Top 20 Social Media Rockstars (part 1)

Thought Leaders

It is important in any industry, no matter what level you are at, to keep learning. I am always looking around in my community to hear what others are thinking and compare notes. Thankfully many of the leaders in Social Media publish, sharing their knowledge and insights regularly. They are a joy to learn from. I put together this list so that you might benefit from their generosity as well.

There are quite a few thought leaders in social media. Identifying and selecting the best of the best is completely subjective, but I feel that the folks I’ve listed below are true stand outs in the pack. Without further adieu – the 20 best social media experts have been shared along with a bit of their backgrounds, accomplishments and key achievements (in no particular order).

Chris Brogan. Author of New York Times Bestseller, Trust Agents and president of New Marketing Labs in Boston, Chris is a true social media Guru. He has more than 108,000 followers on Twitter and 48,050 blog subscribers and I am one of them.

Gary Vaynerchuk. Famous wine aficionado, Gary is a living example of how to make social media work for your business and brand. He single-handedly transformed his family’s annual retail wine store profits from $4 million to $50 million through video posts on Wine Library TV. He has more than 850,000 followers on Twitter and 42,000 Facebook fans. Using  social media, he has democratized oenophilia.

Amy Jo Martin. Founder of digital integration and social media agency, Digital Royalty, Amy works with entertainment brands, professional athletes, sports teams and organizations to catapult them into the online here and now. She’s a social media maven to the core.

Jay Baer. Having worked with some of the biggest brands, Jay founded five companies and spent 15 years running digital marketing agencies. His highly popular blog, Convince and Convert, provides readers with social media strategic planning and consulting advice that is on the cutting edge of technology.

Felicia Day. A canadian-born actress and self-proclaimed ‘media geek’, Felicia is a social media phenomenon. She’s the producer of a YouTube web series called The Guild which garnered more than 15 million views and has appeared in the Internet musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It may not sound like much, but she’s an amazing expert at integrating her brand into social media. Nearly 1.7 million Twitter followers can’t be wrong.

David Meerman Scott. A marketing strategist and author, David has a knack for predicting social media trends before they occur. His best selling book, ‘The New Rules of Marketing & PR’, is being followed-up with ‘Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs’. He is an an active online social media contributor and speaker.

Guy Kawasaki. A founding partner of technology venture capitalist group Garage and co-founder of online magazine rack site, Alltop.com, Guy has written nine business and marketing books. He began with Apple and has since transformed himself into a social media leader that consistently remains ahead of the curve with his social media insight.

Mari Smith. Dubbed by Fast Company as the ‘Pied Piper of Online’, Mari is a social media business coach and strategy expert for small businesses. She is her own best case study for brand development. She regularly travels the speaker circuit sharing advice and providing social media training to thousands. I love her trademark blue shirt.

Jeremiah Owyang. A partner at Altimeter Group and columnist for Forbes CMO Network, Jeremiah  interprets news as a web strategist and reviews technology products as they are related to social media. His blog is currently ranked at #28 by AdAge Power 150. I always come away with great insights after reading his blog.

Valeria Maltoni. Listed as a Top Marketer for 2009 in AdAge, Valeria’s blog Conversation Agent is one of the top online blogs in the world. She was handpicked by Fast Company as an expert blogger to write about creating conversations between the customer and marketer and built one of the first online communities connected to a magazine.

I’ll be posting the second half of the social media expert list next week. Stay tuned.

Book Marketing Strategy: Best Websites For Authors

Online is where it’s at, especially when it comes to the marketing strategy for your newly published book. Creating buzz and generating sales can be accomplished more easily than you think with the assistance of a few online sites geared toward authors. We’ve gathered some of the stand outs and are sharing them with you below.

FiledBy. Hands down this is the most comprehensive online marketing platform for authors. It provides simple to use tools that can be used to link, host and organize marketing activities and  connect to online booksellers. The service is free to use and authors can claim their site immediately. Additional features are available through affordably priced premium services and include, additional links, multimedia uploads, blogging, customized graphics, event calendars and much more. Whether you have an author website or not, FiledBy can help expand your social media presence and is absolutely worth joining to claim a name for a basic site set-up.

Red Room. This is a social hub that focuses on writers and book lovers. It’s a full-service site that allows authors to express themselves, promote their writing and connect with other like-minded people. Well-known and undiscovered talent utilize this site to network with publishing agents, interact with literary icons and showcase samples of your work. Membership is free, but if you’re an author you’ll need a Premium Membership to market and sell your books. Current price plan is listed at $30 per month or $250 per year.

Goodreads. This is a great site that promotes book-sharing, reviewing and other various ways to showcase your book. Goodreads claims to be the largest site with 1.8 million members who have added 41 million books. Authors enjoy having their own profile pages that feature a short biography, background, pages for your books, review and interview links, comments and other social media aspects. What make the site unique? It has an online advertising program for authors who are interested in ramping up their marketing efforts.

LibraryThing. Geared more toward the reader, the site does allow authors to become members and highlights them as such. A total of 35 million books have been cataloged by 600,000 readers so why not add yours to the list. As a LibraryThing author, you can promote readings, events and participate in author chats, provide review copies and include photos and other information on your author profile page.

Author’s Den. Your book is bound and ready to for reading, now what? The first step is finding an audience. At the Author’s Den, readers and authors are brought together through book reviews, blogs, news, events and more. More than 1.4 million readers each month have access to 62 literary categories. Not only is site is free to join, but it’s evolving. Coming soon is a market place that will permit authors to go a step beyond the site’s current features, including public relations, marketing and publishing.

Other author websites worth taking a peek at:

Shelfari. An Amazon.com owned site that has become very popular among Facebook users. A great way to tap into your social media audience.

Nothing Binding. Directed toward emerging writers and authors.

Scribd. Known as the ‘YouTube for documents’, authors can upload excerpts, pages, reviews and other material to share with people to view.

Member Call March 2010

Podcast: Play in new window
| Download

Video editing for social media

MAKING YOUR VIDEOS DELIVER

Multimedia is an integral part of both our online experiences and real life too. Sharing videos with friends, family, customers and colleagues is one of the simplest and fastest ways to communicate with one another.  As they say, seeing is believing.

Of course, using video to communicate marketing messages is not new, but using it as part of your social media marketing is. If you want to create one of those sought after viral videos, you need to deliver great content. But you also need to edit it just right. Since you wouldn’t sell your car without a good wash and wax, you don’t want to send videos without refining them for viewing. The results you want might just be a matter of details.

Well, finding a good video editing site just got a little easier.

SUGGESTED VIDEO EDITING SITES

First up on the online video editing list is Motionbox. Registration is required, but members have unlimited video storage, large file upload capability and easy-to-use online editing tools. A standout feature is Motionbox Pro. This is an affordable hosting solution for business and commercial users. Plans start at $24.99 a month and include HD video for large screen viewing and large file format playback for professionally produced pieces that may require more bandwidth to watch.

Another video editing site One True Media. Similar to other online video editing sites, One True Media has basic and premium membership options for members. What make this site different is that it allows members to edit video and photo montages with transitional effects, music and custom labels and cases for DVDs. This is worth checking out if you’re planning on sending out copies of your video to publishers or professionals for review.

With JayCut, online video editing can be conducted by integrating their application into your existing website or through JayCut’s community. An award-winning company, JayCut gives members the options to make videos public or private. Uploading edited videos to other platforms is made effortless with video tutorials to guide you through the process.

Next on the online video editing adventure is Intuitivlab’s MixMoov. The site lets you add elegant transitions, text and apply visual effect to imported media. It uses drag-and-drop storyboards to layout clips and assemble them into a final video. If you’ve ever used Windows Movie Maker, it’s similar.

Meet the ‘fairly’ new kid on the block, Pixorial. This is quickly becoming one of the most popular online video editing sites. At first glance, Pixorial appears to be a video version of Shutterfly. Making DVDs, sending videos via UPS, creating video cards and other features make this online editor robust and, quite frankly, fun.

Notable mentions for video collaboration: Photobucket and Stroome.

Sell your books online? E-Commerce advice for authors

Unless you have bottom-less pockets or access to a well of money, most authors will need to sell their books from their own websites. Dedicating a portion of your site to e-commerce is an excellent way to move inventory and collect profits. No surprise, there’s an amazing amount of e-commerce information available for anyone seeking to learn more. After combing through countless sites, blogs and articles, we discovered some standouts.

If you’re just starting out and wondering what you’ll need to include in an e-commerce site, consider reading 5 Universal Principles for Successful eCommerce Sites. Smashing Magazine has written a detailed piece that walks you through some of the core features that an e-commerce site needs in order to be effective.

Unlike a basic website or a simple blog, e-commerce sites require additional functionality in order to process financial transactions safely and securely. Depending upon what your needs are, the amount of inventory that’s being sold and what your budget parameters are, you may want to consider using Magento. As an open-source e-commerce platform, Magento has a tremendous amount of support and customization options for users. The high-level of flexibility makes it a leader in e-commerce software solutions.

Conducting research on e-commerce trends, industry changes, new technology and consumer demographics is vital to remaining competitive and staying business. Knowing that consumers are growing averse to using credit cards for online purchases or why they’re abandoning shopping cart sites can help you avoid failure before you have a chance to get started. Research can also dispel any myths or preconceived notions about e-commerce. For instance, men spend more than women online not vice versa.

Launching an e-commerce site sounds like a great idea, but if you don’t really know where to begin it can seem pretty intimidating. A quick read of E-Commerce Explained: A Research Paper will help synthesize the process and make the concept and process easier to digest.

It’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of the e-commerce industry. Knowing that e-commerce growth is slowing, but still out-pacing retail can help with profit forecasting and expenditure reduction. Digging up data that shows how Facebook and social media is influencing the buy process can be used to adjust your marketing strategy.

Take some time to get familiar with what works, before you spend your resources on implementing an ecommerce plan. If you do it right, you’ll have your e-commerce shopping cart full in no time.

Websites Designed For Authors

Building author websites to define your online brand

So you’ve written your first novel, or maybe it’s your second, fifth or even 20th, what do you do with your website? As an author in today’s modern world, it’s mandatory to have an online presence. Your fans and readers want to find you and connect with you, and so do the press, literary agents and others. Having a professional, well-designed and well-organized website can boost sales, increase media exposure and set you apart from other authors.

Sadly, many best selling authors have neglected this key marketing tool and still others have jumped on a cookie-cutter bandwagon making their sites indistinguishable from the masses. We spent some time looking at a few outstanding (and disappointing) author websites and put together a list of inspirational URLs that are unique and on point.

Peter Carey. This is a fantastic site that is extremely easy to navigate and leaves no one guessing about who the author is. The color scheme is subtle, but pleasing. Carey has done a great job including audio and video throughout the interface and organized it quite well too.

Augusten Burroughs. A true reflection of the author’s personality, this site is a tribute to creativity and targeted messaging. It’s simple to find the author’s bio, upcoming events, new and contact details. Even though there’s a strong visual presence, it doesn’t detract from the site’s true purpose – inform readers about newest book and find additional information quickly.

Nicholas Sparks. The nice thing about Spark’s site is that it’s perfectly appealing for his target audience. The clean layout and soft color schema have a modern femininity about them. This is an excellent example of how an author is using technology to extend the circle of attraction that his written body of work has among loyal readers.

Stephen King. If you’re expecting buckets of blood or Flash-designed bats to float around the screen you’ll be sorely dismayed. King maximizes his site’s ability to deliver an onslaught of regular news and ongoing updates. Front page (literally) and center, all the latest publicity and coverage is right at your fingertips. At the same time, the site continues to make superb use of navigational components.

Miranda July. Absolutely one of the most innovative author websites ever created. You can’t deny the fact that once you’re on the site you’re instantly hooked and want to read more. Although this site is extremely unconventional, it’s totally unforgettable and sticks with you long after you’ve entered another Google search term. Unfortunately, the actual author site isn’t nearly as impressive as the path that you take to get there. This site is included in our list because it’s a good demonstration of ‘thinking outside of the box’.

We hope these sites offer some assistance when it comes to constructing your own.

Social Media Networks Built For Authors and Writers

Ning helps authors connect, and writers craft their work

Despite all the information, resources and data available on the Internet today, there are instances when you just can’t seem to find what you’re looking for. This is especially true for people who are are trying to connect exclusively with other like-minded individuals. In our case, this would be authors and writers.

Fortunately, some amazingly tech-savvy person recognized this and created a brilliant social media tool called Ning. Ning is a free social platform that lets you socialize your brand, amplify a cause that you’re passionate about or create a hub for people to gather with common interests. It allows users to develop and design their own customized social pages with rich-feature capabilities, such as personal blogs, chats and forums.

Similar to the information super-highway, Ning has a tremendous amount of social networks and millions of active members on each of them. The nice thing about Ning is that whatever you can’t find, you can build yourself. For example, if you’re someone who enjoys building styrofoam pink bunnies out or recyclable materials and setting them on fire whenever there’s a full moon and you want to meet other people just like you – you can set-up your own Ning network for that specific purpose.

Because it’s always nice to meet other writers and exchange successes, challenges and knowledge, we looked at what Ning had to offer in author/writer genre and discovered that there are some great Ning networks available for to join.

Writer’s Digest Community (WDC). Hands down, this is one of the most comprehensive Ning networks available for authors and writers alike. Presently, it’s 4,011 members strong and growing. The WDC features online events and competitions to get your creative writing juices flowing, a guide to literary agents, an online store and a WDC badge to proudly display to show your support on your website’s home page.

Independent Writer’s Network (IWN). This Ning destination is a place that describes itself as being a place where writers can promote their works, share ideas and encourage others. Through this network, members can build their own sub-network page or create their own sub-groups. What makes IWN a stand-out is that content is fresh and relevant to the network’s focus. Definitely worth checking out.

The Writer’s Network (TWN) (affiliated with OnceWritten.com). On TWN you’ll find a wealth of information relating to all things author and writer. Members and OnceWritten.com have compiled a plethora of excellent tips, how-tos and resources that make starting out for a newbie or enhancing what you’ve got for the seasoned pro a complete breeze. Well-supported and updated hourly to daily, TWN is an excellent Ning network.

Other mention-worthy Ning networks include:

The Writer’s Box

The Written Word

World Poets & Writers Registry

Book Marketing Network

Take a moment to explore Ning on your own and you’ll find that there are many niche writing networks, including crime, horror, afro-punk and countless others. There’s truly something for everyone.

Social Media Training: Intro to Facebook

AN INTRODUCTION TO FACEBOOK

What is the big deal about Facebook? It is now more popular than Google.  It has over 100 million users and still growing. It also means there is a large audience that is waiting to be tapped. So the best place to start with Facebook is to understand where the platform started and where the founders want it to go. This video discovers:

• The latest incarnation of Facebook – what the founders are trying to do with it
• Who is on Facebook – because that makes a difference to your marketing
• 10 important facts about Facebook

If you are going to be marketing with Social Media, using Facebook is a must. Get to know why with this video.

Press Release Writing Tips For Authors

All the talented writers in the world aren’t worth a penny put together unless they can get their written works published and get people to purchase them. The best way to get exposure and create awareness is through publicity. Generating buzz about a book and attracting the attention of publishers and the media can be accomplished with a press release. Make sure your press release gets read with these helpful tips:

1. Single page. Unfortunate, but true, we live in a world of sound bytes and ‘want-it-yesterdays’. Publishers and media contacts are busy people who have little time to comb through hundreds of multiple page press releases. Limit your press release to one page to gain a better chance of it being read.
2. Catchy headline. All press releases have a headline that sums up the entire release in a few well chosen words. This is an opportunity to shine and show off your creative side. Think about headlines that you see in newspapers and make your headline count. Get their attention and they’ll want to read more and know more.
3. No first person. Your press release needs to read as if it came from an objective third-party. Write in in the present tense and stay away from jargon and slang.
4. Dynamic first paragraph. Here’s where the magic happens. Hook your reader’s attention by highlighting what the book is about in a sentence or two and including a few chapter titles. This is the paragraph that readers will use to determine whether they’re interested in pursuing you and your book and giving you the coverage that you want.
5. Author’s bio. This is where having a short and sweet bio come in handy. If you’ve created a book jacket bio for yourself, this is an ideal place for you to use it. In fact, you may need to apply additional edits to keep it no longer than a paragraph. It’s extremely important to include your phone number and email address in this section for contact information. This is how you’ll be reached schedule interviews or for clarification of your press release.

Don’t forget to follow-up with your contacts a few days after you deliver the press release to ensure that they’ve received it. Using these press release tips will help you construct a newsworthy piece that is concise, relevant and ready for media coverage.

How To Write Different Types of Author Biographies

Just like there are many different types of writing, such as academic, creative and business, there are also different types of author’s bios. Depending on what medium is being used, the bio will reflect certain elements and bits of information. What makes them differ from one another is the amount of detail included and the overall tone and style.

When you consider a book jacket bio, think about how it will be used and about the space that is available. A book jacket bio should be a short paragraph or two that gives a brief overview about about the author. If the book is non-fiction, the bio should talk about qualifications and what inspired the writing and initiated its perspective. For a fictional book, mention what prompted you to become a writer or how many books you’ve published previously.

What’s most important about a book jacket bio is that it’s often used to serve many different purposes. As previously mentioned, there’s a limited amount of room so the bio should be kept relatively short. Additionally, this bio has multiple functions and will be used for publicity material, such as flyers, and to accompany photos for book tours. For the most part, a book jacket bio is permanent, meaning once it’s printed it’s not easily edited without cost for reprint. For this reason, keeping the book jacket bio professional and succinct should be your ultimate goal.

On the other hand, an online bio has quite a bit more flexibility. It doesn’t have spacial constraints, which allows for more detailed information to be shared, and it can be updated and changed freely without incurring any costs. An online bio is exposed to a wider audience and a more conversational approach should be incorporated into the bio’s overall language. The accessibility of the bio gives it global exposure to people from different nationalities, different educational backgrounds and different social sectors. Therefore, a simple online bio will allow more readers to connect with the author because they can easily read and relate to the author.

So when you’re getting ready to begin writing your bio think about where it will be used, how it will be used and who will be reading it. Think like a member of your audience and write a bio that will appeal to him/her. Take a step back from what you’ve created and revisit it to see if it satisfies the basic criteria of an online or book jacket version. The time invested to develop an audience appropriate bio will pay off moving forward.

Want more help? See my video tutorial HELP REWRITE MY BORING BIO