Social Media in Review- Vimeo

Vimeo (www.vimeo.com), how do I love thee? LOL I do love this wonderful video upload site! It has everything. Great quality video, a way to socialize within the network and a way to promote your videos outside the network. 

I have never had any problems with Vimeo. I will say that I pay for their “Vimeo Plus” membership so I can upload an unlimited number of videos and for a lot of other little “perks”. When Vimeo decided to do an awards program you had to pay $25 to submit, unless you had the membership and then it was only $5! Yep, f-i-v-e!  Also, I’m able to upload via TubeMogul by using my Plus membership. Saves me a lot of time.

Vimeo has widgets you can use, good tech support and a customizable profile option. 
How do book videos do on Vimeo? It’s not the best place for book videos. Perhaps if we were to do some advertising within the site it might build our audience and that’s something we are looking at for 2011. 
We do get views and comments though. And we get a lot of visits to our actual profile page, so we’re getting a higher number of impressions per video. 

This is a site I will continue to pay membership for. I feel the $60 a year I pay is money well spent.

Social Media in Review - Break.com

Break (www.break.com) is a great site for comedy, sexy stuff, and anything you think guys would love. That’s right, Break is more of a guy site. According to Break.com’s own website they reach more men ages 18 to 34 than any other online video site.

So, not all book videos do well there, and of course there are women who go to the site, so we send all videos there. But, we do see an obvious increase in certain videos that tells us Break’s claim on the male market appears to be true.

We’ve had some problems with Break in the past. They’ve rejected some videos as too commercial and threatened to close our profile. But, we emailed them to plead our case that book trailers are video entertainment in their own right. Since then we’ve not had any problems uploading to Break, which we do via TubeMogul.

Social Media for the Thriller Genre

Sheila Clover English, Barbara Vey, & Dianna Love.

Before you start your social media adventure you need to know four things. These things need to be written down so you can examine them as you create your campaign or plan.




Know your audience-  
Identify a typical reader of your book and do a mock profile of them so you don’t lose sight of who you are trying to reach.


Remember that your audience, as it pertains to social media, doesn’t just want your book, they want an experience with you.

People are about their OWN stories!!!!

Know your goals- 
Have set goals. Goals for how you will budget your time online. Goals for what you want to get out of being on social sites. Goals for your book, series or career. But have them, know them and work toward them daily.


If you don’t have goals going in, you can easily get swept away by the time suck that often occurs with social media.


If you don’t know how much time to spend there I recommend buying an egg timer, setting it for 20 minutes and timing yourself. You might budget more than that, or less, but be consistent and don’t get sucked in.




Know yourself- 
Know your strengths and weaknesses. Match them up to the social sites to make sure you choose the right one for you.


If you are terrible about blogging, don’t blog. Twitter. Do something you feel you can be good at. And if you can, find something you actually enjoy doing.


Be passionate about things. People love to see others who are passionate about what they do. Be 
positive. Snark can come back on you in a bad way if you’re not careful.




Know your resources- 
Who is your go-to person for technology? Website stuff? Social media? Make friends. Exchange resources with people.


Know professionals who can help you, booksellers, librarians and communities. And that is where we’re going to segue into the actual topic of the session.

There are many blogs and sites that are specific for the thriller genre. Some of those are professional sites that charge a fee for services and some are free. Both have something to offer the thriller writer looking to promote their book.


Start with asking yourself what it is you want to promote? Is it your book, series or brand? What is your goal? Are you looking to cross promote to a sub-genre like romance or paranormal? 

Set your goals and match them to your opportunities. 

If you’re looking for sites that will get your book in front of thriller readers and other potential buyers such as booksellers or libraries you may need to look for a professional service. So we’ll look at those first and then move on to the free sites.


There are three businesses that I’m going to cover in this session. They are not the only game in town, but they are businesses I trust. Anytime you plan on hiring someone to do your marketing for you I strongly urge you to check their references and reputation.




BookReporter.com
Carol Fitzgerald owns the Book Reporter and this businesses has the respect of the industry. It has been around for years and the great thing about it is that it has genre-specific opportunities.
What I love about this site is it promotes itself to readers. It gives readers a reason to trust them and a reason to return. That means a lot of eyes on your promotion.




AuthorBuzz
M.J. Rose. If you don’t know her, you need to at least know of her. She is an amazing promoter and has put together one of the best promotions for books and authors there is online. You can have your book seen by librarians, book clubs and readers. You can do blog ads. This is a site I recommend you check out.




Circle of Seven Productions
If you’re going to do multimedia and social media check out www.cosproductions.com. This is the company that started the book trailer phenomenon and whether you like book trailers or not, the videos are seen by hundreds of booksellers and thousands of librarians as well as on social media sites, reader sites and genre-specific sites.






They have social media marketing package that includes book review, both traditional and video, blogging, press release, podcasts and distribution of the video and podcast to a wide variety of appropriate sites. 


Barbara recommended Dan Blank of www.wegrowmedia.com as someone who does reliable marketing that has experience. She has worked with him personally.


Again, there are other professional services out there. You may want to check the Predators and Editors website to see if they have been reported with either good or bad reviews.


Now, for some free sites-

1. ITW Facebook
2. ITW MySpace
3. TracyReaderDad Blog - Blip player
4. InfernalDreams.net
5. Reader’s Entertainment Thriller site
6. ITW Twitter  (social oomph)
7. Thriller/Mystery/Suspense Group - http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupprofile&groupID=103678455
8. Whodunit Mystery/Suspense Group - http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupprofile&groupID=100437006
9. Mysteries and Thrillers MySpace Group - http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupprofile&groupID=103678455
10. Facebook ITW Debut authors site (NEW, first time authors only) - http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=31198744908&ref=search
11. Facebook group- "We love reading thriller & science fiction" - http://www.facebook.com/search/?init=srp&sfxp&q=suspense+books&o=69&c1=5&s=40#!/group.php?gid=140489859244
12. http://suspenseandcrime.gather.com/
13. PW Beyond Her Book

Be a guest blogger! Talk about something useful or unique and don’t forget to promote your book and website!

• Know your audience
• Know your goals
• Know yourself
• Know your resources  

Do's and Don'ts of social interaction when building relationships online with your business

This is an excerpt from my talk that I will give at BEA this year-

Many top companies have failed at social media. They have the wrong idea of how to interact with people. They see millions of people out there and they want to reach out to them, but they lose site of the ever-changing landscape of social media and the rules that continue to evolve in that medium.

There are hundreds of social media sites that you can have a presence on. Each of those sites have a different group of people with different expectations. Study the site. Know what opportunities are there. See how people are communicating with each other. Look, first, to learn the accepted way businesses are communicating with individuals. Some sites will work for direct sales. Some will work best for branding. Know the difference.

Do's and Don'ts

Do

Do have someone be personable on your profile.

Do know your community.

Do interact when you have nothing to sell.

Do blog about things readers will find interesting.

Do join groups with interests that match yours.

Do have an interesting profile with pictures and items of interest that match your target audience.

Do have a positive and supportive attitude about your community and let that show.

Do monitor comments and approve them before they go out.

Don't

Don’t act like a business on a social profile.

Don’t be something you’re not. People will ferret you out if you pretend to be a person recommending books and you’re really the publisher of the books. Let them know you’re the publisher. Transparency = trust.

Don’t SPAM!!!! It doesn’t matter what you think is SPAM. It matters what the community thinks is SPAM.

Don’t bog down your profile with so much material that it takes forever for it to load.

Don’t be insensitive to the social media site you’re on. If you’re on MySpace, don’t put up YouTube videos if you can help it. Do you think MySpace will feature your profile if you’re advertising for YouTube?

Don’t be a friend whore. Don’t do “whore trains”. Whore trains are like online chain letters that gain friend additions instead of dealing in money. You won’t get your target audience. It will pollute your bulletins. You usually get undesirable people on your friend list.

Don’t add people under 18 if you are selling adult material.

More and more companies are utilizing social media sites as out reach programs. By following some simple rules that can be accomplished without compromising relationships with potential customers.