Tube Tops - Day Six WABC

Oh my goodness! It's Wednesday, good people of the blogosphere! That means just two more days until the weekend arrives! Get through today and you're golden. Still rolling along with the Winter Author Blog Challenge, and today's prompt is all about YouTube. That golden beacon in the sky, calling our names like a siren. It draws us in and holds us fast for hours. Without further ado, the prompt for today:

With more than 800 million unique visitors a month, YouTube is one of the most popular search engines. Do you have a YouTube channel? Have you made a book trailer for your book? If not, what kind of book trailer would you like to make for your book? Do you have a video camera? If you do and you’re not posting short videos, you’re missing out on a huge marketing opportunity. It’s especially useful if you’re trying to reach a global audience, as 70 percent of YouTube viewers are in countries other than the U.S. If regular video posts are still on your To-Do list, what are some of the most clever video posts you’ve seen, and how might you do something similar to promote your books or yourself as an author? Be sure to give us the link to your YouTube channel.

I've done one video on YouTube and made it private. You can only get to it by clicking on the link: http://youtu.be/ydqAJmVNa5Q I'd just woken up and look a bit like crap, but it was fun and a good learning experience. My idea was to figure out just how to do something like that from my iPad, and it went off without a hitch. YAY!

I attended a webinar last week called Book Marketing is Bull$h*t. At the start of the session, the host asked us to answer a poll. His question was: What avenues are helping you in your sales? Guess what the only option was that didn't get any votes. That's right, book trailers.

Like Pinterest, I think perhaps we're using them the wrong way. Instead of a trailer for a book, perhaps we should be exploring other options. YouTube is video, man! It has a billion (with a B) possibilities. As authors, we just need to figure out a way to tap into it and use it at its highest potential. I don't go to YouTube to find new books to read.

Ah! There's the million dollar question, huh? Where do readers go to find new books to add to their list?

I use:

• Recommendations from peers (Facebook and Twitter).
• Browsing the bookstore (I love a book sale!).
• Reading reviews on Goodreads (I read the ONE and TWO star reviews. If they're complaining about how the book made them feel, in a bad way, I usually enjoy the hell out of it. If it's talking about the bad writing, I know to avoid it).
• Keeping up with my favorite authors and jumping on it when they release a new book.
• Blogs that write reviews (I recently picked up Splintered by AG Howard this way).
• Winning giveaways (Jamie McGuire became a favorite of mine this way).

And, I ended up being a fan of a couple of authors from the last Author Blog Challenge. Tia Silverthorne Bach, Crystal Lee, Heather Topham Wood, and Ms. Sandi Tuttle (she's working on her book, but I love her blog!).

So, utilizing YouTube may be more about reading your book to your audience while they enjoy looking at the cover (please, for the love of Pete, comb your hair - unlike me - if you're going to use your face). I'm planning to work something up so I don't have to be on-camera but can still hook readers with an interesting story. I'm a photographer, too, so maybe imagery is the way to go. Something that compliments the story being told.

Being a graphic designer who's in LOVE with Typography, here are two of my favorite YouTube videos:
Font Conference
Font Fight
Confession: I watched them again after I linked them. Hehe

What have your YouTube experiences been like?

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

Jo

Ouch! Your Pin Stuck Me! - Day Five WABC

Happy Tuesday! My good people, today's topic is Pinterest. Another prompt from the Winter Author Blog Challenge brings up a number of questions I'm glad to answer. Hey, we're all learning here, right? So sit back, relax, and drink your coffee as you read; beginning with today's prompt:

One of the newest and fastest growing social media platforms is Pinterest. Have you jumped on board? What kinds of images do (or could) you post that are related to your book or the topic of your book? What other kinds of images do you post? Are you linking each post back to your blog, website, or Amazon page? IF YOU’RE NOT USING Pinterest, what’s holding you back? Take a look at book marketer extraordinaire John Kremer’s Pinterest Boards. After perusing them, how MIGHT you use Pinterest to brand yourself and your book? Is it something you’re considering? Be sure to give us your Pinterest link.

I'm a member of Pinterest. You can find my boards here: WriteJoMichaels  I post a lot of my book covers and blog posts there, as well as images from blogs I love to visit. Like I do on my blog, I try to provide useful content beyond shoving my books in your face and screaming, "Buy my book!" While I'd love it if folks ran out and bought my books, I try not to shove it down their throats so much.

I have boards for useful things I find, quotes I love, and one that's just for The Best Boyfriend in the World. Things I want to share with him and loving sentiments get plastered all over that one. I just can't help myself!

I don't link everything back to my own blog or Amazon page because not everything I post there has to do with my stuff.

After looking through John Kremer's boards, I see he does the same but has a lot more boards than I do. I tend to run lean on Pinterest because it's a time suck if I allow it to be. I much prefer Facebook and Twitter.

I have an announcement to make! Thanks to a heads up by the lovely +Jo Harrison, I've enrolled in Smashwords' Read an EBook Week. From midnight tonight PST, my ebooks on Smashwords will all be on sale. The Abigale Chronicles will be $0.99 each (books 1 & 2), Yassa will be just $2.25, and The Indie Author's Guide to: Building a Great Book will be FREE. This promotion will run until 11:59pm on March 9th. Here's the link to my profile: Jo Michaels. I hope you all go peruse the selection catalog when it goes live tonight at midnight.


What have you found daunting about Pinterest?

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

Jo

LinkedOut - Day Four WABC

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Oooooh, I heard that groan! I know, another work week just began and you all want to go back to bed. Well, you can do that after you read this post! Ha! My topic for today is LinkedIn. I call it LinkedOut because I'm out of the loop on most of its glorious possibilities. But more on that after the prompt for today:

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Launched in May 2003, it has undergone many metamorphoses – the most recent of which involved retiring two of its most popular features, LinkedIn Events and LinkedIn Answers. Are you using LinkedIn to promote yourself as an author? Does your professional profile include or feature your writing? What is the best connection you’ve made through your involvement on LinkedIn? With whom would you still like to connect? Might LinkedIn be a good vehicle for making such a connection? What is your biggest question, frustration, or suggestion regarding LinkedIn? IF YOU’RE NOT USING LinkedIn, why not? Here’s a good overview of LinkedIn’s features. After perusing it, how MIGHT you use LinkedIn to help build your author profile? Is it something you’re considering? Be sure to give us the link to your LinkedIn profile.

I'm on LinkedIn, I just don't use it to its full potential. My profile has a lot of stuff on it, again, branded as my other sites are, but it hasn't been nearly as helpful as Facebook or Twitter for my promotional network.

Don't get me wrong, it's great for business connections! I just tend to focus more on connecting with readers than I do with businesses. Those readers are active on Facebook and Twitter, not LinkedIn. They're not business owners. My target market doesn't 'hang out' on LinkedIn.

My best connection over there is The Greatest Boyfriend in the World. He has one of the top 100 profiles on LinkedIn and sometimes reposts my stuff for me. I do have a complete listing of my books on my profile there and, I'd say the one book I have that would help the folks there is: The Indie Author's Guide to: Building a Great Book. Though it needs an update to include a couple of very handy tools I've run across in the last week.

No words of wisdom for others on how to use it, because I'm certainly LinkedOut.

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

Jo

Twit Tweet Twitter Tweeps - Day Three WABC

Happy Sunday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I bring you yet another awesome post from the Winter Author Blog Challenge. If you can't tell by the title of this post, today is all about Twitter! Yay! For all you folks who aren't familiar with the Twitterverse, you need to be. I'll tell you why in a moment! First, here's the prompt for today:

Are you on Twitter? Perhaps more than any of the other social media platforms, Twitter has developed its own language. Tweets. Twitterverse. Rewteet. Are you invested in the lingo? So how do you make a statement in 140 characters? Are you following more people or are more people following you? How do you decide whom to follow? Do you reciprocate and automatically follow back everyone who follows you? What kinds of things do you post? How often do you post? What advice do you have for those who are just getting started? IF YOU’RE NOT USING Twitter, go look at it (twitter.com) and either find your favorite author or put “author” in the search field and look around. What’s your take? Which tweets interest you? What would you post if you did decide to create an account? What’s the likelihood you’ll be following @AuthorBlogChal anytime soon? Be sure to give us the link.

I went on a rant two weeks ago about this very topic. Again, I'll address that in a moment. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Twitter, for me, is a lovely and convenient way of browsing what's going on in the world. Because I don't have to read long, drawn-out posts, I tend to absorb more information much more quickly than if I'm meandering through blogs or Facebook status updates. Of course I'm on Twitter. You can find me here: @WriteJoMichaels. And, like every other page associated with me, it follows my branding. A custom background and my logo instead of my face or books. Again, I wrote a post on this topic in my xXx series. It's called lOOk at YoUr tWitTeR. Go check it out. You won't be sorry.

Learning the language of Twitter wasn't difficult. Probably because, like Facebook, I've been a member with a profile since inception. You have to learn how to textspeak on Twitter because of the brevity. Words like: you, at, because, and, later, and see all become symbols or short snaps of themselves. You have to use: U, @, bcz, l8r, &, C to keep within the required allotment of letters.

Example time!
Normal: I went to see a movie yesterday! Here's a link to the trailer and my review (link here).
Tweet: I went 2 c a movie! Link 2 trailr & review: (link here) #moviereview #newrelease #reviewer

To shorten your link, you can use bit.ly. But somehow, your link needs to be less than ten characters or so. This allows space for what is known in the Twitterverse as hashtags. People searching for your content can go to the search function and type in #author and every tweet with that hashtag is magically displayed for them to peruse. Cool stuff, huh?

I often find new people to follow by searching: #author, #indieauthor, or #writer. I do not automatically follow every account that follows me and I use unfollow helper to see which accounts I followed a long time ago that no longer reciprocate. Trying to keep my margin down of following/follows me isn't easy. People drop off every day. Right now, I'm sitting at 1,221 I'm following and 1,082 following me. I try to keep it in the 200 difference range. Then I don't show up when people use unfollow helper to clean up their account in the huge margin section.

I usually post links to my blog there and have enjoyed being included in many e-zines for this reason. Curators like to pick up hastags like: #writetip or #amwriting for their content. I decide who to follow based on their number of tweets and the content therein. I enjoy reading tweets about writing, books, and life in general.

I use buffer to post to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. If you aren't using buffer or don't have the awesome buffer button on your blog, you should. It lets you set parameters for anyone that wants to share your content. Click on mine up at the top right-hand side and you'll see what I mean. It's easy to install to Blogger, too.

Time for directions!
Go to layout.
Click Add a Gadget.
Scroll down until you find HTML.
Go to the buffer button page and set your preferences.
Copy the code.
Paste the code into the box on Blogger.
Click save.

Easy peasy.

Now for my rant!
Please don't make it harder for me to follow you than it needs to be. Services like TrueTwit validation are great and all, but why do you care if I read what you tweet? Even if I'm a robot, it doesn't matter if I read your content! If you're concerned about following me back, stop being a lazy bum and go check out my account before you follow me. If you're concerned about spam, then if/when I send you a spammy message, delete it and unfollow me. When I get a TrueTwit request, I delete it and remove the user. I'm a busy gal.

A word of warning:
DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS SENT TO YOU VIA PM UNLESS YOU KNOW THE PERSON PERSONALLY. Even then, click with caution! Your pal's account may have been hacked. When in doubt, delete without!

That's the best advice I can give someone new to the Twitterverse. If I had to add anything, it would be to be sure and thank the folks who retweet your stuff or give it a favorite. It matters. Respond to welcoming Direct Messages (DMs) with something nice about the person you've followed. Every now and then, I get a lovely thank you for following message with a nice word about my blog or page. I respond to every one. It's relationship building 101. Why else would you have a Twitter account if not to connect with people?

Have you branded your Twitter to match your other platforms? Why/Why not?

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

Jo

Facebook Fanatics for Fun and Fancy - WABC Day Two

Happy Saturday, good people of the blogosphere!! Today's post is all about Facebook. How I use it, how others use it, and how you might want to think about using it! Still rolling with the Winter Author Blog Challenge, here's today's prompt:

Do you have a Facebook fan page for yourself/your book? How long ago did you start it? Did you do it yourself or have someone help you? Are you seeing lots of new people liking it? What kinds of things do you post? What have you found to be the most effective way to get fans/have people interact? IF YOU DON’T HAVE a Facebook fan page, tell us about the fan page for an author you know or like. Why do you like them and why did you “like” their page? What do you think they are doing well that you would like to model with your own page? Do you have a goal date for creating your own fan page? Be sure to give us the link.

I have a Facebook fan page. Sure, who doesn't, right? As everything associated with me, the author, it's writejomichaels. I started it over a year ago and I'm up to 452 'likes' as of today. In keeping with my personal branding, I created a custom cover image I update when I release a new book, and have my logo as my avatar. There's no doubt whose page you're on when you land there. I created it myself but used tips from a participant of last year's Author Blog Challenge, Liberty Montano, to tweak it. I still have to take time to customize my buttons, but I'll get there!

I post things related to my books and my blog on my Jo Michaels Facebook page. I occasionally post a funny photo or saying I come across, but I make sure it's always writerly. I have another page as well, but we'll get to that one in a moment.

Something I cannot stress enough: DON'T make a fan page for your books! Unless you have ONE book that sells 50M copies, how the hell are you gonna keep up with all of them when you have twenty (or fifty) books out there? Make an author fan page. One. That way, all your fans are in one place. Think about it. If you have even three pages, with two hundred fans each, that's potentially three hundred you could've had for just one. And fans are busy people. They have a billion posts scrolling over their page to sift through. If you post the same thing more than once, they'll unlike something. I know I do.

My favorite author pages are those that are attractive, well written, and the author is well spoken when they post there. I can't tell you what a turnoff it is when I go to a page and the cover image is grainy, blurry, or badly put together. I click away quickly and vow never to return!

My other page is related to my editing services and site. It's indiebooksgonewild. We're a team of editors on a mission to make indie books what they were meant to be. Click on over to our site and see what people are saying! Our Facebook page is branded the same as our site, to provide continuity and recognition.

My xXx series of posts goes into how to clean up your Facebook page and keep the content relevant to your readers. If you didn't snatch that PDF yet, what are you waiting for? Go get it! It's free to download and keep forever! Feel free to redistribute it.

Getting folks to interact with these pages is pretty easy. I ask questions, do little giveaways, and comment on other peoples' stuff as my page. That's really important to gain a following. If all the interaction is one-sided, people tend to be turned off.

I've found having a Facebook page to be a delightful experience, and I enjoy getting to meet new people via this branch of social media.

What do you think? Are you branded across all your social media?

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

Jo

Blogging for Education - WABC Day One

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today begins my journey through the Winter Author Blog Challenge. For the next fifteen days, we'll be discussing social media. The topic for today is: Your Blog. So sit back, relax, and let me take you on a little journey!

First off, here's the prompt for today:
Tell us about your blog. How long have you been blogging? Do you write on a regular schedule? Do you plan your topics in advance or write as the spirit moves you? What was your favorite post? At which post do you look back and wonder what you were thinking when you wrote it? What has been the best feedback you’ve ever received? Have you ever written anything that was perceived as controversial, though you didn’t intend it that way? What tips would you offer other author bloggers?

I've been blogging here at my Jo Michaels ~ Author blog for a little over a year. Before this one, I had a couple of others. They were much more personal and discussed things like design, collectables, and life. One of them I can't access anymore but you can poke around it here: The Collectible Guru  The others were all removed/shut down by me. So, I've been blogging for a long time but never with any direction or focus.

Now, I blog about writing, editing, and books. I update M-F at around 9a.m. My topics are rarely planned, but I do take requests from readers now and again to fill holes on my convenient link page. How did that come about? Well, I was on another blog, which shall remain anonymous, searching for a post I'd read there before, for another look, and used the search function. I never found the post I was looking for. I starting thinking how great it would be to have a nifty list for my visitors so they can bookmark it and find what they're looking for quickly. I categorized it to make hunting just a little bit simpler.

My favorite post of all time was a series I did on looking at your social media and your marketing materials. I did some funky stuff with the titles of the posts and bound them all into a handy PDF my visitors could download and keep for reference later on. It was called lOOk at YoUr xXx. I enjoyed it because I love helping people discover their brand, using my design know-how to educate, and make marketing run more smoothly. If you're a blogger, and you likely are if you're in the WABC challenge, please take a look at this post: lOOk at YoUr bLog. You won't regret taking the five minutes to read it.

A post I can't believe I wrote, for many reasons I intend to keep to myself, is this one: Loss. It's a good post and an interesting short story, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I read it now.

I got great feedback on my blog back in December when I invited a number of indie authors to pitch their books to me for a review. It was a ton of fun and I may do it again this year.

People probably thought this post was controversial: Fact or Crap I meant it to make people stop and think. To discard what they've been told and open their minds to new possibilities. My books are far more controversial than my blog and are the reason I use a nom de plume.

Tips for other bloggers: Get out there and meet people! Follow their blogs, interact with them, and keep your own blog focused on one thing. Don't talk about how awful your day was or how hard life is. We know; we're alive, too! Everyone struggles sometimes, but not everyone throws it out there for the world to see. If you do, you'll find people don't really care. They're dealing with their own crap. You'll lose your readership if you don't provide some kind of useful content.

I'm happy to be back with some familiar faces, and delighted to have the opportunity to meet new ones! Welcome, all, to the first post of the Winter Author Blog Challenge! If you're an author and haven't signed up with us yet, get to it! Go here: http://authorblogchallenge.wordpress.com/register/ and just fill out the form already!

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

Jo

Whose Who was Wittier than Who's Whom

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! As you've probably guessed from the title of this post, today we'll be talking about the words: Whose, Who, Who's, and Whom. They all have different meanings and you need to know which to use in a sentence and when. Lot's of Ws today! So, grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

As always, we'll start with the definition of each:
Whose:  /ho͞oz/ Adjective 1.) Belonging to or associated with which person: "whose round is it?"; "a minivan drove by and Juliet wondered whose it was". 2.) Of whom or which (used to indicate that the following noun belongs to or is associated with the person or thing mentioned in the...: "he's a man whose opinion I respect"

Who:  /ho͞o/ Pronoun 1.) What or which person or people: "who is that woman?". 2.) Used to introduce a clause giving further information about a person or people previously mentioned: "the mouse who married the playboy".

Who's:  /ho͞oz/ Contraction 1.) Who is: "who's that?". 2.) Who has: "who's done the reading?".

Whom:  /ho͞om/ Pronoun 1.) Used instead of “who” as the object of a verb or preposition: "whom did he marry?".


You can see they all have different purposes.

Use the word whose when you aren't asking who is but to who something belongs. Look at it this way, if you're constructing a sentence and you insert who's, see if you can change it to who is and it still make sense. If not, change the word to whose.

Make sure you can't use who's before using whose and you'll never go wrong.

Who is related to the subject and whom is related to the object.

I love whom I love. If you're a fan of The Last Unicorn, you'll get this reference.

Grammar Girl (love that website, by the way) has a great quick and dirty tip: If you can use the word him in place of whom, you have the right word. They both end in M.

I hope this post has been a wee bit helpful in reminding you of something we all too often forget - I know I do!

As of tomorrow, we'll be stepping off the usual path for this blog. I've joined the Winter Author Blog Challenge. It'll run for fifteen days and we'll be discussing Social Media! You don't want to miss that! If you're an author (or want to be) you can join us here: http://authorblogchallenge.wordpress.com/register/



I met some fantastic people through this challenge last year and I'm looking forward to meeting more this year. So, come on down and sign your butt up!

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

Jo