Don’t assume that just because I followed you that now I’m a fan - I love to see tweets from new people and I love to read what people say, but when you send someone to a link in a DM welcome message it sounds spammy because it is. Don’t start off your Twitter relationship that way. If you want to send a link to your followers wait till they’ve been a part of your trip for a while or do it in a tweet.

Just my opinion…

First, anchor text should be descriptive. It should describe the link you’re sending people to using keywords that reflect the page you’re recommending.

Second, if you know the high traffic keywords for your market you can use those as well to describe the link (but only if the keywords relate to the page you’re sending visitors to).

Third, knowing where to use anchor text is almost as important as the text itself. All external links should be anchor text, but often web designers forget internal links (i.e. links leading to pages within your site) although they are equally as important. Your home page is also critical for anchor text links. If you have a blog (and you should) make sure that any article, web site or blog you reference has anchor text in the hyperlink.

Creating these hyperlinks is easy, especially if you’re using them in a blog. Most blog software have some very simple one-click anchor text creation widgets.

So take some time and go through your site, make sure that anything you have hyperlinked is anchor text. Stay away from nebulous terms like “click here” or “follow this link” because you won’t get picked up by search engines that way. Make sure the text is focused and specific. So how long can anchor text be? It doesn’t have to be long but if need be, it can be multiple words. Keep in mind that as long as the words are relevant to your topic. The anchor text verbiage is all that matters.

Tip: Not sure if your content is easy to access on your web site? The next time you’re doing an event or book signing (you can even blurb this in your newsletter if you have one), offer to give your visitors a “freebie” if they are willing to go home and evaluate your site. Have them click all the links and even create a short questionnaire that they can fill out and return to you. Once they do they’ll get a free download, free ebook, whatever. Sometimes the best way to get feedback is directly from the user.

1. Talk about trends
2. Review other books
3. Blog “in character”
4. Develop your next story on your blog (this is fun for micro-blogging too)
5. Lend your “voice” to a hot issue
6. Comment or feature other blogs
7. Interview people in your industry
8. Talk about the elephant in the room
9. Be the “voice” for your company, speak to your consumer instead of at them
10. Answer reader or consumer FAQ’s
11. Post pictures of your readers or consumers reading your book, using your product, etc.

As of 2/14/09 Facebook has 175,000,000 active users

Facebook grows by well over 600,000 users per day

If Facebook were a country it would now be the 6th most populated country in the world

The fastest growing segment are women over 55 (up 175% according to this report)

Women dominate Facebook (meaning there are more women than men on Facebook)

Tips for an effective Facebook page:

1. Update frequently. Facebook is not the field of dreams, just because you built it doesn’t mean people will beat a path to your door
2. Use it to post events, updates on your book, product or message - keep your followers current about what’s going on in your world. Don’t tell us you just washed the dog.
3. Facebook is not a way to push a message, but rather communicate *with* your market.
4. Make sure your picture is current, don’t use a logo - I tend to think that doesn’t personalize your page enough. People want to see you, let them get to know who you are.

1. A bio is a must. A recent Harvard Business Review study showed that 82% of unsuccessful Twitter accounts have little or no bio information.
2. You should provide more than 3 links per 20 tweets and you should update more than once a day.
3. If you don’t provide links in your tweets, you should plan to post more often (studies suggest as much as six times a day). You should have no more than 15 updates a day.
4. Twitter names are becoming like URL’s were in the early years of the Internet. Make sure and grab all your branding and your name
5. Don’t use underscores_ when you’re creating a user name. Not only does it look amateurish but a number of spammers have hacked into Twitter that way. You don’t want to look like a spammer
6. Always engage and reply to the @reply responses on Twitter. Why? Well first off it’s important to engage your followers but second, those @replies help with your Twitter ranking.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing. This is a term that refers to organic (non-paid) online marketing. This type of marketing will optimize results as well as your site the way no pay-per-click advertising campaign can.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization. This term refers to the back end stuff your web designer might do to optimize your web site for better search ranking.

Black Hat Marketing: also referred to as Black Hat SEO, this type of marketing is unethical and should be avoided at all costs. If you’re looking to hire a company to do an Internet campaign for you ask them point blank if they do any Black Hat marketing. They’ll no doubt deny it but it will put them on notice that you’re not a novice. You should only work with companies that do White Hat marketing. Examples of Black Hat are link farms that gather thousands of incoming links to a web site from irrelevant and inappropriate sites just to gather links.

Organic Online Marketing (also referred to Organic SEO): This is a term (much like SEM) that refers to organic marketing efforts online. If you’re hiring someone ask them if their work is organic. That’s important. Why? Because organic marketing leverages better results and better (read: ready to buy) customers.

Keyword stuffing: using keywords over and over again in an attempt to artificially inflate your search engine ranking (hint: once Google is on to you your site will drop in ranking like a ton of bricks)

Buzz Monitoring: used mostly by pr firms that specialize in Internet marketing, this term means to track conversations online, monitoring “buzz” as it were

Avatars: these are images, pictures, logos or whatever you chose that represent you in the virtual world. You’ll use avatars on everything from Facebook to Squidoo, Twitter, and even Second Life.

Link Baiting: a way in which web sites, blogs, podcasts, etc encourage incoming links from other sites. You “bait” the user, asking them to link to you for a special offer to their consumer base.

Consumer-generated media (CGM): any and all media generated by a consumer. This isn’t just on Web 2.0 properties like Facebook, Squidoo, and Twitter but also in forums and on message boards, even blog commenting is considered CGM

Pass-along factor: also referred to as the pass-along rate, this term is associated with viral marketing and means how often something is passed-on to another likeminded consumer.

Ping: we’ll often refer to as “pinging” a search engine, but what does it mean really? Well Ping is an acronym that stands for “packed Internet gopher” which essentially is an automatic notification sent to search engines when a blog or web site has been updated. Also, often your site/blog designer can incorporate various ping notifications to not only hit up the bigger search engines but some of the smaller ones as well!

Feeds (also called RSS Feeds): this refers to syndication from blogs, podcasts, even Wordpress powered web sites. It’s important to have a feed attached to your blog so if you don’t, you might want to ask your web person about this.

Narrowcasting: as opposed to “broadcasting” this term refers to the ‘Nets ability to reach a very narrow, focused market. Narrowcasting is often the best way to promote yourself and your book/product/service.

RSS: stands for really simple syndication and refers to the syndication feeds on blogs, podcasts, web sites and social media sites.

Social Bookmarking: this is a way of storing your favorite sites (or pages within a site) on a public system like DIGG, Delicious, or Stumbled Upon. You can use this to both notify the world about great sites (including your own) but it’s also a great way to build traffic and incoming links!

Social Media: is an umbrella term used to describe Web 2.0 properties like Facebook, Squidoo, Twitter, YouTube, and Linkedin.

Tagging: this involves using keywords to catagorize online content (such as blog posts). These tags are often descriptors that help consumers find your content based on tag words

Wiki: much like Wikipedia, this describes an online workspace that multiple users can access, add to and update.

Mashups: this is a way of combining several services into one. In music mashups are referred to several songs that are brought together to create a new one. Online you can see mashups created by techies to combine the best elements of a web site into one. Mozilla (since it’s open-sourced code) has a number of mashups.

Build Your Author Platform with Online Forums

This guest article from Dana Lynn Smith is part of the virtual book tour http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/booktour for her new book, The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Successful Social Marketing. http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/savvy_book_marketer/successful-social-marketing.html

Forums are online communities where people who are interested in a particular subject can ask questions, offer solutions, and share experiences. They are also called discussion groups, list serves, bulletin boards, and newsgroups. Some are web based and others function as email lists.

Forums are free and they are a great way to network with people who share your interests, build your reputation as an expert, learn from others, and subtly promote your book.

Typically, forum members post questions and others offer answers. Some posts are informational, passing along a resource that would be of interest to the group. Many forums are moderated, which means that each message must be approved before it is posted to the group.

To find forums related to your topic and target audience, search Yahoo Groups http://www.groups.yahoo.com and Google Groups, http://groups.google.com

and also type “your keyword + forum” into a search engine. Larger and more active groups will give you more exposure, so it’s best to concentrate your time there.

On some forums, you can specify whether you want to receive each message as it’s posted or receive a daily digest. If the forum has a place for member profiles, upload your photo and enter biographical information and links to your websites.

When you join a forum it’s best to lurk for a while first, to get a feel for the group and the level of expertise. Also read each group’s rules. Then look for opportunities to respond to posts in a helpful way. You can also gain visibility by posting a question.

For maximum benefit, you’ll need to participate regularly. When you receive the digest of posts, it’s easy to skim over the discussion topics looking for anything that you can respond to. After you make a post, check back to see if you need to respond to any replies it receives.

Forums usually allow you to list promotional information in the signature at the end of posts, but signatures may be restricted to a certain number of lines. Your signature can include your name and other details such as your book title and website addresses.

In most forums, it’s okay to mention your book when responding to a question, as long as you are subtle. For example, you might say “In researching my book XYZ, I found that …” Some forums allow purely promotional posts, such as announcing a new book or an author event. Just make sure you’re following the rules for each forum.

Here are some publishing forums to consider:

Self Publishing http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Self-Publishing/

POD Publishing http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pod_publishers/

Publish-L http://groups.google.com/group/publish-l?hl=en

Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides. http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/savvy_book_marketer/