English is a truly global language with hundreds of regional variations worldwide, including over 50 dialects of British English alone. It is also the primary language of the internet, and the virtual world has spawned its own varieties of English too. These online dialects, often spread by memes, have been around long enough now for a pattern to be identified – a path well enough worn for you to identify emerging linguistic memes – or even create your own.

Long before social media – which itself has only recently caught on to the power of image-sharing – pictures were widely distributed via the internet and helped spread memes. Today, social media accelerates this process. From Grumpy Cat to First World Problems to One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor, images with captions make great online memes, as they are so shareable. These examples all use standard English.

Yet captioned images can also be used to propagate non-standard dialects – such as LOLcat, Doge, and Ermahgerd. These develop into new, playfully deviant varieties of English, with their own rules of syntax, spelling, and grammar. Linguistic memes share certain characteristics: they pair an engaging image with a compelling caption to create a funny or relatable situation; they use a specific font; and they follow consistent linguistic rules.

Raining LOLcats and Doges

The oldest of these is LOLcat, or LOLspeak – LOL being the textspeak acronym meaning ‘laugh out loud’, and cats being the most popular images shared online. Starting in 2005, but with precursors dating as far back as the 1870s photography of Harry Pointer, LOLcats are images of cats overlaid with words in uppercase Impact or Arial Black. These act as speech bubbles for the hilarious things cats say, such as “I Can Has Cheezeburger?” – the original phrase, which led to a website of the same name. Recently, OxfordWords gave you the opportunity to generate your own LOLcat speak.

More recently dogs have got in on the act – specifically one breed, the Shiba Inu, who, since 2013, has used short phrases in multicoloured lowercase Comic Sans to express an internal monologue of wonderment in broken English. Doge relies more on idiosyncratic grammar than (mis)spellings and textspeak – though these are sometimes employed too. For example, a Doge meme relating to Wikipedia was captioned: “wow / many edits / so Internet meme / much wiki / very readers / how to article? / such neutral.”

Ermahgerd! Y U No Txt Bak!?

Humans feature in language memes too. “Y U No” Guy pairs uppercase textspeak with a stick figure sporting a furious facial expression taken from a character in Japanese manga series Gantz. The original phrase was: “I TXT U / Y U NO TXT BAK!?”

Ermahgerd (translation: “Oh my God”) emerged in 2012 as a picture of a girl excitedly holding three books in the children’s horror fiction series Goosebumps with the caption: “GERSBERMS / MAH FRAVRIT BERKS” (“Goosebumps, my favourite books”). The captions are meant to sound like a speech impediment caused by the use of an orthodontic retainer.

Idiosyncratic English

Memetic dialects tend to use idiosyncratic forms of English for comic effect. LOLcat and Doge both use a sort of anthropomorphized baby-speak. Is this the sort of broken English cats and dogs would use, if they could speak? It’s more to do with the language we use to talk to our pets – ‘pet-directed speech’, as it’s known (no, really – there are studies). This is akin to ‘infant-directed speech’ (which was called motherese when I was a psychology undergraduate, before people realized that fathers spoke to their children too). Memes featuring human characters require a different approach – Y U No uses textspeak, and Ermahgerd uses phonetics based on a speech impediment – but the possibilities are endless.

Whatever deviations from standard English you use, the key is to be distinctive and consistent. This will help your meme pass from image to text. You know a meme has really caught on when you no longer need to pair it with an image. Doge has a grammatical structure identifiable enough to be used as text only, such as on Twitter. See @WowSuchDoge, @ItsDoge, and @DogeTheDog for examples. You can even find a full linguistic deconstruction online, along with a synopsis of Romeo and Juliet written in Doge.

How to create your own linguistic meme

Do you have a non-standard form of English you use to speak to certain friends? Perhaps in texts and emails? Such ‘private languages’, full of neologisms, catchphrases, and idiosyncratic spellings and grammar are a good place to start (and you don’t have to go as far as Stanley Unwin).

1. Decide on your linguistic rules and be consistent.
2. Pick a font and colour scheme and stick to it.
3. Pair your text with an image. Animal or human, use your captions as speech bubbles or internal monologue. Create your images with graphics software, or use a site like Meme Generator (which you can also use to find and customise popular memes).
4. Use social media to share your meme – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. The essential characteristic of memes is that they spread. Social media can make this happen rapidly.
5. Track your meme. You’ll know it has caught on when other people start using it – and particularly if it passes into text only without needing to be paired with an image.
6. Submit your meme to Know Your Meme. It will be an ‘official’ meme once confirmed there.

Wow. Amaze create. Very meme. So language.

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This post first appeared on the OxfordWords blog on 18 June 2014

From unfriend to selfie, social media is clearly having an impact on language.  As someone who writes about social media I’m aware of not only how fast these online platforms change, but also of how they influence the language in which I write.

The words that surround us every day influence the words we use. Since so much of the written language we see is now on the screens of our computers, tablets, and smartphones, language now evolves partly through our interaction with technology. And because the language we use to communicate with each other tends to be more malleable than formal writing, the combination of informal, personal communication and the mass audience afforded by social media is a recipe for rapid change.

From the introduction of new words to new meanings for old words to changes in the way we communicate, social media is making its presence felt.

New ways of communicating

An alphabet soup of acronyms, abbreviations, and neologisms has grown up around technologically mediated communication to help us be understood. I’m old enough to have learned the acronyms we now think of as textspeak on the online forums and ‘internet relay chat’ (IRC) that pre-dated text messaging. On IRC, acronyms help speed up a real-time typed conversation. On mobile phones they minimize the inconvenience of typing with tiny keys. And on Twitter they help you make the most of your 140 characters.

Emoticons such as and acronyms such as LOL (‘laughing out loud’ – which has just celebrated its 25^th birthday) add useful elements of non-verbal communication – or annoy people with their overuse. This extends to playful asterisk-enclosed stage directions describing supposed physical actions or facial expressions (though use with caution: it turns out that *innocent face* is no defence in court).

An important element of Twitter syntax is the hashtag – a clickable keyword used to categorize tweets. Hashtags have also spread to other social media platforms – and they’ve even reached everyday speech, but hopefully spoofs such as Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake’s sketch on The Tonight Show will dissuade us from using them too frequently. But you will find hashtags all over popular culture, from greetings cards and t-shirts to the dialogue of sitcom characters.

Syntax aside, social media has also prompted a more subtle revolution in the way we communicate. We share more personal information, but also communicate with larger audiences. Our communication styles consequently become more informal and more open, and this seeps into other areas of life and culture. When writing on social media, we are also more succinct, get to the point quicker, operate within the creative constraints of 140 characters on Twitter, or aspire to brevity with blogs.

New words and meanings

Facebook has also done more than most platforms to offer up new meanings for common words such as friend, like, status, wall, page, and profile. Other new meanings which crop up on social media channels also reflect the dark side of social media: a troll is no longer just a character from Norse folklore, but someone who makes offensive or provocative comments online; a sock puppet is no longer solely a puppet made from an old sock, but a self-serving fake online persona; and astroturfing is no longer simply laying a plastic lawn but also a fake online grass-roots movement.

Social media is making it easier than ever to contribute to the evolution of language. You no longer have to be published through traditional avenues to bring word trends to the attention of the masses. While journalists have long provided the earliest known uses of topical terms – everything from 1794’s pew-rent in The Times to beatboxing in The Guardian (1987) – the net has been widened by the ‘net’. A case in point is Oxford Dictionaries 2013 Word of the Year, selfie: the earliest use of the word has been traced to an Australian internet forum. With forums, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels offering instant interaction with wide audiences, it’s never been easier to help a word gain traction from your armchair.

Keeping current

Some people may feel left behind by all this. If you’re a lawyer grappling with the new geek speak, you may need to use up court time to have terms such as Rickrolling explained to you. And yes, some of us despair at how use of this informal medium can lead to an equally casual attitude to grammar. But the truth is that social media is great for word nerds. It provides a rich playground for experimenting with, developing, and subverting language.

It can also be a great way keep up with these changes. Pay attention to discussions in your social networks and you can spot emerging new words, new uses of words – and maybe even coin one yourself.

The post How social media is changing language appeared first on Jon Reed.

‘If you only read one book on online marketing, I implore you to make sure that it is this one. If you implement the strategies and tips you pick up, you will have a winning recipe for success.’
Claire Georghiades, Accounts Resource Ltd, Amazon review

‘Not to be part of the social media revolution is to miss out. Jon Reed really gets it and shows you how to join in.’
Suzanne Moore, Columnist, The Guardian

‘Packed with practical, no-nonsense insight that allows you not only to keep up but to get ahead.’
Justin Cooke, CEO, POSSIBLE; Chair, British Interactive Media Association

Available from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

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At the launch gin and tonic was served alongside the wine – a civilized form of fizz for the discerning wassailer: the wired, the writers and the wage slaves, all gathered to fête the author. Readings and questions ensued.

Launched 26 years to the day since the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the story looks at the disaster’s impact in the UK and follows Laura Morris and her boyfriend Jeremy over a 12-day timeline from the meltdown – when the USSR went full-tilt into news suppression mode – to the first open press conference from the Kremlin. Published by Forma to accompany Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum) by the artists Jane and Louise Wilson, a series of works commissioned to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, this is a novel publishing venture in a world where every book from Sweden to Swaziland seems to form a tributary of Amazon.

After the launch we moved on to St John Bar and Restaurant in Smithfield – a great place if you want to gnaw on bone marrow, braised squid and a side order of greens. They also serve the best Welsh Rarebit in London (though I can’t help thinking that’s just sticking a posh-nosh pound sign on cheese on toast). It’s certainly no Jolity Farm for vegetarians: the cats miaow, the dogs bow wow – and the pigs squeal and end up with their heads and feet in pies. It does, however, have a reassuring reek of bread and Eccles cakes – a sweetener for the less carnivorous.

I managed not to debase myself by throwing wine over a celebrity this time. Okay, perhaps because Shappi Khorsandi left early. So there was no repeat of The Brian Cox Incident, and no one had to disown me. Phew.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Dicky Star is how each daily chapter contains all of the answers to The Guardian Quick Crossword from that day in 1986. So I’ve attempted this myself, by crowbarring all the words from yesterday’s crossword into this blog post. Did you spot them all? Have a go yourself – especially if you’re stuck with your writing. It’s fun. You old sleazebag.

Read the afterword to Dicky Star and the Garden Rule on Tony’s blog at pieceofpaper.wordpress.com.

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Now, despite having worked in King’s Cross in the past (at Macmillan), and having always known that my family owned and lived above a sweet shop round there a few generations back, it hadn’t previously occurred to me to look for it. Not until I came by an old photograph and some family history notes last year. Cross-referenced with Google Maps, this suggested it was now a pub, just across the road and down a side street from St Pancras station.

This photograph was taken 100 years ago. In 1912, just as the Suffragettes were starting to chain themselves to railings and throw themselves at horses, my great-grandmother Sarah Hazelwood already had her name above the door and was running her own business. She is pictured here with her daughter Charlotte, aged 13, who I remember as Auntie Mabel.

My late grandfather John Hazelwood was also born here 100 years ago. I remember his stories of growing up on Argyle Street and his mother making ice-cream to sell in the shop. She may have made some of the confectionery too, though I’m guessing it was a less glamorous life than Chocolat. She also sold hot drinks, strong cigarettes, and hard-boiled sweets from large glass jars behind the counter.

The shop was on the corner of Whidborne Street. So – is The Family Shop now McGlynn’s pub? The street corner matches. The windows match. I had a coffee there anyway, then caught my train.

When I returned to England I dug out the Family History and was suddenly unsure if I’d been in the right building. The notes contain conflicting accounts. The Family Shop is described as on the corner of Whidborne Street and Cromer Street (not Argyle Street). This is now a newsagent and not even the original building – which would be a little disappointing. But the shop address is also listed in my notes as 1 Whidborne Street, a street number that is also clearly visible in the photograph – and the same address as McGlynn’s. This is surely where the photograph of Sarah and Charlotte was taken, and where my grandfather was born, 100 years ago.

The brief visit to my ancestral street was a reminder of my great-grandmother’s Edwardian entrepreneurialism. My business may be virtual and less Woodbine-based – but perhaps I have Sarah Hazelwood to thank for my desire to start it in the first place.

The post The Family Shop appeared first on Jon Reed.

Contrary to popular belief, small publishers are better placed to survive a recession than their larger competitors, says Jon Reed.

The worst financial crisis in a century, an international banking collapse and global recession: it is enough to make a publisher cry all the way to the bank. But there is a flip side to the doom and gloom:  It is possible to thrive — not just survive — in an economic downturn, especially if you are small, flexible and smart.

In a recession there is an assumption that only the strong survive and to be strong means to be big. But thanks to the Internet, you no longer need to be a big business to be a big hitter. Small publishers can avoid a recession. The reason? Small publishers do well in niche markets. Using low-to-no cost online tools such as blogs, podcasts, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and Second Life, they can tap into existing communities of interest and share their passions affordably, effectively, and authentically.

Great leveller
Independents are enthusiastic about social media marketing, with good reason. Paul Davighi,  marketing manager for I.B.Tauris, says: “Social media levels the playing field between media  giants and independents, since the scope and quality of the relationship between publisher and consumer can be the same for both.”

It is possible to shun traditional marketing completely. Chris Hamilton-Emery, director of Salt Publishing, says: “since focusing on the web our sales increased 72% in 2007 and in 2008 trade sales rose 66%. We do no other forms of marketing now, so that increase can only be down to our web presence. Getting the web right is — in our view — a key business competency now.” Salt’s website gets 1.6 million hits a month — and in the notoriously difficult business of poetry publishing. It works because poetry has a niche audience.

In the so-called “attention economy”, people spend more time online. And, if we buy books online shouldn’t they be marketed there too? Furthermore, using the new online tools can raise your profile while keeping costs under control.

More is more
In a recession, the first instinct of a large corporation is to slash marketing. Yet less marketing never leads to more sales. A recession is no time to cut back on marketing activities, but you may be able to cut your marketing budget at the same time as reaching out to new customers.

For a small press, online tools provide cheap and egalitarian access to markets. Andrea See,  marketing executive for Canongate, says: “Because we spend less money on big budget ad campaigns and are directly in touch with our readers at a grassroots level, any future budget cuts will have less of an impact on our marketing activity than they might do at a corporate publisher.”

Blogging works well because it’s “free, genuine and real”, according to Will Atkinson, chair of the Independent Publishers Guild, a UK trade body with over 480 members. A book launch in Second Life is cheaper than in real life. It costs nothing but a few minutes to set up a Facebook group, page or event.

The time commitment to some tools may be greater than corporates can endure, but many small presses are motivated enough to put in the hours. Jan Fortune-Wood, founder of Cinnamon Press, says: “Cinnamon Press is ours, not something we ‘work for’, so giving it the extra hours demanded by these tools is integral to what we love doing rather than an add-on to an already busy job.”

It is important to involve authors, and many are more than happy to be asked. Again, when it comes to blogging, independents tend to do better than their corporate rivals because social media is a personal medium. “A small independent has a more authentic and individual voice and a large conglomerate,” Canongate’s Andrea See says.

But authors handle social media better than anybody. While many big publishers don’t even know if their authors have blogs, independents do and are keen to exploit them. In 2008 to the Independent Alliance of publishers, led by Faber & Faber and including Quercus, offered blogging workshops to their authors.

Iain Millar,  Marketing manager at Quercus, says: “Where authors have distinctive voices or are involved in niche subjects,  blogs tend to work very well. Jonathan Black, the author of our esoteric non-fiction book The Secret History of the World built up quite a following on his 2008 blog and it really made an impact on sales.”

Community building
Social media is a commitment rather than a marketing tactic, and those publishers who make the time and have the enthusiasm make it work. It’s about building relationships — something independents have always handled well. “Independents find and create genuine communities”, Faber’s Atkinson says. “They talk to them.”

See agrees:  “The fact that we have already developed relationships at this level as a primary strategy gives us an advantage over larger publishers who might use it as a fallback when budgets are cut.” Canongate can be found on most social networking sites, but is currently focusing efforts on its online community site, Meet at the Gate.

One online community with a surprising number of independents is a virtual world Second Life, whose residents include Canongate, Snowbooks, Cinnamon Press, Flying Pen Press and eHarlequin.  Niches such as poetry, romance and erotica do particularly well in this global, online community, as author and fiction editor at Bluechrome Adele Ward explains: “Second Life can be very low cost or free to use, yet any small publisher with a presence becomes known across the SL writing and reading community very quickly.”

Ward, known as Jilly Kidd in Second Life, is something of a virtual community organiser, facilitating much of the writing and publishing activities in-world (SL jargon for the things that happen in its virtual world), including hosting ‘Meet an Author‘, a chat show on the SL television station SLCN.  She tells The Deal: “I want to help publishers out during the recession and the independents will certainly be among the ones I’ll be very keen to give free space. That is an advantage to being small – we help each other out.” It’s hard to imagine such touchy-feely attitudes among the big publishers.

WHAT MAKES YOU SPECIAL?
A recession can be brutal. It compresses business evolution into a mercilessly short space of time. It is no time to be average. Think carefully about your USP, your core strengths, your niche and your communities of interest. Adjust your positioning if necessary. A small business can adapt, change, reposition more effectively than a big one. If you’ve got what people want, you can do well. And if you haven’t, you may struggle. Follow the money, and focus your sales and marketing efforts on those products people want. The market is always right.

EIGHT WAYS TO MONETISE YOUR WEBSITE
Your website is usually a marketing tool to promote your books, build relationships with readers and reach new ones. But how can you make it work harder for you?

1. Advertising. Google AdSense of matches ads to your site’s content and you earn whenever visitors click them. Easy to set up, harder to make real cash without a dizzying amount of traffic.
2. Sponsorship. Sell airspace on your podcast for relevant audio ads.
3. Affiliate accounts. The obvious one is Amazon Associates, but other schemes, including Commission Junction, might be suitable for products related to your books.
4. Premium content. Always keep some of your content free, but offer an additional tier of content — articles, audio or video — that is available only by subscription or membership.
5. Paid posts.  Charge people to post on your blog. The format lends itself to adverts for jobs or events, and you can charge via PayPal using a WordPress plug-in.
6. Monetise your feed. Use Feedburner to include ads in your RSS feed.
7. Merchandise. Depending on your business, you may be able to develop merchandise and sell it on line.
8. Donations. Not for everyone, but a ‘tips jar’ is a favourite of many bloggers. It is quick and easy to set up a simple donation button at PayPal.

The post Small and Mighty appeared first on Jon Reed.

Trade publishers should learn from their colleagues in the academic sector when it comes to online marketing, says social media expert Jon Reed.

Have you updated your status today? Has anyone written on your wall? Have you spent any Linden dollars? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? You’re excused for not knowing about mobcasts, or microblogging, or avatars, but the rest? In the 21st Century podcasts, RSS feeds and blogs remain as opaque as String Theory to a frightening number of publishers. Many don’t even know if their authors have their own blogs. And social media? It’s a mystery to them.

While they are pimping their sales forecasts, their customers are pimping their MySpace and Facebook profiles. A savvy few trade publishers are investing in social media – Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster – but many others remain on the fence. The same is not true of scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishers.

STM publishers have form when it comes to pioneering digital technology. Social media is a natural extension of their core activities, says Ian Russell, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), sees social media as a natural extension of the core activity of STM publishers: ‘Scholarly communication is the exchange of ideas and discourse to advance knowledge – whether that’s in the pages of a journal, at conferences, or via social networking sites. Trade publishing tends not to be so discussion-based.’ Timo Hannay, Publishing Director for Nature.com, agrees: ‘The reason Nature exists is to facilitate scientific communication. Social media is just a new way for us to add value.’

Social media helps STM publishers to stay relevant and support research, even in the face of the Open Access movement. It’s also driven by the collaborative ethos that exists in academia. Academic, scientific and student communities are well established online, and want content that is current, not necessarily in hard covers.

According to a survey of US college professors by Thomson Learning last year, half thought social networking would change how students learn, a third that it would change the way they teach, and a third saw podcasting as a valuable way to reach students. A number of US universities, including Berkeley and Ohio, have put lectures on YouTube or have virtual campuses in Second Life.

Huge opportunity
The book world pioneers of social media are authors and academics, not publishers. Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book (Weber, 2007), tells The Deal: ‘Academic/STM authors have a huge opportunity with social media because their work is so specific. Anything they do in the social networking arena is going to make them much more findable.’

STM publishers have joined the conversation. Leading the way is Nature Publishing, with its own social network, podcast, blogs and islands in Second Life (see box: Jargon Buster). In the past year, Blackwell, OUP, Palgrave, Pearson Education, SAGE and T&F have followed Nature’s lead with their own social media strategies.

Nature entered SL in 2006, then handed its virtual space to the scientific community as a place to meet and experiment. The community now runs itself – mostly holding speaker events. There may be only 40 people in the world who want to hear about a new species of beetle, but thanks to Second Life that niche audience can be reached in one go at minimal expense. In December (2007), Nature held a three-day event in SL to coincide with the UN-Bali Climate Change Conference. What better venue to discuss climate change without leaving a carbon footprint?

A growth area is podcasting. Within three months or launch in 2005, the Nature podcast had 10,000 listeners and a sponsorship deal. Blackwell started journal-related podcasts last year. In September, Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning) launched their CourseCasts – weekly podcasts on technology trends. Elsewhere, Harvard University Press and OUP are blogging, while like SAGE, Blackwell and the Institute of Physics are experimenting with subject-specific social media web portals.

‘People like me’
Those using social media are clear about their reasons for doing so: to engage their readership, create community, build open, trustworthy relationships, and enhance their brand reputation. In an age when trust is in ‘people like me’ rather than in corporations, these things matter.

But what is the return on investment? You may as well ask, what is the ROI on business cards? Successful publishing is not a top-down affair in a participatory media culture. A conversation is taking place, not a lecture. It is important to be a part of it. A key objective is word of mouth: tapping into niche communities and making your content easy to find, recommend and share.

It is possible to make money with advertising and sponsorship. In SL, publishers make money from event sponsorship and hiring out virtual venues. Podcasts also attract sponsorship. When it comes to social media portals and publishers’ own social networks, the data captured from the community can be used for targeted advertising.

Content must come before cash. Get your content right, build a community around it, and the cash will follow. Joanna Scott, web publisher at Nature, says: ‘If you can create something useful to people, you can find a way to monetise it later.’ The trick is to create something genuinely useful. That may mean more market research than in the past, but by using social media, you are already ahead of the game, because the direct connection with your users automatically provides a greater understanding of their needs.

Déjà vu?
Some of us remember getting our fingers burned on digital technology in the 90s. The prophesised future failed to materialise and left many high and dry. But, as with comedy, the secret of investment is timing, and what failed to materialise then is here now. There is much to be learned from STM publishers, particularly as they enter a new phase of development and consider monetisation options.

But things move quickly, and corporates mired in the inertia of decision-making by committee risk missing the boat. Sometimes you just need to jump in. Steve Weber says: ‘It’s still early days in social networking, so the opportunities for first movers are immense.’

For once independent publishers have an advantage and social media enables them to punch above their weight. Social media should be central to publishers’ marketing. We’ve seen the surveys, analysed the trends, and watched the successes. It’s time to start talking.

Jargon Buster

• Avatars: graphical representations of people in Second Life.
• Blogs: diary style personal websites that allow readers’ feedback.
• Microblogging: sites such as Twitter that allow personal updates of up to 140 characters.
• Mobcasts: podcasts delivered to a mobile phone.
• Podcasts: audio or video files that can be downloaded using RSS. You don’t need an iPod. You can also listen or watch online.
• RSS: Really Simple Syndication. Alerts subscribers to new content on blogs and new podcasts, when they are updated or available.
• Second Life: a virtual world that looks like a video game, populated by real people represented by avatars (see above). Has all the components of the Real World – shops, businesses and universities – with an in-world currency, ‘Linden Dollars’, which can be exchanged for real money. For geeks now, but predicted to be very big in the future.
• Social networks: sites such as MySpace and Facebook that enable users to create online profiles and communities to keep in touch and reach a wider market for their creative work. Made stars of the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen.
• YouTube: hugely successful video sharing website.

How to Build Your Social Media Strategy

1. Audit your existing social media. How many of your authors have their own blogs? Are you linking to them?
2. Define your goals. Start with marketing aims and objectives, and decide what you want to achieve. Increased sales? Brand differentiation? Market research?
3. Plan your media. What media do you want to support marketing campaigns – websites, blogs, audio, video, podcasts?
4. Be realistic. You don’t need an island in SL or your own social network. Not every book needs a blog. Send your author on a blog tour (guest postings on relevant blogs).
5. Be a facilitator. Provide value, and start the conversation. Set up blogging tools for your authors. Give them a recording device to do a podcast. Get them on Facebook or MySpace.
6. Be authentic. Be careful – social media isn’t a campaign or a tactic – it’s a commitment.
7. Find your community. Go where your market is. Do your customers hang out on social networking sites? What about blog-centred communities?
8. Engage your audience. Don’t spam (send unsolicited mail) a Facebook group. Create compelling content and share it with people who will value it.
9. Be visible. Make your online content easy for people to find and recommend with social bookmarking links like ‘Digg this’ and ‘Add to delicious’.
10. Measure your results. Track your listener numbers, video downloads, and group members; use calls to action and unique landing pages; track your click-throughs, blog mentions and comments; do surveys; drill down into your webstats to find out what’s working.

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