It’s been said there is no better advertising than word-of-mouth. So how do you encourage word-of-mouth advertising so people know about your book and tell others?

Start with the most immediate group of people who know and like you. They include friends, family, co-workers, and community groups and church.

From there consider turning your sights to social networking. Social Media websites such as Facebook and the Christian social networking site, Xianz, allow authors a great chance to expand their network of friends and associates quickly and easily.

By setting up an account, entering the things that interest you, and searching for “friends,” you can open up vast opportunities to share your message. Once your new friends get interested or excited about your book, they may just tell their friends as well.

Here are some tips to makings friends through social media:

1.  Select Details

Give targeted details about yourself, your interests, and your book. However, be selective about the information you put on your social media profile in order to protect your identity and privacy.

2.  Warm Photo

Use a professional photo that is warm and friendly.

3.  People You Know

“Friend” people you know. Invite them to visit your fan page and ask them to leave a comment.

4.  New People

Search for people with similar interests, and reach out to them. Ask them to be a friend.

5.  Mix It Up

Post interesting information about your hobbies, as well as your book on your social media page. This lets people know you’re not only there to promote your book and builds trust.

6.  Frequency

Review and update your social media outlets frequently. Make a goal to do so twice per week.

7.  Interact

Don’t just look for others to post on your page, go to other pages and post comments. Be sure to ask and answer questions.

8.  Events

Create events on Facebook, and invite friends and fans to attend.

As you make friends on social networking websites, remember that people take the term “friend” seriously. Nurture those relationships and think of them as more than a chance to market.

The more you can build trust and respect long-term, the better chance you have to impact lives and spread your message.

If you participate in a social media channel, share your best tip for successfully interacting with others via social media.

Adam Cothes is a Solutions Advisor for WinePress Publishing, as well as a publicist. His experience in the Christian publishing industry spans 10 years and ranges from managing a Christian bookstore, to project management, publicity, advertising, and marketing.

You’ve probably heard of the hot new movie, Avatar. But have you heard of gravatar?

A gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar – your avatar is the thumbnail image that appears when you comment on someone’s blog.

If you have a Blogger profile, the image that accompanies your profile is posted whenever you comment on blogspot.com blogs. But that avatar works only for blogs hosted by Blogger. To make your avatar show up on WordPress (and other) systems, you’ll need to create a gravatar… a universal avatar.

Why do you need a gravatar?

To develop brand identity.

A custom gravatar — I recommend using a professional-looking photo of your smiling face or your company logo — establishes a consistent look for your brand. Wherever you go on the Web, your gravatar subtly promotes your brand. Eventually, people will begin to associate your face with your brand.

If you don’t use a gravatar, you’re stuck with a default avatar. WordPress, for example, gives me the following default options:

A “Monster ID” to brand my company? I don’t think so!

I ran into one glitch after creating my own gravatar; I noticed it wasn’t appearing on many of the comments I was publishing on other people’s blogs.

My problem?

I was commenting via an e-mail address that didn’t correspond with the gravatar I had created. (Depending on what type of blog I’m commenting on, I may use my business address or my personal address).

The solution?

I added additional e-mail addresses to my gravatar account. Here’s how to do it:

Go to:

• My Account
• Add an e-mail address
• Type in the address
• You will receive an activation e-mail
• Click the link, which takes you back to gravatar.com
• Select an e-mail address to modify
• Click an image you’ve already uploaded (or add a new one), click “Confirm”

Within minutes, my gravatar on comments I had already posted was updated to include my gravatar.

Your turn! Create your own gravatar right now and post a comment here, so we can see who you are!

Laura Christianson owns Blogging Bistro, a company that helps writers enhance their relationship marketing through Web sites, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.

Her company manages the WinePress blog, and she regularly consults with WinePress authors. You can read Laura’s monthly Relationship Marketing column in the Snohomish (WA) County Business Journal.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. -Kahlil Gibran

By Marcus Isom

E-mail and the Internet is no longer just an alternate tool used mainly by businesses. It is a standard form of communication throughout many households. Business formerly done by phone, pen, and paper is quickly being replaced by the keyboard and mouse.

Some individuals resist using electronic communications. Here are some common misconceptions I’ve noticed:

It’s toooooo difficult to learn how to use a computer and the Internet.

This is no longer the case. Computers and e-mail have come a long way since the days of black screens with green text, and they’re now about as complicated as learning how to drive – perhaps even easier. Check with community colleges, youth and senior centers in your community; many offer basic computer courses.

Two words : Security Risk

Just be careful. Like driving on a crowded highway or through a school zone, there are “rules of the road” to be learned and followed with e-mail and web-surfing. For example, don’t give out your credit card information or social security number through e-mail. It is safe, however, to give out your credit card number to online stores with secure servers.

Computers are too expensive!

A decent basic computer system that can provide for most people’s electronic needs can often cost from $200-500.

Electronic communication is where everything is headed nowadays, and it’s starting to become difficult to receive paper invoices and consultation. In fact, postal mail is becoming a novelty. Newer forms of social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook, are now the norm.

The sooner one can learn how to make good use of e-mail and other tools we have now, the less of a struggle it will be in the near future, when social networking technology becomes the standard.

Marcus Isom is the warehouse office assistant of Larry Filato, and is part of the WinePress Fulfillment Team. His job primarily consists of taking and processing book orders, maintaining warehousing records, and ensuring that bookstores, distributors, authors, and customers receive their books in a timely manner. Marcus also helps to move inventory, processes book returns, and keeps things tidy.

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to get high rankings in the search engines. If you write about a popular topic that you’re passionate about, you can get a lot of readers.

The problem is that a lot of bloggers rely on search engines as their main source of traffic. If you write on a topic that people search for frequently, it’s hard to get your blog to rank high and you won’t get many visitors, much less find the readers who are looking for what you are writing about.

So, to get more traffic to your blog, you need to find more ways to promote. One easy way to do this is with social networking sites. The advantage of using a social networking site is that you have a lot of options when promoting.

When you create a profile on a social networking site, add a link to your blog. This lets others know you have a blog, and hopefully, they’ll click over to it and read it.

If you don’t have a blog, then you have the option of using the blog available on the social networking site, if one is offered. This will allow readers to read your content. You can post product reviews, articles, tutorials, and even videos or audios you’ve found on your topic.

The only disadvantage with using the blog that’s built into the social networking site is that, while your blog posts are public on the site, they won’t be picked up by the search engines. It’s best to have an external blog and cross-post some of your entries to the social networking site.

Be careful about making your content too commercial.
Otherwise, you might get banned from the site.

If the social networking site allows you to add RSS feeds, add your blog’s RSS feed to your profile.
This saves you time, because your blog entries will automatically show up on your profile. Sites that don’t offer blogs, like Orkut (a social networking site operated by Google), give you this option.

I like using RSS feeds on my social networking site profiles because my profile is constantly updated and I’m always providing new content to my visitors and readers.

Another advantage to using RSS feeds is that readers will have to click through to your blog to read the entire post. If you offer an email subscription, this gives you another opportunity to get the reader to subscribe to your blog.

If the social networking site offers forums or groups, add a link to your profile in your signature file.
You just need to know a little HTML in order to code your link unless the site offers an editor that will code it for you. Again, avoid being too commercial. Your goal is to get others to click through your link to your blog and subscribe, not sell them something.

Many social networking sites have private messaging, as well as bulletins you can send out.
When sending out private messages, you don’t want to spam or try to just sell the person something. Make sure you are friends first. With bulletins, try to write a catchy headline and make your bulletin newsworthy. Use a soft sell. Don’t make others feel as if they’re being sold to.

Want to learn how top marketers use social networking to expand their businesses? “Social Marketing Success” teaches you how to easily bring in more profits in just a few minutes a day.

When you ponder the plethora of the online venues from which you can promote your book, it’s hard to know where to start.

Prospective book buyers need 8-to-10 “touches” from you before they remember you, your book, or your brand. Cyberspace is a great place to reach out and touch someone. If you haven’t written or published your book yet but plan to do so during the next two years, NOW is the time to begin making those touches.

Here are a few tips for building your online presence:

Build your hub. Think about the International Space Station. Construction began in 1998 with the Control Module. Gradually, additional modules have been added.

Your online hub should be a Web site and/or a blog. A Web site generally contains static content that changes infrequently. A blog is an interactive Web site—its content is updated on a regular basis (at least weekly).

More and more often, authors and businesses are creating sites that seamlessly integrate blog content with static content. For example, at my business site, www.HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, our blog is on our Home page. Navigation buttons on the Home page lead to inside pages that function more like a traditional Web site. WinePress also offers this service–their authors get a Weblog page and several additional pages to which they can add content.

Gradually add spokes or “modules” to your hub. I consider social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) and social bookmarking sites (Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon) as spokes. You’ll create a profile at each site (registration is free) and link to and from your hub. Millions of people subscribe to social networking sites, substantially increasing your chances of being found and “touched.”

In future posts, we’ll talk about how to effectively use social networking, but for now, we’ll suggest several sites for you to explore.

• Don’t feel compelled to instantly sign up for each of them. Spend time looking around, visiting other authors’ profiles, and studying how members market themselves.
• After you’ve visited a site several times, ask yourself whether you feel comfortable joining the community, and whether it’ll be worth your time investment to become an active member.

Here are some sites to explore:

General Networking:
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/
Ziggs – http://www.ziggs.com/ (for business professionals)

Targeted Networking:
MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/
Shoutlife – http://www.shoutlife.com/ – Christian social networking for authors, music artists, comics, organizations, and regular folks.

Video Sharing
YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/
GodTube – http://www.godtube.com/ – Christian version of YouTube

Book Sharing
Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/
Shelfari – www.shelfari.com
BookTour – http://www.booktour.com
Book Marketing Network http://bookmarket.ning.com/ – You can set up your own customized social network at ning.com

Micro Blogging
Twitter – https://twitter.com
Plurk – http://www.plurk.com/

Social Bookmarking
Digg – http://digg.com/
Delicious – http://delicious.com
StumbleUpon – http://www.stumbleupon.com/

What sites do you use/recommend? Leave us a comment!

Laura Christianson is a WinePress author and co-founder of HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, a Seattle-area company that helps individuals and businesses maximize their blogging, marketing, and writing skills.