My experiences with Hootsuite by David Lowbridge

So like any published author my main problem is getting my name out there. To combat that the internet has given us dozens of social media platforms in which we can use to engage our audience and find new readers. The only problem is time. If you are like me you have a Facebook account (with two main pages), twitter, linkedin, blog, Google+ and a couple of others. If I had a major update that is a lot to manage. There is also the point that throughout those mediums I have collected a number of contacts who I regularly like to keep in contact. But logging in and out of all those providers is time consuming.

Part of the problem is the user friendliness of some of those programs. For example in twitter on the main page I can see a small box where I can input a tweet and a queue of tweets others and I have sent out recently. But if I want to know who has retweeted my own messages or sent me a message then I have to look at another page.

The average user has about 208 following them and follows about 102; however about 74% of all twitter users have 50 or less. The average user tweets about 2 messages per day. These stats don’t look too bad. However if you look at my following list, a vast majority of them have over that 50 following number and can be well into the hundreds and sometimes thousands. They are also active people who can send ten or more tweets in a day. We are looking at thousands of tweets entering my stream every single day.

Even posting my messages is a little hard. I like to put out a lot of helpful and informative articles for other readers and writers. However with no facility to spread them out across the day I have had to go on and do what I call a twitter blast. That is where I go online and write six to ten tweets and blast them in a space of thirty minutes. For a starters it is not a good policy, it makes it look like you are bot to someone who doesn’t know you and secondly with so many people posting; your messages only have a short time to be noticed. If I looked for tweets with the #amreading hashtag; there have been 38 tweets in the past hour (and it is 6 am in the morning at time of writing), if that is the average, that’s 912 tweets per day. My twitter blasts won’t reach many people in that crowd.

Sometimes I want some messages to go across multiple platforms. Twitter allows you to post your tweets automatically on Facebook, but the problem is it is an all or nothing deal. I cannot select certain messages to go to my Facebook wall, which is very frustrating

Then if we move to Facebook. I have two pages, one for my writing and one for my reviewing (which is no longer a solo run entity); plus there is my general profile page. If I want to update all three I have to do it separately, which takes a long time even if I am copying and pasting.

All of this over the past month or so has created a big black hole in my time that I can do what matters most for writers: write.

I needed something that allowed me to couple of things.

1.       Manage multiple accounts from one location

2.       Select which messages are post to each platform

3.       Spread out my messages so that I can get maximum exposure.

Luckily there is a number of solutions and Hootsuite is one of them.

Hootsuite is like having a marketing manager to help you out. It compiles all the information into one manageable (and customizable) page for each social platform, making it easy to see what has been said, what you have said, who has mentioned you and more importantly what you are going to say.

The greatest asset that Hootsuite has is scheduling messages, there is even a facility where it will post the message dependent on when Hootsuite thinks it will get the most exposure. For every message you send out you get to select which platforms the message gets sent to, with every message able to be sent to multiple platforms in one go, saving time on that pesky copy and pasting.

Hootsuite is not perfect. Facebook pages count as a single platform and when you only have five with the free account, then half of my platforms are taken up by just Facebook. Add my twitter account and I have lost 4/5 of my platforms. When you may only want to add in one or two more platforms, $9.99 a month is just too expensive. Also in twitter ‘streams’ I cannot see those who have simply added my message to their favourites list nor can I see when I have a new follower. However I do get to see my Klout score which is fairly useful.

But even with those minor negatives, Hootsuite is such a useful tool for authors and will continue to use it.

Three Author Promotion Websites to Look out for

We all know that marketing is one of the problems in which most authors, whether traditionally or self published, struggle with. What works for some authors, doesn’t seem to have any positive effects for another which makes it tough for authors to decide what avenues to pour their valuable time into. Add on to all the existing methods, new websites for promoting author’s hard work are opening all the time. Some will say that this can only benefit authors, but readers only have a limited number of hours per day to read. With limited time and readers divided between numerous sites, spending your time on the right site is so very important.

So what I wanted to do was to introduce three up and coming sites in which authors may not know of, but in my mind may help the author out in the future to gain valuable reader’s time. What’s great about these sites; they don’t care if you are a best seller, they are there to promote you.

AUTHORSdB.com

A lot of authors will probably know of this website, but in my mind it is still growing and is nowhere near the size of Goodreads or other social media – yet.

Authors Database is a huge database of authors from just about every genre. The author can create and edit a listing of their own and that listing can contain just about anything you could want to know about them. A personal bio, websites, blogs, facebook, twitter, linkedin, Goodreads, Google+ and a list of your books with a choice of their reviews really gives authors the chance to show off their best and connect with readers. But authors have the option of adding multiple media including photos and videos which can really set up a unique listing that can catch the reader’s attention.

Every week the website does a list of featured authors that are randomly selected and a special Author Spotlight which again is randomly selected; thus giving authors a chance of precious exposure to readers at any time. However with so many authors on the list, feature time will probably be few and far between. Yet the biggest advantage of the website is the number of links that it adds to your social media, making it easier for readers to find you when they are doing an internet search for your name. If you are pretty good at meta data this site could be gold for you.

The power of this website has certainly been demonstrated to me. When I recently added myself to their listed almost 10% of my blog traffic came from this website.

The Electronic Text and Literary Cloud

This is a very young site and is still in the beta stages at the moment, yet it could be a great asset for authors to list their books and readers to find their next great read. When I contacted the eTLC about doing this feature they sent me this blurb for their website.

The Electronic Text and Literature Cloud (eTLC) was established to help readers discover Indie authors. The majority of writing on this cloud is available in a digitalized format, which provides Indies with a viable medium to post their work. Our focus is self-published material since we believe it remains closer to the "vision" of the writer than work reshaped by publishers with "elusive" marketing goals. 

Currently, 325 works are posted on eTLC.  Fiction and nonfiction titles are separated into eighteen categories.  In addition to novel-length works, we welcome short stories and poetry.  All postings include cover art, product descriptions, and links to bookstores.  Most postings include links to the websites and/or the social-networking sites of the authors, and one or more book reviews.  In addition, more than half of the listings include sample chapters.

With the scope of information, the addition of sample chapters and good connectivity to your books across all sale platforms and to your own blogs, this site has the potential to develop into a good catalog for readers to use.

Bublish

As regular readers will know; I’ve done a couple of blog posts on Bublish. One was way back in September 2012 the other was in February when I went through their bubble creation process. I won’t go over those points again. This time I come back to view how I think it has done on my exposure. Well to be honest, I know my name has been thrown out a few times by the Bublish team that has gained me huge exposure. Each week Bublish tweets a line from my bubbles with links back to the excerpt and once a week I can find myself on their floating bookstore. That on its own is a great way to gain exposure.

However Bublish do weekly author interviews on twitter, something which I have not yet participated in, but have watched /read several of them and on a Friday they do a surprise feature on one of their authors. Both of these events are great for authors to interact with their readers – which is key for authors to gain a good fan base.

When you combine all the efforts that they do to promote you and the fact that they are only in their beta stages, Bublish has the potential to grow your fan base exponentially if used right by the author. For readers this is great for finding the next great author. Not only do you get to "try before you buy" but they can interact with the authors that has been rare before.

Do you have any other sites that are good for finding a good author? Have you got any experience with these sites? Leave your comments below.

The Author's Guide to SMART excerpt by D J Lowbridge

Latest guest post by David Lowbridge over on Novel Publicity.

When I talk about being SMART, I am not talking about the actual intelligence of an author. I am talking about the acumen SMART (Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timely). Some people would like to think when they write that they will accomplish great goals set in their head: to be a bestseller or to create a kick-ass book. But in reality are either of those targets useful?

What is a kick-ass book; one that you like or your family likes or 100 million readers like? What about being a bestseller—where is the line that divides a mid-list or not-even-on-the-list author from the bestseller? Neither of those goals have defining, measurable borders. And when would you like to complete those tasks by: Christmas, next Christmas, your 100th birthday?

By setting goals with the following criteria you’ll be able to create better, more realistic goals for both your writing and any marketing you would like to do.

Full article here

Apologies and an Update for Bublish

First off an apology.

I must give my most sincere apology to readers for the lack of time I have been on recently. However this has not been by choice. For any of my closest friends and readers will know I have been ill recently. And what started as a suspected severe tonsillitis in early December turned into me collapsing in a hospital from septic shock a few weeks later. To cut the story short; I have not fully recovered yet and am due to have an operation in a couple of weeks to remove the problem tonsils that are still infected.

I am sorry that this has had such a bad effect on my blog posting. But as I am slowly trying to get back into the swing of things I’ve had to limit what I’ve done and how often. And blog posting although important, isn’t as critical as my own writing for me as an author.

I am also afraid this will continue for a few more weeks as I have an operation coming up in order to solve the problem once and for all. So I apologise for all delays in my reviewing and posting, but rest assured once I am back in full health I will be back with tonnes of review, guests and marketing insights.

Now on with the post!

Way back in September I reviewed the new marketing site: Bublish. Bublish is a new concept for authors and readers to connect through the love of books. The idea is fairly simple; authors share excerpts from their book, can talk a little about it and then share it over the social media world. Readers get to read excerpts and can share them across their social contacts and even buy the book through the bubble’s affiliation link. I gave the site a mainly positive review and promised myself that when my first book was ready it would be one of the first things I would try.

Now several months on I can fulfill that promise. Sound the trumpets as I have bublished!

Initial thoughts on the process are very positive. It is a simple manner of uploading your book to their site and then choosing a section to showcase and talk about. It is really as simple as that.

Some people may struggle if they don’t have an epub version and they aren’t confident enough with technology or Calibre. But as Bublish only accept this format and reviewers may only accept this format; it is a valuable skill for authors to learn.

Another thing that authors may find difficult is what to write about their excerpts. Writing about what motivates you during writing is a good start. But other ideas are adding in something about other people’s thoughts or comparison’s the real world.

What I have found from reading other people’s bubbles is that a few are having the same problem. There are a couple “Like this? Buy my book for more” bubbles. Which are unfortunately not enticing enough for me to click through. The whole point of the exercise is to add the author’s voice and interact with the reader. So why not do something interesting with your bubble? Readers hate sale pitches.

And when I got the chance to talk to Kathy Meis one of the founders of the site; I asked her what is the secret to writing a good bubble.

“...for creating a great book bubble, the secret sauce is really in the Author Insight. This is where the author has the opportunity to tell the story behind the story. It's what will make their excerpt "pop" for potential new readers. Some bublishers only use the Author Insight to set the scene for their excerpt. This is fine, but it really is a missed opportunity to add something special to the excerpt...to tell the author's "why." Think of it as a director's cut in a movie clip.”

Of course there is nothing completely simple in the marketing world. And I did come across a couple of problems. The first was when I uploaded my book; it for some reason came up labelled as “Ghost Haunts Master” and not “Ghost Haunts”. This was probably my fault; the file that I converted on Calibre was not called “Ghost Haunts Master” at the time, but it had been in the past. Also when I came to publish my bubble I found it difficult to just publish it as the button didn’t seem to do anything. However the latter was easily rectified by sharing it on twitter or facebook. Which was the next logical step anyway.

The first however was something that I could sort myself. Instead I had to ask support. And this is where Bublish really shine. Sending a support e-mail normally means waiting days for a response. Bublish not only quickly answered my query, but they resolved the issue in record breaking timing. And that is the foundation that will keep authors going back again and again, a website that cares about its content and the providers.

So what happens once you’ve Bublished? Well the fun doesn’t end. I bublished last Monday and within a week the Bublish team had tweeted my bubble a couple of times; one on the day of release and twice on their “Sample Sunday”. This is a great way to attract new readers as there are already 800 plus followers and it gives you a sense that they aren’t just a platform for you to advertise, but a partner.

And that isn’t the only trick up their sleeve. They have a weekly floating bookstore that is shared across multiple social platforms, live author and publisher twitter chats every Thursday and a special Feature Friday where they feature an author from their database of Bublishers.

The Floating Bookstore is something which I think is a great feature and Kathy Meis explains it as follows:

“The Bublish Floating Bookstore is a way to showcase the newest book bubbles on Bublish. It actually starts on Sunday with our #SampleSunday Marathon, which is 12 hours of the latest book bubbles tweeted with the popular #SampleSunday hashtag. Many readers use this hashtag to find new books each week, so we introduce the latest book bubbles into this hashtag every Sunday. Every new author gets to be part of this event. It's sort of like their Bublish launch event. On Monday morning, we take the #SampleSunday stream of book bubbles and use Storify to turn them all into a single piece of content known as the Bublish Floating Bookstore. This gives all the authors additional exposure throughout the week as well as an easy way to support their fellow authors and magnify the social network effect for each book and writer.”

So with that kind of support and exposure potential, Bublish could be one of the greatest tools that an author can use.

So what are my hints on the best way to use Bublish?

• Create one bubble at a time and once a week - This way you can get exposure over a longer period of time and take full benefit of the Sample Sunday and the tweeting of new bubbles by the team. Readers may also be turned off if they see a block of your bubbles while scrolling through the archive. Sometimes less is more.
• Make your Author Insights interesting - Readers already know your book is for sale. But they might not know what inspired you to write this scene or what image was going through your head.
• Share your bubbles – Your bubbles are good advertising even on your blog and website. Direct your readers to bublish to read what you have written.

I hope you all, readers and writers alike, have a chance to visit the site soon.

Excerpt: The Carpet by Alberta Ross

It was created many years ago, before recorded history when the world was so young. Beneath hills that, resting on living lava, were still rising and would one day be mountains reaching up to the clouds and looking down on the birds. In a valley of ethereal beauty wreathed in the obligatory mists of such places, on the edge of the very beginnings of a mighty lake stood the small shack that housed the hollowed-eyed slave children with their small, and not yet crippled, fingers which could form the dazzling magical jewelled colours of the flying carpets.

These carpets were few and would become the stuff of legends, flying into tales handed down around firesides for centuries and eventually moving from mouths to printed page. Imbued with the magic that could still exist in those far of times of innocence they were mostly splendid, magical and benign. Fetching fabulous collections of gold and jewels in payment they were, of course, playthings for the powerful and mighty. The private jets of the primitive world. A few, just a few, scorned benign, lusted after dark magic and turned evil, riding on the wave of awfulness which swept the world at regular intervals.

How many of these carpets survived the ravages of time is not known. They fell in their hundreds in ancient battles, burnt from their orbits by cunning weapons of fire, the technology of which was lost for millennia. They sunk in galleons on wild untrammelled storm-trashed seas and drowned with the weight of water-filled fibre, to become the cave coverings of those mystical mythical denizens of the deep. Many were lost in disbelief, for magic needs belief to live. In the same way many were lost to science; faced with the proof of the impossibility of carpets to fly, they foundered and fell from the sky. A few lingered on in isolation as the mountains rose, until memories of what such a carpet could achieve was lost and they became so much floor covering over mud and animal dung.

*****

This story was the result of a dream I had over thirty years ago. It stayed with me as vivid as the night it had first disturbed me. The particular magic of the carpet in this tale of magic and mayhem came intact from that first inspiration.

As a child I had marveled as we all had over those mysterious flying carpets, or maybe it is not so amazing to children today.  I am not so old that flying was a new invention! However, apart from the fighter pilots and the very wealthy not many had flown. I was the first in my family when I flew across to Belfast as a 17yr old just before the boom in tourism.  So the idea of a magic carpet when I was young was indeed a marvel.  How was it possible?

I had given up on magic fairly early and so this ability intrigued me.  Over the years I hoped to find some historical record of how it was possible. Giving up and condemning the education system for not giving exciting information! After I left home I wandered extensively, always traveling east, to the lands that had always intrigued me in my childhood, did I still want to understand how a carpet could fly, no, really, no, I was all grown up by then.  They didn’t exist.

Traveling around the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas I met many carpet workers, saw many natural marvels and began to get a feel for the culture who had invented those splendid tales. The stories we call fairy tales all suit the cultures they begin life in.  They are born of the history, geology, social mores and religion of the times. They are part of the imagination of all these.

So when, well into my retirement, I thought I would like to write short stories my carpet raised a sleepy head and asked if it was time.  I agreed it was but that it would need to be part of a wider picture.  I am no expert on life in the East so somehow my carpet had to be transferred to my culture.  I am no expert on the ‘Once upon a time’ era so the carpet must be able to travel to my time. Always the adventurer the carpet was up for it:)

Author Bio

Alberta  spent the first part of her adult life _traveling the world, the middle years studying and now has settled down to write. From the first part she has endless photographs, memories and friends. From the second  a BSc Hons, an MA and friends. Now in this part everything comes together.

Over the years her interests have expanded, as has her book and music collection. A short list would include reading (almost anything) science, opera, folk, gardening, philosophy, crazy patchwork, freeform crochet, ethics, social history, cooking (and eating of course) gardening, anthropology, climate change and sustainability.

Alberta says the best gift her parents gave her, apart from a love of reading and music, was an interest and curiosity in everything which, in itself, has become a total inability to be bored and for this she is always grateful.

Social Network sites:

Blogs:

http://albertaross.co.uk  web site

http://sefutychronicles-albertaross.blogspot.com for background to the writing of Alberta’s publications

http://www.didyoueverkissafrog.typepad.com for whatever takes her fancy

http://albertaross.wordpress.com for all things writing

Alberta can also be found on:

http://www.facebook.com/author.alberta.ross

http://twitter.com/albertaross

http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/alberta-ross.html

and

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4506833.Alberta_Ross

_{The Fiddling Feline, the Flea and the Frog et al is visiting other blogs over the next two weeks}

_{http://www.prudencemacleod.com on the 29/30 November}

_{http://thegirdleofmelian.blogspot.co.uk TBC}

_{http://theindieexchange.com on the 3rd December}

_{http://www.virginiajennings.webs.com on the 5th December}

_{http://mrsbongle.wordpress.com on the 6th December}

_{http://indiebookexchange.blogspot.co.uk on the 12th December}

_{There will be six e-book copies of The Fiddling Feline, the Flea and the Frog et al up for grabs at the end of this mini tour – winners will be selected randomly from those who comment.  I can offer print copies only to UK residents.}