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Elements of an Online Marketing Plan for Authors

Tonight I’m teaching a 3-hour workshop at the Learning Exchange in Sacramento on Online Marketing for Authors. I thought it might be helpful to share the outline here for readers who are working on the same goal:

1. Target Audience

Ø      Community and building your audience

2. Great Website

Ø      Professional design with content management system

Ø      Pages: Home, About the Author, Book Details, Media, Contact, Services, Speaker, Blog, Resources/Articles/Reports

Ø      Optimize for search engines

Ø      Content, resources, community

3. Blog

Ø      Benefits

Ø      How to maintain: frequency, amount of content, type of content

Ø      Promotion: social media, blog directories, commitment

4. E-mail Marketing

Ø      Capture information to engage with your audience

Ø      Provide incentive

Ø      Always building your list

Ø      Tools: ConstantContact.com, EasyContact.com, iContact.com

5. Article Marketing

Ø      Content sites: IdeaMarketers.com, EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com

Ø      Industry-specific sites

Ø      Print publications

6. Internet Radio/Podcasts

Ø      Why internet radio rules

Ø      How to pitch

Ø      Sources: BlogTalkRadio.com, AllTalkRadio.net, wsradio.com, womensradio.com

7. Bloggers and Online Alliances

Ø      Influence

Ø      Opportunities: book reviews, guest blog posts, interviews, cross-promote

8. Social Media

Ø      The Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Ø      Where to spend your time

Ø      Getting started

Ø      What to post: blog links, articles, resources, facts, humorous quips (always remember target audience)

Ø      Tools: Tweetdeck.com, Hootsuite.com

9. Online Groups

Ø      Find your audience—or build it!

Ø      LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo Groups

10. Virtual Book Tours

Ø      Choose your dates

Ø      Combination of activities: internet radio/podcasts, guest blog posts, blog interviews, cross-promote on your site

Ø      You are always on tour

11. Amazon Promotion Strategies

Ø      Author Central

Ø      Tags

Ø      Book Reviews

Ø      Search Inside the Book

12. It’s All About Community – Plant Your Garden!

Ø      Find your audience or build it

Ø      Plant three seeds each day
If you’re not part of this workshop, I cover all of this and more in the 8-week Accelerated Author Marketing Audio Course, which is now available for just $29.99!

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