source: http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/everything-you-do-online-reflects-on-your-book/

Everything You Do Online Reflects on Your Book: Make Sure That Reflection Is Professional
Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller

This month’s guest post is a natural extension of last month’s guest post “Do Your Offline and Online Book Promotion Activities Support Each Other?”

In that post I talked about how your book author website should present consistent information about your offline and online book promotion activities.

In addition, all your online book promotion activities should present you as a professional book author, regardless of whether your book was traditionally published or self-published.

Recently a book marketing consulting client asked me why he could not build a website himself for his nonfiction book the same as he had built for his business. I asked if he wanted my honest response.

When he said yes, I told him that his business site did not look professional. (And he agreed.) Then I added, as everything related to a book reflects on that book, he should have a book site that does appear professional.

And this advice about professionalism extends to everything you do online to promote your book.

For example, I’ve noticed typos in the Twitter profile bios of many people. Now this bio has a maximum of 160 characters. Do take the brief time to make sure you have spelled all the words in the bio correctly.

I always proofread my tweets and the comments I leave on blog posts before hitting “submit.” Now I know I may still occasionally miss an error, but I do try to ensure that whatever I write online is professional.

And this same advice goes for tweetchats or forum discussions or whatever.

Why is this so important?

You do not want to appear unprofessional and risk this reflecting negatively on your book.

And as you have spent a great deal of time writing your book, you should take the time to make sure you are not hindering your own book promotion efforts.

Bonus tip for customizing your Facebook and LinkedIn URLs rather than having those long URLs:

Facebook: Sign into your account. Then go to www.facebook.com/usernameand get your customized URL for your Facebook personal profile.

(Note that this profile must be in your own name and NOT your business name or you are in violation of Facebook terms. See my blog post )

Also, if you have a Facebook Page for business – formerly called a Fan Page – Facebook currently requires that you have at least 25 people who have “liked” your page before you can go to www.facebook.com/username and get a customized URL for your Facebook Page. But when you have at least 25 people, also get a customized URL for this page.

LinkedIn: Sign into your account. Then click on PROFILE (in navigation bar) and click on EDIT PROFILE.

On the right-hand side of the next screen click on CHANGE PUBLIC PROFILE SETTINGS.

Then you’ll see at the top of the next screen YOUR PUBLIC PROFILE URL and click on EDIT.

And, yes, having a customized URL instead of a long, awkward URL can reflect positively on your image as a professional book author.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. The company is committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media marketing. Check out the company program Quick Start Social Media Track.

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If you’ve optimized your Amazon profile, you’re ready to move to the second stage of optimizing yourself on Amazon. And this second stage starts with your book’s page on Amazon.

Your Amazon Page

First, check that your name as author is spelled correctly and the product info is correct. If your co-author was left off or there are other errors, scroll down the page to “update book info” and do so.
Second, if you have a blog and you have entered your blog feed into your Amazon account, your blog posts will automatically appear on this page.

Now let’s look at a basic opportunity. Does your Amazon page offer the LOOK INSIDE feature? If not, ask your publisher to provide this to Amazon.

Next, is your book available in a Kindle format? If your publisher doesn’t automatically provide this format, do so yourself. You can follow the instructions on the Amazon site – scroll down this page until you see this headline “Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store.” Or you can supply the version yourself. (If you do have someone create the digital version, make sure that this version is optimized. Otherwise you’ll have a digital version that is very hard to read.)

Obviously you want to get as many good reviews for your book as possible. This can be achieved in a variety of ways.

One way: If you take a virtual tour on blogs and get good reviews, you can ask the bloggers who gave you good reviews to also put their reviews on this Amazon page. And there are many bloggers who offer to review books even if you’re not on a virtual tour.

A second way: You can ask your friends to read your book and post good reviews. (If a friend doesn’t like your writing, don’t ask him/her to post a review.)

A third way: Look for reviewers on Amazon who have written good reviews of similar books to yours. Then contact those reviewers if you can find their contact info.

A fourth way should be considered with caution: There are book review companies that offer reviews for a fee. It’s probably best to get recommendations from other authors rather than randomly choosing such review companies.

Under “Tags Customers Associate with This Product” you’ll find “your tags.” You can add a tag for your book and then you will be asked to write a brief reason why the tag is relevant. Amazon then reviews your reason for the tag and decides if the suggested tag is appropriate.

You can write an article under “Product Information from the Amapedia Community.” You can read Amazon’s explanation of Amapedia — but for now think of it as a Wikipedia-type entry about your book.
Also on this page you can “Create a Listmania! list” (instructions included) that can turn up on other Amazon pages with your name included with the list. Or on your page you can “Create a guide” for the “So You’d Like to …” feature. Again, the benefit for an author of doing the work to create the guide is that the guide will turn up on other Amazon pages with your name.

Other Amazon Pages

And, of course, you can get exposure by posting reviews on other pages. Your name will automatically appear at the top of your review, so the more reviews you do on Amazon the more places that people can run across your name. If people like the way you write reviews, they may be more inclined to be interested in your own book.

Yes, writing reviews does take time. And doing the other Amazon optimizer techniques in this article also takes time. Yet, if you’ve spent all that time writing a book, it makes sense to optimize your Amazon presence. Who knows who might discover you online? – P.Z.M.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://www.InternetBizBlogger.com.

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