The New Social Culture Will Market Your Book - Learn It

Social Media Power is
Worldwide!

Social media (SM) as a marketing tool began rather inconspicuously. At first SM was a loose and rather disjointed platform where people just kept in touch with friends and family and exchanged pictures.

But, as most now realize, it has exploded into a genuine news and marketing goldmine as well as a conduit to keep in touch.

Per Wikipedia: Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations, communities, and individuals. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media is ubiquitously accessible, and enabled by scalable communication techniques. 

Classification of social mediaSocial media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure) Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme for different social media types in their Business Horizons article published in 2010. According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter), content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms.

The honeycomb framework defines how social media services focus on some or all of seven functional building blocks (identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups). These building blocks help understand the engagement needs of the social media audience. For instance, LinkedIn users care mostly about identity, reputation and relationships, whereas YouTube’s primary building blocks are sharing, conversations, groups and reputation. Many companies build their own social containers that attempt to link the seven functional building blocks around their brands. These are private communities that engage people around a more narrow theme, as in around a particular brand, vocation or hobby, than social media containers such as Google+ or Facebook.

Patents

There has been rapid growth in the number of US patent applications that cover new technologies related to social media. The number of published applications has been growing rapidly over the past five years. There are now over 250 published applications.^[4] Only about 10 of these applications have issued as patents, however, largely due to the multi-year backlog in examination of business method patents.

SM has indeed exploded!

Newbie (and not so newbie) writers are always asking "How do I market my book?"

SM is the new and future blueprint for moving all types of publishing and building your audience for even better success in the future.

Bob Cohn, editor of Atlantic Digital, gives us a great looksee into the growth and technical use of SM to master marketing for publishers:   

Welcome to the Sharing Economy

A year ago, the main sources of referral traffic to our flagship site, TheAtlantic.com, lined up in this order:

• Typed/Bookmarked (readers who type our url into their browsers or follow their pre-set bookmark);

• Links from aggregators and other content sites;

• Search engines;

• Social media (a roll-up of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn)

Then something interesting happened. The social line began rising, first passing Search and then flying by Other Sites and finally, in late 2011, moving beyond Typed/Bookmarked. Now, TheAtlantic.com receives more than one-third of its referrals from social media, topping all other sources.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not long ago, optimizing your site for search, and for the algorithms that determine which stories get featured on Google News, was thought to be the key to generating audience. As a result, Web editors were learning to parse metadata and resigning themselves to writing headlines for machines. Companies like Demand Media were on top of the digital world, suggesting a future in which search requests would replace journalists as arbiters of what stories to publish.

Read and learn more

Writers Welcome Blog is on Kindle :)))

These 'LinkedIn' Secrets Helpful For Writers Too!

LinkedIn is a social media site for professionals that can open many doors. Unfortunately, the site is not being utilized to its fullest potential by most members...and I am as guilty as the next!

But, I have an excuse...I'm lazy but talented...or is that too damn old and lazy?

Anyway, I read this great article by Kristina Jaramillo in Website Magazine detailing five great plans-of-attack for maximizing your ROI with LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Secrets to Success

Read and learn more When you land on this Website Magazine link, you must press the content tab and then the "LinkedIn Secrets to Success" title...

Authors, No Agent/Publisher? Get Social Media-It's Better and Free!

Non-famous, first-time writers...you know, the talented ones that actually write their own stuff...have been literally shut out by traditional publishing interested only in the fast buck for the more-than-recent-past!

But, technology has blown a lifeboat their way and one of the big oars that come with that lifeboat is social media...Social media can be their agent, book tour and publicist all rolled into one AND it's free!

Lori Culwell , a published writer and expert in Search Engine Optimization, posted this in the Huffington Post RE her own experience getting published for the first time (a wake-up read):

I think if there's one trait about me that has served me the best while at the same time annoying the most people, it is that I will absolutely not tolerate being told that I cannot do something. "No" is the one word that makes me almost pathologically have to find a way, if for no other reason than to go back to the original nay-sayer and proclaim "See! It could be done -- you just lacked the vision!"

Yes, it is richly ironic that I chose to be a writer and yet I find rejection so odious. I get it.

Now you're wondering how this applies to you.

A couple of years ago, I decided I was going to write a novel. Was I a celebrity, did I have a book deal, or did I once date Hugh Hefner?

No. I just wanted to write a novel. Is that so wrong? I had hope when I started. And yet, even before I was done, the chorus of "that's so hard" was upon me. "It's impossible for an unknown writer to sell a novel these days" turned into a cascade of rejection letters and emails from interns at agents' offices, then editors, publishers, even well-meaning writer friends. The manuscript was barely even done before it was finished, as they say.

But, here's the thing -- I knew the novel was good, and I knew it would sell, and even though I didn't relish the idea of self-publishing, by then I was on a mission, not only to put the book out, but to convince the world, one person at a time if necessary, that my book belonged on their summer reading lists.

Read more http://alturl.com/fbzkd

Can Social Media Be a Revenue Generating Business for Publishers ?

Social media is a rapidly growing phenomenon...And literally ALL publishing business decision makers are involved; however, they are struggling with just how to monetize the vast potential offered by these sites...As are the little guys, like myself !...But they have a good strategy formulating...

Matt Kinsman, Executive Editor of FOLIO magazine, wrote this insightful analysis in the May 2010 issue of FOLIO:

According to a 2009 Forrester Research study called “The Social Technographics of Business Buyers,” b-to-b buyers and decision makers are among the most active groups in social media. However, monetizing around that participation has been a struggle for b-to-b publishers.

Still, turning social media into a revenue-generating business is a priority for many publishers in 2010. As Cygnus Business Media looks to build value after emerging from its Chapter 11 restructuring last year, one of its top priorities will be harnessing what CEO John French calls “social business media.”

“Social media is the buzz word du jour but just like how everyone talked about Webinars and e-newsletters a couple years ago, everybody finds a new horse to ride,” he says. “We think social business media is as important as those previous developments but it’s a lot bigger. Business-to-business is a form of social media. The difference was in years past, it was done in print. We’ve gone from magazines delivering push content to getting the people out there to get together and talk.”

The next step is figuring out how to monetize social media around communities such as Firehouse.com, Officer.com and EMSUnited.com. As part of the relaunch of its brand, Demers Ambulances wanted to create a social business media “buzz” and purchased an integrated package in order to reach a targeted group of EMS professionals that included ads, e-blasts, blogs booth space, podcasts and Webcasts on EMS Garage.

“Getting manufacturers involved is one of the things we’re working on now, and we don’t have the perfect answer,” says French. “We’re trying to figure out the next best step. Our experience has been, it’s OK for a reader to see advertising from a manufacturer, they know they’re getting the magazine for nothing. The precedent has already been set. If there is an ad message in an online community it’s going to be OK, users realize without this the medium wouldn’t exist. Take the 50,000 people who got a magazine for the last 20 years. They didn’t know at the time but they were the beginnings of the community.”

Read more: http://alturl.com/2cqw

Twitter Connections For Writers, Authors And Publishers

The Book Publicity Blog at http://alturl.com/8229 is one of my favorite sources for up-to-date info on the publishing and book industry. Today The Book Publicity Blog had a great post about Twitter, and since I am also on Twitter (as well as Facebook and Myspace) learning "social media" and how I might use these type sites for book marketing, I am extracting it below for my readers info. WARNING: This post has great contacts and connections to experts in the
writing and publishing field!

"Twitter is possibly the most robust network to link readers and the publishing community since Gutenberg built his printing press. I realize Twitter doesn’t work for everybody and I’m not suggesting that everyone use it — there are days when even I don’t have the time (or simply can’t be bothered) to type even 140-character status updates — but what must be recognized is that Twitter is no longer the latest fad among tweens; it has since evolved into an incredibly powerful communications tool (and it can be fun, too). I realize I’m pretty much preaching to the choir with this post, but please feel free to share the following with colleagues/authors."
***
Most people now know the Twitter basics: you have a 140 characters to update your status and you have a list of people whose status updates you follow and a list of people who follow your status updates. But for all practical purposes, what does that mean? Why should authors and people in the publishing industry use Twitter? Here are some reasons why:
– Networking: Although most publishing houses, literary agencies and book publicity firms are in New York — which means many of us see each other in person — many are not. And of course, media exist all over, as do readers. Twitter is how we meet. Publisher @artepublico uses Twitter to connect authors with the media. @calli526, a book publicist, uses it to connect with the media.
– Promotion: Twitter can be used to talk up a book, blog, event, author, giveaway or pretty much anything else.
– Feedback: For example, @benrubinstein polls his followers for ideas and suggestions.
And here are some specific examples of how Twitter works:
– #followreader is a weekly publishing discussion conducted on Twitter on Thursdays at 4 p.m. ET and moderated by @charabbott and @katmeyerwho also blog at Follow the Reader. (Summaries of the discussions are posted on the blog for people who miss the Twitter conversation.)
– @RustyShelton and his colleagues at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicity developed a Tweet the Author service.
– Author Anastasia Ashman posts about how she uses Twitter.
– @meredithkessler points out that Robert Olen Butler’s @TweetsFromHell was picked up by @LATimesbooks and followed by major critics and Butler fans.
– Literary agent @janet_reid found a panelist for a publishing conference via Twitter and has also used it to fact check some locations/spellings/customs.
– When I write a blog post, I try to tweet about it (and include a link to the post). That means my post could potentially be seen by the 1,267 people who follow me. Realistically, a tweet won’t be seen by all of one’s followers, but even if only a fraction of those people see an update and click through to the link, that still amounts to a lot of eyeballs. (And certainly a lot more eyeballs than if you’re not using Twitter.) Similarly, some authors will tweet about upcoming events to let readers know where and when they will be speaking or about reviews and interviews.
– And lastly, how do you think I found the examples for this post? Yup, you guessed it.