You possibly already know how helpful uploading your businesses promotional video is. For a company’s marketing director, short format video commercials are a helpful resource that can help to capture your customers’ attention and considerably increase the overall amount of visits to your firm’s site. Short format professional videos are extremely effective in getting the target customers’ rather short attention span. Furthermore, if codes are used and video sharing is endorsed, Web videos can be an amazing way to get one-way links and in so doing positively affect your sites position on the search engines.
If truth behold, Internet video clips have become a good source for business or self-advertising. The following are a couple tips to distributing your own video commercials.
Firstly, you can post your short format video commercials on your own site; but this would involve you to find your own video hosting arrangements. Instead, ask your web hosting solutions supplier if video downloading or video streaming options are supported.
Video downloading is where your viewers are required to download your video commercial to their hard disk. They need to store the video to their own PC before they can play it using their PC’s video player or a downloadable video player device. There are lots of video downloading service contractors that cost not much. There is also a progressive downloading mechanism where your web viewers can play the short format professional videos while downloading them.
Video sharing streaming on the other hand completely does away with the requirement to download the online videos and lets instantaneous playback so it offers the most use to your web visitors. Of course, getting a video hosting business that supports video streaming can cost you a pretty penny.
And finally, the more popular way to distribute video commercials is posting your sites to video distribution sites which possess their very own video hosting platform. These websites cost you nothing to become a member & will at times pay you to post video material. What’s more, also have a large audience base and reach; for instance, YouTube obtains in the region of twenty million Web visits each and every month. Vidify provide corporate video production services and expertise for a range of online media engagements.
Nowadays it’s no longer a matter of whether or not an author should promote his or her book, but how aggressively one should go about it. The sad truth is that publishers often fail to promote books, and if we, the authors, don’t promote your own book then it may be destined to a lifespan between that of butter and yogurt, to paraphrase Calvin Trillan. The author’s extra efforts may make all the difference between a book becoming a long-lived seller, and being recycled so that some other author can take advantage of the paper.
What to do then? One cannot concoct a general rule for promoting books. This method obviously has drawbacks, because every book is different and requires its own special approach. So, the primary thing to do is consider your target audience.
And that’s a good place to start–your audience. Presumably, your book is aimed at a particular market or markets. Perhaps it is nutrition, parenting, health, travel, mystery fans, or nature. The first thing you should do is to track down the magazines that are read by the people who will be reading your book.
But before sending a press release to the publication, take time out to find the editor who reviews books or who covers the subject that you’ve written about.
Here are some ways to self-promote your book:
- Create Your Website
- Arranging for an Author Interview
- Trade Shows
- Teaching
- Email Newsletters
- Consulting/Training
- Reviewers
- Magazine Articles
- Discussion Groups/NewsGroups
- Other PR Resources
A large part of promoting your book is promoting yourself and making sure your name is recognizable to your target audience. While you may not reach cult status, you can go a long way to establish yourself as an expert on your subject matter by becoming heavily involved in the community for which you write. To Brand yourself and your work do the following:
Create Your Website
Websites have become crucial marketing tools for authors and are a great calling card. Create a website that provides value to your audience and lets them get to know you and your work. Give people extra tips and tricks they won’t find in the book, update any outdated information and provide news and reviews of your books and news that you know of in the community. If you are really ambitious you can create your own community around your website.
Arranging for an Author Interview
Many publishers have done marketing studies showing that authors who provide comments on their books or participates in author interviews on the online bookstores sell more books online. This is a no-brainer as it doesn’t take much of your time and is perceived as an added value for your reader. Large websites, such as Borders.com, make a practice of interviewing authors.
Trade Shows
Trade Shows are a fantastic place to promote your book. Every attendee and speaker is a possible book-buyer. Try to arrange with your publisher to do a book signing either at their booth or at the trade show bookstore. Many authors sell thousands of their books at a single trade show. If you can find a chance to speak at a trade show or are invited to speak on one of the panels, the best bet to opt for. Aside from being great book publicity, it’s another way to get your name out there in the community.
Teaching
Teaching is a great way to develop your pedagogy. It’s also a great way to understand how people learn the technology, what their frequently asked questions are, and how you can best improve your books so that they are most easily understood. If you are not interested in teaching at the local university or community college, you might want to consider teaching online courses. There are numerous online education companies looking for authors to help teach their courses. Most authors find online teaching to be enjoyable, lucrative, and something that can be done almost simultaneously with writing books.
Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are a great direct marketing tool. Though a lot of work, if done right they can lead to huge name recognition and royalty checks from book sales. Several authors have had tremendous success with their email newsletters to the tune of thousands of subscribers. A good example is the Kabalarian Philosophy Electronic Newsletter.
Consulting/Training
Many publishers look first for trainers or consultants to author books on certain topics. To become known as an expert in the community, you need to stay abreast with what is latest in the technology field. It’s good to diversify if you can — if you concentrate only on writing books you can become out of touch with the latest advances. Consulting will keep you on the cutting edge. Also, if you’re lucky, the company or companies for which you consult will want to buy a copy of your book for the entire staff.
Reviewers
Positive book reviews are always a great way to sell books. Keep an eye out for bylines of reviewers in magazines and journals particular to your book topic and coordinate with your publisher to make sure that the reviewer receives an early copy of your book. Trumped up reviews on Amazon are easily seen through and don’t do much for an author’s reputation, but if you get a genuine email from a reader with positive specific comments you might want to ask him or her to post their comments on Amazon.
Magazine Articles
Article bylines have long been good book promoters. Research the major trade journals on your subject matter both in print and online and pitch article ideas tangential to your book topic. Also, you should consider writing for some major websites that serve your topic area. You can often attach excerpts from your books (ask your publisher for permission) to contribute to popular sites, which promotes your book at the same time.
Discussion Groups & Newsgroups
Discussion Groups are a huge part of any community these days. By participating online you are getting your name out in the community, staying current with all of the latest developments, and making crucial contacts that can include book reviewers, magazine editors, book editors and the real gurus of technology.
Newsgroups on the Web, including chat and message forums on proprietary services like AOL and Compuserve, are great places to make yourself known and promote your books, your website, and your career. Many authors have gained prominence on the newsgroups, particularly in the web scripting and programming area. It’s important to be helpful, answer questions, and make yourself available without pushing your books too obviously or obnoxiously. If you spam the newsgroups or forums it won’t serve you in the long run.
Amazon Corrections
If you have a book listed on Amazon.com and wish to correct erroneous information on their site, here is the person to contact. They respond quickly to author requests to correct information.
Albert Rodriguez, Catalog Department: catalog-dept@amazon.com
Other PR Resources
You can find more information about marketing and promoting your book from John Kremer’s Book Market website. John is the author of 1001 Ways to Promote Your Book.
A great resource for adding advertising to online publications is Art.com. They offer free banners and you can add them to your site. Advertisers pay per click, and you receive a percentage of what the advertiser pays. It’s an excellent way to create extra income from your out-of-print books or supplementary material on your site.
An interesting way to promote your book is to put your website in search engines like Yahoo! Yahoo generally takes a day to update newly added sites, but there is no absolute surety that your site would be listed.
You can also sign up as an Expert in About.com, which provides a wonderful way to promote your work.
Last but not the least, become a bit philanthropic and with a large heart give away your books for free among critics, friends and family. Also add your website URL in all your outgoing e-mails and correspondence. More mails obviously means more views for your book!
Nithya K is a India-based writer who specializes in writing fiction and has tremendous interest in writing non-fiction related to science, technology and other genre. She is also experienced in creating technical documentation. Basically a BE graduate with an MBA degree, her main focus is still writing. Nithya is also interested in Ghost writing of books and articles in the areas of business writing, technical writing, science and technology writing and fiction.
The author can be contacted at tutor19us@yahoo.com and also invites readers to visit her webpage at www.geocities.com/tutor19us/index.html
Suspense novels are probably the easiest novels to write. Suspense novels require a simple formula, which will make your work truly suspenseful. Follow this basic recipe, and you’re well on your way to building a whole library of successful suspense novels.
Suspense novels formula step 1: Decide your topic. Many people who wish to craft best-selling suspense novels struggle with this first step. The biggest problem is they get too wound up in trying to come up with something that’s never been done, assuming that they’ll land a number one best seller. Forget trying so hard to do something that hasn’t been done, and just settle on something you know, even if the subject has been done. Then work on an interesting twist.
Suspense novels formula step 2: Start your suspense novels at the end, rather than at the beginning. As is the case with any good project, successful suspense novels are crafted with the ending in mind first. Then the artist can return to the beginning and begin building to that end. This is how quality suspense novels are created.
Suspense novels formula step 3: If your suspense novels have killers or conspirators, wait as long as possible to reveal the perpetrators. In my first suspense novel, The League, my editor noticed that I revealed the perpetrator about six chapters and ninety pages before the end. He loved the story but said that it would be vastly improved, if I could keep the readers in suspense a bit longer.
So, if you hope to make a fortune with suspense novels, use this basic formula, and you’re well on your way.
Mark Barnes is a novelist, sports writer and writing coach. He is the author of the novel, The League, a shocking, sports-related conspiracy, published by DNA Press. His next novel, Troon, a suspense/thriller about a golfer fighting for his life while trying to win $5 million in a secret tournament at Royal Troon in Scotland, is currently in production. Learn more about Mark Barnes and his work at http://www.sportsnovels.com. Once there, pre-order his unique suspense/thriller, The League, and have it delivered right to your doorstep.
Of course you’re familiar with using *headlines* to call attention to Web copy, brochures, articles, or documents. But *subheads* can be just as effective in bringing out key points for your readers. And they also help make any document easier to read, because they break up long blocks of text into easy-to-digest bits. (Hence my “edible” title. Hmm.)
Subheads Break It Up
Subheads are generally viewed as goodwill gestures toward your readers, since they’re most often used to divide lengthy articles into logical breaks. They may indicate a change of topic or simply break up a mass of type. Placing subheads every four paragraphs or so allows readers to skim through your article or document and skip sections without losing their train of thought.
The next time you flip through any magazine, notice how its editors use subheads throughout the longer articles. Readers are very averse to reading large blocks of text, so subheads break it all up into bite-size chunks.
Subheads Have “Idea Power”
Because subheads catch readers’ eyes, you should use them to your benefit! Read through your document or article for your main promotional points, then summarize the ideas as subheads. This way your readers absorb your main points in just a few seconds by skimming through all the copy.
For best results, subheads should *not* read like a table of contents. To make your subheads engaging, it’s important to include action or selling elements.
BORING SUBHEADS: “Our Story,” ‘50 Years in the Business,” “Our Department’s Success.”
ENGAGING SUBHEADS: “Five Clients Who Saved $10K With Us,” “The Most Creative Solutions in the Industry,” “Let Us Do All the Work for You!”
BONUS TIP: These types of subheads also work wonderfully for *sales letters* and *proposals*. Experiment the next time you compose a long letter try looking at it both with and without subheads. You’ll definitely see the difference!
Subheads Rule on the Net!
When you’re writing copy to be posted online either in an e-mail or on a Web site it’s even more crucial to use subheads! People don’t like to spend a lot of time reading online it strains the eyes. Subheads help readers skim over your main points and pick up your ideas quickly. And if they’re looking for a particular piece of information, subheads help them locate it faster.
If you’re writing an e-mail that’s longer than one screen length, try inserting subheads every two or three paragraphs, if appropriate. It only takes a minute, it helps you organize your information, and your readers will love you for it!
Subheads Add Interest
Even if your document is a white paper that’s about as exciting as white rice, don’t be afraid of using ’sum-it-all-up’ subheads to retain the reader’s interest and break up the copy. Remember, you want people to be drawn to reading your masterpiece especially when it’s a formal document!
Examples: “Great Forecasts for Next Quarter,” “Improvements Needed in Management,” and “30% Sales Increase Forecasted.”
So consider subheads your new best friend whether you’re writing an e-mail, Web copy, brochure, or report!
(c) 2000-2003 Alexandria K. Brown. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexandria K. Brown, “The E-zine Queen,” is author of the award-winning manual, “Boost Business With Your Own E-zine.” To learn more about her book and sign up for more FREE tips like these, visit her site at http://EzineQueenTutorial.com/
