Tag: Marketing

How to add a MailChimp email signup form to your blog

mailchimp-logoLet me say it right upfront: I hate emailed newsletters. Most businesses send them out far too frequently for my taste. I usually let them languish in my spam folder unless I’m in the market for something they’re selling. But with Facebook limiting the organic reach of posts (unless you pay them), a newsletter is one of the few free ways left for us to be certain that our fans get word of a new release.

So when David Gaughran recommended MailChimp, I gave a lusty sigh, bit the bullet, and signed up. MailChimp is free for mailing lists with fewer than 2,000 addresses. The free service also limits the number of newsletters you can send out per year, but the limit is something like 800. I’m only intending to annoy people when I have a new book out, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay. Continue reading “How to add a MailChimp email signup form to your blog”

Your Author Platform: Building the Plane While Flying It

Karen DoddGuest Post
by Karen Dodd

From the perspective of a newly published indie author (the glow hasn’t quite worn off yet but I’m expecting to see it on my pillow, scowling back at me, sometime soon) I want to share with you the single most important activity to engage in before you publish your book. Okay, I should say the most important activity besides writing a great book.

Is it having beautiful graphics designed for your website and social media presence? No. Is it having fabulously flashy business cards or bookmarks? No. It’s in engaging with others long before your book goes live. Continue reading “Your Author Platform: Building the Plane While Flying It”

Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part III

razor wireTo refresh everyone’s memory, in Part I, I spoke briefly about Paul Drakar’s idea that top ranked Amazon reviewers were the new Gatekeepers of publishing, and his strategy for enlisting their help to promote our books. In Part II, I investigated whether these top ranked reviewers really did influence sales – apparently they do. Now it’s time to look at Drakar’s strategy in detail.

In a nutshell, the strategy is a six-step process that involves a great deal of research, and more than a smidgeon of chutzpah. I’ve provided a bare-bones summary of the steps below, however I recommend reading Drakar’s entire article as it contains a great deal of useful information. Continue reading “Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part III”

Pitching to the New Gatekeepers – Part II

Prison GuardAt the end of Part I, I promised to talk about some results I’d found relating to the influence of reviews on sales. Well here it is, and it’s a beauty.

The research is titled Estimating the Helpfulness and Economic Impact of Product Reviews: Mining Text and Reviewer Characteristics.

Put into layman’s terms, the researchers were looking for ways to reliably predict :

a) the types of reviews that would influence customers to buy,

b) and the types of reviews that would help merchants to sell.

I won’t pretend to understand the methodology, or the statistics, however I think it’s important to look at what the researchers were studying, and where. The ‘what’ included three categories of popular consumer goods : Continue reading “Pitching to the New Gatekeepers – Part II”