The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

If you’re trying to promote an ebook, there are enough things you can do to keep yourself busy for weeks and even months.

That’s what I told my friend, Clarence Jones, when he emailed me this week asking for tips on how to promote his new ebook Computing Shortcuts for PCs. The tips are similar to the ones you may have seen recently in the Oct. 2 blog post titled Tech Tips for Basic Computer Use written by New York Times tech columnist David Pogue.

Clarence, a former award-winning newspaper and TV investigative reporter, said he has sold 50,000 copies of his print book Winning with the News Media–A Self-defense Manual When You’re the Story, with little effort. But when it comes to promoting an ebook, he’s stumped. Most of the ideas below are what I recommended. I came up with a few more of them while writing this post.

Win a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate

Let’s see how many ideas we can come up with on how to promote an ebook. On Dec. 1, I’ll award a $50 gift certificate from Amazon.com to the person who comes up with the best idea and explains it in the comments below.

Here are my ideas.

Use Blogs

—If you aren’t already blogging, start. You can create a blog, for free, in less than 10 minutes at Blogger.com. Blog a tip a day and elaborate on it so you have enough copy to fill the post. Link to the sales page for the book. Blogs pull in traffic like a magnet. Invite comments, just like the NY Times columnist did. That will give you more fodder for future editions. You can use Blogger.com to get a feel for how easy it is to blog, but serious bloggers use a better platform, like Wordpress or Typepad. I use Wordpress for this blog.

—Set up one or more Google Alerts for relevant keywords (“computer tips”, “keyboard shortcuts”, etc.). Tell Google to email you the “comprehensive” information once a day. Much of what you see will be blog posts. Visit each blog. If the blogger is writing about something that ties into tips in the book, or looks to be a blogger whose readers would like what the book has to offer, leave a comment about the post at the blog. Excerpt five or six tips from the book, name the book and leave the URL for the sales page. See Let Bloggers Create Publicity for You.

—Or, you can email bloggers privately and invite them to review the book.

Create Video

—”You’re a TV guy so you probably have access to somebody who could shoot a quick video of you giving some of the tips from the book,” I said. Videos should be no more than two and a half minutes. Upload the video(s) to YouTube and some of the other video-sharing sites. Be sure to use the URL in the video. And tag the videos with relevant keywords—the same keywords people would type into Google when searching for information. YouTube lets you upload the video and insert the URL into the video without having to use video-editing software. Videos will bring a TON of traffic to the sales page. If you don’t have access to anybody who can shoot video, guy a Flip Video camera at Wal-Mart or Best Buy for $150 and have somebody else shoot it. The camera is so simple, a 6-year-old can do it. You can learn more about it here.

Offer Tips to Promote Your Expertise

—Identify target markets that would love this book. Senior citizens, for example, certainly would. Research ezines that are written for senior citizens. New-List is a directory that includes informatin on more than 8,900 electronic newsletters. To find more directories, do a search for “ezine directories”. Track down the editor of each ezine and offer a list of 10 computer tips from your book, for use in their ezine, along with a link to the sales page for the book. They will probably love the offer because coming up with content on a regular basis is a hassle. Work-at-home moms probably would also love the book. I know that that’s a pretty big niche and lots of them are online.

—Write a 500-word article on computer tips excerpted from your book and post it to EzineArticles.com, the granddaddy of article directory sites. Include the URL for the sales page in the author resource box. You could probably come up with about five or six different articles because your book is divided into sections.

—Write tip sheets or tips lists (“9 keyboard shortcuts that will make your life easier”) and submit them to national magazines. Submit to a specific columnist or department. Don’t just do a blast and hope it lands on the right desk. Identify 20 or 30 magazines that are the best targets for this. Certainly senior citizen magazines including AARP, although that magazine is difficult to get into.

—Write a direct-to-consumer press release about the ebook and pay $80 to have it distributed through PRWeb. Make sure relevant keywords are in the front of the headline, the first paragraph and high in the copy. Don’t use free press release distribution services. They don’t “distribute” anything. Learn more about how to write and distribute press releases using my free email tutorial 89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.

—Subscribe to Help a Reporter Out, a free leads service by PR guy Peter Shankman. You’ll get dozens of leads each day from journalists working on real stories and seeking sources. You might be a good source for some of their techie stories.

—Or, if you’d rather not have to sift through dozens and dozens of leads per day, subscribe to Dan Janal’s PRLeads service. It includes targeted queries from journalists who are looking for sources with your expertise, and a complimentary 15-minute coaching session with Dan will help you understand how to reply to queries and get the most out of the service. You’ll also get expert advice and feedback on your sample responses to reporters.    

Use Social Networking Sites

—Start Twittering. Download the free Twitter Handbook and you’ll learn everything you need to know about this fabulous form of micro-blogging.

—You can do a search at the Twitter site for “computer tips” or “keyboard shortcuts” and then follow those people who are Twittering about those keyword phrases. You can contact them privately and ask them to review your book and tweet about it. Many of these people have huge followings. I know lots of people on Twitter tweeted about David Pogue’s blog post on computer tips. You can track down all those people and I’ll bet all would be willing to tweet about your ebook, particularly if you offered it to them for free and asked them to review it for you.

—Set up a Facebook profile and start gathering Facebook friends. Consider setting up your own “computer tips” group on Facebook. See How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business or Nonprofit.

—Create a profile at LinkedIn and answer questions related to computers and computer shortcuts. This promotes you as an expert. See Use LinkedIn to Promote These 7 Ways.

Miscellaneous Tips

—Submit a “Help This Hound” request to me and I can put your question in my newsletter. Lots of my Hounds will reply with their own ideas.

—TheWriteMarket.com lists 10 more places to promote your ebook. I found that list simply by doing a search for “how to promote an ebook.” Google returned lots more that I’m not listing here simply because you can perform the same search yourself.

—Write a 1- or 2-line blurb about the book, with a link to the sales page, in your email signature.

I also told Clarence that within the ebook, he should promote his business. He and his wife, Ellen, an award-winning TV reporters, are media consultants, crisis counselors and on-camera coaches. They travel the U.S. presenting workshops on media relations and teaching the strategies discussed in Winning with the News Media.

Regardless of the topic of your ebook, you can use many of the tips mentioned here to promote it. By the way, if you’re looking for a great book on how to win with the news media, read Clarence’s book. I and several other people wrote glowing reviews at Amazon.com.

OK, Publicity Hounds, what other ways cna you promote an ebook? Comment here and compete to win the $50 Amazon.com gift certificate.

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Facebook, Information Products, LinkedIn, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity for Niche Markets, Publicity on the Internet, Social media marketing, Twitter, Video
posted On: 11/1/2008: 6:27 pm: By Joan
Comments: 7 Comments

I spend almost no time on MySpace simply because that’s not where my target audience spends most of its time. I much prefer Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (follow me, connect with or be my friend).

If you’re a musician or artist, or your target audience spends considerable time on MySpace, there’s a new way to target your message to them. MySpace is launching its new advertiisng program, MyAds. It lets you specify with amazing detail exactly the types of MySpace users who you want to see your ad. Techcrunch explains:

…they build out a profile of each user based on what they do on MySpace over time, with 1,200 different ways to categorize each user.  So if you only want to target women who live in California between the ages of 25-30 who like motorcycles, i can.  There are 2,842 of them on MySpace.  And if I just want to target those in San Francisco, I can.  There are 147 of them (the ad tool tells you all of this):   

Because you’re targeting very narrowly and reaching fewer people, but better prospects, this could be a very inexpensive way to advertise

Posted In: Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social networking, Twitter
posted On: 10/14/2008: 9:52 am: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

If you’re creating events on your Facebook page for speaking engagements, book signings, teleseminars or anything else you want to promote, don’t miss an important step—emailing the invitation to a select group of your friends, or all of them, using the email function on Facebook.

If you have thousands of friends, that’s a time-consuming chore. But it’s worth it. Here’s an example that shows how those invitations made my cash register ring the last few days (and it’s still ringing).

On Wednesday, I created an event at Facebook called “How to Promote on Twitter” because I wanted my friends to know about the teleseminar series I’m hosting on Oct. 13 and 14 on How to Use Twitter to Amass an Army of Followers, Customers & Valuable Contacts–and Promote. I have more than 1,500 Facebook friends, and it took Chris Buffaloe, my assistant, more than an hour to email them all and invite them to the event.  Facebook lets you invite only 100 people at a time, which can be tedious.

When one of my Facebook friends, Adam Urbanski, the Marketing Mentor, got the invitation, he RSVP’d:

 I haven’t seen Adam in several years so I went to his Facebook profile page and noticed he’s a pretty popular guy because he has more than 3,500 friends. And there on his wall was a one-liner, letting all his friends know he had written my wall for the Twitter teleseminar event. The link to “How to Use Twitter to Promote,” by the way, is a hyperlink. His friends can click on it, read my invitation and, if they wish, register.

As soon as Chris emailed my invitation, I received more than a dozen registrations for the teleseminar @ $77 each. That’s about $924 in revenue, just from sending one invitation.  Granted, the topic is hot right now, and lots of Twitterers want to know how to use the site to promote instead of posting lame tweets about what they had for lunch.  But emailing invitations and receiving RSVPs results in hundreds more eyes reading your invitation and even more mutual friends seeing the topic.

Boost attendance for your events

If you’re sending Facebook invitations for your events and seeing no results, these could be the reasons:

• The title of the event is boring.
• The copy on the sales page for your event doesn’t promise value.
• You don’t RSVP to your friends’ event invitations, and the only time your friends hear from you is when you have something to promote.
• You don’t have enough friends yet on Facebook who are willing to RVSP to your events, so that the one-liner like the one above, underlined in red, shows up on their walls. 
• You aren’t taking the time to reply to the messages they send you on Facebook. I made the mistake of letting several hundred email messages accumulate in my Facebook inbox before I went through them one by one and replied. Two of them were invitations to be a guest expert on other people’s teleseminars.

During the teleseminar I hosted earlier this summer on How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business or Nonprofit, Jason Alba, my guest expert, discussed the importance of RSVPing to events and writing on your friends’ walls. The timeline he explained to us on how to promote almost any event will really make your cash register ring!

Posted In: Business Promotion, Facebook, Social networking, Special Events
posted On: 10/11/2008: 1:01 pm: By Joan
Comments: 4 Comments

Can’t think of a story to pitch about your business, nonprofit or government agency?

Thanks to TV producer Shawne Duperon’s excellent newsletter Shawne’s TV Guide, for this timely story idea: politics in the workplace.

Shawne suggests you pitch the idea to your local TV stations, daily and weekly newspapers, and bloggers who cover your industry. It’s too late for trade publications but still a great opportunity for publicity in business journals.

Shawne suggests these talking points:

• Is it safe to talk politics in the office?
• Is it unavoidable?
• How loud and frequent is the conversation in your workplace?
• Does your organization have a policy about discussing politics with clients or customers?
• What’s the proper office etiquette?

I suggest these:

• Do you have policies governing T-shirts, campaign buttons and bumper stickers inside the office?
• Are you a sole proprietor? If so, do you ever discuss politics with your clients or customers? If not, would you consider discussing it if you knew that you and a client or customer are backing the same candidate? 
• Do you make your political affiliation known on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and comment about things like the presidential debates and the campaigns? Have you gotten any flack from people who following you and disagree?
• What about LinkedIn, the social networking site that’s strictly for business? If somebody asks a question on LinkedIn about something pertaining to politics, do you make your political views know without fear of alientating your connections? I’ve seen a few political questions that have led to political debates that have no businesses on a site like this one. 

Keep this story idea in mind for when you’re creating your publicity plan or media plan in the years ahead, even when you have hot local or statewide contests. 

Shawne is one of my favorite Publicity Hounds. We teamed up and brainstormed more than 200 story ideas you can pitch to print and broadcast media when we presented teleseminars on 116 WOW Story Ideas from January through June and 103 Sizzling Story Ideas from July through December. 

Posted In: Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Newspaper Publicity, Nonprofits, Pitching the Media, Social networking, TV Publicity, Twitter
posted On: 10/2/2008: 11:39 am: By Joan
Comments: 5 Comments

If you’re strapped for cash and can’t afford a professional photographer, and you need a photo because you want to promote something on Facebook or another social networking site, what’s the next best alternative?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal offers tips from three professional photographers on how to capture the right image. Each has a Facebook page.

From Jessica Kaminski, owner of J. Kaminski Photography:

If you’re taking your own photo, “Hold the hand with the camera higher than normal so you don’t get a double chin in the photo.”

From Kristyna Wentz-Graff, staff photographer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who offers this tip if you’re shooting your own photo outdoors:

“Use the early-morning hours before 10 a.m. or early evening hours such as 4, 5 or 6 when the light is most flattering and there’s a beautiful glow in the sky.” The noon sun, she says, will cast shadows that give you raccoon eyes and an elongated nose.

From Janet McMillan, owner, Janet McMillan Photography:

“For me, the best photos are when you can capture something that’s not necessarily so posed, like a true moment.”

For her own photo and a casual, informal look, she used a Holga camera, a toy camera with a plastic lens that takes larger-format film.

The article also offered a great reminder for those of you who want to promote on LinkedIn but don’t want to use a personal photo. Don’t hide behind a corporate logo because the site doesn’t allow copyrighted material.

Posted In: Facebook, LinkedIn, Photos & Graphics, Social networking
posted On: 9/30/2008: 2:07 am: By Joan
Comments: 3 Comments