Promo-Ho.com

Shelfari, Unbound and You

2008-06-24T23:05:00.000-04:00

Image via WikipediaProbably all of you have heard of Shelfari, based on their early spamming of all your friends' address books. Yeah, ok, that was kind of bad, but Shelfari has managed to come into its own, and I think the most exciting feature about Shelfari is its Unbound section. It's basically a huge author wiki (a web page that can be edited by anyone and everyone) where you can find out all about your favorite authors. TechCrunch described it as possibly becoming the IMDB of authors.

So what does this mean for you, the eBook author? Possibly nothing. For now, it looks like anything that's not on Amazon pretty much doesn't get on Shelfari. I tried submitting my own short story titles and cover art to Shelfari but never heard back from them. Perhaps this is something that will change in the future, so keep an eye out.

However, if you do have a Kindle or print version of your book at Amazon, you are likely already in Shelfari's Unbound section.

Your options:

1. Edit your own Unbound page. You'll have to sign up for a Shelfari account, but you never have to use it except to edit your Unbound page, if you don't feel like it. Just add all the info you want to add and you're done!

2. Link your Shelfari profile to your Unbound page. If you like the idea of Shelfari and think you'll be able to connect with your readers based on what you're reading, go ahead and create an actual in-use Shelfari profile and link it to your Unbound page. Look for the small, "Are you the author?" link at the bottom of your Unbound page.

Have fun!

Making Loops Less Loopy

2008-06-19T14:09:00.002-04:00

If you're struggling to figure out when to post your promotion to the various email loops, join KyAnn Waters' Yahoo Group, Promotion Loop Schedule.

According to KyAnn:

I don't use Outlook and my yahoo loops are on an account that I only visit when I'm promoting so I needed a way to keep track of when/where/what to promote. So I started a loop to send me reminders to my personal email. here is the loop addy: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Promotion_Loop_Schedule This loop won't generate any email except yahoo reminders that today you can post on which loops. The loops that you can post on any day are all in one listing that will go out daily. I'm sure there will be kinks in the process, but I needed something to come to my inbox that said drop a promo here.

I thought since I'm doing this for myself I might as well make the calendar available for anyone else who is going crazy with promotions and all the loops and rules.

And feel free to share the link with anyone who could use the info.

Thanks KyAnn!

SEO Guide for the Rest of Us

2008-06-13T13:30:00.000-04:00

Image via WikipediaSEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the webmaster world. Basically, SEO is a process by which you make your website more easily searchable by the big searchy types (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and get a better rank on those search results pages. SEO experts will have you believe that you need said experts to optimize your site for you or you are DOOMED to a crappy page rank and no search engine hits ever, so help them God.

That is not necessarily true. I know I'm going to have angry SEO experts sending me nasty emails for this, but I think Search Engine Optimization is largely a racket. You do not need an entire company to make your site searchable. You just don't.

There are many things you can do on your own to make your site searchable, and, at the same time, make it a better site for your visitors.

So here's Sonja's SEO Guide for the Rest of Us:

Get someone to link to your homepage. A lot of times, that's your publisher. If you have a profile on your publisher's site, make sure it links back to your site. Once you are linked from another site, the search engines can automatically find you. This goes for all your other places on the web too. Have a MySpace page? Make sure you link back to your homepage. A blog? Same thing. A word of caution though: beware of big sites whose main purpose is a "link exchange." If you are linked from a page a search engine has classified as a bad apple, it may actually hurt your page rank.

Put titles on your pages. Look at the top of your browser window right now and you will see a title in the bar at the very top that says Promo-Ho.com or Promo-Ho.com: SEO Guide for the Rest of Us. That is your title and it is very important. If you are using a blog platform, this is likely the blog title you submitted when you set yourself up for the first time. If you are designing a website, your editing program should have a title input space. Never leave that space blank! Be sure your title is concise and appropriate. For example, the title on my author page is Sonja Foust, Romance Author. If you have a particular genre you write in, you might use that instead: Jane Doe, Historical Romance Author, for example. Why are titles so important? This is the first thing people will see when they search for your site as the big, bold, linked piece of text. In addition, search engines look at titles first to judge the contents of your site.

Use as much text as you can. Some web designers love Flash (fancy animations) and graphics and lots of other fancy stuff, and that's fine to an extent, but search engine "crawlers" (the little robots who circulate around the internet and read every website ever created) can't read Flash and graphics. If you can make it work, your navigation menu should be text rather than graphics, or at least have an "alt" tag that matches the text of your graphic. (Your web designer will know what that means.) Use as much text as you can in the content of your pages too, rather than pictures, and when you do have pictures, don't forget to descriptively "alt" tag them.

Have a clear navigation design. This will involve a menu running across the top or along the side of your page, most likely. Every page should be reachable from at least one static (unchanging) text link. Usually, that means the menu on each page should look exactly like the menus on all the other pages. If you have graphics in use for your menu bar, you may choose to do a duplication of your menu bar along the bottom as text, as I've done on my site.

Make your content good. Google says, "Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it" (Webmaster Guidelines). Your bio is a good place to do this. "My name is Jane Doe and I write historical romances with mysterious twists," will do better than, "My name is Jane Doe and I'm a mother of three," when someone searches for a historical mystery, for example.

Use meta tags. If you're not a web designer and you have no idea what meta tags are, don't run screaming yet. They're pretty easy. Meta tags go in the head section of your document. You'll have to look at the HTML code of your site, and then insert appropriate tags as explained at Google Help. Don't fret, though. If this is something you don't feel like tackling, it's not the most important thing in the world, despite what some SEO experts will tell you.

If you can follow some or most of those simple guidelines, you're well on your way to being searchable on the web. Good luck! As always, leave suggestions or other comments in the comments.

Chapbooks

2008-05-06T13:55:00.002-04:00

Maggie Toussaint at Sweeter Romantic Notions has written up an article on her experience making a Chapbook. A chapbook is basically a little booklet with an excerpt in it that you use for promotional purposes.

Check out Maggie's post if you want to create your own chapbook!

Managing Your Life on the Interwebs

2008-03-31T14:42:00.001-04:00

If you're like me, sometimes you get a leeeeetle carried away with promoting yourself, especially when it's so easy to do. I mean, really, it takes 20 seconds to create a profile on the newest social networking site and BAM! that's more promotion for you (and your Emeril for the day).

Do not get me wrong: You will never hear me say "promotion is bad." That will not pass the lips of the Promo Ho. But you still need to be able to manage your promotion without giving up all your writing time. After all, writing a great book is the best form of promotion.

["Yeah yeah," says the peanut gallery. "Everyone always says that, but we came here for promotion ideas and we don't want to hear, 'write the best book you know how, rainbows and sunshine and kisses.'" So ok, moving on.]

In reality, setting up a profile just about everywhere is easy, and probably won't hurt anything, as long as you're not going to be obsessive about being uber (that was your German for the day) involved in every community. Par example (that was your French for the day), I have a MySpace page which I rarely check. I slapped up the profile years ago and updated it when I started my writing career, and I haven't paid much attention to it since. Every week or so, I log in to delete the comment spam from hot chicks trying to get me to take surveys, accept friend requests, and generally do on-site clean-up. I used to cross-post all my blogs to MySpace too, but I'm lazy and not of infinite time allowances, so I don't do that anymore. The point is, it's free marketing, I have a presence on the site, and it takes next to no time to maintain.

The trick is figuring out where your home base is online and directing people to that. Par example (again), my MySpace page has a link to my main page and my blog. My main page is where you find all my writing info, and my blog is where you find everything you ever wanted to know and more about little old me. All my profiles around the web link to my main page and my blog.

And on my blog, I have links to all my social network sites and various other profiles in my right-hand sidebar, thanks to Profilactic.

Lifestreaming is a new trend in social networking. Basically, the goal of lifestreaming is to get all your social network "feeds" (the pieces of info you update regularly, like your blog) in one centralized place. That's next to impossible, but Profilactic does a really decent job and is my lifestreamer of choice. Others out there are FriendFeed and MyBlogLog and there are a bunch of others I haven't tried.

Think of organizing your online life as creating a treasure map. You can leave little pieces of you all over the internet, but your ultimate goal is for people to return to your home base and find the real good stuff.

Good luck! Leave your tips on social networking and lifestreaming in the comments.

Multiple Email Disorder

2008-02-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

If you're anything like me, you have several domain names, each with their own email address. How do you manage all that stuff, and how do you keep your identities separate?

I would suggest getting yourself a Gmail account. In my opinion, Gmail is the easiest way to manage multiple email addresses in one simple, web-based inbox.

Here's a great post on how to get all of your emails consolidated into one Gmail inbox: Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account

Done that? Good. Now we move on to the pretty stuff.

Unfortunately (because Gmail is awesome in so many other ways), Gmail's default signature option is boring: plain text or plain text, you decide. So if you want your email signatures to have a little flare and you want a different signature for every address, consider installing Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on, so unless you're using the Firefox web browser (why wouldn't you be?) it won't work. Luckily, Firefox is free. Download Firefox.

Greasemonkey is really easy to install. Just go to the Greasemonkey website and click Install Now. Told ya.

Now that you have Greasemonkey installed, you have to install the Gmail HTML signature script. That sounds all technical, but it's not. Just go to the Gmail HTML Signatures website and click Download/Install. It does everything for you.

Now you're ready to go. Open Gmail, and compose a new message. The dropdown menu at the top will contain all your email addresses, and you'll notice a new link to the right that says Create Signature. Click it and a blank box will pop up. Now put whatever HTML code you want in there and voila! Pretty signatures!

It does require a little bit of HTML knowledge, but only really basic easy stuff. For a quick and dirty primer, check out the HTML Cheat Sheet.

Here are some of mine, just to get your brain jogging.

--
Sonja Foust

[For the signature above, I used some code that I'd set up for my blog using Feedburner. That's a post for another day, but it's a cool site to check out if you're interested in optimizing your blogging.]

--
Sonja Foust

[Feedburner again.]

--
Sonja Foust
Webmaster, HeartofCarolina.org

--
Sonja Foust

Pretty cool, huh? So go wild with your new efficiently done email. Have fun! Email is internet word-of-mouth and it's one of the best marketing tools you have!

Favicons

2008-01-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

The girls at DandelionBlog.com have written a great article on Favicons (those little icons that show up in your browser's address bar) and how to use them.

What is a Favicon?

Favicon is short for favorites icon. It’s an icon that is associated with a particular website. It shows up in the address bar of the viewer’s browser to the left of the URL. See some examples:

Here is the readily recognized “G” Google favicon

Read the rest of the article!

Favicons are really fun, pretty easy, and impress people. There's really no down side here. Go learn how to use them!

Matchy Matchy

2007-11-28T13:02:00.000-05:00

If you've tackled the project of designing your website, and now are ready to integrate your blog, it's not as challenging as it might sound.

If you have a domain name, you can even make your domain names match. In Blogger, there are instructions for getting your custom domain here: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=55373&topic=12451 It includes setup instructions for a lot of common hosts, like GoDaddy. The advantage of doing this is that your blog address is now http://blog.yourname.com instead of http://yourname.blogspot.com.

After that, all you have to do is get your menu links from your website pointing the right places and then format your blog so that your menu bar matches your webpage menu bar. In Blogger you can customize the heck out of your template, so have fun and experiment. Sometimes it takes a few tries, but if you've already designed your website, the hard part is over.

Blog Listings

2007-11-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

So now you've got your blog all set up, and hopefully integrated with your website. But how do you get visitors? There are a lot of variations on strategies, and the one that seems to work best is to be active in the blog community: comment on your favorite blogs often and contribute to your forums.

However, it never hurts to be listed in a blog directory, so here are some you might consider. Please leave comments to submit other blog directories that we can list here! They are listed with Google page ranks to the left.

8 Technorati
7 Blogcatalog
7 Blogdigger
7 BlogPulse
7 Boing Boing
7 EatonWeb (review fee)
7 IceRocket
7 PressRadar
6 2RSS.com
6 Answers.com
6 Best of the Web
6 Blogexplosion
6 Blogflux
6 Bloggapedia
6 Chordata
6 CRAYON
6 FindingBlog
6 Globe of Blogs
6 LS Blogs
6 PLAZOO
6 RateItAll
6 RedTram
6 Tailrank
6 The Truth Laid Bear
5 BlogBiB
5 Bloggeries
5 BlogHop
5 Diarist
5 Feedage
5 FeedBoy
5 feeds4all
5 FeedsFarm
5 Search4RSS
5 Syndic8
4 Authors Blogs
4 Aviva Directory
4 Bigger Blogger
4 Blog Search Engine
4 Blog Universe
4 blogBunch
4 Bloggernity
4 Bloghub
4 British Blog Directory
4 Bulletize
4 FyberSearch
4 Romancing the Blog
4 Spillbean.com
4 Topix
3 Blog Listing
3 Blog Search
3 BlogCode.com
3 Blogging Fusion
3 BlogIntro
3 Blogio
3 BlogListing
3 BlogMap
3 Blogz
3 GeekPhilosopher
3 Postami
3 Read A Blog
3 StrategicBoard
0 All-Blogs.net
0 Content Smatter
0 Kiosken

Lots On Websites

2007-10-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

Erica Ridley has put together a great series of articles on website design for authors.

Read the articles!

T It Up

2007-09-25T13:10:00.000-04:00

Who doesn't love a good t-shirt? They're fun, they're cute, and people look at them... that is if you can actually get anyone to wear them. And the best part? They cost you little to no money to design and sell, as long as you use free services.

Of what services do I speak? Why, print-on-demand t-shirt services of course. Here are the ones I've found:

Cafe Press
Zazzle
Spreadshirt

I'm sure there are others, but these should get you started. You design the image for the shirt, slap it on a product, and stick it up in a free store. (Example: Here's the Promo-Ho.com store.) Easy as pie.

But what do you put on the t-shirts?

Well, there's always your book cover. Your publisher probably has a clause in the contract about not using your cover image to make money, so you won't be allowed to take in profit from the sales of your t-shirt with your cover, but that doesn't mean you can't make the t-shirt. It's a promotional tool if you're not making a profit, and most publishers are a-ok with that. Still, check the fine print in your contract. The problem with book-cover t-shirts? Well, frankly, they're boring. Pretty much only your biggest fans (like, maybe your mom and your critique parter) will wear a shirt with your cover on it in public, and then they might only do it when you're watching. Ha. The other problem is that covers (unless you're in print and distributed to Big & Nice bookstores) won't give people enough information to find your book easily.

So here's my recommendation for must-haves on promotional t-shirts:

1. A catchy slogan that applies widely, not just to your book. For example, if you have a cowboy romance, maybe your shirt says, "Save a horse, ride a cowboy." Haaa. See how that gains you a wider audience? Lots of people think that's funny, not just your mom and your critique partner.

2. Your website address. I'm saying that this is WAY important. Way more important than your name or even your book title because this is where people will go to find out more. Now, of course, it goes without saying that you have to have an easy and memorable web address. www.freesites.biz/~!/authors/novels/romance/ western/chick-lit/secret-baby/asmith.html is not an easy and memorable web address. It should be yourname.com and nothing else. Cough up the dough for the domain name, people. I don't ask you to spend money on anything else, but you have to spend it for that. Ahem. You should also place your website address where it's easy to see, maybe underneath your slogan in slightly smaller print or, better yet, across the back of the shirt in big print.

3. Your name, the title of the book, and the publisher. This is the third and least important piece. Remember, you want people to be able to find your book, but first they have to look at your shirt. If you don't have a website (shame on you), you could put something like your book title and then, "Available at YourPublisher.com" if you have to. If you do have a website, I think the title of the book would suffice, as long as it's easy to find from the very front page of your website.

Other stuff you might consider for use on a t-shirt:

1. Your cover. I know you think I totally dissed using covers on t-shirts already, but I didn't. I just dissed using your cover and nothing else. So in combination with a cute slogan and your website address, you cover could be an awesome addition.

2. Fun graphic artist-y things like pictures and designs. Check sites like iStockPhoto for free/cheap stock images that you can use. Don't steal stuff from random websites though. Chances are it's copyrighted and you'll be in big trouble if you use it on your t-shirt.

3. Inventive colors and styles. A lot of t-shirt places give you way more options than just a plain white t-shirt. Consider going for a baseball jersey or a black long-sleeved t-shirt instead of the standard.

4. Don't limit yourself to t-shirts! A lot of these websites let you slap your design on anything you can think of: bags, hats, magnets, thong underwear (I kid you not). Go wild. Sometimes the best sellers are the ones you did as an afterthought. My Promo-Ho.com license plate frames are really popular. Whoda thunk?

Have fun! T-shirts are a cool way to get your name out there, and they're fun to make besides.

Sonja Foust
Author of LOVE IN SHADOW (The Wild Rose Press)

SRN On Marketing

2007-08-07T13:31:00.000-04:00

Check out Sweeter Romantic Notions today for a blog on getting started marketing yourself as an author. Maggie Toussaint shares what she's learned since she began:

With my almost a year of marketing experience under my belt, my best advice is to take a deep breath. It doesn’t do any good to run in circles screaming and shouting (been there, done that). If your publisher doesn’t have a welcome packet to initiate you into the world of promotion, or even if it does, it’s a good idea to find a mentor. Someone who knows the ropes in your genre can shave hours off your time spent in promotion...

Read the rest of the article!

Smart Bitches Web Design

2007-07-31T12:53:00.001-04:00

Smart Bitch Sarah, of Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books, has written a really helpful article on web design, with some ideas, tips, and examples I hadn't seen before:

If the site is to promote an author, product product product front and center.

Read the article!