Marketing Advice via Bella Roccaforte

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm continuing my post about what I learned from UtopYA Con 2014. I started it yesterday, but I'm interviewing for new editors over at INDIE Books Gone Wild and it's time-consuming. Apologies! First, a little bit of information about how I met Bella Roccaforte and what I learned from her. Put down your coffee (Gasp! Did I just say that?), grab your pens and notebooks, and let's get going; because this is going to be epic.

I met Bella at UtopYA Con and we quickly realized we're from the same area in Georgia (North Atlanta). Because I am who I am, I talked about everything marketing. Getting off the elevator, she turns and says, "You should go to the Amazon marketing panel tomorrow. I'll be there."

After all she told me over the previous hour, I would've broken an ankle to get to that panel. So, I went. It wasn't long before Bella found herself ushered to the front table by the moderator.

Things I learned:

• Stay off your book's Amazon splash page. Every click that doesn't equal a sale, gets put into the algorithms (not in a good way).
• Don't make the first book in a series free until you've written at least three. This gives you a loss-leader that starts your sales funnel.
• Keywords matter. Don't hunt for your Amazon keywords in Google (not the same search engine, ya know?).

Pretty cool, right?

Now, most Indie authors have day jobs or other things they do besides writing. Bella happens to be an SEO analyst. After the con was over, she shared the following post with us:

Links that Every Indie Author Should Know

You must go check out that post. You can thank me later.

What was the last thing you learned from someone when you weren't intending to?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Meta-Data for Books, Videos, and a Chance to Pick My Brain

Happy Wednesday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm gonna talk to you a little about meta-data for your books, show you a couple of videos, and tell you about a chance you have to ask me a question about writing, editing, self-publishing, or marketing. So grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

Meta-Data for Your Books

What is meta-data? Namely, it's data that you can't see but has an impact on web search results. It's part of SEO (search engine optimization), and not something you should be skipping over when creating your novel. We're all familiar with tags and keywords on Amazon, Smashwords, Createspace, etc... But! Did you know you have keyword (description tags) available to you in MS Word? Best of all: There's no limit to how many you can use!

Screenshot time! I bet you're all familiar with this:

Now, that's awesome, right? You put in the document title, click save, and off to the races you go! But look a little closer and pay attention to the arrows:

Each of those is a field you can put meta-data into. Just click on them and they'll open like this:

Best part? If you've used certain tags previously, it suggests them. All you have to do is tick the check-box. Once you're done with the author name (it will auto-populate your user name on your computer), add tags and a title. When you're done, it'll look like this:

Then you can click save and all that beautiful, digital information will be embedded in the book file. How cool is that?

See? You had a tool and most likely weren't using it.

Why does it matter? Well, we all know what tags are and how they function on Amazon, right? Think about how many more you'll get with this function. Roll that around in your mind for a moment.

Ahhhhh, I can see the lights upstairs come on from all the way over here! Now you know.

Moving on...

Videos!

I promised you a couple of videos, so here you go:





Those were fun, huh? Yeah, that's a book trailer for I, Zombie and one for Chasing Shadows.

Okay! On to the next topic!

Your Chance to Pick My Brain

Natasha Hanova is hosting a Q&A session with me on her blog. I've agreed to take five industry related questions from readers. This is your chance to get an answer to a question you have (that you can't find the answer to here).

If you'd like to put a question in the hat, either comment below or DM Natasha on Twitter. You can find her here:
Natasha's Twitter Page

How about that? Did you all have fun?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo