If however, you do understand that social media is vibrant, ever-increasing and valuable then keep reading!

Today’s lesson is about pitching and social media. What follows are some tips for you to employ if you really want to find the best possible places to pitch yourself, your products or your brand online.

1. Don’t pitch on social media platforms where you don’t have a presence. Set up your Facebook Fan page, your blog, your Twitter account and shine up your LinkedIn.com profile as well.

2. Don’t push out generic pitches to anyone and everyone on these accounts.

3. Do your research and don’t mass pitch lists of folks. This is really a no-no on social media platforms.

4. Don’t write your pitches with you in mind, write them with the producer, blogger or journalist in mind.

5. Practice makes perfect. There is something incredibly valuable about learning to pitch a brand or product in less than 140 characters.

6. Don’t pitch a journalist or a blogger more than three times if you’ve not yet had a response from them.

7. If they ask you to stop pitching them – really do.

8. Don’t twitter-stalk journalists or bloggers.

9. If you cannot fit your pitch into 140 characters or less, rework it until you can.

10. Always follow-up with a thank you if a blogger or twitterer shares your news with their readership.

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When it comes to Twitter, if you’re an author and you’re just starting out, one of the ways to find people to follow is to use the Wefollow tool. If you hit this link, you can see the Wefollow books list – http://wefollow.com/twitter/books . These are Twitter book reviewers, publishers, and media people who write about books or work in the book industry. This is a free tool that you can use anytime to find some more book folks to follow.

If you want to find more libraries on the Web a great resource to use is GalleyCat’s listings at this link – http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/best-library-people-on-twitter_b11945 .

The other important thing to remember as an author on Twitter is that you use your tweets to provide strong visibility for your book. Too often authors are letting others tweet on behalf of them or focus too much on sales jargon instead of tweeting about the book and why readers would want to identify with it.

Another tip we give authors during their book signing tours is to make sure they highlight and follow the bookstores that they’re appearing at on their Twitter feed. This is a great reciprocal way to acknowledge and support the independent brick and mortar stores that are supporting authors in incredible ways.

To find bookstores who are twittering – see this link on Wefollow – http://wefollow.com/twitter/bookstore .

If you do a book signing at a brick and mortar store – take a picture and post it out across all your social networks as part of your support of the store as well as your book. And make sure that you tweet out your date and time for signing prior to the event. Thank the bookstore via Twitter as well.

Make sure your PR agency is also keeping up with the latest tools online and offline so that you’ll have the competitive advantage! Ask them if they are open to you sending them blogs that you want them to reach out to. Ask them if they pitch to Twitter book reviewers and online blogs/sites. Ask them how often and how many and see if you can see samples of links and posts they’ve garnered on behalf of their authors.

Above all, use the best of online and offline tools to make sure your book comes out on top!

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1. Write news-worthy blog posts that link to major media stories and give your take on the story. Share your expertise in brief bullet-style sentences in regard to a specific media topic or story and then link that to a breaking news story. (I mean really link it, hyperlink the news story in your blog post!)

2. Put Google alerts on the blogs of the publications you most want to be covered in and make sure that at least once a week you’re posting a comment to a breaking story on their blog as well. Post authentic, honest comments that are not self-serving but add to the discussion.

3. Put Google alerts on the top two competitors/thought-leaders in your vertical and start compiling a list of publications and journalists that interview them. These are the same journalists and publications you want to make sure you’re reaching out to via social media and your blog.

BONUS! – I posted these links on my Twitter account but just in case you don’t have them. If you want to get a great free list of the media on Twitter (that takes just a bit of work to compile), you can go to the site Mediaite.com and hit their PowerGrid link and get the Twitter addresses of each person they list. (Oy vey, does it take some time? Yes! But will it save you some PR retainer fees and move you one step closer to the media? Yes!)

The new media person I’m following on Twitter is Willie Geist – http://twitter.com/williegeist1 , because I love Morning Joe and he and Mika both inspire me. Joe does too!

Now go and find the media masses!

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Promote Your Book With Social Media

Teleclass :: September 28, 2010

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Today I flew out from San Francisco after speaking to the Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association luncheon yesterday on ”Online PR and Social Media,” and spent the flight listening to the Dead on my iPhone.

This was shortly after having coffee in Sausilito this morning with my friend Ann Matranga at The Depot. We sat outside and watched the kids play in Lytton Square which Bill Graham helped create and we talked about the Dead.

So it seems synchronistic, speaking of the Dead that David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan today announced, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from The Most Iconic Band in History (Wiley, 2010).

There are so many reasons why this book is cool, but I have to be honest and say I love Chapter 8: Encourage Eccentricity and the whole focus on the fans and marketing.

I love it because it reveals how a company or band or individual can tap into the power of differentiation and eccentricity to make their way in the world.  Not only can this bring you success, but it’s the right thing to do!

To quote from that chapter, “The Grateful Dead teaches us that we are all eccentric in some ways. Smart companies understand eccentricities and create a market from them.”

I also like this from the book,  ”Deadheads are your neighbors, coworkers and friends.” As a dancing bear tattooed Deadhead I’ll have to confess, I know the deadheads, the deadheads are friends of mine, and I am proud to still be one!

As Bill Walton says in the foreword of the book, “Like other daring visionaries The Grateful Dead rejected conventional wisdom.”

That’s why we are still dancing – and that’s really how you can build a fan base that even after all these years is still trading Dead stories, tapes, t-shirts and mementos of their time drifting with the Dead.

So any marketing lesson that Scott and Halligan share in this book you definitely should tune into.

Go see David’s post all about the book tour at his site.

And check out his new tie-dye pic on the site too. Wonderful.

Meanwhile, me and my dancing bear will be digging the marketing nuggets of this extraordinary and timely book on marketing!

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If you’re ready to truly have independence and thrive both online and offline, then you need to also declare your independence from naysayers.

You know who they are and  you have to compassionately say goodbye to them. They are not only the people in your life that are always the first to say no to a new idea, but also your own negative beliefs about your brand, your offerings or your value to the world.

Does this mean once you say goodbye to them you don’t have to do any more work? That things will just happen? Absolutely not. To make anything happen in this world, you absolutely must be scrappy, persistent and unyielding in your desire to attain your dream.

If you want to attain the dream of being more visible online then you should:

1. Stop listening to people who say social media tools like Twitter and Linkedin.com are useless.

2. Stop listening to viral marketing agencies and PR firms who tell you the only way to get your message out is through bait and switch content and endless affiliate marketing spam techniques.

3. Build your thought leadership online by sharing your insights freely, honestly and often. Stop waiting for people to give you permission to share your expert knowledge. Start providing your community a way to freely access your content on your blog/website in conjunction with other social media networks.

4. Stop listening to people who promise a quick method way to gaining thousands of followers on social network communities with very little real work or effort on your part. There is no quick, easy way to community-building, start one click at a time and keep going.

5. Stop buying into the idea that only a giant PR or marketing firm can do conversational sweeps, define social media touchpoints, or find relevant communities for you to participate in. You can do alot of this work on your own and you can collaborate with the agencies if you do determine to work with them.

6. Stop letting the fear of social media and all those folks who say it can’t be used effectively keep you from you USING it. If you choose not to let your voice be heard through online channels, then you’re missing out on the opportunity to truly effect change in the world.

No go and be vibrantly independent!

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Friday is a good day for posting a few sites you should know about and tools you should be using as an author. So enjoy and think kindly of me as the temperature in Austin is heading toward the upper nineties!

1. If you’ve not yet registered to publish your blog on Kindle then you should do so today. Here is a great and easy way to do it on Squidoo.  I have to say too that Seth Godin mentioned this in his incredible talk at IBPA this year so YOU really should do it!

2. If I were an online book publicist (which I sometimes am) then I would feel incredibly happy to share the link to the Book Bloggers Convention attendees and tell you that you don’t need an online publicist to build your own book blog pitch list from those blogs.

2A. Don’t copy the whole list and then just spam pitch them. Take time to read their blogs, see if your book is a good fit and contact them one at a time. (Of course one would hope this is what PR flaks would do too, but alas, I’m not sure they are as smart as you!)

3. Gee, I wish all those cool blog posts I have could somehow be converted to newspaper-style format, so I could be my own mini-me publisher. Hmm. How can I do that? Try Feedjournal.

4. If I were an author I would be using Muckrack.com to find what journalists are tweeting in my vertical/topic and I would make a list and follow them on my Twitter account.

5. If I were someone who is always trying to figure out other ways to use Twitter (and I am), I might start following the publications I hope to be featured in and anytime they tweet out a new article link, be one of the first ones to go the publication site and comment on the article. If I do it often enough they might even think about using me as an expert for a future story. If I do it without marketing blather and authentically then at the very least I’ve created a way for folks to find me and perhaps visit my blog.

6. If I wanted to save money on news clipping services and use the Google alerts I set up in an even more powerful way, then I would convert all the places I’m mentioned or featured online by using HTML to PDF converter for free.

7. If I had an intern and wanted to be booked on radio shows, I might have them go through this list and see how many are a good fit for my topic and who the producers for the shows are by visiting the web links to the actual station. (Ok, this means you have to do a little bit of sleuthing but is that so wrong?!)

8. If I were an author hoping to get a book review or a writer wanting a book deal I would follow the folks listed under books here.

Now go and conquer all things Web and may the “book-Force” be with you.

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When I work with clients on Web visibility, I define exactly what we want their social media Economy of Effort plan to engender. I define Economy of Effort in this way – taking the best content and brainshare you can provide and using it in the most efficient and economical way possible to reach your communities through online channels.

In the hype, over-hype, more hype and master hype that the social media “experts” are urging you to buy into about social media profiles, they forget to pass on the real truth that if you can’t keep up with them all, then not one of these tools serve you well.

If you’re diluting your message across hundreds or frankly even five or more social media platforms, fan pages, blogs, twitterIDs – then you’re not utilizing economy of effort in social media. And your return on investment in doing all this work will be very small.

You can’t conquer all communities, you can’t be the answer for every single question on the Web, and you can’t be active on every social media platform. And trust me, you don’t want to be either.

It’s not about the masses, it’s not about how many people are following you on Twitter, it’s about the quality, the congruency and the resources they require from you uniquely to help them.

It’s not about how many comments your blog posts are getting – it’s about setting up a structure for you to blog effectively, even if it’s just once weekly, with valuable and integrity-based content. It’s about using content to its best purpose through all your online profiles and not spending hours generating tweets, blog posts, status updates or weeping over your keyboard because you can’t possibly think of one other “tweet-worthy” thing to say.

Instead, it is about using your efforts wisely. Pick three goals and focus your online efforts toward those.

(HINT: Make it a goal to attract journalists, media and peer publications to your blog or your profiles, so you become a valued expert for them, without the need for PR gatekeepers, agencies and pitches full of pablum to mass media lists.)

Keep in mind all your goals should focus on supporting your community with grace and respect for their time as well as yours. Your community is always more important than you. Your community, by this point, is most likely sick of being interrupted by your Flickr, YouTube, blog posts and incessant tweeting.

We would all be served better if we decided to incorporate what Einstein said, “Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

How to do that?

1. Out of clutter find simplicity – Start slow with your social media efforts. I suspect many of you are already suffering from what I’ve termed “Post-Traumatic Social Media Disorder” and so for you, I would advise you “socialdown” immediately. I know it sounds hard, but you can do it. If you’ve got twenty places you’re juggling online, reduce them to five. Message them so they know where you’ll be and why you’re doing it, and believe me, the ones who really value you will “socialdown” right along with you. In fact, you’ll inspire them to take this step themselves.

Think of it in terms of downsizing, social media belt tightening so to speak. There’s not enough time in the day to do everything well, and keep our work life balance where it should be, so choose to no longer be trapped by ”tiny shiny social media” tools.

2. From discord find harmony – Incorporate a strategic and congruent plan for your brand and your online conversations. Not just superficial junk, make sure that every single thing you’re doing counts for something. Not only counts, but brings you harmony with your community. And most importantly, brings you harmony in your life. Stop being in front of the computer 24/7. Get off the Blackberries, iPhones, laptops, YouTube and walk outside.

3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity – I feel your pain. I feel your panic about what you might be missing out there if you’re not online all the time and you’re not on all these platforms. That difficulty – that pain- will pass. Give yourself six months and you’ll recognize that it’s nice to see the sun again, it’s nice to not be in constant social media panic mode, it’s nice to have a plan and follow it. Congruently, abundantly and with boundaries.

Sieze the opportunities, I promise you’ll find, if you’ll choose to set yourself free from being everywhere online.

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1. Make your site a mini-magazine issue of thought-leadership. Look at your site as though it’s a real publication for both your peers and the media to source for news. Build an editorial calendar for all your online tools including Twitter, Linkedin.com (status updates), Facebook and make sure you’re congruent in your content and your expertise.

2. Make sure you’re linking outside your blog to other news sources and stories by journalists. As a recovering technology journalist (1996-2004) I can tell you that all journalists love to have their names or links to stories, surface in Google alerts and they really love to show those to their editor as well.  You’re also giving them new sources of experts to look at when you write about stories they’ve covered and what your take is on the story.

3. Build a set of Google alerts on topics you’re most interested in and let those Google alerts give you ideas for new pieces of content on your blog, your Twitter and your Facebook pages. Don’t just stop at  posting those story links, go and comment on the stories at the sites they’re on and that will help you with building link-love to your site.

4. Don’t purposely be contrarian to the news. Be the person who lends a new angle or insight to a story.

5. Make sure you’re reading the online and offline magazines in your vertical and studying how their stories are created, who they source and where you can contribute bylines.

6. Have a website that encompasses a Web 2.0 press ready page. This includes your TwitterID, Facebook, Linkedin.com, YouTube channel and one pager about your expertise.

7. Put Google alerts on journalists’ names so you can build a clip file of what they’re covering and who they write for. More and more the online media is made up of freelance writers so don’t leave them out of the mix.

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REALITY: There are tons of absolutely free and  in-depth social media  help sites. If  you spend just one hour a week on them, you can learn everything you need to do.

REALITY EXTRA: You cannot possibly learn any of this stuff by just reading – you have to start doing!

5  Sites That Give You LOTS of GOOD FREE Social Media MOJO:

1. For Facebook turn to Allfacebook.com – superb, updated daily and tons of tips to instantly use.

2. Mashable.com - one of my faves on all things social media. Fantastic resource.

3. Twittip.com - Twitter tips you can instantly use.

4. Linkedin.com – read their blog! You get the insider scoop on the latest, like today they’re showing folks how to reorder your profile information. Tons of guest articles too. Cool beans!

5. SocialMediaToday.com – another daily must read.

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I think the site is a superb resource for finding actionable and interesting information about the leaders in tv, radio, tv execs, producers, radio hosts etc.  What’s interesting about the site is how it tracks the people who are making news for all of us and their online buzz, metrics etc. Bookmark the site and visit it often.

And if you’re still not sold on online profile/presence and why it’s important, let this site give you another kick toward embracing your online visibility!

You can also find some great Twitter handles on the site and take note how folks are using online tools.

Check out the brilliant Jack Gray (producer for Anderson Cooper), he tops the list of Twitter followers at 1,065,148 Twitter followers. It’s interesting to note how many on the TVExec list don’t have a Twitter profile. (YET!)

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1. Check out this group of book bloggers and book reviewers at Ning.com.

2. Check out Readinggroupguides.com and for as little as 100.00 you can submit your book in their ReadingGroup Guides. I’ve had several authors do this and find their books picked up by groups!

3. For new inspiration on how to market your book – check out what Seth Godin is doing for his latest book.

4. Create your own YouTube channel. Here’s an easy to follow primer on how to do it.

5. Start writing blog posts that can be repurposed as articles and offer them to other like-minded sites and blogs.

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