Tuesday, August 3, 2010

What Internet Promo Do You Like Best?

Recently a comment was left on a post I made on another blog asking me the question what of all the Internet Promo that I did seemed to be the most effective--or what did I like best?

My answer was that I really didn't know because they are all so interconnected.

I love blogging as anyone who has been following me probably has already figured out.
I post the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays here. Every Tuesday, I blog at and I try to post every day on my own blog, Marilyn's Musings and I just signed on with Criminal Minds at Work for periodic blogging.

From time to time I post on my publisher's blog.

The entire month of July I was on a blog tour. Everyone always asks me if they work. All I can tell you is I get a lot of exposure because I promote each of them a lot and I've noticed that my Amazon numbers go down while I'm on a tour.

And you probably wonder about Facebook. I love Facebook--not sure how much good it does promotion wise, but I think it's a lot of fun and I've made friends and found old ones by posting on Facebook--and I also am connected to a lot of my relatives through Facebook.

I Twitter, but I usually do it through ping.fm which delivers whatever I post to all the social networking sites that I've signed up for.

One thing that's important about blogging is when you've blogged somewhere, to go back and check periodically to see if anyone has left a comment or question on the blog that you should respond to. If you're guest posting somewhere, be sure to leave a comment thanking you host for having you.

I love having people guest post on my blog--but one thing that I've noticed is that not everyone knows that all the information they want on the blog needs to be sent to the host: Your own name for instance. Yes, I've had people sent me a blog post via email with an address that doesn't include the person's name and the name is nowhere in the body of the email. Not too smart if the post is promotion of some kind. And if the person has a website--and if she or he is an author--that certainly should be included.

I always ask for .jpg photo of both the person and the book cover and sometimes I don't get either.

As the host, it is really a pain to have to pull information out of the person who wants to be on your blog. It also would be nice if the person spell checked their post--a typo or two is expected--but goodness, when you can't figure out what a sentence is supposed to mean, that's pretty sad.

So, what about you? What Internet promo do you like best? And do you have any pet peeves?

Marilyn

7 comments:

Terry Odell said...

You've hit most of mine with the guest-blogging angle. I host guests, and I've seen all those "mistakes".

I haven't found any magic bullets for on-line promotion, but a pet peeve is seeing authors who leave comments that are nothing more than promo for their own books. Show a little respect.

If you're going to be a guest, by all means Read The Blog that's hosting you. You should understand what the direction and focus of the blog is. And be on time with your copy. You're filling a time slot, and you owe it to your host to "show up on time" with the copy. Your host often has to doctor it for formatting, etc., before it magically appears.

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

Yes, it's amazing that when you are doing something for someone, they don't really do all that's necessary to make their blog or promo work.

Marilyn

WS Gager said...

Lots of great information Marilyn. Thanks!
Wendy
W.S. Gager
www.wsgager.com

Terry Stonecrop said...

Good info for me to file away. Thanks! I found you through Ben Small's post on Murderous Musings.

Cheryl said...

Great topic, Marilyn.

I've never turned down an opportunity to guest post or be interviewed. It's good for Pump Up Your Book and it's good for me too.

You've mentioned many of my pet peeves. Recently I had someone contact me for an editing job and I couldn't figure out who it was. I responded requesting more information and never heard back. Not sure what happened there, but it was strange because the email address looked familiar, but I couldn't find it in my contacts.

A major pet peeve of mine is receiving a next to useless media kit. There is a company I host authors for at The Book Connection from time to time, and it never fails that I have to go searching for missing information. Sometimes I can't even find the author's website easily. A media kit that talks just about the author and barely mentions her book or provides no synopsis at all, isn't the most helpful.

This is what I request when I agree to host an author:

* cover art in jpg format
* synopsis of book
* short excerpt
* author photo in jpg format
* short author's bio in 3rd person
* links to website and/or blog
* link to video trailer if applicable
* links to purchase

That will give you a nice bit of online promo.

Cheryl

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

Thanks for stopping by, and you too, Terry. Cheryl, you've spelled it all out exactly what we need to ask for--getting it though, sometimes is like pulling teeth.

Marilyn

Morgan Mandel said...

Facebook, egroups and blogging are all my favorites lately.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/morgan.mandel