Resources Archives - Page 6 of 18

28 February, 2014

How to create a fun quiz for your book

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:21:26-07:00February 28, 2014|Resources, Social Media, Writing|Comments Off on How to create a fun quiz for your book

No matter what your book is about you can easily come up with ten questions that relate to your book. Authors of fiction can create questions about the setting, characters and events in the book. Ask questions about small town living or inner city hazards for your hero or heroine. Whether your book is about finding a partner in a romance or solving a mystery, create a quiz about the situation.

Authors of non-fiction can create questions around a topic that would build interest in readers. For instance, if you were writing a book about public speaking you could ask the following questions.

How do your overcome your fear of speaking in front of groups?

Where do you find places to speak?

How do you promote your book in small group settings?

The great thing about creating a fun quiz for your book is that it stops people for a few seconds and gets them […]

23 February, 2014

Improve your writing by adding dialogue

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:21:30-07:00February 23, 2014|Resources, Writing|Comments Off on Improve your writing by adding dialogue

Including dialogue in your writing, even for nonfiction pieces, is a powerful way to move your story or article forward and keep the reader’s interest.

The appeal of including conversation is that it brings the level of your writing down to a human level. While you can always be obtuse and convoluted in your conversations, it is probably not your natural way of speaking. When you talk with someone, you leave out 90% of the wild, descriptive phrases and get to the point.

Compare “Hey, Mom, I’m going to the store!” to the writer’s penchant for superfluous information.

Most dialogue consists of short sentences sandwiched in between longer ones. So, adding dialogue not only makes your article more active and stimulated but also gives it variety. That’s a good thing. Plus, dialogue can add a measure of warmth, passion and even humor.

“Want to give it a try?”

That one sentence has only six words, […]

21 February, 2014

Do authors need RebelMouse?

By Support@wheatmark.com|2023-06-09T11:21:35-07:00February 21, 2014|Resources, Social Media|Comments Off on Do authors need RebelMouse?

Rebel Mouse is a social media tool that pulls in your social media from many networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Tumblr, blogs and even your email, into your own personal RebelMouse page that can be embedded on any domain. Authors can use it to collect, connect and distribute information for research, writing and sharing.

Margaret Looney in her post The Year’s Best Social Media Tools for Journalists cited that IJNet (International Journalists Network) named RebelMouse as the number one tool of the year.

The idea behind RebelMouse is that it becomes your social front page. Everything you do across multiple platforms such as your blog, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc. automatically gets updated on your page. Instead of repeating your content in a spin that is frowned upon you can add something new on each platform and share it all in one place.

Once […]

17 February, 2014

Why you should use your real photo in creating Social Media profiles

By Support@wheatmark.com|2023-06-09T11:21:43-07:00February 17, 2014|Marketing, Resources, Social Media|Comments Off on Why you should use your real photo in creating Social Media profiles

An important part of building brand awareness is image awareness. Like the golden arches of McDonald’s you want your face to be recognized as an expert. When people see your face, you want them to instantly say, “Yes! I know that person.”

Recognition builds association, which builds greater credibility.

The more your target audience sees you in different places and doing different things, the greater the image of “Oh my, that person is everywhere. They must be much more important than I realized!”

A photo tip is to use a unique personal image for different social applications. This way when your name is searched on Google, the page of images for your name will have more instances of “you” than images of other people with the same name.

When getting professional images taken, come prepared with different outfits and ask the photographer to use different background images. This way you get more mileage out […]

23 January, 2014

Consistency is the key to book marketing success

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:21:49-07:00January 23, 2014|Resources, Writing|Comments Off on Consistency is the key to book marketing success

It’s “the little drops of water, little grains of sand” system that creates wonderful writers.

It’s writing one sentence after the other and doing it over and over until you have 10,000 sentences and your book is done.

It’s writing a couple of comments every single day for a whole year until you have left your thumbprint on 100 blogs and over 700 posts.

It’s tweeting a tweet when you don’t feel like it, but you do it anyway and after days and weeks and months your name becomes known, your face becomes known and what you are writing about becomes noticed.

Consistency happens only with conscious, deliberate effort.

It takes an idea that is grand and glorious and breaks it down into steps and actionable moments. Step by step, day by day, in season and out of season you keep at it until the dream is manifested into reality.

Every author needs an author platform. […]

21 January, 2014

Building your 100 book marketing gold list

By Sam Henrie|2023-06-09T11:21:56-07:00January 21, 2014|Marketing, Resources, Social Media|Comments Off on Building your 100 book marketing gold list

If you are looking for a magic bullet to speed your book to greater selling success, creating a 100 gold contact list might be just the ammunition you need.

A gold contact list is simply a list of 100 people that would help you to sell more books. This concept comes from John Kremer of Bookmarket.com. Kremer explains that building a list of 100 key media and book marketing contacts will help you to focus your relationship building efforts where they will have the most punch.

The first thing you have to realize when you build your list is that you don’t have to already know and have a relationship with these people. Come up with a list of people in the field that you want to know and then try to build a relationship with each one.

This will take some time. It will mean finding out where this […]

16 January, 2014

Why print newsletters can be more effective in keeping your fans connected

By Grael Norton|2023-06-09T11:22:01-07:00January 16, 2014|Marketing, Resources, Writing|Comments Off on Why print newsletters can be more effective in keeping your fans connected

The pendulum is swinging back. For the last five or ten years the push for authors to send out a digital newsletter was encouraged on every front. Turns out that it became so popular everyone did it. So much so that as email newsletters became more and more prolific, readers soon felt overwhelmed. In order to handle the load, people started filtering the emails into sorted files that rarely were opened or simply deleted them after a casual disinterested glance at the subject line.

Even though digital newsletters could be sent in full color, 84% of the browsers that received them had pictures and images turned off to guard against spam and viruses. An email with plain text has to be pretty amazing to be read in this day and age of short attention spans.

As email turned into a chore and a headache, the delete key started being used with greater […]

14 January, 2014

Personal profile picture sizes for major social media sites

By Support@wheatmark.com|2023-06-09T11:22:07-07:00January 14, 2014|Resources, Social Media|Comments Off on Personal profile picture sizes for major social media sites

While you can’t be everywhere and do everything, you can put your picture almost everywhere. Every social media site has its own perfect sizing for optimum display. Here are six of the major social media sites and the picture size your photo should be for the best display.

Facebook: The final picture that will be displayed is 160 x 160 pixels, but the picture you upload must be 180 x 180 pixels. If you want the most control over how your picture will look, then size it to exactly 180 x 180 before you upload it. Yes, you can upload a rectangular image and crop and resize it within Facebook, but it will not look as sharp as a perfect square picture. Check out this info page on Facebook for perfect dimension tips. Finally, when your image shows up on an update, within a comment or on someone […]

23 December, 2013

10 image providers that can be used for LinkedIn

By Support@wheatmark.com|2023-06-09T11:22:12-07:00December 23, 2013|Resources, Social Media|Comments Off on 10 image providers that can be used for LinkedIn

If you are an avid LinkedIn user there may be times when you want to post or upgrade while on the go. Here are ten sites that LinkedIn accepts for bringing in tweets, photos and videos.

1. 23hq – Free to add 30 photos a month. $25.00 a year for unlimited. You can send photos to friends by email, post on LinkedIn and other media outlets. Photos can be private or public as you choose.

2. Mead – a photo site in Spanish.

3. Mobypicture – “Directly share your photos, videos and audio with your friends on your favorite social sites: facebook, twitter, flickr, youtube, and more!” This is out of the Netherlands. The terms of agreement allow them to use collected information to market to you.

4. ow.ly – http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url – a part of HootSuite

5. HootSuite – […]

18 December, 2013

3 free press release sites

By Support@wheatmark.com|2023-06-09T11:22:57-07:00December 18, 2013|Marketing, News, Resources|Comments Off on 3 free press release sites

While you will have greater results if you send a targeted news release to a specific journalist, there are times when sending press releases out to the masses is not a bad idea. The chances of getting results are much slimmer, but if your release is timely and powerful, it might get picked up by media that you would never have contacted.

In many instances, it might be smart to do both types of news releases. Make sure that each release is different enough in content and focus so that your ideal targeted journalist will not feel like they are getting a mass letter. After all, if you go to the trouble of finding a journalist, connecting with them and writing the release to fit their coverage, then you want to build an ongoing relationship.

If you are ready to send your release out to the public, here are free press release […]