SO Now What? by Chris Keys

So now what? By Chris Keys author of the soon to be released “Reprisal! The Eagle Rises!” And “The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story” due out summer of 2010






So, now what? What you haven’t been paying attention and you not sure what it is I’m talking about? Well let me enlighten you.

A couple of weeks ago now, Ning, the leader in free social networking sites, decided to change its business model. They are going to shutdown the hundreds of free social networking sites in favor of offering only Premium pay for use sites.

Now, I personally do not administer a Ning social site but I do belong to about thirty of them. The social sites are a major portion of my marketing plan and without them. Leaving me, like you, having to figure out where to go from here.

I know one of my sites is moving to Face Book and still another is quickly developing their own website where the members can interact. While a few, are just folding up their tent and calling it a day. With just one so far opting to switch to an upstart website provider, I guess that is what they are called, Wackwall.com. So as a member of these sites I’m wondering, what I can do to market myself now. Where ever the sites go that you care about, you need to go too. Follow the site as it evolves into whatever comes next on the world wide, web.

Your sites for blogging will most likely remain in existence and so your blog is that much more important. So I’ll still keep blogging and you should too. Your blog can be used as a place to post updates on the books you’ll be writing. They can be part of the blog or the whole blog, plus you can post updates and excerpts to the notes page of Face Book.

If you have a book out already and you do not have a fan page on Face Book get one. For those of us about to have a book or are working on it…work faster and then get a fan page on Face Book I know, I have the same feeling. Isn’t a bit presumptuous to get a fan page? What if they don’t like the book? There is an old adage, “You have to fake it, until you make it!” Yes, I said fake it. If you want to b a best selling author or a household name or even make a living at writing, then you have believe enough in yourself to act like you belong on the list with other best sellers. Lots of celebrities have fan clubs and many have fan pages on Face Book. These are easy to create. The trick will be developing a fan base who actually buys your book. That is another blog for another time after I’ve actually managed to sell a few books. It’ll happen and it’s coming soon. But back to the subject once you’ve got a face book page and fan page then do what you have to get followers. I suggest that you read a friend mines blog posting, “Marketing Tips for Authors” by Tony Eldridge. His url is Tony@marketingtipsforauthors.com He has a blog currently 4/28/10 about the very subject of building a Face Book following and selling more books. You need to read this.

Then in addition, you’ll need to develop you own website, being sure to spend the money, or at least as much as you can afford to, to maximize your search engine presence. Your website will need to be the best you can make it with pictures, bio of you, the author; your comments about your books and other authors books; reviews of both, and you’ll need to even more now develop relationships with other authors to create a solid word of mouth advertising campaign and links and hyperlinks between your site and theirs. And last but not the least by far, you’ll need to repeatedly ask the customer to buy your book(s). I’ll blog soon about how to ask without getting too pushy which will chase away your reader. My own website site is in the process of development. It’s a free site for the initial time period and then it’ll cost me. There are several where you can get started for free. The draw back to free sites is you’re limited to what the template allows. Ideally, I would think you’d want your own site, one that you can control, from what is seen on it, to how it is presented and where. You’ll want to control the number of ads that you run on it, as well as having the profit from running the ads come to you not the web host or Goggle. So investigate the costs involved with having an independent site and if it makes financial sense for you do it. If you’re like me poor or cheap, than start with the cheap website until you can afford more or want more. Just remember to always ask for the sale. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

You’ll need to develop your twitter site. Yeah, I hear you. I’m in the same boat. I find myself struggling to say anything with the limited number of words I can use. So I’ll have to discover the inter-man of few words so that I might be able to develop a following. I strongly suggest though that you read, From Miller Mosaic Power Marketing-“What you should know about using Twitter effectively and Strategically, plus, Tony Eldridge’s-“Conducting effective Twitter Contests” These are both on my to buy list as soon as I have the cash so that I can be an effective user of Twitter.

The next thing that we’ll all need to do is develop our Amazon pages to their fullest potential. There are several sites on the net that offer to help you do this but I haven’t had a chance to explore them so I won’t make any recommendations. I will however, be getting a Amazon page of my own soon, I hope, and I’ll be blogging about it, when it happens.

So there it is! That’s what I think is what we do now that Ning is going away. Who knows maybe this will open up whole new horizons on the net or maybe it’ll be a real bummer. I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t acre. I just want to find the best way to sell my books. You now if you read any of my blogs before, Reprisal! The Eagle Rises! Or The Fishing Trip-A Ghost Story the whole family can read this one. Reprisal! Not s much.



Good luck and God Bless until next time, Chris Keys