With Twitter’s popularity growing each day, journalists are often finding their next story on Twitter or you might be a possible candidate for an interview. All the more reason to think before you Tweet!

With all of the “stuff” out there online it’s tough to know what will actually bring in the customers and the dollars but here’s a tip that’s sure to work. First off, get your company/book/self a social networking page – either on Facebook or Squidoo but I’d stick with Facebook and in a minute you’ll see why. Next, make sure that your web site has a sign up on the home page for either a newsletter or mailing list. Make sure you have an ethical bribe (a give away to get consumers to leave you their email addy so you can grow your list). Then, open a Twitter account. Your Twitter account should be used to share information, helpful tips, insider scoop and also link to sites, blogs, or audio online that would be helpful to your consumer. Become a filter, *the* place your consumer goes for everything on your topic or area of expertise. Once you open your Twitter account go to Socialtoo.com and get an account there, Socialtoo.com will allow you to set up a welcome message whenever someone “follows” you on Twitter. Your welcome message should offer your freebie (ethical bribe) and redirect people to your site. This way, you’ll get sign ups for your newsletter or mailing list. Now, to your Facebook page…. You can and should add your Twitter account to your Facebook status updates (you can’t do this through Squidoo or MySpace). That way you can share your tips with your Facebook fans too which will help you grow your fan base there too. Make sure you link your company’s blog to Facebook and Twitter (you can do this through Twitterfeed) so that everything is recycled into these two services. By using both of these Web 2.0 properties and focusing your efforts heavily there, you can pull in customers to your site and business. Don’t fragment yourself by getting a bunch of social networking sites. You need to spend time with these and if you can expand on just one site, it will serve you much better than having 30 sites you rarely touch. If time is a constraint (and when isn’t it?) you can use a site called Tweetlater to plan your tweets for the week, meaning that you log on on Monday and drop info into this system, it will then Twitter for you all week so you don’t have to worry about it.

By keeping a circular “funnel” going you bring customers in at two of the biggest points of the web right now. These are huge properties online and when used effectively, can really help monetize the Internet for you. Remember though, be helpful first, sell later. The best metric for online selling is 95% helpful, and 5% sales. Believe it or not this pays off big in the end.

When I did this we quadrupled our newsletter sign ups and doubled the inquiries into our business.

Here’s a fun little marketing tip for your presentations. If you’re using a laptop why not get a skin for your cover that lists your book/company and URL? That way it’s always in front of your audience. You can order custom skins for your laptop, phone, blackberry, virtually anything from this site: http://www.skinit.com/. Happy Branding!

Common Errors in English, a super helpful site for all you wordsmiths out there! http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Ever wondered why some of your followers decide to unfollow you? Now you can find out what Tweets make them stay and which ones make them leave. Qwitter (http://useqwitter.com) is a free service that will ask you for your Twitter usename and email address then each time someone unfollows you the service will tell you who and at what point they left your tribe. More to the point, what post made them leave? Sometimes you’ll start to see a trends with various posts that either get you a lot of followers or cause you to lose a lot of steam with your peeps. Socialtoo.com will do this as well but Qwitter seems to be a bit more pinpoint so if you’re losing a lot of followers and want to know why, I would recommend joining Qwitter to find out!

As we roll into 2009, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at some trends for the New Year and ways you can turn these trends into profits for you. Increasingly, we find that with attention spans shrinking, trends seem to come and go a lot quicker. That’s why it’s imperative to know your market and know what the trends are that will have a long-term affect on your sales as opposed to those that are fairly short-lived. Some will be expected trends but I think you’ll find a few surprises in here as well.


1) Green: anything and everything or related to conservation. The same is true for organics and organic products and books related to these topics. Also, keep in mind that it’s not cheap to be green so the more you can teach people how to be green and save money, the more popular your book or product will be.


2) Entrepreneurs: more and more people are leaving their corporate jobs (whether willingly or through a layoff) and finding a safe haven in the entrepreneurial market. Anything related to office, home office, start-ups, inspiration for business owners, whatever it is, it’ll be in high demand. We’re seeing a huge uptick of folks starting businesses and in fact, it’s predicted to be a very fast growing market in 2009.


3) Social networking and anything related to Web 2.0: whatever you’re doing, make sure you’re doing it online. There’s a huge surge in this market and we predict an even bigger one to come. If you’re not online in a way that supports your book and gets to your consumer then you should make that your #1 priority for the New Year.


4) Outsourcing: this is a big one. As more companies lay off, outsourcing options will expand. I’ve read reports saying that companies will start outsourcing everything from HR to accounting. This is great news if you offer a service, if you do and your book ties into this position use your book as your business card. Now is the time to expand on the benefits and cost savings of going the outsourcing route.


5) Business coaching: could it be that the explosion of entrepreneurs will require more business coaches? Possibly. But trends suggest that any business related coaches will be in high demand. Coaching, while having become a bit of a cliché term, is still a popular field, no matter how you define it.


6) DIY: the do it yourself culture will be out in full force in the New Year. If your book or product dials into that in any way, make sure to maximize this benefit in your marketing materials. (see #8 too)


7) Pets and anything related to pet ownership: it’s been a trend for years and it only keeps getting bigger. Anything pet-related and any other sort of tie in will be huge and only grow even more as the year wears on. Four out of ten US households have a pet (most of them a dog), so offering up products and services to that market is a sure win. Also, there are particular markets that tend to be recession proof. Pet services is one of them.


8) Home: consumers are staying home more than they ever were. If your book is on decorating, home-care, DIY renovation, real estate, and anything in between. Get out there and market it aggressively to decorating sites, home owner-related sites, the DIY market (you’ll find a lot of these folks on Facebook) and real estate sites that are directed at consumers.


9) As time wears on the idea of browsing online is going to shift and consumers will want to get to their data, product, or service fast. What does this mean for you? Well for one thing it will force those of us who are marketing online to be pinpoint accurate in our messaging. There’s little or no time for fluff and, as I mentioned earlier, surfing for the sake of surfing is no longer part of the consumer mind-set.


10) If ads are your thing, then consider this, Advertisements are going to become so desperate that you’ll start hearing a term called Shockvertising, this form of advertisement using shocking words or images to get the viewers attention. We saw this in the UK with the ad for Dexter. I’ll save you the description, it wasn’t pleasant but certainly shocking. You can only imagine I’m sure.


If all of this has left you wondering how you can be a trendspotter in your market here are a few ways you might be able to capture early trends within your marketspace:


1) Listen: listen to what your readers/consumers are asking for. If you start seeing the same request over and over again this might indicate an emerging trend.


2) Read: read publications in your market, go to conferences (these don’t always have to be in-person events, they can also be online) and get to know who your competition is in this space. Read publications, other books. The best sales person is one who is constantly learning.


3) Go online: find out what people are buzzing about on blogs, web sites, even Twitter. You’ll get a lot of real-time data to work with when you know where your audience resides and where they’re talking about what you’re selling!


As we all try to make our marketing dollars count for even more, trends and marketing to these groups is becoming even more important. Taking risks often means wasted marketing dollars. The more certain you can approach marketing, the better served your campaign will be and the quicker it will get off the ground.

So, have you been shopping recently? Despite the extensive reporting on an economy that’s tanking there was a line 4 miles long to get into one of local malls here in San Diego. Presumably those people weren’t all shopping, or were they? Well, if you’ve seen some of the sale prices recently I think the line up of cars makes sense. I was in a major department store on Saturday and found cashmere sweaters at 80% off the original price. Isn’t that great?? Well, yes and no. First off, I now own so many cashmere sweaters that I’ll have enough to last me well into my old age (as a friend of mine says somday I’ll be the best dressed person at my senior center). But as I was scarfing up all the sweaters I could get my hands on a thought occurred to me. So, does that mean that the other 360-or so days of the year that I’m paying 80% too much for these sweaters? And if the store can cut prices by that much, what else am I overpaying for?

As retailers try and lure shoppers to their stores, it’s easy to get caught up in the price-slashing that’s going on this time of year but buyer beware. If you do this with your book, product, or service eventually people will start to question all of your pricing and begin to demand these types of discounts all year round. So while running sales is a great thing, be cautious of the 80% off cashmere sweater. It might be a great deal for the consumer but it could mean a new demand on your pricing structure and, make your buyer wary of overpricing.

Leave it to the New York Times to find some hyper-competitive, highly-strung types to turn the simple concept of a book club into a battlefield.


Forget the idea of genteel book clubs in which members drink tea and discuss big book ideas. According to the Times, hard feelings develop among some book club members when they can’t agree on book picks, lit crit, club politics and more; it can really become quite complicated when the guests hate your choice of wine or if members want to duke it out over John Grisham versus John Updike. Then there are the ones who want to get tipsy and unload about their significant other instead of the book. Maybe reading is best done alone.


Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

You haven’t done all of your shopping, have you? Perhaps you haven’t even begun. Well, Penguin Group took the holiday book list idea one step further, by asking some of their authors what books they would give as gifts this holiday, as well as the books they would like to receive. Khaled Hosseini, Michael Pollan, Geraldine Brooks, W.E.B. Griffin and many others share their lists. Perhaps it will help you cross some names off of your gift list!


Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.

It’s hard to believe that the author of the wildly successful Twilight series was unknown a few years ago. One piece of her success hinged on her willingness to use the ‘Net to reach out to readers - something we always recommend to our authors. Learn how her savvy use of the Web helped her become a bestselling author.


Posted by Paula Krapf of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.