Image by luc legay via Flickr

Here are some new ways you can empower your profile, enlarge your community and GET MORE SOCIAL!

1. At every single book signing you do make sure you not only sign your book, but what about putting your @TWITTERID right underneath your signature?

2. Revive and revamp your signature line in your email – make sure you include your TWITTERID, YOUR LINKEDIN profile, your FACEBOOK FAN PAGE and a link to your BLOG. Also make sure that you put your TWITTERID and your LINKEDIN ID on your business cards.

3. Encourage people to tweet during your booksignings. Create a hashtag that is your book title, or topic and give it out at the start of the booksigning.

4. Still think you can’t find media on Twitter? WRONG! Check out this great link for all the public media.

5. Always mention your TWITTERID in media interviews – say you would love for people to connect to you via Twitter.

6. Subscribe to the enewsletters from media, print and online magazines you want to be featured in. Make sure when you get the enewsletter you take time to then go to the site and immediately comment on a story. By doing this authentically you are not only providing more insight, but providing the reporter or freelance journalist another possible expert for a future story. Journalists don’t always want to quote the same sources for every story. Respect their work and they will in turn count on you to add new ideas in future stories.

7. What? You don’t have time to source actionable data on Muckrack.com? That’s crazy! You aren’t seriously thinking your PR person is doing this all day every day to find new journos on twitter? Peeshaw. Start doing it yourself.

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For someone (me) who is always trying to balance the online with the offline, I feel your social media junkie pain.

You Just Might Be A Social Media Junkie if…

 1. You keep dropping a note in your collection plate at church instead of a donation. The note says, “Dear Reverend Hill – why have you not yet started a Facebook fan page for Jesus?”

2. Your wife wants you to be in therapy with her, but you’ve told her you will only do it if you can find a therapist who can dispel his/her wisdom in 140 characters or less. (length of a Twitter)

3. You’ve told your immediate and extended family that the best place for them to find out what you’re up to is on Tweetdeck. 

4. Instead of an emergency phone number on your children’s school information – you’ve posted your TwitterID account and told them that is the best way for them to reach you. (The school secretary in particular does not seem hip to the tweeting.) 

5. You volunteered for the Parent Teacher Organization group but only on a virtual level and have promised you will send tweets during the school carnival when the principal is dunked. 

6. Your Mom closed her Facebook account, because she was getting too many Fan messages from you asking her to join your Fan page. 

7. Your husband has a Google alert set up on your name and occasionally searches Google images so he can see what you looked like before you became part of your office chair. 

8. Your neighborhood bunko group has unfriended you on Facebook because they don’t much cotten to you sending status updates like, “I just kicked everyone’s butt in bunko. I’m the bunko queen and these women can’t roll a triple six if it killed them.” 

9. You tell people you and Barack Obama are very close virtually because you joined his Facebook Fan page. 

10. You found your Honors English teacher (Mrs. Whitley) on Facebook and you’re sending her blog posts to redline for you (because after all once a teacher, always a teacher.) 

11. Your husband has banned twittering, facebooking, linkedin-ing from the bedroom. 

12. Your pug starts a very high pitched noise when he sees you reach for your iPhone.

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Wonderfully funny and incredibly talented people abound and the dinner this evening could not have been more hilarious. If you’ve not read anything by Laretta LaRoche, please change that and get her books.

She was the keynote speaker this evening and really delivered! Also Tim Bete (past director of Erma Conference) spoke and he was truly funny as well.

The room tonight was packed full and what a great honor to be among so many talented people.

I’m nervous about presenting tomorrow but I’m wearing my tweet-proof vest so all should be well, plus I’ve got to say the spirit here feels incredibly kind and generous.  I’m going to try very hard to have the audience at my first “Hello, Ya’ll.”

I also got to hang out with Sam Horn, who I really count as one of my mentors and just think it is incredible gift to know. You should also check out Sam’s books!

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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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1. Journalists are curious and under very tight deadlines. You can write all the content you want on your blog, Twitter account, Facebook but if you don’t work at making it interesting, enticing and engaging they won’t source it.

2. Who the top reviewers  Amazon are for your genre. Get them yourself by doing a search on Amazon or actually just hit this link where you’ll find the list.

3. What journalists to follow on Twitter. You can find them on your own by hitting sites like Muckrack.com and using Google search to search Twitter IDs.

4. How to engage your fans on Facebook – the secret is post often, post thoughtful content, post responses to comments and just when you think you’ve done enough – post even more.

5. What the names of producers are at major television shows. Ok, here’s the thing, the PR firm won’t tell you even if you do pay them, so one thing you can do is join a site like MediaBistro.com and watch the comings and goings in news staff and compile your list from there. You can also use google search and search on terms like, “Producer Anderson Cooper show” or “NPR Morning Edition producer.”

6. Who the top bloggers or online book reviewers are in your book’s genre. For this one use Google, Technorati and do searches like “book blog reviews” or “cookbook reviews” or “business book review”. You can also apply this to Twitter searches as well.

7. That you matter. Too often we forget that our ideas, our expertise can contribute something greater to the discussion and sometimes our PR firm can forget that as well. Make your ideas actionable, news-peg worthy, future focused and you will find media that is interested in it.

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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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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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Twas the night before social media, when all through the Web

Not a Facebooker was statusing, no new updates in sight.

The tweets all tweeted on the Twitter with care,

In hopes that St. Click soon would be there.

 The 24/7 social media gurus nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of new DIGGs danced through their heads.

And Mamma-Web in her Bing-chief and I, computer in lap.

Had just settled down for a long tweet free nightcap.

When out on the Web there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my Lazy Boy, to see what was the Web-chatter.

So close to the screen, I stuck like a flash.

Logged into my blog account and posted a blog post fast..

With a little old blog post, so lively and quick.

I knew in a moment it was definitely St. Click.

More rapid than BING, his Google-bots came,

And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name.

Now HubSpot, Now Mashable, Now Kayser, Now Guy!

On BING, on DIGG, on Alltop and FiledBy, oh my!

To the top of the search! To the top of the LinkedIn!

Now blog away! Blog away! Blog away all!

end

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I was up last night like a little Animoto elf creating some and I like this one best.

The price point is fantastic at $30 year for creating as many as you want.

If you want to create a free one you can do so as well. The free ones are limited in length and can only have 15 elements, but they still turn out pretty terrific.

It would be wonderful of course if every author had a budget of $3000 to $5000 to have a company create a stunning video for their books, but just in case you don’t, take heart you can still come up with something
that works for your site, your Tweets and your Facebook.

Now go and create! Send me links to some of the ones you create and I’ll feature them on the blog!

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(I’ve included the commercial YouTube at the top of this blog post.)

On bad days, I watch it to make myself laugh. While I don’t think I sound all that Southern, the voice in the Geico commercial does tend to grow on you.

It also reminds me how powerful humor is and why it’s so important to use in our lives and in our social media presence. Laughter is the great equalizer for us all.

My great Aunt Florence used to say, “If you can’t say something funny, don’t bother to say anything at all.” At her funeral this was particularly hard on all of us because what’s funny about a funeral?

In a small cemetery, in Mobile, Alabama we all stood in the rain, led by a minister, who was all of 30, and he used humor to ease our grief.

The minister related how on the last Sunday of Aunt Florence’s life she had managed (at 90 years old) to go to church that morning, have him over for fried chicken and turnip greens at noon, and prior to that mowed the front lawn on her riding mower, in her favorite purple flowered floppy hat.

In fact, she was a little bit peeved at the minister because he came a bit earlier than noon and caught her, all dressed in white on the mower clipping the very last bit of the front lawn. She was a staunch advocate of good Southern manners and you never arrive early for supper in the South.

But caught her he did and despite her chiding, they had a great supper and later that night she went to sleep and passed away. When he finished the story, our tears turned to laughter because his story had so perfectly captured our Aunt Florence and her great love for supper, mowing the lawn and her church.

I suppose today I’m feeling particularly Southern and proud because the Texas Book Festival is this weekend and my client Bill Scheft is here among all the other amazing authors that always make me laugh.

So your “Minding Your Southern Social Media Manners” is really about remembering that laughter is good medicine online and offline.

1. Don’t waste time being snarky.
2. Don’t Twitter twerrible twthings.
3. Don’t Facebook-fatigue folks.
4. Don’t blog bad mojo
5. Don’t ever lose sight that life is best lived offline and online with humor and grace.

DM me on Twitter if you’re at the Fest, would love to see you. Twitter @nettiehartsock .

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1. Stop being sheepish about your accomplishments and build a truly savvy and transparent profile for yourself on the Web.

(Oy vey – you’re not tooooooo olddddddd to be on the Web. Seriously.)

2. Use Twitter for good, not evil. As mega-celebs close down their Twitter accounts it just means more room for your content rich, edu-focused tweets! Don’t Twitter out something you wouldn’t want your Mom reading. Keep your tweets filled with link-love and be willing to share your knowledge.

4. Don’t hate me because I’m social. (Oops, did I blog that out loud?) – what that means is don’t kill the Web 2.0 messengers, and don’t buy into everything they tell you to do. Find a good Web 2.0 balance that works for you. Many people become power LinkedIn.com users, others just operate best on Facebook.com. Whatever you choose to use, don’t let it languish.

5. Stop wishing for the good old days of cold pancakes and stale coffee networking breakfast events. Put your butt in the chair with your favorite coffee mug and spend thirty minutes a day online using all the free tools available to you. No excuses. Just Social IT!

6. Find your tribe, your peeps, your community by using Google Search, technorati search and Google Blog Search. Ready for something new? Try BING search.

7. Be present, be YOU, be Web 2.0 brave!

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