A List for Effective Marketing

For most of us, marketing is a crazy-confused thicket of contradictory advice.  The best way to market oneself, in my opinion, is to follow the golden rule, or do as you would have done to you.  And again, for many of us, that boils down to: don’t cheat. Splashy eye-candy that doesn’t provide value is cheating. Biased “information” that doesn’t provide the truth and/or is a thinly-veiled advertisement is cheating. Sock-puppetry? Cheating. Comment-stuffing? Cheating. Spam? Oh yeah; that’s cheating.

Below the cut are some inexpensive (but often time-consuming) ideas you might want to implement if you need to market yourself and don’t want to cheat. Because I work with authors a lot, it’s written with them in mind, but even if you’re not an author, it probably applies to you.

1. Build your website carefully.

A. Make sure it’s easy to navigate, that all your links and images have alt tags, that it’s disabled friendly and cross-browser functional. Check it in Opera, IE, Safari, and Firefox, at minimum. Sure, probably 75% of people use IE. Is that a reason to alienate the other 25? Make sure you can see it well and navigate it easily with Flash and Ajax disabled. If you’re feeling brave, try to navigate it using only the keyboard.

B. Avoid Flash, especially for navigation. If you use Flash, be sure to check that your website works without it. Turn off the flash and take a look. If you can’t stand giving up your Flash, consider creating two sites, one with and one without.

C. Make sure it loads quickly. Go to your public library and access your website on their default browsers with their computers. If it’s not fast enough there, consider the people on dial-up (there still are some!) and make changes.

D. Visual interest is important, but make sure that your focus is on content. Leave “white space” to allow people a place to rest their eyes.

E. If you have ads, consider getting rid of them. Ads are for sites that are selling something. You’re selling yourself. Keep your site visitors focussed on you.

F. Throw out your links page. If you do provide a links page, be sure you actually like the sites you’re linking to, that the sites are live (check them once a week or so) and tag them “rel=no follow”. Don’t accept a reciprocal links agreement unless you really believe in the site that’s linking to you. In that case, drop the no follow and blog about the site you’re linking to, tell people why they should care instead of dropping a link on a links page.

G. Get rid of the splash page. People want content immediately. A splash page puts another hurdle between the content and the reader and may negatively impact your search engine rating.

H. Ask random strangers (or friends and acquaintances) to visit your site and write down everything that even slightly annoyed them about it. I went to an author’s site today and clicked on the menu item “List” thinking, I guess, that it would give me a list of the author’s works. Instead, I got a pop-up form to join the mailing list.  Navigation is for navigating. Put your sign-up and contact links on a page.

I. Read up on SEO and implement as many SEO “white hat” actions you can do yourself or get your web manager to do for you. Be sure they’re not black hat tricks (i.e, keyword stuffing). The line between the two changes, and some things that were perfectly acceptable a year ago are frowned on now. If you use black hat tricks you’ll end up in trouble with the search engines, and worse, with your visitors.

J. ‘Subscribe to my newsletter”, if you have one, should be clearly obvious and on every page, especially the first page. I used to think that newsletters were passe in this day of RSS readers, but I was wrong. People like getting newsletters. If you have one it should be easy to sign up, and it should come at regular intervals, with interesting things included. Use text only, though you may choose to provide a link to an HTML version on your website for easier reading, images of book covers, and to get more traffic coming back to you.

K. Make sure your content about your books is up to date and complete. That means providing excerpts, data about your book, reading group guides, and links to the sites where people can buy your books. Provide clickable thumbnails so they can see the cover well. Provide ISBNs and retail price. You might also consider providing a printable list, either as a pop-up or as a simple black-text-on-white page.

L. Provide viewing options for mobile users, either with a different CSS file or a different site. Be sure your content is designed for mobile viewing. Provide a link on your main page or consider redirecting mobile users. There are pros and cons for both.

M. Consider using cookies to provide a greeting to people who have never visited your site before. There are benefits and drawbacks to this one. The biggest benefit is that people like to be acknowledged and they like their experiences personalized.

The big drawbacks, and for me they’re bigger than the benefits, occur when things don’t go as planned. For example, If you have your site set up to say “Hello! I’m glad you visited” to new users, perhaps pointing out newsletter signup options or RSS feeds, or something similar, people who discard their cookies regularly will get it every time. I had one site use a pop-up to offer me a sign-up to their newsletter every time I visited the front page, with the notation “This is just for your first visit here. We will never ask you again.” –and I didn’t even have my cookies set to dump. I got tired of it and quit visiting. The annoyance wasn’t worth the content being provided. Be sure your content is worth the annoyance if people don’t like something you do.

2. Provide new content regularly.

Yeah, I’m recommending a blog. I know. Everyone blogs. That’s because it’s a good idea. Don’t let it become your life, but blog something every day or every other day if you can. If you can only blog once a month, you’ll stay alive (a site of interest people pick up now and again), but you won’t be the “go-to” for content about your subject.

A. Be sure to blog about the stuff you care about, but if it’s personal, tie it into something that interests the people you want to draw in. I go to one author’s site because she has good information. I go to another’s because I’m already a fan and like knowing what she’s up to. The first blog gets more people all the time. The second, finding her work and falling in love with it comes first.
B. Personal information makes you more approachable, but you want to strive for a balance here. We like buying from people who charm us or befriend us, but we’re still there to buy. Give people solid information they can take away with them.
C. Point out the exploits of other authors who write like you do or in the same genre; blog about news stories that relate to your genre; draw people’s attention to the strange, quirky, or unusual.
D. There’s a budding writer in all of us. If you’re an author, at least some of your posts should be about writing (make it a regular feature if you can). How you do it. “Where do you get your ideas?”, etc.
E. Immediately delete every spam comment and respond to all legitimate comments within 24 hours if at all possible.
F. Consider endorsing products or features available on the web that make your life easier (as a blog post, not as an ad or sidebar link). You can sometimes get some nice cross-network traffic that way.
G. Consider asking an author friend to provide a guest post. The change in scenery will draw his readers to your blog and your readers to his.

3. Be an expert on your subject and share your expertise.

A. send out press releases with a free release site (PR Zoom has been my choice because it’s easy).
i. Be sure your press release is news, not just fuzzy stuff about you.
ii. Write it in the third person.
iii. Make it relevant, i.e., if you’re announcing that an author is signing at X bookstore, tell people why they should care.
iv. Don’t flounce, pout, or start flame wars. Sure, be passionate about your subject, but try to remember that you’re a professional and the person to whom you’re responding is a real person, whatever they may sound like.

B. Consider building a site about you the expert vs. you the author, and link the two.

4. Be Visible

A. Comment on other blogs. Most blogs have the ability to link to your website somewhere in the comments feature. There are two benefits to this. If the blog you’re commenting on doesn’t automatically use “no-follow” tags on their commenters’ websites, you get another hit in the search engines. Whether they do or not, if you comment with insight and intelligence, someone’s going to visit your website. And that someone has friends. And don’t forget, the owner of the blog will be kindly disposed toward you as well, and may actually talk about you to his or her friends.

B. Join social networking sites. Put relevant links up on De.li.ciou.us. Join Myspace, Facebook, LiveJournal, LinkedIn, Ziki, Amazon author blogs, even (ack) AOL. Believe it or not, even Twitter is a good idea. Set it up so that it announces every time you’ve made a blog post and you don’t have to think about it again. Make sure they all link back to your site.  Consider adding your blog to blog directories… there’s a massive list of social networking sites on Wikipedia.

C. Work the social networking sites. Cross-post your blog posts (or just certain ones based on content/topic) to all of them that allow blogs. Consider offering cool stuff specific to the readers of that site for those that allow blog posting.  This can kill you. Try not to let it. Either hire someone to do it, provide cross-posted content, or narrow your focus.

D. Consider adding another blog at one of the blogging sites. Cross-post there or make it personal, it doesn’t really matter, though my preference would be for new content as a way to avoid looking like a cheat. Add a link to your “real” site.

E. Join a group author blog or start one with other authors who will interest your readers. Provide content once a month or so about stuff going on in your genre or your books or things people are thinking about.

F. Watch for opportunities to blog about ongoing issues that matter to you and provide links to your site, i.e., blog against racism week; wretched pixel-stained techno-peasant day, etc.

G. Make sure your publisher provides a link to your website.

H. Make sure all of your giveaways (bookmarks, flyers, etc.,) include your URL.

I. Build a squidoo lens, a winksite, sign up at Topix to be an expert in your field, or join Zimbio (among many others, I’m sure), submit short stories to online ‘zines.

J. Send your book to the ebook reviewers, and/or offer interviews where appropriate. Print authors sometimes overlook the online reviewers, but they can be quite popular. If your book is available as an ebook, send it out for review.

5. Finally, most importantly, don’t forget to write.

People may stop visiting your website if your next book is late.