Here’s my method.

1. Establish a “content spring”

I’m an organization nut. I need structure to survive. Online, when new social media networks materialize daily, organization can be tough. It is important to establish a “content spring,” a source from which most of your content will originate. The goal being to focus content creation efforts in a single place to avoid feeling overwhelmed by so many points of entry. In a perfect world, with perfect organization, you would be able to syndicate your content throughout your social networks with a single push of the “publish post” button.

The most logical content spring is the good ol’ fashion blog. Blogging platforms have evolved considerably over the past few years, with most blog sites having enormous inbuilt configurability. For The World’s First Author Blog I use the WordPress platform, which is perhaps the most configurable of all blogging software. Expect most of this post to skew appropriately.

2. Map your content routes (or, “build some tributaries,” if you want to maintain the spring motif)

Step three will detail a few of the tools I use to get my content from the spring to..I don’t know, the ocean maybe, but before that, in keeping with my penchant for organizational nerdery, it’s important to map out exactly where you would like your different types of content to ultimately appear. Emphasis intentional: the idea of micro-syndication relies of focusing your content for specific audiences, even niche audiences within your own readership.

“But Caleb, I want ALL of the content to go EVERYWHERE.” Well, hypothetical dissenter, while total media saturation may seem like a good goal, resources, time, and an ethical aversion to spamming friends and strangers should keep you from acting on this impulse.

The goal of micro-syndication is to ensure that the right content gets to the right people. When you write a fantastic blog post about micro-syndication, your family and bar buddies on Facebook might not care. And all those Twitter bots that you think hang onto your every tweet, they don’t care either. But your readers and your marketing and social media friends might care a lot.

I’ll use myself as an example. I have a personal Facebook page, a professional author Facebook page, various Twitter accounts (primarily my @calebjross account), a LinkedIn profile, and a few other profiles and websites. When I write a blog post, I don’t necessarily want to bombard every contact. What to do?

3. Establish the filters (or, setting up strategic dams, or whatever fits with the spring thing. I’m beginning to regret this stupid running metaphor.)

Know which tools are available and how they can help. Here are a few I use daily.

Twitterfeed

For highly customizable distribution to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (and fingers crossed more platforms in the future), nothing beats Twitterfeed. By using RSS feeds (which come built-in with most blogging platforms) Twitterfeed allows the user to direct specific feeds to specific social sites. What makes this system great is that by using category and/or tag data from your blogging platform, you can fine-tune the distribution path of your content.

For example, I have my main homepage feed:

www.calebjross.com/feed (“feed” may be a variety of RSS extensions. The WordPress default is “feed”)

Which I send to my author Facebook page as well as my Twitter account (both accounts I use almost exclusively for reader/writer information).

However, sometimes I create content on my homepage blog that isn’t very writerly, content that perhaps is better meant for those friends, family, and bots. In that case, I simply categorize the post as “un-writerly,” which creates this feed:

www.calebjross.com/category/un-writerly/feed

Twitterfeed has been set up to publish only posts from this feed to my personal Facebook page. Neat.

YouTube Playlists combined with Shortstack and the YouTube SEO Playlist plugin

With videos, my content spring is YouTube (I could host videos on my own site, but why the hell would I do that?) Now, take the concept of categories and tags described above and apply to video playlists. As I upload videos to the Caleb J. Ross YouTube channel, I assign them to playlists organized primarily for the purpose of syndication.

The next step is simply finding tools to aggregate the videos. This is where the Shortstack app and the YouTube SEO Playlist Wordpress plugin come into play. Using the YouTube SEO Playlist plugin I am able to have videos from specific playlists automatically populate on my website. Head over to any of my book pages (Charactered Pieces: stories, for example) or my Author Video Blog page. Notice that only Charactered Pieces: stories related videos appear on the book page and only episodes in my author video blog series appear on the Author Video Blog page? That syndication is entirely automatic.

This very same concept has been applied to my author Facebook page, using the Shortstack app. Notice the dropdown menu used for selecting playlists. Awesome.

Another syndication solution to consider is Ping.fm. This service allows a single social network message to populate to 30+ different networks. It sounds pretty great until you realize that most of the networks are small, lesser-known properties (myYearbook, StreetMavens, Yammer, and others). I haven’t used Ping.fm yet (this post will be the first I attempt to distribute using the service). If anyone out there has used the service, I’d love to know your thoughts. And in keeping with the ease of syndication theme here, the WPing.FM plugin is available to further streamline distribution by connecting WordPress with Ping.fm.

Tumblr and the Tumblrize WordPress plugin

Tumblr is an enormously popular blogging platform, thanks in part to its effective merging of twitter-like following capabilities, Facebook-like social group curation, and traditional long form blogging capabilities. Because the network is so huge, it’s important for an author to be there. Luckily, the Tumblrize plugin is here to auto-populate posts from a primary blog to a Tumblr blog. And I know, all you SEOs out there, that I run the risk of duplicate content. For now, I’m testing that risk.

On-Site Syndication/On-Site Curation

Micro-syndication is important, but what about ensuring that the content you create is easily accessible to the right visitors on your site itself? I call this…wait for it…on-site syndication (I provide naming things consulting services at a fair rate). Traditionally, on-site organization has simply been part of a greater conversation called site navigation. But I think it deserves specific attention.

One of the most effective examples of on-site syndication/curation is my use of category pages to organize particularly important blog post categories, effectively creating a type of micro-site with each category. Check out my SEO for Authors category (screenshot below), Book Marketing Tests & Studies category, or the World’s First Author Podcast category for examples.

There’s a rule when it comes to search engine optimization: Content is King. Basically, this means that above everything else—all the link building, code tweaking, and social networking—the most important factor of any well-optimized web presence is the content itself. What good is your website without compelling content? And without compelling content, how can you expect other websites to link back to yours? I would go so far as to suggest the rule should be Content is God, but then we lose out on the lovely alliteration.

But the Content is King rule governs everything, not just your website or social profiles. Your books themselves actually contain Kingable Content that can be tweaked and optimized for marketing benefits. I’m not suggesting that you to manipulate your book’s words for the sake of search engines; that would be [keyword]ing+<h1>stupid</h1>. Rather, I’m here to clue you in to an area of underutilized content that supports your book even after publication. Metadata.

What is Metadata?

Metadata, whether it’s book metadata or webpage metadata, is basically the same thing: behind-the-scenes data (subject, genre, theme, etc.) that describes the front-and-center content (the book itself). The categories assigned to help shelve books within the Dewey Decimal system, that’s a form of metadata. Those Product Details on every Amazon.com book page. That’s metadata. When you do a search on a computer for an author or topic, the search results are partially powered by metadata. Those Amazon.com If You Liked ____, You May Also Like ____ recommendations…metadata factors in to those.

Why Care About Metadata?

The more information available to search engines and book sites about your book, the more information those search engines and book sties have to use in providing relevant results and recommendations to readers. And while descriptions such as publisher, shipping weight, and product dimensions (pictured above) may be useful for some purposes, they don’t speak to the general concerns of most readers, such as theme, genre, subject, etc. That’s where enhanced metadata comes in.

Not many people realize just how deep the metadata rabbit hole goes. Which is why, for lack of a better term, I’m using “enhanced metadata” to refer to all those unseen rabbit hole nooks and crannies. Enchanced metadata allows you, the author or the reader, to supply book sites with in-depth information about a book. Such information may include, but is not limited to:

Where Can Metadata be Manipulated?

Shelfari (refers to enhanced metadata as Book Extras)

Shelfari is a social networking and book cataloging site which powers much of the enhanced metadata provided to Amazon.com. Existing Book Extras data can be seen either by accessing a particular book’s page at Shelfari.com or by accessing the book’s page via your Author Central account at Amazon.com.

More about Shelfari Book Extras

Goodreads (refers to enhanced metadata as Book Metadata)

Goodreads, like Shelfari, is a social networking and book cataloging site. Goodreads feels to me like a much more engaging platform than Shelfari, with far more opportunities for networking with readers.

To access the Book Metadata at Goodreads, first click on the “edit review” link of any book you’ve read. On the next page, toward the bottom, you’ll click on the “edit book metadata” link.  If you have not read a book, Goodreads requires that you become a “librarian” to edit the Book Metadata.

Goodreads also allows some users to become Librarians, meaning they are able to edit not only book metadata, but also all information about a book including authors, descriptions, publishers, page numbers, and on and on. I highly recommend applying for librarian status. Not only am I an organization nerd, I love being able to more fully control the data with the books I’ve written.

LibraryThing (refers to enhanced metadata as Common Knowledge)

LibraryThing is yet another book networking site, and in my opinion is the least user-friendly. But readers use it, so as an author it’s important for me to be there.

To access the Common Knowledge section, simply open up an existing book page and scroll down to about the middle of the page.

More information about the LibraryThing Common Knowledge metadata can be found here.

Additional information on metadata (as well as general SEO information for authors) can be found in this amazing PBS.org article, “A Self-Publisher’s Guide to Metadata for Books.”

top photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leprecon/

Back in November I wrote a blog post about standardizing your name for search engines. One of the most common responses I received from this post was from authors with unique pen names who cited their unique names as a reason to exempt them from the post’s advice. Basically, their ideas went that a writer with an uncommon name—we’ll use Maximus Pandroistien for this example—should not be worried about being outranked by other websites in a search results page because the likelihood of a similar name existing is nil. While this logic is true, it is narrow-minded. And please, pass along my condolences to Mr. Maxie Pandy and his presumably horrible childhood.

But here’s the important bit: potential readers who already know your name are not your target demographic. After all, they already know about you. You want to reach those who may be interested in your style of work but have no idea you exist. This is the difference between branding and directional marketing (branding = getting your name out there; directional marketing = being available when/where customers are looking).

Your Domain Name

Your initial focus should be your domain name. If you are able to buy your own name (branding) definitely do. Though search engines will try to downplay the power of keywords in a domain name (see this video of Google Matt Cutts dancing around the issue) research consistently speaks to their importance. In fact, in the aforementioned name standardization post, I speak to own troubles with acquiring my own name as a domain.

So, what if your name isn’t available as a domain name? Then, you are free to focus on directional marketing names, ones that speak to your writing in terms of content, aim, or marketing desire. For example, I currently own the domain names TheSocialMediaAuthor.com and NoirLiterature.com, which contain keywords that speak to the content I create. (note: these two domain names aren’t the best examples, as they currently redirect to CalebJRoss.com; in order for keywords in domains to matter to search engines, the domains generally have to represent unique sites. Search engines are smart enough to know when people are trying to game the system by buying and redirecting keyword-stuffed domains).

Your Site Content

Now that you’ve taken care of your domain name, the next consideration should be the actual content of your site. When writing content, whether that is pages or blog posts (or meta content, which is a different post entirely), keep your desired keyword targets in mind. If you write about vampire dinosaurs on mars, use phrases that speak to that content as often as possible. Of course, keep readability in mind; don’t stuff your content full of keywords solely for the sake of the search engines.

The basic idea is to help your website rank for search terms that could lead to more readers. When someone types in “book about vampire dinosaurs” or “I want to read about dinosaurs and vampires” or “are vampire dinosaurs real?” then you want your website (and by extension, your book) to appear in the results.

When blogging, write about themes in your book, the characters, the plot, and any other interesting element that could be expanded upon in an entertaining way for your blog readers. Pair these ideas with the overall tone you are trying to establish with your content to create something unique that speaks to your personality. For example, if you are a fiction writer, but you also love movies, write about movies that share elements with your books. If you pride yourself on knowing about cutting edge technological advances, writing about how new technology helps you as a writer of vampire dinosaur fiction.

Of course, all this speaks solely to on-site content. I haven’t even touched off-site elements yet (social networks, inbound links to your site, and offline media). I’ll save those for a future post.

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(part of my ongoing Search Engine Optimization for Authors series^[1])

Part of being a great author-marketer is knowing how to filter promotion time wastes from time worthwhiles. Some options are simple to filter. “Should I do a Goodreads.com giveaway to attract potential readers?” Yes (all it costs is the price of a few copies of a book to receive interest from hundreds of readers). “Should I rent a billboard for a month?” No (billboards offer either 1) travel-oriented products/services or 2) products with a high profit margin). Some options aren’t so simple. And in the case of the Facebook ad, prominence adds to the should I or shouldn’t I debate. Well, I’m here to help.

Are Facebook ads a good choice for self-promoting authors to sell books? Simple answer: no.

Scroll down to the bottom of this post is you want the quick n’ filthy results. Otherwise, continue reading for the in-depth analysis.

During the past month, I’ve been testing a Facebook ad campaign for one of my books. I approached the project with the intentions of sharing the results with you lovely readers. So, it was important to me that I document everything—to a nauseating level of detail—to best understand not only the results but the methodology as well. My hope is that I not only provide you with the campaign’s success (or lack thereof, in this case) but also with some possible alterations that may be worth trying should you or I decide to run a second campaign.

My credentials -or- “Why the hell should I listen to you?”

I have over 7 years of search marketing experience working with SEO and Paid Search (Google Ads, Facebook ads, etc.) interactive marketing agencies. I am also an author, so I understand that even though money is important, often a readership is a valid KPI (that’s Key Performance Indicator; see, I know some jargon). This Facebook campaign, however, will be focused on sales and profit.

Campaign structure -or- “You didn’t show a naked woman in the ad just to trick a user to click, did you?”

First, what is a paid search (Facebook or Google AdWords) ad? Basically, the idea is that an advertiser gets charged per click. If a user doesn’t click an ad, then then the advertiser doesn’t pay for the impression. Sounds good, right? Yes, and that’s one of the reasons it is such a lucrative model for the ad publishers and for many businesses who use the ads.

A note about timing: though I have two books coming out at the end of this year, I did not want to skew the results of this Facebook campaign with other promotional efforts. Therefore, I did not mention the titles of the new books in the campaign. Some could argue that this sort of additional branding may have helped the Facebook campaign. I can’t argue with that. However, for the sake of making this test as sterile as possible, I wanted to the ad to stand on its own as much as possible.

Here is how I set up my ad:

• I established four versions of the ad (shown below), changing things like the ad image, title, and copy. However, each ad spoke to the same product offering. This is called A/B testing, which is a way to help identify successful ad variations. Basically, if you were wondering, does the ad title “Dark Literary Fiction” get more clicks than “Like Your Fiction Dark?” A/B testing would be the way to determine this. Ideally, with A/B testing, only a single element would vary between two ad variations. In my case, I was not as interested in these minute changes.
• Each ad version pointed to the same landing page on my website. Because I decided to do the A/B testing at the ad copy level, I didn’t want to confuse the results by also altering the landing page copy. However, testing the landing page is a perfectly valid option in general (and in encouraged for most ad campaigns). Here is the landing page (with a few tweaks, as mentioned below). Though I’m not using the page for the Facebook campaign any longer, the deal is still valid if anyone wants in on it.
• This landing page was unique to the Facebook campaign. For tracking purposes, I don’t want to skew results by having multiple campaigns lead to a single page.
• This landing page included a nofollow, noindex tag, which means it will not be crawled or indexed by search engines. I did not want a user finding this landing page via a search engine. If I were not testing this ad, then I would be okay with having this page indexed. However, because I am testing a specific ad I wanted to keep all other sources of traffic far, far away.
• My own computer IP address is filtered out in my analytics program (Google Analytics, for me). This is something that anyone using an analytics program should do, whether testing an ad or just curiously interested in site traffic. Basically, it is important to not count your own visits to your site when determining the popularity of your site.
• The ad used a Cost per Click (CPC) model (vs. a Cost per Impression (CPM or CPI) model, which charges by impression. The reason for selecting the CPC model is that I wanted to equate specific clicks with specific actions and costs.

The ad demographic targets are as follows:

• These ads targeted about 436,800 users:
• who live in the United States
• between the ages of 18 and 45 inclusive
• who like Choke (novel), Chuck Palahniuk, Craig Clevenger, Fight Club (novel), Invisible Monsters, Lullaby (novel) or noir
• I set an initial CPC bid amount of $0.60 which I varied +/- about $0.30 as ad competition warranted. The initial CPC bid amount was determined based on a Facebook recommendation.

Ad Duration and Budget Terms -or- “SHOW ME THE PARAMETERS!!!!”

• Campaign dates: 11/16 to 12/13 (28 days)
• Initial budget:  $10/day. On 11/24 the budget was reduced to $5/day. After 10 days I was already seeing that clicks were not converting into sales. Halving the budget allowed me to continue testing the ad, but without totally losing my ass in the process.

Conversion funnel -or- “Exactly what things did you track to determine success or failure?”

Now that the ad parameters have been established, the next step is tracking the effectiveness of the ad. This is done in three steps:

1. How many people click on the ad vs. the number of times the ad appears? This is called the Click-thru-Rate or CTR.
2. How many people take some sort of action on the landing page after clicking the ad? This can be either clicking to purchase a book or it can be something as simple as just leaving the page without taking an action.
3. How many people follow through by acting on the ad offering (in this case, submitting an email for a free eBook)?

1. Click thru Rate

For the purposes of this test, the CTR isn’t that important. I am only paying when a user clicks the ad, so knowing the CTR really only tells me how compelling the ad copy is. It has no real effect on my bottom line. If I were advertising using the CPM or CPI models, CTR would factor more heavily into the final determination of success.

2. Landing page actions

The landing page for the test ad has two purchase buttons (one for Stranger Will and one for Charactered Pieces). Each purchase button has been appended with event tracking tags so that Google Analytics can tell me exactly how many times each button is clicked. Because I can’t tap into Amazon’s Point of Sale system, I will assume every Buy Button click on my website is a conversion. A 100% conversion rate is wishful thinking, true, but my thoughts are that if someone has already made it this far into the funnel, and has clicked to the buy button, then actually buying a book is likely.

Each event action is given a monetary value based on things such as my royalty percentage, affiliate fees, partner takes, etc. So, these values represent the true profit for me, the author, when a book is purchased. For the sake of transparency, the values are listed below.

• Charactered Pieces from Amazon.com: $2.09; from Barnes & Noble: $1.81
• Stranger Will from Amazon.com: $2.50; from Barnes & Noble: $2.50

3. Offer completions

The point of the ad campaign is to provide readers with a free ebook (which is attained by purchasing a copy of one of my books). In order to claim the ebook, readers must email order confirmations directly to me (details can be found toward the bottom of the Murmurs product page). Receiving one of these order confirmations acts as the “Holy Grail” conversion, as it definitively shows a conversion. However, my entire determination of success cannot be based on this alone, as it is likely not all buyers will care to redeem the offer of a free ebook. Therefore, an Offer Completion is like icing on the Landing Page Action cake.

Observations and Adjustments -or- “You didn’t just ‘set it and forget it, did you Ronco?”

No, I didn’t “set it and forget it” you obvious fan of late night informercials. As the test progressed, I did make subtle tweaks based on observations. I will outline those here.

• 11/21 – age, copy, and images changed due to poor performance (without enough data, I can’t make conclusions)
• 11/28 – I found that I have a 74% bounce-rate, but a time-on-page of about 1:49, meaning people are leaving the page without clicking another on my site, but they are at least reading the page (judging by the 1:49 time-on-page). This means one of two things. Either 1) the free ebook deal just isn’t intriguing enough or 2) the layout of the page is not optimized for conversion. Because I can’t really change the deal without altering the basis of the test, I decided to tweak a few items on the landing page:
  • I shrank a few images on the page, fearing that perhaps they were too imposing.
  • I removed some extraneous text
  • I added the important detail that books could be purchased in ebook OR print versions. I thought, perhaps people thought they had to purchase a print book, which would admittedly be weird considering I am giving away an ebook.
  • I added “ebook” to the ad verbiage so the user knows they are getting a free ebook (as opposed to a print book).
  • I added an email newsletter subscription option on ebook page (I figured I might as well get something out of the ad)

• Total Amount spent:  $79.48
• Total Clicks: 152 (strange though that Google Analytics reported only 54 visits; is Facebook over-reporting? Here’s an article from 2009 about one such case. I should look more into this.)
• Total events (clicks from the landing page to buy a book):  2…that’s not a misprint
• Total estimated value: $5
• Is the total estimated value for the campaign larger than the total amount spent? Hells no!
• Average bounce rate: 85.19%
• Average time on page: 1:22

What would I do differently with a second campaign?

• Use a CPM ad instead of a CPC ad. Does the low margin on a book simply make CPC advertising unfeasible? Would a CPM (cost per impressions) model work better? If so, a focus on the book cover itself would be important (rather than shots of people or more “conversion friendly” imagery)?
• Create a more enticing offer. Do people even care about free ebooks? Maybe readers would be willing to buy a full price book if additional freebies were offered. Or, maybe a purchase offer isn’t even necessary. Perhaps a simple “like my page to be entered into a contest for a free print book” would work.
• Promote a different book. Maybe I should write a non-fiction book. I would image those to have better conversions.
• A month long test is overkill. I would not test for a full month. I knew after one week that this campaign was not going to work. I should have used the remaining 3 weeks to test dramatically different versions of the ad or perhaps tested another platform entirely (Google AdWords, for example, though I anticipate the results would not be much different). I will take what I’ve learned and apply to another test at some time in the future, for sure. Be sure to subscribe to this blog RSS feed to ensure that you never miss a post. Another option, subscribe using the button below to get new blog posts sent to you via email.

Other helpful articles about Facebook ads and book selling:

• Do Pay-Per-Click Ads Sell Books? by Laura Pepper Wu
• Do Facebook ads work for authors?
• Facebook Ad sells a Bazillion Books! by Arthur Slade

1. ^[1] I understand that paid search ads aren’t traditionally umbrellaed under search engine optimization. However, because tracking and optimization is involved, I’m including it in the series ↩

What is Event Tracking? I’ll leave the details up to Google itself, but for our purposes think of Event Tracking as a second, deeper level of website analytics. Most of you are probably using your analytics program primarily to track how users interact with your website on a macro level (how many visits, most popular pages, how long visitors stay, etc). Event Tracking allows a micro level of tracking, where actual clicks and downloads on specific pages can be tracked.

Anywhere a user can click, Event Tracking can be used. Let’s look at an example that an author could definitely use.

How many times did readers download my sample chapters?

Let’s say you have a sample chapters .pdf that users can download. It’s been available for a while, but you’ve decided to start promoting it more. Is the promotion working?

In this case, you’d likely put something like the following as your Event Tracking tag. The important part is highlighted in blue. Notice everything that is not blue is a simple html link. Nothing special or complicated there.

What does this code mean?

This example has the specific labels replaced with dummy labels:

And here is what each of the bolded codes means:

Category

This is the name you supply for the group of objects you want to track. It is important to think in terms of scalability, so that should you want to track more events in the future, you can assign the tracked events to appropriate buckets.  This is why I use the category ‘samples’ rather than something hyper-specific like ‘NovelChapterDownloads.’  This way, I could use the same category of ‘samples’ should I decide to offer short story samples or even sample chapters for future books.

Action

This tag is commonly used to define the type of user interaction for the event. In this case, I use ‘download.’ With a .pdf there really is only this one option. If I were to track video events, however, I could use any variation of ‘play,’ pause,’ ‘stop’ or something else.

Label

This tag is optional. This can be any bit of additional data that might help understand your data. In the case of a .pdf download, I tend to use the file name for this label.

What does the end data look like? Here’s an example, tracking link clicks to various pages, pulled from the doteduguru.com website. In this example we are looking primarily at the Label tag. You can see the number of interactions on each of these Labels as well as which page they happened on.

Some possible scenarios

I mentioned a few at the beginning of this post (How many times did readers download your sample chapters? How many times did readers view your new book trailer? How many times did your website visitors click a button to buy one of your books? How many times did someone click a link to read one of your stories posted at another website?).  By now, you should have a general understanding of what event tracking can do. But you can also adapt its use for very specific ends.

Does your book interest readers?

Let’s say you have a finished novel. You want to post three sample chapters on your site. However, instead of posting all three chapters in a single .pdf, why not post each one as a separate .pdf. That way, you can gauge reader interest in your book by measuring the number of subsequent chapter downloads after the first. If you find that your first chapter was downloaded 300 or so times, but the second was only downloaded 6 times, then you may want to revisit your first chapter.

How interesting is your title?

You could post a vote on Facebook for readers to give feedback on a title. Or, you could post sample chapters to a few “different” books and measure which one received the most interaction. Each file would contain the same chapters, but the titles would be different. Does Nerdy Babes from Planet Chess get more downloads than Intelligent Females from the Game Planet? I’m not saying you should use these results blindly, but they may offer some insight.

Measure the effectiveness of an online advertising campaign

I’ll get more into this option in my next SEO for Authors post. Basically, you can establish an ad, in my case on Facebook, and drive clicks to a specific landing page. That page can have tracking on various action buttons. Activity can then be measured to determine success. Stay tuned to this SEO for Authors blog category for more on this Event Tracking possibility. Better yet, subscribe to this blog RSS feed to ensure that you never miss a post. Another option, subscribe using the button below to get new blog posts sent to you via email.

(Announcing a new post category: Search Engine Optimization for Authors. Well, it’s new in that I’ve finally given a name to it, but as you can see by clicking over to the category, there are a few past posts that fit within this category)

If you’ve read Christina Katz’s fantastic Get Known Before the Book Deal, or have been at all concerned about building that illusive “platform” so many industry types talk about then either 1) you are an author with a career somewhere between beginning and burgeoning, or 2) you’re interested in the publishing industry for slightly different, though I’m sure equally masochistic, reasons. Either way, one of the cornerstones of author presence in our Web 2.0 world (aren’t we at Web 2.1 yet, at least?) is the blog. Despite its cornerstone status, many authors aren’t sure where to begin. Or worse, they take the leap into bloggery without considering how to leverage such a forum for their own career goals (okay, time to put on the Purina checkerboard slacks, you sleazy salesman).

Which blogging platform to use?

There are hundreds of blogging platforms available, ranging from the well-known (WordPress, Blogger, Blogspot, even Facebook Notes can be considered a form of blogging) to the lesser-knowing (Gather, Posterous) to the entirely made up (IdeasAndThings.com, BloggingForBeer). Though my experience is limited primarily to Blogger and WordPress, based on research and my own empirical data I really only need this limited experience. I’ll say it now: WordPress.ORG is the ultimate blogging platform. But is it the best for authors? Yes. Yes, it is.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

A free WordPress.com blog (www.example.wordpress.com) is not the same as a self-hosted WordPress.org blog^[1]. Unfortunately for those of you who use the former, even if you’ve purchased your own domain name to mask the .wordpress.com part, you aren’t getting the full benefit of the WordPress software. My goal then will be to convince you to pony up the few dollars per month for some hosting space so you can host your own website. I use Bluehost and haven’t had any trouble with it.

The problem with a free blog, like WordPress.com, Blogger, or any other, is that the free software has limitations that prevent you from really being able to do everything you might like to do with your website. These limitations generally have to do with using (or not using, as is the case) any type of scripting, such as Javascript or Flash video^[2]. Stop yawning! This is important.

Scripts are used more than most people are aware. That fancy Twitter feed in my sidebar. That’s a script. Those media players in my podcast episode posts. Script. The Currently Reading box to the right where I can show off my elitist in-the-know brainery. Script. The rotating banner at the top of my homepage. Yep. Script. Those social sharing buttons at the bottom of this post and floating to the right of the screen. Guilty. Script. And with WordPress, there are literally thousands of plugins that allow someone with no knowledge of any kind of script to dynamically adapt the look of a blog to suit his or her current fancy. Basically, if you can dream it, there’s probably a plugin for it. (I often say the same thing about Microsoft Excel, but I won’t get into that now as I’ve probably already surpassed by nerdery limit for this post).

The most important script of all: Google Analytics.

Most free blogging platforms will give you some general traffic data (number of page views, number of hits…and that’s about it). Google Analytics (free, by the way) gathers, digests, and excretes so much information you’ll need to consult a doctor for having a 4-hour+ raging data boner.

Who cares about so much information, right? You, the entrepreneurial author should. As authors are increasingly being charged with marketing tasks, it is important to think like a marketer. What do marketers do well? They test, measure, and replicate. Google Analytics allows you to test promotional ideas, measure the results, and repeat with equal or better results.

Say you wrote a blog post. You know how many times the post was viewed (which is different than the number of page visitors, by the way). Shouldn’t that be all you need? No. You might need to know how long a person spent on that post (to estimate engagement); if it was the first post visited upon entering the site (landing page) or last post visited before leaving the site (exit page); what keywords brought the visitor to that page; and what actions a person took on that page. Why? How else are you going to know if what you wrote resonated with people? How else are you going to know if you should write more content with a similar intent? The more you can understand your audience, the more likely they are to come back for more (and perhaps buy a book). I know, I know, there is magic is simply creating the words and not caring who reads it, right? Try telling that to the agent or publisher you are trying so hard to lasso.

Over the next few weeks I plan to explore some of the more important aspects of Google Analytics with particular attention paid to how understanding data can help an author connect with readers and ultimately sell a few books. Some of the topics might be:

1. using event tracking to see how many times your chapter samples were downloaded
2. using a custom landing page to determine the effectiveness of a Facebook ad
3. digging into popular keywords to mine for blog content
4. where your visitors come from can help you focus your outreach
5. using a URL builder and custom shortlinks to track the effectiveness of non-internet advertising (how well did those postcards work, really?)

To keep up, either check back here often or subscribe to my RSS feed. If you want to subscribe only to the SEO for Authors category (which will make me sad, but I understand) you can do that too by clicking this subscribe to Search Engine Optimization for Authors category link. Last option, subscribe to receive new posts by email: 

1. ^[1] Wordpress offers its software for free at WordPress.ORG. Simply download the software and install on your new server space. Some hosts, like Bluehost, let you bypass the download part entirely and install the software directly from the web host account dashboard. ↩
2. ^[2] Some free blogging platforms allow some scripts. But the selection is limited and usually not very customizable. ↩

The always wonderful Jane Friedman recently posted and responded to a question from a writer about the standardization of an author name and how search engines interpret (or cannot interpret) the various spellings of a single author’s name. I won’t post Jan O’Hara’s entire question here, but definitely check it out. A representative excerpt follows:

Depending upon the blogging platform I’m using, it variously codes my name as OHara, O’Hara, O\Hara, or Hara…While some search engines or bookselling sites prompt the reader to find the correct spelling, this is not consistent. I cannot be guaranteed a reader who searches for “ohara” will be sent on to “O’Hara.”

This is an important dilemma. In fact, it’s one I myself have wrestled with for years. The truth is, way back in 2000 or so when I first started seriously considering a career as an author, I went by Caleb Ross (sans the middle J ). The reason: calebross.com was already taken. And not just by another nobody. Caleb Ross is apparently a well-known actor, most famous for his role on TV show called The Tribe. So, my secret goal in life was to become so popular that searches for Caleb Ross would instead lead to Caleb J. Ross content.

But after so many years of fledgling popularity, I pretty much gave up and decided to focus (rightly) on my writing instead of my name. Little did I know that focusing on my writing would become a huge help in gaining that coveted #1 position in the search results (more on that later). As I become more aware of how search engines work my efforts to take the #1 position became more focused. How did I do it? How did I “train” the search engines to know that searches for Caleb Ross could indicate a desire for Caleb J. Ross content?

First, how do search engines work?

I eat and breathe search engines, but I understand that most people don’t. Therefore, I want to give a quick summary of how a search engine works, with special respects to the problem of standardizing names. If you know how search engines work, skip this first section.

When you do a search on Google (I’ll speak to Google specifically here, but most of this information can be applied to any good search engine) the search engine results page (SERP) is not actually displaying live data from the websites it lists. Instead, the SERP is actually showing copies of the website data. Google routinely takes snapshots of every website in the world (called crawling or spidering) and stores copies in its own databases (called indexing), much like a giant file cabinet. Why is this important? Because before a search engine displays the results for a query, it is applying a top-secret algorithm to all of the websites in its file cabinet. This algorithm attempts to determine which websites are most relevant to your search query (FYI, the fact that websites are indexed on Google’s own servers rather than stored only on local website servers is one of the reasons why search results appear so quickly…if that interests you, look for your Welcome to the Nerd Club membership card in the mail shortly).

So how does Google decide that one website is more relevant than another? How would Google know that when someone is searching for ohara that he actually means O’Hara? That, my friend, is why Google rules the world. Few people know the actual algorithm. However, there are some known factors which can be used to help make sure Google understands that ohara is the same person as o’hara.

The importance of proper anchor text

One of the most important ranking factors is inbound links, which are the links on other websites that point back to your own site. Google considers each inbound link like a vote for the linked site. Basically, the more other sites link to your site, the more important Google assumes your site to be. Of course there are caveats to this, but the basics are all we need right now. But the link itself isn’t all that matters. Also important is the anchor text, or the highlighted part of a link. For example, in this sentence the anchor text would be “this sentence.” For a better example, see the first paragraph of this (already lengthy) blog post where I link back to Jane Friedman’s blog using the anchor text “posted and responded to a question from a writer about the standardization of an author name.” Basically, I am telling the search engines that the linked page on Jane Friedman’s blog has something to do with a question from a writer involving the standardization of an author name and that Jane Friedman’s blog should get a vote for that query.

Back to author name standardization. If I want people searching for Caleb Ross to see calebjross.com in the search results, one way to encourage that would be to place links throughout the internet that point to calebjross.com and contain the anchor text “Caleb Ross.” And this is exactly what I did.

Since March I have been involved in a 70+ blog tour where I have offered guest posts to a variety of literary and author blogs. Each blog post contained a short bio, in which, for the last 10 or so guest posts, I included the following line (links included):

This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross (also known as Caleb Ross, to people who hate Js) as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour.

What seems like a slight humorous aside is actually a conscious effort to help Google understand that people searching for Caleb Ross may in fact mean Caleb J. Ross. Couple this sly insertion with the boatloads of content I was creating and distributing online, and eventually the search engines recognized that Caleb J. Ross may be worthy of Caleb Ross searches (though The Tribe’s Caleb Ross still appears predominately in image searches…and rightfully so; he’s way better looking than me).

The importance of tying all of your social profiles and blogs together

We all have social profiles. Way too many social profiles. Counting all of the profiles I maintain with regularity, I have about nine. Most social profiles offer an area to include external links to other sites. Utilize these areas to include links to each of your other social profiles.

For the more advanced user consider implementing the rel=”author” markup. I won’t go into depth about how to implement it (go to this official Google support answer topic for in-depth info), but it is important to understand its potential power. Consider this: you write for multiple blogs, have multiple social profiles online, and you want to help Google understand that single authors often produce content all over the internet. Enter the rel=”author” markup. When implemented correctly, here’s what a SERP will look like:

Google has been pushing this markup a LOT lately. And if Google is pushing something, you can be certain that it is important, or at least will be in the near future.

Which brings me to Google+. To some, Google+ is just another social network. To search engine nerds like myself, Google+ is nothing short of a revolution. I won’t turn this post into a manifesto, but I do want to highlight a couple very important aspects of the Google+ profile. First, at this time Google+ requires either a real name or a known pseudonym which means the name in a Google+ profile will certainly carry more weight than a name in a different social profile. My recommendation is to build your Google+ profile around your preferred professional name. Second, Google+ contains a dedicated profiles sidebar (see screenshot below). Most important to note is the “Contributor to” section. If you’ve read this blog post then you probably already know what to do here. If you skipped everything above: list the author archive page urls for all the blogs you contribute to in this section.

Now, go to sleep. This has been quite the lengthy post.

Click here to read the guest post. Also, don’t forget that if you comment on all guest blog posts, you will get free stuff.

About the Stranger Will Tour for Strange:

My goal is to post at a different blog every few days beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of my second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact me. I would love to compromise your integrity for a day. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow me on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend me on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

See all tour stops here

Recently, I was kindly invited to participate in a panel on social media during the 2011 AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference in Washington DC. Joined by Tanya Egan Gibson, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Christina Katz, and moderator Jane Friedman, the panel succeeded in opening up and emphasizing both the possibilities and importance of social media in developing an author’s platform.

Having never before participated in an AWP panel (though I have attended many), I was initiated only from the perspective of an audience member. Knowing that an uninteresting topic coupled with boring presenters may drive the audience to mutiny, I came prepared to be as concise and witty (hopefully) as possible. Overall, I consider my effort a success. Of course, having the aforementioned panelists at the dais made failure near-impossible.

I’ve argued before that and author should openly embrace social media; the goal of both online social engagement and book-bound literary endeavors are the same: communicating on a human level. While naysayers abound, the consistent monologue about the form (such as this very AWP panel) seems to slowly be cultivating a more accepting and even more eager mindset.

Listen to the entire panel at The Velvet Podcast, here. Or you can subscribe to The Velvet Podcast via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, or iTunes.

Here’s the official description of the panel:

The Art and Authenticity of Social Media: Using Online Tools to Grow a Community. (Jane Friedman, Tanya Egan Gibson, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Christina Katz, Caleb J. Ross)

Social media is easy to disparage as meaningless socializing, undignified shilling, or time better spent writing. Yet sharing information online and having conversations with readers is critical to spreading the word about what you (or your organization) does. Online community building can help develop a long-term readership, plus open up new opportunities.

Optimizing a website so that it can be more easily found by readers is to most authors, I would assume, a foreign concept. Not that I am discrediting authors; I simply hope that most of you aren’t as nerdy as I am. Having a platform (re: a stable of willing buyers) is becoming more and more important to publishers. Optimizing your web presence is an important way to grow that platform.

Many of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) best practices for commercial sites are relevant when working with a personal site. Keyword-rich content, meta development, inlinks, all of these things are important. However, there are some major differences to consider. I’ll be focusing on those differences.

First, determine the purpose of your website. Is it to covert sales? Is it rack up a long list of newsletter subscribers? Is it to provide general awareness of yourself and your books? Most of you are likely part of the third item—most book sales will happen off-site, at either an online book store or through a brick-and-mortar store; and newsletters, though highly converting [1], are generally geared more toward e-commerce consumers and repeat consumers. There is a place for all three of these items in a single website, of course, but I’m going for focus in this already lengthy post.

Monitoring Traffic

You need a way to analyze your website traffic. I recommend Google Analytics because it is free, extremely robust (intimidating so), and super easy to incorporate. If you can’t measure your site’s performance, you’ll never know if you efforts are truly working. Some free blog sites don’t allow Javascript (which Google Analytics uses), but in those cases the blogging platform usually has a rudimentary traffic measuring application already built in.

Keywords

Think of keywords as the terms used to find a website. For example, someone may type Hoist That Rag meaning and end up seeing my page in the Google search results. And in fact, they did:

The 8th, 9th, and 10th top referring keywords for a given time-frame

Using Google Analytics, I can see what terms people searched to find my site. I recommend expanding your keyword set using these terms as a guide. For example, using the term Hoist That Rag meaning, I could imagine that people coming to my site might be interested in Tom Waits, Tom Waits Lyrics, and perhaps more generally, downtrodden, crooner, barfly personas. Additionally, keywords that searchers may not have used, but ones you feel are relevant to your site, are worth considering. For example, nobody came to my site using the term “grotesque noir fiction,” but I may want them to. I’ll add that to my list.

So, what to do with this keyword knowledge…

Content

By “content” I am going to be focusing on blogs. Individual page content, such as your bio, about, and work pages should be filled with keyword rich content, but blogs offer a more consistent stream of new content, which search engines (and readers) love.

Write blog posts that blend what you want to say with what you know people have already searched for. Keeping the examples above, I could write posts about barflies, Tom Waits, and perhaps how many of his lyrics feel like grotesque noir (“Eyeball Kid” comes to mind). The basic idea is to give search engines as many opportunities to validate your site in the eyes of readers.

Search engines put a strong focus on in-bound links (re: links from other sites to yours). When content is created specifically to attract links, this is called link bait. So how can you use your site’s past performance to anticipate link bait opportunities? I’ll use an example from my site to illustrate.

On July 6^th, I noticed a spike in site traffic. Upon digging into my analytics, I found that a recent post, “Great Unexpected Literary References,” which highlights literary references in cartoons, managed to be linked to by a couple moderately popular literary blogs.

A July 5th spike in traffic. What is this about?

To capitalize on potential continued interest in this type of content, I then created more content with similar ideas. And in fact I started an Unexpected Literary References category for this very purpose. It continues to be a fairly popular category (in terms of my site’s overall traffic).

Content is great for bringing readers to you, but what about getting your content in other places?

This is part of what is called off-site optimization…

Community participation

Getting content and in-links is important to search engines, but don’t forget that you are blogging for human readers. Comment on other blogs, join forums, follow authors on Twitter, friend authors on Facebook, but above all, be active. Involve yourself in the online literary community. This is good practice, even if you don’t have a site to promote.

Basically, by proving your love to other humans, as a byproduct, you will be proving your worth to search engines. Each LEGITIMATE link you put out there is another rung in your search engine ranking ladder (notice the word LEGITIMATE; spamming is bad, search engines are smart about penalizing you for spammy links, and humans are smart about blacklisting shits who throw irrelevant links all over the web).

But you only have so many hours in the day, you say…

Be your own Press Release distributor

Use RSS to import your blog feeds into your various social networking and profile pages. Goodreads, Amazon, and Facebook, for example, allow authors to have their blog posts automatically posted to profiles. This means that you hit “post” once at your own blog, and your content feeds to those various other networks.

Be sure to cross-link all of your profile pages and your website. If possible, list your Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, YouTube, Fictionaut, and all the other social pages you maintain on all of those various networks. Sometimes, you are only allowed one site link. In this case, I would recommend listing your website. A close second would be your Facebook profile.

Profile links in my homepage sidebar

Profile links in my Facebook sidebar

Measuring conversions

Since most author pages aren’t focused on product conversions (purchases usually take place off-site, at an Amazon.com or independent bookseller like Kansas City’s Rainy Day Books) it doesn’t make sense to focus on actual product sales as a measure of performance. If looking to measure conversions, a newsletter sign up or comment submission may be more appropriate. Think of yourself as being in the business of establishing a relationship, not in the business of bookselling. Google Analytics has a built in method of tracking conversions.

[1] ExactTarget is an email marketing company, so be weary of fully embracing these numbers.

Disclaimer: I am far from a career author. I’ve made enough money to buy a few fifths of whisky and some diapers for my baby, so needless to say I’ve got a long way to go. The following plan reflects this outsider (re: possibly ignorant) perspective.

The idealized author spends his time alone, churning out typewritten manuscripts to meet constant deadlines. He drinks. Probably smokes. He’s respected. He vacations in tropical seclusion, but still, even with the changed view, he writes. He has no day job. He is an author. Writing puts his kids through college.

There is a reason this image contains a typewriter. Much like the machine itself, the idealized author is all but extinct. I think a lot of writers would like to go back to this model. Is it possible to not just retain the author career, but to make it thrive?

Given the following set of assumptions, I believe it would be possible to bring back the author career:

1. Content will continue to outweigh consumption
2. The marketplace is spoilt by free content, and much of that content will continue to be free
3. eBooks/eReaders will be a primary content medium within the next decade
4. The cost to produce and distribute market-quality products will continue to fall

More authors are producing more content than ever, so it’s fair to say the larger onus is on the publishers to bring back the career. The problem is that publishers have no incentive right now to court authors in the way they once did. Publishers have the above items #1 and #2 going for them. A culture of expected free content coupled with an overflow of content, means authors have been trained to work for cheap or free.

But, authors have items #3 and #4 above as important pieces of leverage. If publishers don’t adapt to the changing market, and work with authors to do so, then the publishers will die. Because authors have the ability to create and distribute their own work, and because they have been trained to work for nothing, authors have little to lose by abandoning the publisher. Without authors, publishers die. Without publishers, authors continue.

What can be done?

1. Consolidate the agent and publisher roles. Basically, this combined entity should act as a time and beaurocracy manager for authors. Today, authors have the ability to publish and distribute their own content without the help of agents and publishers. If this Pub/Agent composite can give authors time to write, then they will ultimately be given the sort of consistent product that the marketplace loves. Marketing thrives on trends. Giving authors time is the way to nurture trends.
2. Increase author royalties. As media becomes electronic, the savings on overhead and distribution must be passed on. Court your talent, publishers. I’ve read the arguments against electronic media being cost-savers for publishers, and I just don’t believe them.
3. Embrace the eBook paradigm shift. As a reader, I haven’t yet fallen in love with eBooks. As a writer, I am very excited by the possibilities. Instead of fighting to keep print alive, fight to make eBooks thrive. eBooks have the potential to increase the pool of readers, much as the iPod did for music enthusiasts.
4. Brand yourselves as independent records labels do. Make fans out of your press, not just out of your authors. I won’t go into much depth here about this, but we do have an episode forthcoming at the Welcome to The Velvet podcast on this topic.

What can writers do?

1. Provide consistent and brandable content. As Dan Holloway says in the comments at Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works blog, “If you are writing for the art, by all means try your hand at getting an agent, but don’t be upset if you don’t get one – and if the feedback is that you should be more commercial in order to get one, then make the decision – do you want to write for the pay packet, or do you REALLY want to do it for the art? And if it’s the latter, don’t expect to be picked up, or blame the publishers when you aren’t.”
2. Prove that you can provide that content. As Jane Smith says in a response to the above comment, “I think that a big reason that most writers make such a paltry amount is that there are lots of people out there who call themselves writers but who only really dabble with writing: they sell an article every now and then, take several years to write just one book; sure, they’re writers–but not full-time, serious writers.”. A career author must write as though it is a career.

I want to sit alone and write fiction for a living. Help me do that. Make me believe.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaywalk/