Joan

Offer a trivia quiz along with your press release

5/19/2012 By Joan Leave a Comment

People love quizzes.

So do bloggers and journalists. That’s why adding a link to a quiz can super-charge your press release and tip the scales in your favor that a website, newspaper or magazine, or your favorite blogger will announce your news, or use the quiz by itself.

Each year, The American Kennel Club announces its results for The Most Popular Dogs in the U.S., based on registration statistics. Read the press release for the 2011 rankings. Here’s a screenshot of what appears at the end of the release. Notice all the links and the invitation to use the trivia questions.

I also love the list of statistics for 50 U.S. cities, the invitation to interview the AKC spokesperson, and the note about photos.

What kinds of quizzes have you offered with press releases?

Other Tools That Can Help You:

89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases, my free email course

Special Report #30: The Shortest, Easiest Articles You’ll Ever Write

Filed Under: Press Releases/News Releases Tagged With: akc, american kennel club, most popular breeds, quizzes, trivia questions

Authors: Why you shouldn’t respond to bad book reviews

5/18/2012 By Joan 5 Comments

One of the most powerful tools for marketing your books is the treasure trove of online book review and book recommendation sites like Goodreads, AuthorsDen and Shelfari.

You can create a community of hundreds or even thousands of raving fans who will examine which books you’ve placed on your virtual bookshelf. They’ll discuss, review and recommend your books. They’ll ask you questions about your characters or plot lines, and sometimes hang on your every word.

But with the good, comes the bad.

Prepare for Negative Reviews

Somebody, somewhere, won’t like what you’ve written and respond with a bad review that they believe is completely fair and accurate.

Resist the urge to respond! Here’s why:

If you do, you’ll most likely invite another comment from the reviewer that’s nastier than the original. You won’t be able to help yourself. Before long, you and the reviewer will be in a drawn-out debate that looks and sounds like sour grapes.
You’ll come across as too sensitive, unable to accept criticism, and resentful. Do you really want your followers to see you that way?
You’ll turn off other potential reviewers because they might fear that you’ll come back at them with both guns drawn.
People don’t all like the same things. Go over to Amazon and look at some of the best-sellers. You’ll see negative reviews mixed in with reviews that gush about the book.
You might develop a reputation on blogs and discussion boards as an author who can’t stand the heat.
Those public comments might show up when people, including publishers and journalists, do a Google search for your name or book title.

What to Do Instead

Practice acceptance. Know that you are not alone. And move onto the next project.

If your’e still angry, walk away from the computer. Take a walk. Take a nap. Resist the urge to keep going back to the bad review and reading it again, hunting for any inaccurate morsel.

Don’t appeal to your fan base and ask them to write good reviews to “push down” the bad one. Don’t ask them to stand up for you in the debate.

Instead, read this lively discussion about “reviewer abuse” on Goodreads..

As a publicity expert who teaches reputation management, I know how damaging these public squabbles can be.

Am I wrong?

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers Tagged With: author's den, bad book reviews, goodreads, publicity expert, reputation management, shelfari

Dog Tweets—5 reasons traditional PR is dead.

5/18/2012 By Joan Leave a Comment

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

5 reasons traditional PR is dead. http://ow.ly/aYitX

Authors: How to get your books in front of librarians. http://ow.ly/aYk8n

Tip on finding your target market: Make it easy for THEM to find YOU. Offer various forms of content online.

3 simple ways to turn yr web archive into profitable books & ebooks. http://ow.ly/aYtzc

7 NEW Things to Do After You’ve Written a New Blog Post. http://ow.ly/aYxk6

Still can’t figure out Facebook’s tricky settings? @MariSmith walks you through them. Webinar replay. http://ow.ly/aYQCk

6 tips for asking for–and giving–Linkedin recommendations. http://ow.ly/aYjC7

Guest Bloggers: This is perfect time to pitch a guest post & tell the blogger to save it for “when you’re on vacation”.

4 ways to fire a client without burning your business. http://ow.ly/aYkoa

9 ways to find guest blogging opportunities. http://ow.ly/aYNQu

Filed Under: Blogs Tagged With: Blogging, Blogs, book marketing, Book Promotion, Book Publicity, Facebook, LinkedIn, PR, social media

Biggest Facebook frustration: Secret settings or ROI?

5/17/2012 By Joan 2 Comments

It’s hard to decide which part of Facebook drives people craziest: The super-secret settings that nobody tells them about, or the difficulty for businesses to really gain traction and see a return on their investment of time.

I vote for ROI.

But then, I almost drove myself crazy when my Facebook fan page disappeared early last year. I finally got it back when I appealed for help on Twitter. Dave Kerpen of Likeable Media found a glitch in my settings and told me that only people in the Philippines could see my page. He fixed it in a jiffy and I was back in business.

Part of the problem for many of us is that every time Facebook rolls out wholesale changes, it’s like entering kindergarten at Facebook Elementary School because we have to learn how to use it all over again.

Mari Smith, The Queen of Facebook, helped more than 14,000 people understand Facebook’s new timeline this week when she presented a free 90-minute webinar. It’s called “10 Essential Facebook Money-making Techie Tips” and if you’re at all confused about Facebook, I encourage you to watch the replay.

I’m promoting this as a compensated affiliate and I earn a commission if you buy her new Facebook product. I’m promoting it because way too many people, me included, find Facebook so frustrating.

Or, jump to the page where she’s selling the product.

What part of Facebook do you find most frustrating? The secret settings, difficulty seeing ROI, or something else?

Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: facebook settings, fan page, mari smith, techie tips

PinAlerts tracks what’s being pinned at your website

5/17/2012 By Joan Leave a Comment

You’re creating gorgeous Pinterest boards filled with stunning sunsets, wedding cakes fit for royalty and bling you can only dream about. And you’re having a ball.

But does Pinterest bring money through the door? It sure can, if you know which product photos and images at your website are being pinned the most.

PinAlerts, a new and free Pinterest tool that’s sort of like Google Alerts, will email you every time your website receives a new pin on Pinterest. You can decide how frequently you want to be alerted: daily, weekly or as it happens. The emails include a link to the latest pins with a description.

You can read how PinAlerts works.

PinAlerts.com was developed by Pinterest experts Janet Thaeler, Paul Wilson and John Benson of PinnableBusiness.com. Pinnnable Business develops Pinterest marketing tools and solutions. PinAlerts is the company’s first release and is currently in beta.

5 Ways to Use This in Your Marketing

Janet helped me compile a list of ways you can use this cool tool in your marketing campaigns:

You can tell instantly which product photos are the most popular. If photos of some of your most popular products aren’t being pinned, it might be time to reshoot those photos.
You can do competitive research to see what others in your industry are pinning so you can see the types of content that does well in your niche.
You can find potential joint venture partners. “Yesterday, I sent an alert to OrangeSoda and they saw that the person who pinned their new product works for a major newspaper and could be a potential partner,” Janet said.
You can see how the market views your product by reading the descriptions below the photos that people are pinning. Often, the descriptions are very flattering.
“I also want to know what articles I write get pinned,” Janet said. So she creates images to accompany them, using a variety of free web tools. See “How to Easily Create Free or Inexpensive Infographics,” a webinar I’m presenting next week that feature some super-cool and drop-dead-simple tools for creating everything from pie charts and maps to those colorful quotes that you see all the time on Pinterest.

A heads-up from Janet: “People pin your head shot from your website or blog. So make sure it’s pinnable and good-quality.”

What other uses can you think of for PinAlerts? Any other Pinterest tools you know about and use?

Filed Under: Pinterest Tagged With: infographics, janet thaeler, john benson, paul wilson, pinalerts, pinterest, product photos