Promoting Yourself Using Social Bookmarking

If you’re a published author and you want to learn about how to promote your book, I highly recommend that you sign up for the Author and Marketing Experts newsletter. The newsletter is chock full of tips and tricks for how to publicize your book. You can also check out their free online courses and podcasts at Publishing Insiders.

One of the tips in a recent newsletter was about social bookmarking and you can also click here to read an article on maximizing book reviews by using social bookmarking.

Of course by now some of you may be wondering, “What the heck is social bookmarking?”

Social bookmarking lets you share your favorite websites, pages, etc. with others. Sites such as Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon are just some of the sites which store your bookmarks and share them with others.

If you’ve got the Google Toolbar, you can also post your content to Blogger, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo and a number of other services with just the click of a button.

What can you share? Articles or blogs that you’ve written, reviews for your books, videos, contests and basically anything that you have online and that you want to share.

These bookmarks are great tools for having people discover you and your work and will help drive people to your website.

You can also make it easy for others to share information you’ve created by using buttons such as these in your posts and on your website! You can get this simple social bookmark widget at Addthis.com.

I hope you enjoyed today’s Tuesday Tip.

Also, many thanks for all your help last Tuesday when I asked for suggestions for some upcoming contest. The lucky winner of the Valere! Please e-mail me your postal address so I can send your prize.

November 28, 2009September 4, 2017

Surprise Saturday!

It’s a Surprise Saturday blog because I was so busy yesterday with an assortment of things that I didn’t get to do the Fun Friday blog. Had to take my daughter to her job at 2 a.m. because she was working on Black Friday. Then headed to the shore to start filming a Director’s Cut I am doing for you so that you can see some more Behind the Scenes of SINS OF THE FLESH.

Then back to the outlets to pick up my daughter, visit family and then return to the shore for some Black Friday shopping. My daughter and I got almost all of our Christmas shopping done which is great! Now I can focus on getting ready for the holidays and also some revisions I have to do on ARDOR CALLS, the next book in THE CALLING Vampire Series.

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving! Mine was wonderful. Good food and family times. I’ll have some photos for you next week.

Before I take off for the rest of the weekend, here’s some happenings for you!

Visit me today at the Borders True Romance blog for a chance to win one of 5 copiesof SINS OF THE FLESH. Just visit this link: http://bordersblog.com/trueromance/

Don’t forget to get 25 extra entries into the contest at Bitten by Books on December 1. You can get the extra entries by RSVPing for the event. Just use this link: http://bit.ly/4TCKcE

Only two days left in the SINFUL THINGS CONTEST. Just tweet the info below or post it to your Facebook profile for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate.

Celebrate Release of Caridad Pineiroâ€™s SINS OF THE FLESH! RT for a chance 2 win a $50 Gift Certificate. http://bit.ly/2AZWlC

October 28, 2009

SINS OF THE FLESH Video Premiere

Welcome to day 2 of the SINS OF THE FLESH Book Launch Party! Today we have something really special – the premiere of the SINS OF THE FLESH video.

So grab a bag of popcorn, make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom because you won’t want to miss a second of this and sit back and enjoy this awesome video! Many thanks to all involved in the creation for doing an amazing job in translating my vision for the book into this trailer.

If you can’t see this video on your computer, you can also visit this link to view it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqpKM-uIZwA

Don’t forget to leave a comment by midnight EST on Friday, October 30 for a chance to be one of 5 lucky winners of a SINS t-shirt and autographed copy of the book.

And don’t forget to either tweet or post the following for a chance to be the lucky winner of a $50 gift certificate! The SINFUL THINGS Contest ends on November 30, so keep on retweeting/posting!

On Twitter please Tweet/Retweet (please be sure to include the bit.ly link):

Celebrate the Release of Caridad Pineiroâ€™s SINS OF THE FLESH! RT for a chance 2 win a $50 Gift Certificate. http://bit.ly/2AZWlC

On Facebook please post to your profile (please be sure to include the bit.ly link):

Celebrate the Release of Caridad Pineiroâ€™s SINS OF THE FLESH! Post this link to your profile for a chance to win a $50 Gift Certificate. http://bit.ly/2AZWlC

October 27, 2009October 27, 2009

SINS OF THE FLESH Book Launch Party!

Today’s the day that SINS OF THE FLESH, my first paranormal romantic suspense mass market novel, hits the shelves. So it’s time to pop open a bottle of bubbly and do some celebrating!

To celebrate the release and all the awesome reviews, we’ve got some fun things going on today.

First, just leave a comment on this blog post by midnight EST Friday October 30th for a chance to win a SINS T-shirt and an autographed copy of SINS OF THE FLESH. 5 (yes FIVE) lucky winners will be chosen!

Second, try out the SINFUL THINGS Contest for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate by spreading the word around about SINS OF THE FLESH. Just post/tweet the following Sinful Things comment at your Facebook profile or Tweet it between October 26 and November 30th for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate!

On Twitter please Tweet/Retweet (please be sure to include the bit.ly link):

http://bit.ly/2AZWlC

On Facebook please post to your profile (please be sure to include the bit.ly link):

http://bit.ly/2AZWlC

Last but not least, savor this teaser about SINS OF THE FLESH:

Mick Carrera is a mercenary and an expert at capturing elusive, clever prey. Yet the woman heâ€™s hunting down is far from the vicious killer heâ€™s been told to expect: Caterina is wounded, vulnerable, and a startling mystery of medical science. Even more, sheâ€™s a beautiful woman whose innocent sensuality tempts Mick to show her exactly how thrilling pleasure can be. The heat that builds between them is irresistible, but surrendering to it could kill them both . . . for a dangerous group is plotting its next move using Caterina as its deadly pawn.

Thanks for helping to make this book launch a hit! Drop back later to view the premiere of the SINS OF THE FLESH video trailer!

October 6, 2009July 8, 2019

Alleviating the demands of Social Media Promotion

My friend Rayna Vause and I were recently at the Moonlight & Magnolias conference in Atlanta to give a workshop on publicity and promotion in cyberspace. One of the topics we discussed was Social Media and how to use it to help build your brand online.

One of the major concerns expressed by many was the time demands of being in so many places online. It’s a truly valid concern. With so many authors still holding down jobs and/or the needs of family, spending time on the web and social media sites can be a major time suck, especially when you’re also trying to write a book.

But it is possible to use technology to alleviate some of the demands of Social Media promotion. If you’ve got a blog, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, it’s possible to automate many of these applications so that you’re content will be available on all of them with minimal work. How do you do that?

Feed your blog to your Twitter, Facebook and/or Myspace pages:

Both Twitter and Facebook allow you to feed content automatically from your blog. In Facebook, find your NOTES section and you will see a spot where you can add your blog feed to bring it into your Facebook profile. With Twitter, you can use Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog content as a tweet.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a similar application for Myspace, but it is possible to create a widget for your blog feed that you can embed on your Myspace page or in other applications that accept Widgets. I’ve used Spring Widgets and find their RSS feed widget very handy.

Feed your Twitter, Facebook and/or Myspace to each other:

It’s possible to feed your various tweets, status changes, etc. from one Social Media site to another.

To feed your Facebook status to Twitter and vice versa, you can use this Twitter application on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=twitter&init=quick#/apps/application.php?id=2231777543&ref=search&sid=1130005412.376077238..1

To feed your Tweets to Myspace, you can try out this application:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=463617608

Keeping track of your Social Media Sites:

There are a number of applications that will allow you to view and take action on your various sites at once. Two of the more popular and useful applications are TWEETDECK and HOOTSUITE.

Tweetdeck is a desktop application that will allow you to see tweets, respond, retweet as well as view your Facebook and Myspace content. Hootsuite is a web-based application that also does much of the same, but also allows you to schedule tweets. A great ability to have if you must get information out but know in advance that you will not have access to the web.

I hope you found today’s Tuesday Tip helpful and that it will help you avoid the possible time suck of Social Media. If you have any good applications that you can recommend, please let us know by posting them to the comments section.

September 29, 2009February 17, 2021

Improving Visibility on the Internet

Penny Sansevieri, the CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., tweeted the other day about how Starbucks had taught her something about Search Engine Marketing. For the full text of the article, you can click here on this link:
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/what-starbucks-taught-me-about-search-engine-marketing-260912.html

The article contains some useful examples for you on how to increase your visibility on the Internet and improve search engine rankings.

We’ve discussed some of them before, like leaving comments on blogs (and finding those blogs by using news alerts). Sending out books for review and having those reviews posted online is another great way to get your name noticed.

Likewise, we’ve talked about doing article submissions to create buzz and drive traffic to your site.

What else can you do?

Having links from key sites back to yours is another way to improve visibility. How do you do this? If you’re book has something that would be of interest to a particular industry (i.e., knitting, crafts, civil war), find sites for that industry and see if you can’t be listed there. Make connections to stores, vendors and magazines in that industry.

An excellent example of using this kind of marketing is Debbie Macomber’s connections from her books to the knitting industry. Macomber even has her knitting related products with her name available at HSN!

If you’re book is in a particular genre, like vampires, search out sites for that genre and ask to be placed on their list of links. Oftentimes sites may require that you link back to them which seems like a fair exchange.

Search engines will see those incoming links and if the site on which your listed is a high ranking site, that will improve your page ranking.

Finally, don’t forget press releases, especially close to the date of your novel’s launch. Reach out to local papers and use those free press release sites to get the word out!

Hope today’s Tuesday Tip was of help!

March 3, 2009August 18, 2009

To Tweet or not to Tweet . . .

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question. Some of you may be wondering just what a tweet is. A tweet is a post using Twitter.

So now some of you may wondering, What’s Twitter? Wikipedia defines Twitter as “a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. ”

Lots of people are sending tweets. Some believe it is a useful way to promote yourself (see this discussion at Bubblecow) and others do not (see West Pier Words).

I’m undecided, although I’m leaning toward the not. Like Dot at West Pier Words, I’ve gone through the Shelfari, Gather, etc. thing only to find they take up too much time. I do have Myspace and Facebook pages. I’ve found them to be good for letting people know about the books and also, connecting with friends from all over. Same goes for this website and blog. It’s nice to hear from you and it does truly make a difference to me!

As for adding yet another thing to my life – my already crowded and busy life – I think I’ll forego the tweets for right now.

How about you? Do you Twitter? Do you find it for keeping up with friends? For those of you who are published authors, do you like it?

Also, a big thanks to my fellow author Chris Redding for the links to the Twitter discussion. You rock, Chris. You also tweet! LOL!