Begin by building a customized list of potential contacts. The recipients should be a blend of general and well-known book critics, as well as off-the-beaten-path reviewers that are more prone to reading and writing about niche authors. Beyond building a database of reviewers consider including bookstore owners/buyers, trade associations and specialty stores too.

Good places to look for contacts are the National Book Critics Circle and BookMarket.com’s list of review editors. You can tailor your list of well-known reviewers and also dig around on the net for some of the lesser known critics to fill in any gaps on your list.

Send out a letter, or email, of introduction that briefly describes who you are and what you book is about. Like most book-related correspondence don’t forget to include a hook that will entice the recipient to yearn for more. Explain how they can receive a complimentary copy of your book and about how long it will take for the shipment to arrive. Some outlets will only review galley copies, or early manuscripts that have yet to be edited. Be prepared to accommodate these requests if necessary.

Another group that can be tapped to solicit reviews from are the mentions within the book itself. If your book talks about companies, businesses, locations or specific people you can reach out to them and let them know that you’ve created free PR and would appreciate reciprocation. Use this opportunity as part of your PR efforts and to generate backlinks to your online book page.

Since it’s often difficult to know who’s reviewing and what they’re saying about your book, youo’ll want to use Google Alerts to set-up notifications based on chosen keywords. This will help you monitor links and coverage about your book so that you can collect and use as testimonial and reference on your book’s website.

Getting started is easy. Sign-up for a free account and you’re off to the races. Squidoo recognizes that the majority of its audience aren’t tech-savvy and a simple content management system has been implemented to walk you through the ‘lens’ set-up process. If you’re new to the community, it might be in your best interest to take a look at other lenses to get a sense on how they’re used and built. This will make it easier to determine how to create our own. 

So, what’s the point of having a Squidoo lens? First, Google loves Squidoo and values it as a highly credible source of content and information. This means that even if your personal website is buried somewhere on page 25 of the Google search engine results pages, you still have an opportunity to nab a piece of the limelight via Squidoo. Most lenses appear in the top 10 of Google searches and that’s a great thing for those of us who are just starting out. 

You can build a Squidoo lens for each one of your books and even for yourself and then link them altogether for a collection of lenses that are all about your body of work and expertise. Pretty snazzy. Many authors feature downloadable ebooks, upcoming book signings, future speaking events and other details about where they’ll be and what they’re doing. You can even use your lens to help drive traffic back to your blog and website. 

There are plenty of Squidoo resources available to help you get things going. The best sources tend to be from the Squidoo lensmasters themselves. Explore and enjoy.

Retweets

Twitter users know that retweet (RTs) are one of the most powerful methods of extending their social reach. When you create a tweet that has sticking and sharing power, other tweeps are more likely to pass it along to others in their own networks and those people will pass it on to theirs and so on and so on. In this manner, a RT has the power to exponentially to spread your message and drive traffic back to your profile and your site or blog if you’ve tweeted a link. 

Link

Speaking of links, they are an integral part of your social media presence. Links are easy to shorten and share with others and they’re very easy to look at the type of traffic they’re producing. If you use a link shortener like Bit.ly you review how many clicks a particular link has received. You can also set-up Google Analytics for a particular page via link to get a better understanding of bounce rates, visitor habits and a slew of other data. 

If you actively participate in leaving blog comments you can include a link, as long as it’s relevant to your comment, back to your site or blog post. External links carry more weight and influence in the eyes of Google and therefore will help boost your site’s exposure on the search engine’s results page. The more links you have, the more easily you can be found because you’re viewed as a credible resource. 

Pings

Without getting to technical, pings are essentially communication methods that are used by computer networks that send out alerts when something new occurs. Pings are an effective way to promote your site/blog and you measure site traffic related to a ping to estimate your the level of influence that you have.

Facebook Pages have quite a bit of functionality beyond simple posting. One area in particular is video. Readers, and people in general, want to have their senses stimulated and there’s no better way to give them hot helping of sight and sound than with a well-crafted video. This is a prime spot to show off your video book trailers. Upload them and let your fans enjoy a peek at what you’ve got in the cooker. Consider filming a weekly journal that takes your fans through your life as an author. Lots of possibilities here. 

Getting you FB Page up and running is only one piece of the puzzle. Once you have a presence you’ll want to get others to know that you’ve arrived. Thankfully you can employ the services of FB advertising to capture the interest of your current fans and potential fans that are on the prowl for a good book to read. Like Google AdWords, you can create an affordable campaign that can be adjusted daily to ensure that you’re capturing the attention of the people you want. 

Lastly, there are a ton of great FB applications that you can incorporate into your FB Page. Look for applications like WeRead and share books that you’ve enjoyed as an author, plus the ones that you’ve written.

If you’re going to launch a social media strategy, you’ll need to consider how it can fit in with your overall marketing plan. Use it as a tool to build your brand and elevate conversations about it. It’s misleading to think that social media alone will transform your brand into an overnight success that generates ridiculous amounts of revenue. It is simply a good marketing option that can augment your existing efforts.

That’s not to say that using social media as the sole mechanism for pushing your brand is a bad thing. There are a handful of companies that have successfully managed to accomplish an impressive ROI through social media alone. The thing is that they are typically well-established brands to begin with and the likelihood of experiencing outlandish results is not commonplace. In fact, it’s about as rare as a snow storm in Hawaii.

Before you embark on a social media frenzy, put some thought into what your current efforts consist of and how social media might boost them. Think about the amount of time that you’ll need to dedicate to building your community, interacting with fans, sharing new content and maintaining and active and consistent presence. Social media can’t and won’t run itself. You are the catalyst and if you don’t contribute the human element to your social media campaign your brand will be most likely fade into nothing in the social media sector.

So, on it’s own, social media isn’t bad, it’s just not that great. If you want to hit a home run, don’t forget to add some cheese and mushrooms, oops, I mean, public relations and search engine marketing.

If you’ve read the above and feel like you’re read to take the next step into the social media spotlight, you’ll want to make sure that preserve the integrity of your campaign by avoiding some of these common mistakes.

1.  Dormant accounts. Opening social media accounts all over the place isn’t going to win you a ton of fans and followers. Each account that you have should be one that connects to your audience (i.e. where they frequent, where they like to connect). For each account that you have you’ll need to play an active role. If you haven’t sent a tweet in six months or posted fresh content, people will wonder where you’ve gone to and eventually move on.

2.  Self promotion. Although it’s exciting to start a campaign, it’s also important to remember that it’s not all about you. Tone down the ‘me-me-me’ and focus more on what you can do for others. People will appreciate that you’re using your expertise and skills to point them in the right direction instead of just shoving a sales message in their face. First build your flock and then share information and update about your brand.

3.  Tuning out. The whole point behind a social media campaign is to engage yourself in conversations with other people. Discuss what they think, what they want and what they know. The worst thing you can do is not listen to what’s being said. Don’t let conversations and exchanges fall on deaf ears. Take the time to reply and respond quickly. You’ll be amazed by the results you’ll get from such a simple action.

Social media takes time and it’s not for those lacking in patience. Slow and steady wins the race in this realm.

Since you’re writing a USP that will be shared via social media you’ll want to remember to use the ROAD model. An acronym, ROAD stands for: researching who your audience is and your competition, objectives that are defined and aligned with your target market, actions that include a  well developed strategy and plan to execute your brand via social media and devices that are the best social marketing fit based on your brand needs.

A USP needs to contain some basic parts in order to officially call it a USP. First, it should state what your brand is and what someone will get from it, in other words, the benefit. Next, it needs to be completely original from your competition. Your USP should differentiate your brand beyond just a benefit. Lastly, you ultimate goal should be to create a USP that is so strong it will compel your audience to take action and choose your brand over any others.

True, that’s a tall order to fill with USP, but no one said that this was an easy assignment. Writing a USP is a tough job and it shouldn’t be taken likely. If you feel like you’re grasping at straws before you’ve had a chance to put pen to paper try to find USP examples for inspiration. FedEx: “When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight” and Avis: “We try harder” are just a couple of USPs for you to chew on.

Remember that when you’re putting your USP together that you want to begin with the end in mind. Think about how you’ll use the USP and where you’ll share it. Keep it simple, but succinct and most importantly, make it your own.

Google Alerts

This is an excellent (and easy) way to track specific keywords that relate to you and your brand. For instance, as an author, you could designate the name of your book and your own name as search terms for Google. Each day, you’ll receive an email notification with a summary of mentions. Google Alerts makes it very easy to identify who’s talking and sharing information about you. It’s free and effective.

Bit.ly

As most tweeters know, Twitter has a 140 character limitation which includes URLs. The Bit.ly shortener allows users to condense long links into compact versions. Optimizing URLs through Bit.ly also gives users an opportunity to track how many times people are clicking on your shared links. This provides you with a number of impressions so you can gauge what content links are performing better than others and make adjustments as needed.

Xinureturns

This is a very hand all-in-one tool that gives you an overview of PageRank, backlinks, quantity of indexed pages and much more. Simply type in any URL that you wish to see stats on and they instantly appear. Xinureturns is a quick way to look at how your multi-metric performance. The only drawback with Xinureturns is that there is a slight discrepancy with the data that it pulls. Check carefully to insure that what you’re seeing is current.

There are many free tools available. Hunt around and you’re certain to find some freebies that will make analyzing and measuring much easier.

1.  Build a cyber sales channel.

Blogs are actually quite flexible in terms of content and functionality. For example, you can integrate e-commerce so that blog readers can purchase books directly from your site. You can tie-in your blog sales outreach to services like Clickbank and even Amazon.

2.  Connect with your audience.

You audience is much broader than just readers and fans. Through a blog you can meet publishers, literary agents and other authors to exchange information and build a social network to support your book.

3.  Boost book sales.

As an author you have the advantage of never running out of great ideas for blog posts. You can use our book to generate hundreds of topics for posts. Try using an excerpt from you book and expanding upon it, touch on something unique about one of your characters, discuss plot or print out a teaser page to encourage sales. Endless opportunities exist for blogging authors.

4.  Become search engine friendly.

The primary search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Bing, continually crawl the web looking for new content that is regularly updated. Every time you submit a post a search engine bot will come along and index it on the internet. That makes you more searchable and increases your exposure. People will have an easier time finding you and connecting with the material that you’re producing.

5.  Develop conversations with readers.

Blogs aren’t a one-way street. Commenting systems enable readers to share feedback and thoughts and regardless of whether they’re positive or negative, participating in a dialogue is an excellent way to learn how to improve and expand on things that are disliked or favored.

If you don’t have a blog, there’s no time like the present to start one today. Give your fingers a run for the money and start typing.

There are quite a few ways that you can measure how your readers are interacting with you in the social media sphere. Some are costly, but they deliver robust data that can be used to adjust your campaign as needed. On the other hand, there are some fantastic free tools available that do a fair job delivering snapshots of your fans and their sentiment toward your book, or brand. Do some digging to find the tools that will work best to meet your needs and fit your budget.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the data that you start pulling. If you’re a writer, words come easily, whereas numbers may seem more challenging. Focus on identifying trends in your data and ignore  information that isn’t relevant. Spot increases and decreases over time to give yourself a benchmark to help gauge whether your social media efforts are succeeding or failing.

Make sure to overlay sales numbers with your social media data. If you’re using Google Analytics to measure conversions on your book’s landing page, check for spikes and dips and then compare how specific social media efforts may have effected those outcomes. Watching sales and measuring the ROI through social media will be determined by the set of metrics that you define. For example, if you are more concerned about sales instead of site registration then you’ll need to shift your measurement and focus accordingly.

However you choose to evaluate your book’s or brand’s social media investment just remember to be open-minded about the numbers. They can be your friend and help you find opportunities, identify mistakes and tell you what to continue or abandon.