Every time I interview a new author for my services I always ask “What is your current author platform?” Usually I get either a blank stare or silence on the other end of the phone.

Basically an author’s platform is a collection of marketing strategies. Because I’m very connected to the Internet and all that it contains, I like to think of an author’s platform literally as an interconnected web of marketing strategies. Think “website” in the center connected to a blog, connected to Twitter, connected to LinkedIn, connected to Amazon.com, connected to Facebook and then connected still to other sites that have backlinked to any of the above.

Starting with the website please check out this “how-to” blog entry from The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Promotion, Building Your Author Platform.

Self-published authors know that their book’s success depends on their ability to promote it. The good news is that you can easily and inexpensively promote your book online!

Here are 10 tips to kick-off your online book promotion:

1.   Create a web site for your book

Choose a web site address based on the title of your book, not your name. Your book’s title will be easier to remember than your name and having the title appear in your web site address will boost search engine rankings.

2.   Make sample content available

On your web site you can make your table of contents or even a chapter or two available for download. Unlike a bookstore where potential readers can thumb through your book online readers can’t. Make it easy for them to get a taste of your writing style as well as offering something intriguing about your book.

3.   Use your web site address in your book for downloadable bonuses

Give your readers a reason to visit your web site by offering special materials for download in your book.  Special reports, checklists or worksheets will further engage your audience.

4.   Link to your blog

If you don’t have a blog, get one. Through your blog you can encourage reader feedback, comments and questions. Set up RSS feed (real simple syndication) on your blog so that you can be alerted and respond immediately when some leaves a comment.

If you have a static, traditional web site now for your book, consider adding a free blog site for your readers to interact with you. You can easily link your blog to your web site.

5.  Include testimonials and reader reviews

If someone leaves a favorable review or comment on your blog or sends you an email, ask for permission to use it on your web site or blog.

6.  Create a media or press room

Make it easy for the media to find and distribute information about your book. Set up a press room on your blog or web site. Remember to make any downloadable files available in PDF format and text.  Search engine spiders can crawl text but not PDF files (PDFs are basically a graphic).

7.   Share your expertise with your readers

Create additional products or services based on your book’s content. It’s easy to produce a podcast (very short audio format 1 to 3 minutes), hold a teleseminar or webinar. Create an e-book to sell directly from your web site or blog.

8.   Include a subscription box on your web site or blog

Using an autoresponder service such as Aweber to capture your readers email addresses you can build a database of your book’s audience. This database can be use to promote a new book, notify your readers about book signings or awards or even your Virtual Book Tour. You can develop a monthly newsletter with premium content for your subscribers.

9.   Use social media to create a viral environment

Online book promotion means building a social network to create a viral buzz about your book. Don’t discount MySpace.com, Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com or Amazon.com when promoting your book. Did you know that Amazon.com let’s you create an author profile that is crawled by search engine spiders? Just another way to get the work out there.

10.  Link to your web site or blog

In your author’s box or bio make sure you include your web site, blog and email address. If you have social media sites such as MySpace.com or Facebook.com include those links as well. These links will allow your readers to find your information but by backlinking to your web site the search engines will take notice.

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl K. Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants). We specialize in online book promotion using social media marketing tools and strategies.

On a virtual book tour (VBT) you “visit” websites, blogs, podcasts or online radio sites instead of bookstores, cafes or libraries; anything but real world brick-and-mortar traditional tour sites. At each stop along the way you may:

1.    Be interviewed
2.    Write a guest post
3.    Have your book reviewed
4.    Provide a book excerpt
5.    Answer questions from the host’s readers or listeners

The length of the book tour can be anywhere from a couple of days scattered throughout a month, a full week or span a couple of months. It depends on how much time you have to invest.

During your book tour your book is made available for purchase through link backs to your book’s sales page on your website or through Amazon.com or BN.com (Barnes and Noble). You may want to have a contest at your stops so that a reader or listener can win a copy of your book.

Virtual Book Tours are an extremely cost effective way of promoting your book. You can promote you book internationally without leaving the comfort of your home or office. No travel expenses. No passport. No suitcase. No airline hassles or delayed flights.

A VBT tour is organized in these basic seven steps:

1.    Decide the start date and length of the tour
2.    Identify hosts (stops), usually a combination of websites, blogs, podcasts or online interviews sites
3.    Contact your hosts
4.    Schedule your stop at their site
5.    Submit your questions or article
6.    Announce your VBT to your target audience, friends, family, colleagues, associates
7.    Be available at the appointed times to answer questions

Hiring a professional author’s assistant to help you identify, schedule, monitor and promote your VBT is a very worthwhile investment. The book tour itself is relatively simple but the initial research and set up time may be overwhelming. A professional author’s assistant has the technology and knowledge to assemble a viable list of hosts along with the skills to organize and monitor the VBT from start to finish, including sending out the thank you notes when it’s done.

So you want to know how to use social media for marketing your book? Okay, hire a professional author’s assistant that specializes in social media marketing. If you’re more of a do-it-yourself type then you can learn everything you need to know at Andrea Kalli’s E-Learning Center.

If you do set up your social media marketing accounts by yourself, hire an author’s assistant to monitor the content, add fresh content and monitor comments.

Here you can learn, at your own pace, how to set up your social media accounts. But more importantly Andrea explains why you need to set them up. In her friendly and informal style Andrea will guide through the set up process to actually posting content. Along the way you will learn important tips and tricks of effectively using social media marketing.

Do authors need to use social media marketing for their book promotion? Absolutely. Authors can take advantage of non-cost online tools to promote their books, create a virtual book tour and develop a large target audience for furture books.

Click here now to read about all of Andrea’s online training couses – I’m sure you’ll find something you didn’t know!

Okay, maybe it is. This being  the information age I want to be informed. Not about how cute your cat is, that you’re off to your yoga class or out to a movie with your husband or at your son’s piano recital. Tweet me useful stuff like the URLs to that awesome Web 2.0 blog or the great article on social media marketing. Give me something useful to read. If I’m going to interrupt my day to read a tweet give me a good reason to read yours.

Yes, I know, tweets, like emails, can be deleted and it’s up to me to hit the delete key. The point is while Twitter is an awesome micro blogging concept, very, very few have figured out how to use it in their overall social media marketing strategy.  It’s a communication tool and a great opportunity to communicate about your business and provide useful information on business related topics. The more trivial one-on-one messages should be sent directly to the tweeters and not to everyone following you. Or you can use your IM. When I have something important to share with all of my tweeps I’ll Twitter.

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

First time author, Gary Unger, sold out his book How To Be A Creative Genius (in five minutes or less) at Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon.com using LinkedIn. How? Listen to his interview with Stan Relihan on The Connections Show.

Click here.

If Gary used just one social media marketing tool to sell out his book, what if authors started using more than one? Maybe Facebook, MySpace, Friendfeed, or Twitter? Social media marketing is worth the initial setup time, maintenance is minimal.

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

Gook Luck!

On Hubpages you can -

Hubpages (http://www.hubpages.com)

1. Add your profile and picture
2. Create a page for your book
3. Make a request and respond to a request
4. Check out the popular topics and network
5. Join a forum
6. Read and comment on other people’s Hubs
7. Gather fans for your Hubs
8. Join a Tag Fan Club
9. Use links to generate impressions for your referral tracker

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com)

Add –

1. Articles to a new lens (write about your book and it’s progress)
2. Join a group
3. Make a comment
4. Set your favorites to show your books or other author’s books
5. Your Web site, blog URL, contact information, Twitter ID, etc.
6. Invite friends to view your lenses (articles) and rank them

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

Add to your shelf -

Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com)

1. Your books
2. Books you’re reading
3. Other author’s books you like and support
4. Add a Shelfari widget to your blog, Facebook and MySpace
5. Ask for feedback and comments (positive of course!)

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.

Tips for using LInkedIn and Biznik -

LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com)

Add –

1. Your profile and picture
2. Mention your book and your URLs, blog, Twitter ID, etc.
3. Post a questions and give answers to other peoples questions – share your knowledge and expertise
4. Become an expert of the week
5. Join groups or create your own on your specific topic
6. Build your network by looking for and connecting with other authors and professionals in the publishing industry

Biznik (http://www.biznik.com)

Add –

1. Your profile and picture
2. Mention your book and your URLs, blog, Twitter ID, etc.
3. Select more than one city for your profile to appear in
4. Add members to your network
5. Articles
6. Blog entries
7. As for help with services or referrals and be sure to share your services and referrals
8. For a membership upgrade you can record a video profile
9. Your associations
10. And raise your profile with promotion tools
11. Your upcoming events – book delivery date, teleseminars, interviews, etc.

© Copyright 2008 The Author’s Assistants. Cheryl Callighan is a Master Virtual Assistant (MVA) and professional Author’s Assistant (The Author’s Assistants) with over 30 years of administrative and managerial experience, as well as extensive online marketing and technology experience. Cheryl has run her successful Virtual Assistant business, eOffice-Virtual Assistants LLC, “the original multi-VA Team”, for 19 years. Cheryl loves working with creative self-motivated professionals who need someone to hand off the details.