Need help with social media?
You’ve gotten the message that your business needs to master Web 2.0, become active on social media sites like Plaxo and Bebo, start posting on Twitter, syndicate online, produce lenses on Squidoo, author a blog, keep up with Digg and Newsvine. You know it will improve SEO, and monetize your expertise. But how are you supposed to do all that and still run your business? Check it out:
www.Expertizing.com.

Would your company be more profitable if it got out of its own way? Collaborative Networks International is a Boston-based leadership and organizational strategy firm that specializes in developing collaborative leaders and top teams so they can ‘get out of their own way’ and lead. In this economy, a dysfunctional leader or suboptimal team is a liability. Get CollaborativeNetworks.net on the case ASAP, and watch your ROI zoom.

Fern Reiss

This week we feature IAW director Fern Reiss's special report on Getting People To Your Website: 25 Simple Tips for Top-Notch Search Engine Optimization.

Barbara Weltman

Marcia Yudkin

Next week, we feature Barbara Weltman’s article on health coverage and Marcia Yudkin on taking your tax-deductible dream trip.

Ethical Aspects of Drug Development

Dr. Judy Stone is an infectious disease specialist, internist, pharmaceutical researcher, and author of Conducting Clinical Research: A Practical Guide.

Book Dr. Judy Stone as a speaker for your next meeting or conference.

Email Dr. Judy Stone

Be our featured speaker

Ellen Zagorsky Goldberg is a professional model, registered nurse, and mother of four who loves to help pregnant women and new moms feel and look great.

Book Ellen Zagorsky Goldberg as a speaker for your next meeting or conference.

E-mail Ellen Zagorsky Goldberg

Be our featured expert

Meet Jack Perconte. Jack is the author of two new books - The Making of a Hitter and Raising an Athlete, as well as other books on baseball and sports.

Read more

Be our featured author

The Publishing Game:
Find an Agent in 30 Days
Fern Reiss

“Brimming with publishing wisdom that will help you get the agent and publisher you want—fast.”

— Michael Larsen, Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency

Read more

Book Fern Reiss as a speaker for your next meeting or conference

E-mail the author

Feature your book here

Self Help / USA

— Nancy Stampahar

Numerous life examples reveal that the power of choice turns adversity of every sort into opportunities for increased happiness. Included in this illustrated book are simple exercises for both personally and professionally achieving one's happiness.

Read Nancy Stampahar's query

Feature your query here

Attend a talk with IAW Director Fern Reiss:
If you'd like to hear Fern in person in 2009, she will be speaking at:

• Keynote, Colorado Independent Publishers, Denver (25-28 March)
• American Society for Journalists and Authors, New York (24-26 April)
• Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Conference, New York (17-19 May)
• Independent Book Publishers’  University, New York (26-28 May)
• Book Expo America, New York (28,31 May)
• Private consults, Europe (July & August)
• Publishing Game Workshop, Jerusalem (July 28 and August 4)

Please contact us to book her for your event or conference, or to book a private consultation on writing, publishing, or publicity while she's speaking in your town.

Follow Fern online:

• Twitter
• Facebook Writing & Publishing

If you need some personal input on your writing, publishing, or publicity dilemma, consider a consultation with IAW Director Fern Reiss. Fern consults to clients all over the world via telephone; the charge is $300/ €200 per hour or $1500 / €1000 for six sessions for publishing consultation and $1500 / €1000 per hour (non-profits: $1200 / €800) for Expertizing consulting. Sign up at PublishingGame.com/
consulting.htm or www.Expertizing.com.

3 March, 2009

Welcome to our new members in Holland, Canada, and the United States.

Special Report

Getting People To Your Website: 25 Simple Tips for Top-Notch Search Engine Optimization
by Fern Reiss

One of the most common laments in the business world is, “But now that I have a website for my book/business, how do I get people to find it?” Putting up the website is only half the battle; unless people are able to find it, you won’t be improving your business. And most search engine optimization techniques don’t require a computer science degree to implement. Here’s how to fly to the top of the search engines—and stay there.

Tip #1. Optimize for your top keywords
When people search online for your topic, what words or phrases are they looking for? And which of these words can you realistically hope to ‘own’ in the online marketplace? The better your choice of keywords, the better your ranking will be. For example, I advise writers on how to find literary agents. “Literary agents” is a Google search phase that’s extremely popular—too many other websites are vying for this phrase, so my chances of ranking highly would be minimal. But if you do a Google search for ‘find a literary agent,’ a slightly less popular phrase (but one that authors still use), my PublishingGame.com site pops up on the first page. Likewise, if you do a Google search for ‘writer organizations,’ The International Association of Writers appears on page one of the results, hovering between number three and six, despite the newness of the organization.

Tip #2. Figuring out your top keywords
So how do you figure out which keywords to use? The following all do similar things, but they have slightly different ways of calibrating what words and terms people are searching for (and some people find some of them easier to use than others.) By combining them, you come up with the ‘best’ list of what terms to include:

  www.adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
  www.keyworddiscovery.com
  www.wordtracker.com
  www.goodkeywords.com

Tip #4. Don’t neglect indirect marketing/indirect marketing keywords
It’s also important to figure out keywords for your ‘indirect’ marketing. Think carefully about who your indirect markets are—and how they will find you. For example, the primary market for my Publishing Game products (books, workshops, and consulting on publishing and book promotion) is the writers themselves. But my indirect market is anyone who knows a writer. This ‘indirect’ approach resulted in a whole sideline of products for friends of writers—such as gift baskets for writers, in prices ranging from $39 to $99, particularly popular around the holidays. (Try a Google search for ‘holiday gifts for writers,’ for example, and see what comes up.) So zero in on your indirect markets, and compile a list of keywords for those indirect targets, as well.

Tip #7. Don’t over-use graphics
Good websites need graphics—but don’t make the mistake of placing important text details, such as contact information, in an image file. Image files can’t be indexed by search engines.

Tip #14. Avoid content mirroring
If you’re writing articles for other websites as a way to improve your search engine linkings, be aware that ‘content mirroring’ is considered a no-no by search engines. Content mirroring occurs when you duplicate the content exactly in an outside-your-website article containing a link to your website—which contains exactly the same article. Rather than avoiding publishing your own article on your own website, simply create two versions of the article: One for your own website, and one for all the other websites to which you’d like to distribute. You can either simply rewrite the article using different phrases or change the order of the lists or paragraphs; or you can add unique content to the middle of the article (such as an additional tip, the inclusion of contact details, etc.) As long as there is a 30% difference in the content, search engines will consider your article ‘unique.’

Members: Read the rest of this article.

Next week: Stay tuned for Barbara Weltman's article on health coverage and Marcia Yudkin on taking your tax-deductible dream trip.

Social Media Marketing – Sally Falkow

If you missed IAW contributor Sally Falkow's article a few weeks back on Social Media Marketing it’s not too late. You can still find out:

• Why the jump in social media amongst internet users affects your business—and how to take advantage of it
• Where the largest growth in audience was in the morass of social media
• Which age cohort was the most involved
• How you can figure out where your audience gathers online
• Why knowing that Google’s new search parameters includes news, images, videos, and blog posts makes it imperative for you to reevaluate your online digital content
• What one syndication tool you can no longer avoid—for any business
• Why one quick search result will do more to improve your business than any single other thing you’re doing—and how to maximize its results

Members can read the feature right now.

New Members:
If you missed any of the articles, audios, or reports below, you can still read and listen to them in our Member Archive. 

New: Amazon announced today that they’re expanding into ebooks in a big way, making Kindle books available for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch; stay tuned for how the IAW can help you with this new publishing opportunity… More bad news on the magazine front: One of the largest magazine wholesalers, Anderson News, is out of business and has laid off their entire staff… Magazine sales in the second half of 2008 were down 11%… Borders Books eliminated another 12% of their workforce… Nielsen reports that the average American watches 5+ hours of television per day, an all-time high, up 3.6% from this time last year…

Members can read more by clicking through to:
PartyLine Media Leads and
Wooden Horse Magazine Update.

You can get a complimentary copy of the annual Marketing Sherpa marketing report as a pdf at: www.marketingsherpa.com/Wisdom2009.pdf.

Agent in the Hot Seat this month is Rita Rosenkranz, here to tell us what's hot and what's new, and the best way to get that publishing deal…

Members can click here for more.

Whether you’re a business traveler or an armchair traveler, here’s what’s going on in the writing and publishing world for writers in England.

The British book market sold almost 237 million books in 2008. The four largest publishing houses in Britain are Hachette UK, Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins, followed by Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Pearson, OUP, Wiley, and Egmont. Academic and children's books are on the upswing in England. Indy press Canongate grew 155%, but most independent publishers were down.

Members can read more at Spotlight.

(Interested in sharing what’s going on in your part of the world? Members can become an IAW ambassador.)

Book Profile

Each month, the International Association of Writers sends a newsletter featuring your latest books to bookstores, libraries, bloggers, reviewers, and book groups worldwide. The book listings also run in several locations on the website, and each week we feature one of the books in our newsletter. Here’s how to make the most of your IAW Book listing:

• First, be sure to fill out an Author Profile. You must create an author profile before you can submit book profiles.
• Next, from the book profile page, select the genres carefully. Bookstores, libraries, bloggers, reviewers, and book groups may be looking for authors in particular genres, so be sure the genres you choose accurately describe your niche. (You can choose from a variety of fiction and nonfiction genres.)
• Be sure to upload an image of the book's cover.
• Make your book's description concise, accurate, and entertaining. The more memorable it is, the the more interest you'll generate.
• Your short biography will be displayed along with your book profile, as well as in several other places on our website, so be sure it is interesting and describes your expertise accurately.
• You can submit up to three book reviews. These are important: Libraries, especially, place a lot of emphasis on reviews.
• Remember that in today’s economy, traditional sources of book and author information (such as newspapers) are disappearing; so more and more bookstores and libraries are looking to the IAW. Don’t miss out on this easy way to market yourself and your books.

Next week, we’ll look at making the most of your syndicated articles. Stay tuned!

The more members we have, the more clout we have with journalists, booksellers, literary agents, librarians, etc. Want to help make others aware of the International Association of Writers? Here are some ways you can help:

• Become an Ambassador from your geographic area, or become a web ambassador and mention us on listserves and writing forums online.
• List us as a favorite on Digg.com or Delicious.com.
• Email a friend or colleague to tell them about us.
• Add this to your Facebook or Twitter Status line: “Looking for publicity as a writer or small business? Check out AssociationofWriters.com”.
• Remember—sign up three friends or colleagues, and get a free one-year extension on your membership!

Prepare Yourself for Networking Events in 6 Steps
by Marianne Korten

How can you prepare yourself to book results at business networking events? Many participants do not prepare at all and just spend the hours chatting. You can make a difference by being focused, prepared and confident.

Read the article here. (This article is accessible to both non-members and members.)

(Want to see your syndicated article here? Members can post to our Syndicated Articles Directory; articles from the directory may be chosen to be featured here. Non-members:  Join now and you can post your articles, too.)

Q: “Is the Amazon announcement about ebooks good for writers, or bad for writers?”

A: As with many things in the industry, Amazon’s announcement about its new expansion into ebooks can either be perceived as a threat or as a challenge. On the one hand, sales of Kindle and e-reader books may adversely affect your physical book sales. On the other hand, the growing market for ebooks can be viewed as a gigantic new opportunity. The IAW has some ideas on how we can help writers to take advantage of this expanding ebook marketplace, and we’ll be sharing these thoughts in future weeks, but in the meantime, we encourage writers to dive in and see what opportunities this might hold for your books…

Members can post their Talk Out questions here.

“A few days after I posted my speaker profile on the International Association of Writers’ website, I began receiving inquiries from meeting planners who wanted to book me for high-paying speaking gigs. The International Association of Writers rocks!”
— Linda Gradstein, correspondent, National Public Radio

“I’m loving the site—thank you!”
— Kristin J. Eckstein, producer, ArtsImagine.com

Members send your kudos & we'll print them in a future issue.

The 10^th annual Bethesda Literary Festival, 17-19 April, in Bethesda, Maryland, United States.

The largest literature festival in the Nordic countries: The Norwegian Festival of Literature in scenic Lillehammer, about 2 hours drive north of Oslo (26-31 May).

Read the entire Calendar. (Members—post listings at no charge.)

Copyright © 2009 International Association of Writers

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