Reasons Why Marketing Fails for Authors

If you’re thinking about going the book or author promotion on your own you might want to think about what some of the causes are for ineffective marketing. There are many resources available that will tell you all of the right things to do, but there are only a handful that highlight what not to do. Before you begin launching your strategy take a quick moment to read up on what can potentially hinder your success.

Not Knowing Your Audience & Your Budget

Marketing your book or yourself isn’t a hobby and it’s not something that just ‘add water’ to and then sit back and watch the magic. You need to have an understanding of who your target market is and what type of funding you have available to reach them. If you don’t determine where your audience is it will be difficult to know how to allocate dollars and create a spend forecast with enough longevity to make an impact with them.

Lack of Ambition & Commitment

As mentioned earlier marketing your novel and yourself means that you must be prepared to work and work hard. Many authors and speakers fail to register as a blip on the radar because they aren’t stepping up and building relationships, setting up meetings, scheduling events and initiating the activity necessary to generate interest and awareness about their product.

Inability to Understand The Process

Despite having immediate access to the internet and countless free tools, many folks still struggle with how to utilize them properly. It’s one thing to set-up a Facebook Page for you or your book and it’s an entirely different thing to know how to work the Page to your advantage. There are many different communication tactics, as well as applications that need to be executed with thought and purpose. In doing this, you’ll reap bigger and better rewards by connecting with your audience.

Not everyone has the time or the skills required to build out a strategy and maintain, or adjust, it on a constant basis, not to mention measure its outcomes. It can be an overwhelming process for anyone who’s new to the game. Fortunately, professional resources, like Leili McKinley, can help alleviate the burden and provide you with outstanding results.

Facebook Page Marketing

Facebook Pages are similar to user profiles, but instead they offer a way businesses to showcase their brands, services and products, plus give people an opportunity to connect with them. As an author, having a Facebook Page for your book is a wonderful way to let your readers share feedback, provide praise and engage with you as a writer. Just like it’s important for your book to stand out from others within your genre, knowing how to make your FB Page a cut above the rest is important too. 
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What Story Does Your Campaign Tell? Common Newbie Social Media Mistakes

The biggest challenge that many social media beginners face is having a clear understanding on what a campaign actually is. Your campaign should understand exactly what your audience wants and needs, as well as where they gather. Dissemination of good, free material and monitoring results with measurable goals is also part of what a campaign is. A campaign should be wrapped with good messaging, a clear call-to-action and feature a simple way to share with others.

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.

Facebook Privacy and Branding

Social media giant Facebook has seen its own fair-share of challenges this year in the privacy arena. Millions of Facebook users were extremely upset when they learned that Facebook had allowed their personal data to be made available beyond friends, fans and family. As the media continued to inquire what Facebook intended to do to remedy the situation some people began to plan and stage quit Facebook rallies. Soon enough Facebook recognized the seriousness of the situation and recently implemented new updates and changes to its privacy settings in an effort to restore the faith of its users.

Facebook’s new privacy settings make it much easier for users to navigate and manage. For your brand this means that you’ll have a simpler time controlling what type of content your fans engage with. Another new feature is that you can view what your brands profile looks like to others. This is a big improvement because now web trollers can’t pull personal information from your page and add it to their spam banks or start a tidal wave of solicitation.

Additionally, you can also opt out of sharing personal data with third-party applications. This means that if you want to use the features of an application, but you don’t want to have your phone number, email address and other details shared with software developers abroad it won’t be. Brands will still be able to enhance their pages and interact with fans without sacrificing personal data in order to do so.

Because limited information will be made available through public views people will have to ‘like’ your Page if they want to learn more. This is great for brands because now truly interested fans will jump on board to support your brand and interact with you. In contrast, many people would surface scan your Page and move on instead of taking the time to listen to your conversations.

Overall, Facebook has done a decent job of empowering brands to police and monitor their own information. Choosing what details someone wants to share is a more appropriate way to engage with one of the most recognized social media tools available.

Facebook Applications:fun and functionality for your pages and profile

Not only is Facebook is quickly becoming America’s new favorite past time, but it’s spreading like wildfire. Famous for connecting with friends and family, Facebook is a social media giant that has even managed to outrank Google as the internet’s number one site. Because Facebook is used by so many millions of people and for so many different reasons, incorporating various Facebook software applications can enhance your experience and make using the site more efficient and fun.

A Facebook application count from 2008 shows the current directory at 33,000 strong. That’s a heap of apps to choose from. Just because there’s an app doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good one. Here are a handful that we consider to be the best of the bunch.

DivShare

If you’re tired of being limited to the types of things you can with friends from your status box, like links and photos, then DivShare is the app for you. DivShare lets users share MP3s, images and any other type of file up to 200MB in size with no cap on storage space. This is great for exchanging large files.

Marketplace

With more than 9.7 million active users, this is definitely one of Facebook’s more popular apps. Marketplace is like Craig’s List for Facebook. You can sell, buy or search for anything you want. Plus, you can support charities by selling for a cause.

RockYou Live (formerly Super Wall)

This application lets you share videos, cards and even draw graffiti. Depending on what peeks your interest, you can easily share your favorite media item of the day, like a popular video from YouTube or a home movie of your dog’s silly pet trick. Discover new and interesting content from the web right from your Facebook wall.

Weekly Schedule

A wonderful application for anyone who has friends that don’t require Blackberry’s to manage their time. Use Weekly Schedule to keep tab on your pals and let them know where you are straight from Facebook. This is a convenient way to coordinate meetings, events or conferences.

weRead

Writing and reading go hand and hand. Show off your literary prowess with a this handy app that helps you catalog, track and share all the books that you’ve read, are reading or planning to read.

Whether you’re interested in getting organized, traveling or marketing yourself, Facebook seems to have an app that will suit everyone’s needs. Explore to find more.

Hate 2.0 – Does Social Media Bring Us Together OR Tear Us Apart?

As I participate in Social Media, I watch people interact. I observe behavior, sometimes predictable, sometimes shocking and sometimes downright hilarious.

But the recent issues surrounding Facebooks policy on free speech made one thing clear – Social Media can be anti-social. It can be used to bring tribes together or tear people apart.

Teenage bullying on MySpace, antisemitism on Facebook, blogs promoting racism and other Hate 2.0 sites are proliferating. The Simon Wiesenthal Center released a report last week that says online terror and hate is on the rise, particularly on social-media sites. The number of sites they identified is around 8000, a 30% increase from last year. Caroline McCarthy reports “In addition to religious terror groups, the sites identified also pertain to anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobic, and various anti-religion and anti-government sentiments. And social media is a particular concern, with games, Facebook groups, and Second Life having been identified as potential communication and event-planning tools for terrorist and hate groups.”

All of this seems to point to a disturbing potential trend: the use of Social Media to encourage hate and ostracism, perhaps even violence. Instead of bringing people together based on beneficial common values, the promoted values are divisive, us vs. them. “You don’t believe what I believe so I will harass, bully, harangue, insult and degrade you or worse.”

But what happens when this Hate 2.0 leaves the virtual world and invades our street corners? Are we giving people who would preach anti-social messages an easy way to gather and communicate and proliferate? Are we giving them a better faster way to organize violent actions? Is Social Media becoming a tool of war?

Perhaps Social Media can do one great thing. It can help us see ourselves, our behavior, in a greater context. It can reflect our ability to accept and tolerate the differences while celebrating the commonalities. It can help us see ourselves in the context of the whole. True perspective is one of the greatest gifts you can receive.

Social Media may be a path to greater self governance. There is opportunity in debating opposing views.  It comes in the form of really having to listen to the view from “the other side” in order to make a poignant, effective argument. Debaters may find that they cannot change each others views, but they may develop respect for their opponent in the process. And a healthy dose of respect puts an end to violence – verbal, emotional, spiritual or physical.

Clearly, we as a society have found value in Social Media. The implications and ramifications of all the new interaction will unfold as time marches on. The question remains will Social Media change us? Will it drive new social behavior or simply reflect what we already are?