I’m way behind in posting the rest of my look at Social Media.  I will continue next month on the 25th and blog on the 25th thereafter.

My husband showed me this video, which is about being a geek but it also has statitistics on the social media sites that I found interesting.

The statistics show that social media is booming. And it’s making geeks of all of us

Mechele Armstrong aka Melany Logen

http://www.mechelearmstrong.com

http://www.melanylogen.com

Everyone who’s anyone in today’s high-tech society is online. And 99.9% have websites of some type, whether it’s a personal domain, a Flickr account, a LiveJournal, a Facebook page … something somewhere tells others who they are, what they like, and what they’re doing. Now while your grandmother might not be online (or, if she is, might not do anything more than send you all those annoying e-mail forwards she gets), any public persona has a website today. Celebrities, athletes, writers … even the president has his own blog now! So if you’re trying to build a presence as a published author, then you definitely need a place of your own online!

But is a personal domain right for you? Do you need to get a page at www.your-name.com or can you promote your work through free webhosts and social networking sites?

Having your own website isn’t as daunting as it sounds. Domain names sell for as low as $5/year these days, and you can find web space for about the same cost each month. Even if you don’t know basic HTML, free programs such as Wordpress can generate a fairly low maintenance website and blog for even the most inept web user.

In choosing a domain name, be creative. If yourname.com is taken, try the .net version. If neither are available, try adding a dash between your first and last name. Or add a descriptive word to the end of your name, like “writes” or “author.” I would caution against picking a URL with the title of your book in it, unless you’re writing a series which you intend on continuing for some time. Otherwise you’re stuck with a domain name for one book only, and if you write additional ones, where will you list them?

Once you have a website up and running, be sure to include an author bio, information on your books, and links to any free stories you might have posted online. Readers love freebies, whether free fiction or free promotional items, and how else will a new reader know if they’ll like your writing if they don’t sample it first? Published books should include buy links ~ don’t link to eXcessica’s homepage but rather directly to the page where readers can buy your book. Otherwise they might hit the front page and forget what they were looking to buy in the first place. Give them as few clicks as you can to get them to your book.

When your site is live, be sure to link to it everywhere you can to help promote it. In your email signature every time you post to a Yahoo! group. In your profiles on all those social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter). On your author pages maintained by your publisher. On any forum posts you might make, and any blog comments as well. Pimp it everywhere. Once readers can find you online, they can find your other stories and hopefully become fans of your work!

Facebook is another social media site.  You have networks of friends from your high school to college to work to the area you live in.  There are various plug ins and an IM system. 

It is not supposed to be used for promotion and if they think you are using it just for that, they will delete you.  It’s why as Mechele, I don’t have my book cover as my avatar.  So authors who are there do need to tread carefully. I’ve heard of a few accounts being deleted because of promotion.

I actually am on Facebook as the real me, too and I’ve come to enjoy Facebook for that side of me. I’ve found friends I lost touch with after high school and gotten reacquainted with their lives. I have a lot of current friends on there.  Like Twitter, it allows you to do these brief update bursts.  It’s an easy way to find out what’s going in someone’s life.

The downside is that it can be time consuming.  It can be addicting with all the plugins and poking people and sending coffees and what not. I’m also not quite sure Mechele is doing everything there she should be as an author.  I know there is a way to link a blog to post it on your Facebook page but haven’t found that yet, though Mechele’s page does say when I update her livejournal, I think.

Facebook is compared to MySpace a lot, which I will tackle in my next post.

I thought I’d look at the social networking sites (following up my last post) and post the good, the bad, and the ugly about each one.

Twitter is a social networking site that lets you post 140 character updates (called tweets).  You can friend people and follow their tweets and people can friend you and follow yours.

What I like about Twitter:

Tweets are short.  It requires brief sentences that don’t require a lot of time.

It’s a great way to check in with friends briefly and also catch up.

 What I don’t like:

Like any other social site, it can become addicting.  You start following other people and have to check in ten times a day to see what they’ve tweeted.

Tweets are short and can be misunderstood easily.  Some agents/editors did a query tracker by tweets hoping to educate about queries.  Some people got offended by the shortness and learned nothing.  It can be hard to get your point across that briefly.

 Feel free to add to the list of positives and negatives.

Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen

http://www.mechelearmstrong.com

http://www.melanylogen.com

I’m supposed to moderate a panel on social media this weekend at MarsCon.  The statistics I’m finding are quite staggering. 

 I find it interesting how many users there are and I really don’t think most authors have mastered an online presence.  I know I look at those statistics and think “Geesh. I should really do more online ’stuff.”  But then you get into what’s the most effective and what’s the most time consuming.  And how many hours you have in a day. 

What forms of social media do you use (blogs, myspace, facebook, twitter, etc)? How do you use them?  What advantages and disadvantages do you see?

 Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen

http://www.mechelearmstrong.com

http://www.melanylogen.com

I have been staring at this screen for an hour now, willing a post on promotion to pop in my head.  LOL it hasn’t happened yet. The holidays have brain fried me!

I had a book release today and as I scrambled to do book promotion, I wondered how much of what I did really impacted.  That’s the scary part of promotion. Figuring out what works isn’t always easy. I sometimes wish I could see hard numbers as to what works and what doesn’t.  But I figure each little thing is getting my name out there.  Now, I just need to write that next book….

Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen

http://www.mechelearmstrong.com

http://www.melanylogen.com

As it’s coming to the end of the year and I had lunch today with a writer friend, I thought I’d put in a plug for saving receipts.

My friend and I talked about books and writing.  That makes lunch today something I can declare as as expense on my taxes. 

Even if you’re not going to make a profit, you can still itemize your deductions so save all the receipts related to writing!

Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen

http://www.mechelearmstrong.com

http://www.melanylogen.com

I’ve mentioned in the past that it is important to have a blog. But what do you do with it? I have three days a week I post. Another day I post every two weeks. Monday is Happy News. I go to www.happynews.com and find a story. For me it is usually health related. Wednesday is Word Wednesday. I get word of the day from www.dictionary.com. I usually write those posts on the weekend and have a few spares in case I get in a jam on Wednesdays. Fridays are Hot Hunk Fridays. I find a famous person I think is hot and talk about them. If I can compare them to one of my heroes all the better. I never blatantly sell my book, but the cover is there and you can click on it to buy it.

Every other Tuesday I review a book. I’m a book reveiwer for Thomas Nelson Publisher. They send me a book, I review it and link to their site and where you can buy the book. I’ve just begun this endeavor so I can’t say for sure it drives more traffic to your blog.

Once in awhile I’ll do something fun on an off day. Here’s something a friend of mine did. http://caridad.com/blog/.

You can get blogging memes and tag another blogger or two to answer the same questions. http://www.squidoo.com/50memes

If you are going to do anything in life you should try to make it fun. The same is true for a blog.

Good Luck

Chris Redding

Or maybe it’s creative marketing? 

So, does your book have a topic?  or a theme?  Is there a subject mentioned in the book that’s near and dear to your heart?

 Well use it!

 One way you can sneakily market is to get involved in a subject that’s in your book.  Say your heroine quilts.   You can find groups associated with quiliting.  Join in.  Talk about it (which is why it should be a subject you know about AND care about) No, don’t work your book into every discussion. But put that signature line in. When it’s appropriate, talk about your book.

A brilliant example I’ve seen is a mystery that involves scrapbooking.  Those books are now sold in scrapbooking stores, the woman does signings at stores, and I think it’s bloody brilliant. 

I also think stories that involve recipes or quilt patterns are brilliant because you’ve expanded your market to people who might not be your typical readers but might now pick up your book because of the subject.

 Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen

http://www.mechelearmstrong.com

http://www.melanylogenc.com.

Here are some more yahoogroups where you can promote your book. As I stressed last week, read the guidelines. Some have specific days for promoting. Others have a specific format you need to use to post.

 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WritersPromo

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thewriterslife

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Amazon-Affiliates

Have a good weekend