Your book has just been reviewed in a major newspaper! That’s terrific, but don’t let the publicity train stop there. Here’s 3 ways to leverage that review and spread the love:

1. Pitch other newspapers by letting them know about your great review. (If somebody else big has reviewed it, they are more likely to review it too.) However, avoid giving them the same-old, same-old pitch. Reporters want a fresh angle that appeals directly to their readers. Be sure to read the publication and that reporter’s stories to see what will appeal to them.

2. Shout your good news from the rooftops! Post it on your blog, your facebook page, tweet it! Email your friends with the link. Enjoy your moment in the sun.

3. As you spread the word, create a media list of contacts for future publicity. This list should include:

• Your social media profiles
• Email contact list
• Reporters, publications, details on how they like to be contacted
• Bloggers

I spent most of today working on the content for my new class on social media marketing. It’s titled “Now That I’m On Social Media, What Do I Say?” It’s interesting to me that people who wrote an entire book get writer’s block when they’re confronted by their new blog or Facebook page.

I was trying to think of a great example of someone who is totally genuine – a poster child for how to act on social media – when I remembered David Letterman’s Mom.

Remember Dorothy? Dave sent her to the 1994 Winter Olympics as his show’s correspondent. She was wonderful – enthusiastic, down to earth, and very funny. So, all of you social media newbies, check out Dorothy’s report to Dave and her interview with Hillary Clinton below and take note:

I clicked on Amazon.com and there it was again: The Three Wolf Moon t-shirt. I had written about the t-shirt before, several years ago. It hadn’t changed. Except there were even more reviews about the wonders of wearing this fabulous t-shirt – 2,091 of them to be exact:

353 people have uploaded images of themselves wearing the shirt, including Stephen Colbert and William Shatner. Who knew celebrities would embrace this fabulous fashion statement?

What can we learn from the Three Wolf Moon shirt?

1. There are people out there who will spend lots of time writing hilarious reviews of the damnedest things. You can only hope they embrace your book or product and do the same.

2. Apparently this is a real chick magnet.

3. To learn how to turn your book into a cultural phenomenon, check out my Amazon for Authors webinar on Feb 15 and March 8. Learn more here.

Fish or cut bait. S— or get off the pot.Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

How many euphamisms can you think of for “take action?” Sooner or later, you have to move or die. I know a lot of small business owners, consultants, and would-be authors who operate on the “I’m busy so I must be accomplishing something” mode.

The trouble is, they’re not. Activity does not always equal progress. It just makes you feel better so you can delay real action a little longer.

Real action can be painful. It means you have to make the hard phone call, write the proposal, draft the novel, practice the speech, ask for the sale. It means you have to risk failure.

It’s way easier to put that off by taking one more meeting at Starbucks, secure in the fantasy that you’re working on getting that next client. Except that he’ll never be your next client if you don’t write the proposal and ask for the order. But that would be risking a “no.”

I worked with a guy years ago at a small newspaper who used to say, “I might as well meet with so-and-so. I already don’t have the sale.” I loved that attitude. If you lose the sale, what have you lost? What you already didn’t have.

Upside-down marketing has a simple premise: Get more of what you want for your business by helping others get what they want.

Marketing ideas that will work today require you to create some new practices for the current business paradigm. In this workshop, you will learn about some marketing strategies that will separate you from the competition and give you the results you desire.

If you want to have “exceptional” results in your business, you will need to put “exceptional” methods to work for you. This workshop is designed to help Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners market their products and services differently in 2012 and beyond.

If you’re in the Denver area, don’t miss this workshop on January 26, 2012, from 8:00 am to noon at the Jefferson County Board of Realtors, 950 Wadsworth Blvd., #101, Lakewood, CO 80214. Cost is only $29.95, limited to the first 100 registrants.

For more details, check out the flyer: UPSIDE-DOWN Marketing Workshop Flyer

The workshop is sponsored by Make-it-Fly and MetaDog Rewards LLC. All profits go to benefit Kudo Communities.

1. DO NOT anger Dan Savage by comparing homosexual sex to beastiality. (SEE Santorum.com. No, this is not Rick Santorum’s official campaign website. It’s Dan Savage’s website and ranks higher in Google than the candidate’s official website.)
2. DO NOT forget to buy your name as a URL. (SEE newtgingrich.com which is really StopRomneysPiousBaloney.com. This is not the website of the presidential candidate.)
3. DO NOT forget to buy the negative URLs that could be connected to you. (SEE newtgingrichlies.com)
4. DO NOT admit you don’t know how to use email. (As did John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign.)
5. DO NOT run anti-gay ads wearing the same jacket Heath Ledger wore on Brokeback Mountain. (SEE Rick Perry’s anti gay ad and it’s many parodies)
6. DO NOT make off the cuff “facts” that people can check within minutes. (SEE ALL CANDIDATES and most office holders.)
7. DO NOT try to make a high school student with a twitter account apologize for calling the Governor of Kansas a jerk. (SEE #heblowsalot on Twitter and the resulting coverage of the incident.)
8. DO NOT post pictures of your junk on Twitter. (And even if it’s accident, don’t email pictures like this AT ALL.) (See former Rep. Anthony Weiner.)

Remember Lorelei Lee? Marilyn Monroe played Lorelei in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lorelei and her best friend Dorothy (Jane Russell) played two showgirls looking for love and diamonds. (Not necessarily in that order.) The highlight of the picture was Marilyn’s iconic performance of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

You’d think that Lorelei was the epitome of the ditsy blonde bombshell.  When I watched the movie again this week, I realized that Lorelei wasn’t anybody’s plaything. She had a plan for herself – marry her rich boyfriend – and score a tiara from a wealthy conquest. She didn’t waste her time with good looking men who couldn’t give her what she wanted. She set her goals and executed her plan.

Here’s what a marketer could learn from Lorelei:

1. Have a plan!

Most marketing happens randomly – a blog post now and then, a few posts on our Facebook page, a tweet. Plan your marketing efforts – whether it’s posting on social media or getting on radio – and schedule time to carry it out.

2. Take time to target your intended audience.

Lorelei had made up her mind to marry a rich man who would give her diamonds. She didn’t waste time on men who didn’t fit that criteria. Who are you spending your efforts on? Are they the audience you’re looking for?

3. Attract your intended audience by delivering the goods.

Know what they’re looking for. Lorelei’s intended wanted his vision of the ideal woman – gorgeous, innocent, and devoted to him. She never let him suspect she had a brain and a plan.

4. Listen to your audience and they’ll tell you what they want.

How can you become the go-to expert to your audience? Provide solutions to their problems and they’ll turn to you.

5. Keep your eye on the prize and be persistant.

Lorelei and Dorothy got the husbands of their dreams at the end of the movie. What is your business goal and how will you get it?

I love it when the people speak up.

Log in to Twitter and search on the hashtag @40dollars and you’ll see personal stories and political opinions galore as people sound off on the latest stalemate in Washington.

$40 a paycheck is the average amount ending the payroll tax cut will cost an American family. The House GOP rejected a Senate bill on Monday that would extend the cut for 2 months, giving both houses time to pass a bill extending the cuts for the rest of the year.

To get the public on their side, the White House turned to social media, inviting the public to post how losing $40/paycheck will affect their families. The response was immediate. According to the CNN blog:

You responded in force on Twitter using the hashtag #40dollars.  Early Wednesday morning there had been 1,000 tweets generated 723,638 impressions, reaching an audience of 585,405 followers using the hashtag within the past 24 hours, according to the website HashTracking.com. The website Topsy.com, which tracks similiar metrics showed that the hashtag had over 14,000 mentions. Needless to say, President Obama and the White House’s campaign drew the attention of Americans online.

Will it help to break the stalemate? Stay tuned.

This sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it’s not. It’s great to market your book and/or your services on free social media sites. The sites are free but your time is not. Time = money, whether you’re working for someone else or running your own business.

Once upon a time in the corporate world,

…social media gurus argued that since social media marketing is a conversation between friends and not a sales pitch, return on investment for these marketing activities could not be measured. These conversations were good for business and that was a good enough reason to do it.

The bosses in charge of the budgets saw it differently. In order to continue funding for social media campaigns, CEOs demanded proof that social media campaigns had a tangible – read profitable – benefit to the company.

You, too, as an author/entrepreneur need to see financial results for your social media marketing campaigns. To measure your ROI (or, return on investment) you need to do the following:

Step #1:

Write clear objectives as to what you want to accomplish with your campaign. Use concrete numbers, like “sell 500 copies of my book in the next quarter.” Or, “grow my mailing list to 5000 in by July of 2012.”

Step #2:

Establish your social media and website baselines before starting your campaign. Where are you now in your social media presence? Use tools like Google Analytics, Klout, and Hubspot’s new Marketing Grader to determine your current traffic, including unique and total visitors, incoming links and other sources of traffic, and what pages are getting the most visits. Look at your social media profiles to note your Facebook business page “fans,” your Twitter followers, number to retweets per week or month. Do you use Feedburner or another blog syndicator? Check how many subscribers you have. Do you have an ezine? How many subscribers do you have?

Spend some time going through your client records. How have your clients been finding you up to this point? Referral? Your website? Facebook?

Step #3:

Set a time frame to measure – weekly or monthly.

• For your reporting period, look at sales revenue, the number of transactions, the number of new customers, and the average sale.
• Use Google analytics, Facebook Insights, a customer questionaire, (and ask your new customers, if you can) to determine the cause and effect of your campaign.
• Look beyond the numbers to what happened as a result. For instance, does your increase in website traffic correlate to higher sales? Maybe you’re getting more referrals?

You’ll need to track this information consistently for a few months to see what patterns emerge.

Here’s the easiest thing to do after you see where you’re getting your new customers from: do more of that. If you’re seeing more business because of contests you’re running on Facebook, run more promotions like that. Your audience doesn’t seem to be on Twitter? Okay. One less profile to worry about.

Numbers and reports may be a bit tedious to do, but they can provide very exciting information on the best ways you can promote your business and make a living. And that’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

Well, I thought it was funny…