authors who have chosen to share their positive publishing experiences with us. I started Outskirts Press to help authors (since I am one), so I love hearing from our published authors about their joys of publication. Authors share their comments with us all the time in a variety of ways. And with this new app feature, we can “thank” those authors for those kind words by giving them additional exposure for their books. Authors who share their positive experiences with us are also archived on the Self Publishing Author blog at http://selfpublishingauthor.wordpress.com

Next time we’ll talk about improving your chances of getting featured in the “video” section of our iPhone app — and this is actually a guaranteed method. So stay tuned.

Apple, self publishing a book

Getting Featured on our free self-publishing app – Part 2

A couple weeks ago I started a new series on this blog with the purpose of helping our authors get featured on our free self-publishing app for the iPhone 4 (available for free download by clicking here). While that was the specific goal of the series of postings, in more general terms, my advice (and the advice I will continue to provide this week) extends to all authors from all publishers who are interested in securing a little more “attention” from their publisher.

You see, the self-publishing industry is BIG, and there are only a handful of self-publishing firms handling the vast majority of self-published books. Now that publishing is so easy, getting exposure for your book after publication becomes one of the major hurdles self-publishing authors face. The degree to which you have an opportunity to get ANY exposure for your book depends upon the self-publishing company you choose. Some, like Outskirts Press, offer a lot of opportunities. Others don’t offer any; they’re done with you the moment your book is published.

The blog series a couple of weeks ago discussed 6 different ways our authors can receive exposure for their books on our blog, which would also result in being featured in our iPhone app. The “Blog” section is just one section of the app. There are three others: Authors, Videos, and Twitter. I will discuss those opportunities this week, beginning with the “Authors” section tomorrow.