Social Media: How to Make It Work for You -- Rather Than You Working for It

--From the Writers' League of Texas 2010 Agents Conference.

The moderator was Shennandoah Diaz of Greenleaf Book Group. The panelists were: Scott Allen of BookRix, author Lynn Reardon, Jennifer Hill Robenalt of Robin Hill Media, and Rusty Shelton of Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists.

Rusty said that an author should act like a media outlet and a resource for others to use. When doing so, don't try to sell books. Provide content that others can use and you'll get your name out there. Jennifer agreed and said to talk about yourself the way you would at a party. Be real, knowledgeable, not superficial.

Be consistent about who you are and get the most out of the content you put out. Develop a following. The more followers you have, the better chance you have to get an agent. Use content in your blog that causes readers to keep reading and recommend your blog to others.

Include book reviews of books similar to yours in you blog. Review best sellers so that your reviews have a better chance of reaching more people. Most authors will want to link to you after a favorable review. Also, the author's agent and publisher will take note of you. They probably have Google Alerts set to find any information that mentions their client and their client's books.

Jennifer said to request an interview with an author for your blog. This will give you access to their publicity. Usually, all you have to do is send them questions and they'll send the answers for you to publish.

Scott said he found interviews generate more traffic than book reviews. Also, interviews take up more pages and there's more for the search engines to pick up. In addition, interviews last longer than reviews since interviews are about the author and reviews are about the book.

Rusty said to use Google Alerts to help find timely subjects for a blog. If you don't have time to do everything, the top priority is a blog and a website. After that comes Twitter followed by Facebook.

Scott said the fastest and cheapest way to get to the top of the Google search page is to have a video. Jennifer mentioned using http://animoto.com/ to help prepare a video.

See Paulo Coelho on Facebook for an example of using social media to advertise yourself and your books.

Lynn said she started using social media six months before her book came out. She calls it an accidental bestseller.

Jennifer mention virtual book tours with like-minded authors. Scott said he didn't do face-to-face tours and now regrets it. He recommends doing as many book signings and speeches as possible.

Rusty said you should publish your book for e-Readers and add links at the end to get to your website and/or blog.

Scott said to look for ways to link to a charity in your blog. This generates a wider audience while doing some good for the charity.

Lynn suggested sharing a dilemma with your readers. Get them involved. Readers want to know your writing process.

One of the panelists suggested http://www.mediabistro.com/ to learn more about using the media.

With Where Love Once Lived, I need to look for Christian Fiction groups in and around Austin for face-to-face meeting. I could offer to talk about my experience with CreateSpace, writing the book, and using social media for publicity.

If you have a book to sell, let me know if any of these suggestions from the panelists help.

Why It's Never Too Early to Start Thinking About PR & Marketing

--From the Writers' League of Texas 2010 Agents Conference.

The moderator was Shennandoah Diaz of Greenleaf Book Group. The panelists were: Marilyn Carter of Marilyn Carter Marketing and Communications, Lisa Lawrence of LL PR Media and Public Relations, and Jennifer Hill Robenalt of Robin Hill Media.

The panelists suggested getting ideas from other writers and publishers, especially those with books in your genre, by using Google Alerts. I use Google Alerts to see what's being said about my books, but I hadn't considered using it to get information about other, similar books. It's easy to use. Go to Google.com and click on more and then even more. From there, select Alerts and it'll be easy to figure out the rest.

Another idea I got in the session was to set up an author Facebook page. The panelists disagreed on whether to have one for each book or one for all books. After they discussed it, I decided it was best to have one for all books. This gives you a chance to sell yourself more and you don't have to get fans all over again when a new book comes out. I haven't set mine up yet, but when I do, I'll tell you more about it.

The panelists talked about the importance of videos to help sell your books. If you don't have the software to do it yourself, you may want to check out http://animoto.com/. I haven't tried it yet, but I looked it over and it looks promising. The use public domain photos and music so there are no royalty payments. There is a free version and a paid version.

Another suggestion was to look for blogs in your book category and add meaningful comments on as many as possible. Keep your comments to the subject and don't try to sell yourself. The benefit will come when other readers (and the blog authors) see your name and comments and decide to check you out. I've picked up several blog followers using this technique.

Publishers still use press releases, but they are seen by the panelists as necessary evils that don't do much to increase sales. Most of the people who receive them disregard them because they know the same message was sent to many other outlets. It would be better to send a unique message and pitch to each place you want some free advertising.

Many bloggers are looking for content. You can write your own questions and answers to send them. Make each one special. Look for blogs that do virtual book tours.

If you're doing a non-fiction book, and are an expert in some field, a good place to go is http://www.helpareporter.com/. You can sign up to receive queries from writers looking for expert information. You may then be quoted in a high-distribution publication along with the title of your book. I'm not sure it will be useful for fiction, but I signed up anyway.