Flickr photo courtesy of Via Mio

The symptoms of this deadly and narcissistic disease include the following:

1. Author does not believe they need to continue doing outreach after their book has been out for six months, because everyone should already know who they are and desperately want the book.

2. Author does not think it’s necessary to register their profile on new niche sites that might elevate their visibility and help them reach out to a new community of folks.

3. Author says their online guru “manages all that web 2.0 stuff and they don’t need to keep track of it or know what is being posted.”

4. Author believes the term “online guru” really means something.

5. Author is too busy to thank any bloggers for covering their book.

6. Author doesn’t want to send out hand-signed copies for book giveaways because book give-aways are only for lessor authors.

7. Author spends time blogging snarky posts on their blog about how they are the smarter than everyone else.

8. Author never responds to comments on their own blog or even bothers to link to outside bloggers.

9. Author thinks the media, the blogosphere and the twitter denizens will follow them JUST BECAUSE.

10. Author believes book marketers who tell him/her it’s all about impressions, click-throughs and long copy – not about valuable content, elevating the discussion and empowering the vertical.

If you are felled by any of these symptoms, please make certain to address them immediately so they do not become a full-fledged online affliction.

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2. Understand that I don’t need a publicist, mygrandma or even my publisher to work on my behalf to get coverage for my books! I can compile a list of blogs and start participating way before my book is out!

3. Take to heart that it is an author’s job to help publicize their book.

4. Get on Twitter and start tweeting.

5. Remember that if I’m going to build a FACEBOOK fan page I’m not done working with it just because I built it. I have to post to it at least three times a week and make those messages lively, dynamic and not marketing blabbity-blah.

6. Do a search for book awards and submit my book to every single one of them that I’m eligible for.

7. Take my book and page by page I would highlight short tweets I could repurpose on Twitter, and identify what ideas I can use for blog posts to help drive more interest about my books.

8. Stop believing that by getting a ton of “friends” to compile a bunch of empty bonuses together that those are going to take my book to #1 on Amazon.

9. Commit that I’ll be conversant on the news as it relates to ideas in my book and commit that I won’t try to get my book to fit every news angle.

10. Commit to not growing hits, but reaching new communities with valuable insight and the goal of long-lasting relationships.

11. Have an active profile on Linkedin.com, participate, offer good insight and join the groups that care most about my book content.

12. Stop spreading myself too thin across 8 billion social media profiles.

13. Use Google. Use Google. Use Google. To search for new opportunities for my book.

14. Pro-actively write a reading group guide and save that as a downloadable PDF that I offer for free on my site.

15. Thank every single reporter, blogger etc. that notes my book each time they do it.

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2. In the aforementioned stories, highlight all the adjectives they use in the story and you’ll get a very good feel for their particular slant in stories and the publication’s slant as well.

3. If they are very well-known journalists, then take the time to read interviews they’ve done about writing, their own work and their lives. This is an excellent way to make a human connection. Remember, no matter what your PR firm has told you, journalists are HUMANS too.

4. Go through each story and highlight the experts they’ve sourced in the story. This will teach you what they look for, what caliber of expert they reach out to and how you might position your own thought leadership around this. By the way, don’t create inauthentic content via blogging or otherwise to just “snag” a journalist’s attention. They’re much smarter than that and really good journalists are very intuitive and work hard to find the best possible source.

5. RESPECT, find out what it means to the journalist. Don’t stalk them, don’t email them incessantly, don’t consistently denigrate their angle on a story. If there is something you can add, then by all means add it to your blog post about the story. Add some new insight. We can all help each other to elevate the writing and meaning.

6. Don’t ever expect or think you deserve coverage. It’s not enough to just decide you’re a great expert or big thinker. You have to work harder than that. Don’t even make it about a journalist doing a story on you. Make it about you doing a story for your own community that engenders new discussion. Journalists are always looking for new angles to old stories!

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One of the most important things to ask in the new year is, “What movie is my website playing to visitors?”

What that means is to really identify the changes that are driving this new social media technology usage and ensure  you are doing the very best you can to employ those tools as well.

No matter what you are doing in terms of your site, if you’re not incorporating some form of social media with it, then  you really are just starring in a silent movie at this point.

I picked the Buster Keaton clip because in watching it I realized that in many ways the tumbles and turns he takes are similar to how many of the authors and thought leaders I work with feel when faced with the task of social media.

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.  And as many posts over these five years on my blog have noted, this is a long-term investment you’re making. You’re at an incredible place in the Internet. Having been on the Web since 1996, I can tell you that what we are witnessing is a communication revolution and there is still plenty of time to find your place and your community on the Web.

Information for how to start your own social media mojo can be found freely on the Web by reading key blogs that help you understand how Web 2.0 works and how to tap into its power.

Read David Meerman Scott, Mashable.com, DailyBlogTips, Problogger.net, SocialMediaToday.com and others that empower how you market your messages and how to use online tools transparently.

Keep thinking, “From Book to Brand to Beyond!”

The key is to start somewhere and move forward one step at a time. You can do it!

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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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 Here are Six Ways to Expand Your 2.0 Sociability:

1. Create at least three profiles to start with on the Web: LinkedIn.com, Twitter.com and Google Profile .

2. Use Alltop.com as a great reference for how different blogs can be and how you might create new ideas or content when you launch your own blog.

3. Read Mashable.com for superb 2.0 latest news and also follow them on Twitter.

4. Use Ping.fm to update all your social networks at once.

5. Check out what Stribe can do – lets you create your own social network on any website. (it’s in beta right now.)

6. Use TweetMic if you want to do audio versions of your tweets. This is really cool – I’m going to play with it today and see how well my southern accent goes across Twitter. :>) The latest version just got released on September 27th.

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2. Read other bloggers – you’ll be inspired and it helps you understand what you can also add a topic that has not yet been covered.

3. Don’t spend all your time on Twitter, but also think about how the things you are tweeting about can be expanded into a longer blog format.

4. Use Google Alerts  to create writing prompts for you that help you blog effectively on the topics you want to cover in your blog.

5. Don’t waste time blogging about topics you’re not passionate about.

6. Don’t buy into blog-envy. It keeps you from writing what you need to share and keeps all of us from reading your great wisdom.

7. Stop worrying about how many comments your blog posts are generating and start focusing on if you’re producing good content. Keep in mind you’re building your own mini-publication or magazine and that a blog post is not just about producing comments.

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Ok, I just stuck that video up there because it made me laugh. It also reveals a deeper question to ponder about product endorsements/reviews and how they can quickly turn to broken painful shells in one’s marketing plan. (Or at the bottom of one’s bathtub.)

Now, back to the topic of the day, blogroll-scrubbing. I recommend that you take time out about every three months and scrub your blogroll.

Does this entail real soap or painful walnut shells? Nope.

Here are five easy steps to take to do a good blogroll scrubbing.

1. Hit each blogroll link, and make sure the blogs are still lively (or even alive.)

2. Make certain they still have the content you want to refer your readers to.

3. If there are blogs that aren’t updated anymore then take them off your blog and let them rest in peace in the blog cemetery.

4. If you have blogs on your roll that no longer reflect your mission, your standards or your focus, then take those off as well.

5. For every two blog links you scrub, find one new one to take its place.

Keep your blog roll timely and always remember it’s a virtual library shelf for your blog visitors. You don’t want any resources or links up there that won’t be helpful to your community.

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What follows are five tips for creating your blog editorial calendar:

1. Pick five to seven general topics in your frame of expertise that you know you can generate good content with.

2. Brainstorm on each topic for 20 minutes. Write down every single thing that comes to mind under each of those content headers.

3. Look at the newly created content under those headers and divide it by days of the week. Remember if you can blog at least three days a week it is invaluable to your blog’s visibility.

4. Take the content you have and see if you can break it up into Friday tips, or Monday takeaways. In other words, establish an editorial pattern for your blogging. If you want to always blog on Fridays about how to find inner creativity, then that would always be a Friday post and you can create tons of future content around that specific topic.

5. If there are areas of your content that seemed much harder to brainstorm on then you’ll know which ones you need to do more research for and find outside sources as well as your own insight to incorporate into the blog posts.

Bonus Tip: Spend 30 minutes a day three times a week on blogging and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your blog starts building long-term community.

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If you truly want to understand why blogging is powerful, how it is not going away and why you should be blogging then read this article.  

The article was penned by fantastic journalist Paul Boutin and features insight from Damon Darin, The New York Times Technology Editor.

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1. Instantaneous gratification after you’ve finished a post.

2. No writers’ block allowed or “blog block.” If you don’t have something to blog about – then take time out to thank or link to all those other peer blogs who inspire you.

3. Freedom from an editor or story slant – although note, this never means your blog should be sloppy and not congruent.

4. E-meeting tons of other bloggers who are supportive and active in the blogosphere

5. Reaching out to potential readers and establishing a rapport.

6. Interviewing other bloggers

7. Writing anything keeps you creative and focused. It’s too easy as a writer, to get lazy and not challenge yourself. Writing blogs keeps you challenged!

8. Hoping someone will comment on your blog. (Someone…anyone…Mom?)

9. Getting feedback that you’re on the right track and you’re helping folks view the world at a better vantage point.

10. Link Love – it’s fun and festive and you get to meet other link-minded folks!

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I excerpted this statement from the post,” Not sharing all the details upfront about an upcoming campaign when inviting bloggers to participate is a very good thing.”

Read the whole post and see where you fall on bloggers, PR and how best to reach out to them. I think it’s never a good idea to start out with a mystery when engaging in a collaboration with anyone, but would love to hear your take on it too! Notice I use the word collaboration. Bloggers even if they are being paid to be “brand identity enthusiasts” still need to feel a part of team,  and certainly are due the respect and transparency of anyone else on the team.

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