Michael R. Hicks's Blog, page 26

Cats and Keyboards

For today's Funny Friday post, I have to thank author Peg Robarchek for pointing this out after a Twitter discussion about the latest antics of Sasha the Siberian Cat entertaining himself with my computer. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWIPZvwcnX8

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Published on September 09, 2011 04:15

A Dog Haiku

Love my master;

Thus I perfume myself with

This long-rotten mouse.

I lie belly-up

In the sunshine, happier than

You ever will be.

Today I sniffed

Many dog behinds—I celebrate

By kissing your face.

I sound the alarm!

Paper boy—come to kill us all—

Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I lift my leg and

Whiz on each bush.

Hello, Spot—Sniff this and weep.

I sound the alarm!

Garbage man—come to kill us all—

Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

How do I love thee?

The ways are numberless as

My hairs on the rug.

I sound the alarm!

Mail carrier—come to kill us all—

Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

My human is home!

I am so ecstatic I have

Made a puddle.

I sound the alarm!

Gardener—come to kill us all—

Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I Hate my choke chain—

Look, world, they strangle me!

Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack!

Sleeping here, my chin

On your foot—no greater bliss—well,

Maybe catching mice.

Look in my eyes and

Deny it. No human could

Love you as much I do.

The cat is not all

Bad — she fills the litter box

With Tootsie Rolls.

Dig under fence—why?

Because it's there. Because it's

There. Because it's there.

I am your best friend,

Now, always, and especially

When you are eating.

My owners' mood is

Romantic—I lie near their

Feet. I fart a big one.

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Published on September 09, 2011 04:00

Marketing Tips For Self-Published Authors: Using Twitter Effectively (Part 2)

Now that you have a general idea of what Twitter is, you've got an account on Twitter and your interface of choice like Hootsuite lined up, and have monkeyed around with at least a few of the Twitter tools out there, let's talk in a bit more detail about the people you might choose to follow, and those who might choose to follow you.

The goal of all this is to connect with people who might be receptive to scoping out your books, or who can help spread the word, and weed out the chaff.

First, let me share a couple of my personal definitions with you (these aren't official, just what I use in my empty head):

- Broadcaster. A broadcaster is a person, business, or just an account that tweets the same thing or set of things over and over. These accounts are basically one-way communicators, and they don't interact with their followers (that would be you). They also tend to have a huge number of followers, which looks impressive, but is often about as meaty as a big bag of styrofoam peanuts. Most of the time these accounts are set up and run automatically without any further human intervention. They'll follow people willy-nilly, expecting you to follow in return, and they almost always have their accounts set to automatically follow people back. Tweet, tweet, tweet, blah, blah, blah. And that's it.

- Promoter. A promoter sends out promotional tweets, many of which might be canned or repetitive in a given span of time, but they also actively interact with their followers and other people in the Twitterverse in a positive manner (you can be a promoter and be nice, or be a promoter and be a wiener-head; I block the latter). These are real people who both talk and listen on Twitter: the communication is two-way. These folks are often a source of helpful information and can also be good connectors for you to reach other readers through retweets (i.e., they're someone who passes on your tweets to their followers, which is a HUGE source of leverage). Yours truly falls into this category.

- Good ol' Tweep. A tweep – for purposes here – is basically Johnny or Jean Public, one of the many people who may give you an opportunity to touch their lives through Twitter. Some of these folks you may be interested in; others, you might not. But for our purposes here, the tweeps you want are potential or existing readers of your books.

So, here's the deal. A lot of folks who want to promote something, like books, get on Twitter and right away are entirely focused on building a huge following as quickly as possible.

"Well, hey," says you, "if I don't get 100,000 followers in a week like the social media gurus say I should, Twitter won't do me any good! I'll be riding the failboat!"

Hold onto your rubber ducky. It's true that you could rack up a ton of followers fairly quickly, just like I was doing for a while. But eventually you'll realize that a huge percentage of those "followers" – whom you're also following back – are just broadcasters. That's kind of like being in the room with a few thousand copies of your old Aunt Gertrude. You know, the one who just loves to talk and talk and talk, but who never lets anybody get a word in edgewise?

Now, do you think whoever owns those broadcaster accounts gives a hoot about your tweets? You don't have to be a member of MENSA to figure that one out: the answer is a loud and resounding no. Unless you just happen to enjoy the content that's put out by a broadcaster (and you very well may, and that's fine), hit the "block" button on these weenies. That way you won't have to worry about accidentally following them again later when we get to some of the more advanced tools we'll talk about.

"How do I tell if somebody's a broadcaster?" Very easy: just look at their tweets in your timeline, or pop up their timeline, and all you'll see is post after post, by them, almost always with URLs to their product or site. And that's it. They don't reply to anybody (or there's maybe a token reply in there somewhere), and they don't retweet things – that's a HUGE no-go. Block 'em.

Moving on to promoters. This is the group you want to be part of. You'll mainly want to connect with fellow authors, but don't limit yourself to just that group: you might hook up with people in music, film, etc., and through them you may find more readers. But hooking up with other authors is good for a couple reasons. First, you can learn a lot from other authors on Twitter – different ways of doing things, ideas to try that you haven't heard of, a great editor, link exchanges, etc. These folks can also be powerful motivators when you're writing new material, or have hit a roadblock and you need someone to help shake the gray cells loose. Or just to yak and have fun! Check out the hashtags #amwriting and #pubwrite, as a couple examples.

The most powerful thing you can get from fellow promoters – and give back, in return – is retweeting. When you tweet about your book and other promoters (and sometimes readers, as well) retweet it, you just gained enormous leverage: you're reaching your own tweeps, and theirs, too! This leverage can be exponential, and is one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter.

"But hey, if I retweet their stuff, that'll be competition! My tweeps might buy their books and not mine! I'm not gonna do it!"

Stop being such a pansy. It's about coalition, not competition. Readers are going to buy what they like, but they're more likely to buy books from nice people who like to help others than from selfish ninnies. There's another old saw that applies here: a rising tide floats all boats, while selfish ninnies ride the failboat and sink. Don't do dat.

So, get in with a good group of fellow promoters/authors who are willing to help each other succeed and leave the ninny-filled failboat behind.

On now, to tweeps, otherwise known as potential readers! You want to let folks know about your books (without annoying them to death with promo tweets), but you also want to share your personal experiences with them and get a glimpse into their lives. You don't have to make any terribly pithy comments, just be neighborly! Go through your timeline and look at the tweets people are making, and find ones that you'd like to comment on. Don't make those tweets have anything to do with your books! They'll get that from your promo tweets. Keep your "personal tweets" personal – be nice and fun. Help people if you can, rejoice at their happiness, offer support in hard times, have a bit of fun (but watch what you say and how you say it: off-color jokes,etc., are NOT cool), and just try to be someone that other folks enjoy being around. Don't try to be the center of attention: just be you.

Now let's look at a few do's and don'ts that'll also hopefully give you an idea of a few things you can do if you're new to this whole tweeting thing:

DO feel free to promote your books through your tweets! Just don't overdo it. I recommend sending out promotional tweets maybe once an hour, but not more than every 30 minutes. That way your tweets don't form an obnoxious intestinal blockage in your followers' timelines.
DON'T send out nothing but promotional tweets! Otherwise you're just a broadcaster, and the people you want to reach will largely ignore you.
DO post stuff about your daily life and your interests. That's what Twitter is all about: sharing life.
DO keep your personal posts upbeat. Find the silver lining in things. People are attracted to sources of inspiration and encouragement. Nobody wants to be around a sourpuss.
DON'T tweet the same thing ("Hey, have you read my book???") to fifty people in succession. It looks really stupid in everyone's timeline, and your own!
DO NOT EVER get into an argument or pissing contest with anyone (reader, reviewer, your Aunt Gertrude who won't shut up, etc.). Twitter (and Facebook) can be very unforgiving about the old adage, "If you don't have something good to say, don't say anything at all." Even if you're in the right, it will come back to bite you.
DO toss questions out periodically to help drum up some yakking. "Hey, anybody going out for ice cream tonight?" "Who has a pencil sharpener?" You'd be amazed at the responses.
DO – ABSOLUTELY! – your very best to answer every tweet or direct message (a "DM," which is a form of message in Twitter that only you can see) you get from people. If they're tweeting to you, you're getting some action! Respond!
Send out a welcome "shoutout" (#ShoutOut using hashtags) to new followers to welcome them to your little Twitter circle.
DO feel absolutely free to unfollow people whom you wouldn't want to be seen with in public. There are a ton of folks on Twitter who can't seem to write anything that doesn't have mostly four letter words or say stuff that would make a porn star blush. Don't feel compelled to keep these folks around if their language or behavior offends you. Unfollow or block 'em without a second thought.
DO retweet things from other people, both authors/promoters and your tweeps! If something good happened to somebody, pass it on! If someone needs some support, pass it on. If a fellow author hit the bestseller list, pass it on and celebrate their success!
Last but not least DON'T eat too many salt and vinegar potato chips like I just did. Otherwise you wind up writing a post like this.

Related Posts:Marketing Tips For Self-Published Authors: Using Twitter Effectively (Part 1)Why I'll Never Again Do Business With Bank of America Who's Your Favorite Hero?Amazon Kindle's New @Author Feature – A New Way For Readers and Authors To Connect $100 Giveaway by Michael R. Hicks – For Clicking a Couple Buttons

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Published on September 08, 2011 04:42

Why I'll Never Again Do Business With Bank of America

As far as being a banking customer goes, I don't consider myself particularly needy. I mainly just want my money to go in and out, to and from the right payees and accounts, in a reasonable amount of time, and without a lot of hassle. I do almost all my banking on-line nowadays, so I have a modest expectation that the accounts I have at a bank will be automatically linked up, and shuffling money between accounts shouldn't require me to be Wile E. Coyote, supergenius.

My most demanding expectation, I suppose, is that I there should be a readily accessible way of actually talking to a real human if the typical voice menu options don't have what I need. And typically they don't, because most of the basic things they're designed to handle are bits that I can normally sort out on-line without a problem. At least that's how things have been with USAA, where I do my personal banking, and I've never had any complaints with them in over 25 years.

Enter Bank of America, and my attempt to set up business checking and credit card accounts. I'm not really going to spend a lot of time detailing every single "issue" I had with them, because they've already wasted enough of my time and I'm only going to write enough to hopefully give you a big fat caution light before you consider doing business with them (at least for a business account).

In short, from the application for the account onward, there was something screwed up at every step. I've been on the phone with their customer service folks for problems more in the last month (I opened the accounts almost exactly one month ago) than I have with USAA in over 25 years.

Today was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. I bought a few things using our new BoA business Mastercard, which has a pretty low limit (which is fine – I don't need to have a huge credit line for my business). But there were some other things we needed to get, so I transferred some money from the business checking account to cover the existing balance on the Mastercard so I could use it again.

Guess what? You can't do that. Once you spend up to the credit limit on your account, or need to get something that would exceed your available balance, you're stuck until the billing cycle is over. Only then will any payments you've made toward the balance on your card actually be applied. So if you make some big purchases early in the cycle like we did, you're hosed until the billing cycle ends. A month.

I don't normally say this, but that came as a huge WTF??!!

Then came the fun part: trying to call customer service to figure this out, because no one told me about this little bugaboo when I opened the account (if they did, I doubt I would have ever used it at all).

Getting through to customer service has been a telephonic root canal every time, because there is NO option on the voice menu for just talking to a representative (again, thank you, USAA, for having real people easily accessible!). Then, if you finally do find your way through, you get put on hold for quite a while.

I spent a good fifteen minutes on hold this morning before a customer service rep came on. After going through a lengthy "I have to prove you are who you say you are" drill that was as bad as a polygraph for a top secret clearance, then "researching" the details of my question (add another fifteen minutes or so), it turned out he couldn't help me at all. So he transferred me to credit services.

Fine. Except he transferred me to the general access line…which sent me right back to all the %$^$@%@#$ voice menus, rather than a real person!

I'm normally pretty laid back. Cats are my roll models. I rarely get angry. I mean, really, cursing mad. But I sure was at that point. I'm glad the boys weren't home, and that the cats were asleep (although they weren't for very long). I used words I hadn't even remembered I knew.

By that point, I'd already wasted a good 45 minutes that I could've been working. I was frustrated, torqued, peeved, and now I had to go through the crap with the voice menu thing again, trying to hit the right combination of options to get a representative. Or maybe they just have it route you to someone when the system detects a lot of swear words coming from the customer (I suspect that's the most likely).

Anyway, I finally got to someone in credit services and, in level and polite tones, managed to convey my question (Can I pay off this freakin' card so I can use it again before the end of the cycle?), and received an answer (No, you may not, unless we have a manager sign off on a waiver).

I kindly thanked the woman, and told her not to bother with the waiver or anything else: once the credit card balance is cleared, I plan to close all my accounts at Bank of America and pretend like they never existed, and take my business and money to a bank that has both sensible small business account policies and decent customer service. Unfortunately, USAA doesn't offer business services, or I would've just stayed "home" with them to begin with.

And this is almost 900 words I could've spent on the next novel. UGH!

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Published on September 07, 2011 09:16

Marketing Tips For Self-Published Authors: Using Twitter Effectively (Part 1)

If you've been on the web for longer than five minutes, you've no doubt heard of this thing called "Twitter," and if you've been on Twitter for longer than five minutes, you've probably been spammed by at least eight hundred "social media gurus" who'll be happy to sell you the "Ancient Chinese Secret For Gaining 100,000 Twitter Followers In A Week and TO MASSIVELY GROW YOUR INCOME WHILE RELIEVING HEMORRHOID IRRITATION!!!!"

Yeah, whatever. Let me know how that works out for ya.

All kidding aside, the reason you should care about Twitter is that you can, at least based on my experience, use it very effectively to help promote your books and your author persona – if you do it right. I'm not claiming I've got the whole thing pinned down (I'm trying to learn new tricks all the time), but of all the tools in my promotional toolbox, I think my highest "skill rating" and return on investment is currently with Twitter.

While I don't have statistics to back it up, I believe that the rapid success enjoyed by SEASON OF THE HARVEST after its release (and I didn't do any big lead-up fanfare anywhere) that landed it on several Amazon Bestseller lists – along with – is due directly to my promotional efforts on Twitter. I also believe that the continued success of those books, and the growing success of the others, is due largely to Twitter.

So, Twitter is a tool – just one tool – but like any other, if you learn how to use it and use it for the right kind of job, it can be very powerful.

Before we get down to the nitty gritty, let's first come to grips with what Twitter is. I found a nice definition of it in the PCMag.com encyclopedia:

A very popular instant messaging system that lets a person send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers. Launched in 2006, Twitter was designed as a social network to keep friends and colleagues informed throughout the day. However, it became widely used for commercial and political purposes to keep customers, voters and fans up-to-date as well as to encourage feedback.

The biggest point to take away here is that "tweets" are SHORT: only 140 characters. That sounds like a lot, but it's not very much at all.

To give you an idea, those two short sentences total 138 characters, if I counted right (and I suck at counting, so don't hold me to it!).

"Holy cow!" you exclaim. "How can I possibly say anything important in 140 characters??"

True, you're not going to be able to cram War and Peace into those 140 characters, but if you learn to not be a gasbag (which is incredibly difficult for me!), you can say a lot in that amount of space. It's not really hard, but it does take some getting used to.

Another thing you have to get your brain around is the concept of "following" and "follower". Followers are people who are following you; "following" means you're following them. Each way is voluntary, so you can follow someone but they don't have to follow you back, and vice versa, and you can unfollow someone any time you want (and vice versa). When you follow someone, you see their tweets in your timeline; they'll only see yours in their timeline if they're following you. There's also an option to block people, which means that their tweets won't appear in your timeline, your tweets won't appear in theirs (even if they're trying to follow you), and they're, well, blocked. I use this mostly for the social media guru spammers or anybody else that I really don't want to have anything to do with.

The most important thing, however, is to start using it, and then use it consistently. And by consistently, I mean every day, intermittently throughout the day. Twitter is a very "non-persistent" environment, and if you're not in there chatting away every day, making your little dent in the Twitterverse, you're not going to get much traction out of it. I'll show you ways of how to do that effectively without sucking up a huge amount of time, but I wanted to plant that in your brain right up front, because if the persistent/consistent thing won't work for you, then Twitter is probably not going to be an effective promotional tool for you (that's okay, by the way – different tools for different needs!).

Okay, so, let's start from ground zero:

Set up a Twitter account . It's free and easy. I STRONGLY recommend that you have a photo of yourself to use as an avatar – something that you feel is a good reflection of yourself. It could also be a book cover, but I personally think the "human face" is better. Choose a user name that is easy, maybe catchy, and again, is a reflection of your author persona. I chose KreelanWarrior as a spin from the IN HER NAME series of books. Make sure you link to your blog or web site (you MUST HAVE ONE! I'll send Sasha the cat to bite your toes if you don't!). For the Twitter settings, you can adjust them as you like, but one I highly recommend you check is "email when someone starts following me" so you'll know when you have a new follower. This will be important for interaction and pruning, which we'll get to later. I also recommend that you do at least minimal customization of your profile page, which is easy in Twitter's interface, just so yours doesn't look like the default. Try to stand out from the crowd a bit, okay?
While Twitter's interface is okay, you need something better. There are a bunch of alternatives out there, but my personal favorite is Hootsuite . Hootsuite has a bunch of features that make interacting with and sorting through your followers and folks you're following much easier. It also allows you to integrate with other social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, so you can post something once and send it to multiple channels. While I'll cover a few specifics later, I'm not going to go into the basic details of how to use Hootsuite, as there's a lot to cover and there are some great Hootsuite tutorials on YouTube. And if you have a smart phone like an iPhone, make sure you get the Hootsuite app so you can tweet on the go!
Get an account on Klout . This this is a great source of trend information on the growth of your following and the effectiveness of your interactions. Looking at the stats and the detailed analysis will help give you a clue about whether you're doing things right or not.
Get an account on ManageFlitter . This site has a variety of services and options, but the only thing I use it for is to find people I'm following who haven't been active on Twitter in the last 30 days or longer, with a utility to bulk unfollow them. This is VERY IMPORTANT when you're close to following 2,000 people. Why? Because that's a trip-wire in Twitter where they start enforcing a following to follower ratio of 1.1 to 1. What that means is that you can't follow a bunch of people unless there's an almost-as-big bunch of people following you. So once you're following 2,000 people, you can't follow any more until at least 1818 are following you (2000 to 1818 = 1.1 to 1). And one way to keep this ratio as trim as possible is to weed out any folks you're following who aren't actively using Twitter. If they haven't tweeted in 30 days, zap 'em. You want to engage people who are actively yakking on Twitter, not just collect a bunch of hollow accounts.
Another indispensable tool that was brought to my attention by Kirkus MacGowan is TwitCleaner. This is an awesome tool – and free (at least as of this writing) – that analyzes the Twitter accounts you're following and gives you a pretty good idea which ones are just "broadcasters" or spewing other junkaroni, and thus don't really represent people you can engage.
Last but not least is TweetBurner. On the outside, this tool seems like just another link shortener (note: you want your links in your tweets to be shortened, because otherwise they'll eat up gobs of your 140 characters), but with a powerful twist: it can track the clicks on those links. The immediate benefit of this is that you can see which tweets perform better in terms of how many clicks they get. It doesn't have any more in-depth analytics, unfortunately, but it's free and easy, and that's a good thing.

There are lots of other Twitter tools out there, but those are the ones I use most often. Do a google search for "twitter tools" and play around with ones that catch your eye.

That brings us to your homework for the week: set up those accounts, look at the tutorials and learn the very basics of how to use Twitter and HootSuite, search for and play with other Twitter tools, and START TWEETING! If you're new to Twitter, don't even worry right now about tweeting about your books – just tweet about whatever you're doing right now (well, unless you're sitting on the pot – we probably don't need to know that, hey?).

And don't worry about finding followers right now: go to my profile, click the "follow" button, then give me a shout. Copy and paste this into the "What's Happening" box in Twitter if you like, then hit return to tweet it: "Hey, @kreelanwarrior, I read your Twitter intro blog post and am wondering what t0 do now?" and I'll follow you back.

Then we'll go from there…

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Published on September 07, 2011 04:00

Tips on Using Twitter Effectively – Part 1

If you've been on the web for longer than five minutes, you've no doubt heard of this thing called "Twitter," and if you've been on Twitter for longer than five minutes, you've probably been spammed by at least eight hundred "social media gurus" who'll be happy to sell you the "Ancient Chinese Secret For Gaining 100,000 Twitter Followers In A Week and TO MASSIVELY GROW YOUR INCOME AND RELIEVE HEMORRHOID IRRITATION!!!!"

Yeah, whatever.

The reason you should care about Twitter is that you can, at least based on my experience, use it very effectively to help promote your books and your author persona – if you do it right. I'm not claiming I've got the whole thing pinned down (I'm trying to learn new tricks all the time), but of all the tools in my promotional toolbox, I think my highest "skill rating" and return on investment is currently with Twitter.