Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 41

Opportunities on Social Media Are for Everyone

I had lunch with two men as part of a networking group arrangement. I mentioned that social media marketing could work for local businesses as well as it could work for national and international businesses.

One of the men challenged me because he did not agree. He asked me to give an example.

I told him to pick an industry and I would come up with an answer.

He picked a retailer of women's clothing.

Retailer of women's clothing? It is one of the easiest businesses for effectively utilizing social media marketing.

I gave him an example of how a retailer of women's clothing could use Pinterest.com to showcase the retailer's clothes. And then I explained how social proof – for example, others "liking" the pins (photos) of these clothes – could add more encouragement to buy the clothes.

He next came up with a retailer of washers and dryers. He thought I would have to agree that social media would not work for this retailer.

I immediately told him (having just read an article in The Wall Street about wait times) that a retailer of washers and dryers could use social media to get across how little wait time was required for this retailer's deliveries.

The man who had suggested this type of retailer was surprised that I was not talking about price – using social media to get across which retailer had the lowest price on washers and dryers.

My response was that, first, the lowest price is not necessarily what motivates buyers to choose one retailer over another. There are many components of what buyers want – including a very short wait time window for deliveries – as a company's USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or UVP (Unique Value Proposition where value does not necessarily mean price).

Second, I explained that social media marketing is NOT built on advertising the lowest prices. Instead social media marketing is built on the concept of creating relationships with prospective buyers.

These relationships can be strengthened when a prospective buyer comes across a seller in more than one place – such as on Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

The more "touch points" of good information freely shared the more likely that a relationship can be developed if the prospective buyer is actually in the seller's target audience.

What is wonderful about social media marketing is that it is NOT selling, which many businesses seem to consider a dirty word. Effective social media marketing is SHARING – and that is something we can all get behind.

P.S. Here are three recent guest blog posts of mine:

"Successful Digital Distribution Means Understanding Digital Promotion" at The Indie Times

"The Elephant in the Room: Amazon" at The Indie Times

"Ask PZM March 2012" about blogging and Pinterest at cluculzwriter.blogspot.com

© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter and @ZimblerMiller on Pinterest) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which is now WBENC certified and helps clients effectively use social media and other online marketing strategies. Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

Guest Post About New Site Monkeybars for Authors and Artists

In the LinkedIn sub-group "Ebooks, Ebook Readers—SELF-PUBLISHING" I read about a new site — Monkeybars.net — that sounded very innovative. I asked questions of Fergal O'Moore, who had posted the announcement about the site, and his answers were so detailed that I got his permission to use his information as a guest post here. (Fergal is executive vice president of business development for Monkeybars.)



The question I originally asked Fergal was how the Monkeybars store function would work. Here is Fergal's reply:

In the simplest way it would work the same way as sending people to Amazon or Smashwords. Monkeybars does not expect any exclusivity so it would be another place to upload your books for sale. From your own site you can direct people to Monkeybars to purchase your products.

(Note that at the moment the site is set up for digital products including ebooks. At a later time physical products may be able to be sold via the site.)

We have a widget that you can embed for your Monkeybars shop (or you can just use the link) or you can embed each piece of content that is sold on your Monkeybars shop.

You can also "Share" a link to your Monkeybars store or your individual books on other social networks to promote your books. This directs people back to Monkeybars.

The big difference is that, instead of Monkeybars charging 30-40% just to have your books listed, we provide a platform that allows you to allocate a percentage of the price of your book to the rewards program.

When people buy the book from Monkeybars and recommend it on any of the social networks they use, the recommenders will be rewarded for any subsequent purchases from the portion of the sale you set aside.

The recommendation is tracked across all social networks and across five degrees of separation so you are incentivizing the buyers to make your work go viral since they get a reward every time the book is purchased.

You have control over price and reward value. The cool thing is that everyone who becomes a new member from your invitation or because they bought one of you books (on Facebook or Twitter, etc.) will become part of your network. You will earn rewards on any of their purchases or subscriptions even if it is not your content.

We are kind of like a co-op consisting of content creators and content consumers, and the revenue is split between them (for creating and for spreading the word).

In summary, we are a store like the other locations. We give the authors or publishers control and allow them to sell for free (up to a certain storage limit although for books it is sufficient for hundreds).

We provide tools to promote very effectively on all the major social networks allowing you to really leverage these sites.

We also give you the ability to earn additional revenue just by building your network of fans and customers.

And you can still sell on the other platforms provided these do no have exclusivity. We have a number of authors and publishers in our market that also sell on both Amazon and Smashwords.

There is a lot of additional information in our help and how it works sections including FAQ and merchant tips.

Perhaps a good way to explain how you can have a "shop" within the marketplace on Monkeybars is to have a look at Charlotte Vale-Allen, a New York Times bestselling author who has books on Monkeybars: www.monkeybars.net/booksbycharlottevaleallen.

This link takes you to her Monkeybars shop page where only her items are listed. But her items are also in the open "Market" along with other books, where books can be filtered by genre or searched for.



You can explore the site and consider joining. (Note from Phyllis: By joining through this link you will be joining the site for free while also connecting directly with me and becoming part of my network on the site.)

Experience in Ebook Cover Design

Although I am not a professional ebook or book cover designer or designer, I am very interested in ebook covers and do create these for my business partner's ebooks.

In the U.S. and Canada the convention when listing dimensions of an object is width by height. I admit it did not occur to me that other countries may not have the same convention.

This came up when I was designing a book cover for Phyllis Zimbler Miller's upcoming ebook "How to Succeed in High School and Prep for College."

When figuring out what size to create the ebook cover, I looked at Piotr Kowalczyk's chart for ebooks "Screen sizes and proportions." However, I didn't carefully read the labels of the chart.

In the chart when the majority of the proportions read 4:3, I started to design an ebook cover 4 width by 3 height. After showing her the size I created, Phyllis pointed out that this shape would be wrong for a book.

I went back to Piotr Kowalczyk's chart, and lo and behold he was listing height by width.

I also wanted a font to be readable at both a small size and a large size because, when someone looks for a book on Amazon, the book cover initially is displayed at a small size.

I bought the font District Demi and used this for "How to Succeed in High School and Prep for College." I also used District Demi for the cover of Phyllis Zimbler Miller's original screenplay "Dr. Soapy" for its display on Amazon Studios. (In this case 16:9 was asked for.)

What do you think of the below covers below? Constructive feedback is very welcome.

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Spending the Day Creating Pins and Boards on Pinterest

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After spending time learning about the relatively new social media site Pinterest (still in beta so you need an invite from a friend or the site itself) I am beginning to appreciate its attraction.

Perhaps I'm helped in this understanding because the site is apparently skewing towards women in the Midwest, and I'm a woman who grew up in the Midwest.

I do think that the sharing of photos without the need to friend people as on Facebook is a huge draw. And the site itself is very attractive without all the distracting bells and whistles of Facebook.

And, yes, I'll admit I had to first watch the video on how to install the "Pin It" bookmarklet.

Once I did install the bookmarklet, though, I "went to town," as the saying goes, creating boards and pins. (Basically, a pin is one photo with a description and a link while several pins go on one board, which has a theme, such as "My Books and Ebooks")

I can also see that pinning can become addictive. And, yet, for book authors, service professionals, and business owners, pinning can also become a strategic part of an integrated online marketing strategy.

Here are two uses of Pinterest that I tried:



1. I often write guest blog posts, although I do not link to these posts from any of my websites because I do not want to take people off my own sites. Yet I like the guest posts I have written.

With Pinterest, as long as there is at least one photo (besides my headshot) used on a guest post, I can pin the photo with its automatic link to the blog post to a board on my Pinterest account. You can see the result of this in "My Guest Blog Posts" (I only pinned my most recent guest posts that had photos accompanying the posts.)

2. I have two relatively new blogs, each of which promotes my books and ebooks. I created separate boards for these – "LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDER Blog Posts" and "PZM Blog Posts" – and pinned all the posts of each blog to the blog's board.

Future efforts:

I have to decide if I want to go back and create a board for my Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing blog posts. If I do, I will pin only the most recent blog posts.

I did, in a way, get around this by creating a board labeled "My Blogs" that board has a link to each of my major blogs but not links to individual posts.

Question of copyright:

The one area that I am pondering in connection to Pinterest is copyright protection.

I know when I pin a photo from my own blog posts that I have legally obtained the photos I use with my own blog posts. And if someone puts a guest post of mine on his/her site and adds a photo, I see no reason to worry about how that photo was obtained as the photo is not being used on one of my own sites.

But, if I create a pin from someone else's site with a photo that accompanies a guest blog post of mine, what is my responsibility to the possible copyright holder of that photo?

I am NOT a lawyer so I am only pondering the question of copyright. If anyone would like to weigh in on this question, please do so below in the comments.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter and @ZimblerMiller on Pinterest) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which is now WBENC certified and helps clients effectively use social media and other online marketing strategies. Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

Exploring New Online Opportunities

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I have been trying out some online sites that are relatively new, including one – the user-curated site Pinterest focused on photo sharing – that is very quickly gaining popularity.

You can read an article on Forbes.com about why Pinterest is growing so quickly.

The sentence I found most revealing in this article was: "Ironically, the pinboards help you get to stuff that interests you quicker by sidestepping your actual friends."

This is a very interesting concept that a social networking site can be more effective for you outside the connections you have on the site. I want to give this concept more thought because it could have wide-ranging implications.

Meanwhile I have started my Pinterest profile – see http://pinterest.com/ZimblerMiller – using the same username as on Twitter, although I have a long ways to go until my Pinterest account is maximized.

When I recommended Pinterest to a friend who creates one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces, Yael said to also tell her about the user-curated site Fancy, which will now enable transactions directly on the site. Here is a Mashable article on this new function.

Meanwhile, wearing a different hat, I have uploaded a screenplay of mine – DR. SOAPY – to Amazon Studios. Yes, Amazon is getting into the movie business.

Check out my Amazon Studios project page to get a feel for what a screenwriter can upload. And if DR. SOAPY seems of interest you, download a free copy. If you like it, I would appreciate it if you would write a review on its Amazon Studios project page.

(The photo on this post is the "cover" that Yael created to go with the DR. SOAPY submission.)

Finally, I'm participating in an online course taught by Mari Smith, the Facebook guru. She demonstrated how the Facebook personal profile timeline could be a very powerful tool for making targeted connections on Facebook. And she said this functionality will eventually be rolled out to Pages (formerly known as fan pages).

Mari also pointed out that Facebook's new functions are influenced by the existence of Google+. Isn't competition a wonderful thing?

For me, experimenting with Facebook timeline opportunities is on my "to do" list along with other opportunities in connection with the upcoming release of the first ebook in my nonfiction ebook series for teens and young adults. (Yael also created the cover for this ebook.)

Depending on my experimenting with these different sites, I may want to change up my social media relationship marketing strategies for Miller Mosaic. Of course, who knows what the next exciting social media opportunity will be?

We are truly in the midst of a brave new world – and getting braver and newer all the time!

© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which is now WBENC certified and helps clients effectively use social media and other online marketing strategies.

Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

4 Tips for Speed Interviewing Online

Miller Mosaic co-founder Yael K. Miller had a new online experience thanks to the University of Pennsylvania, which hosted an online mentoring event for Penn alumni (Yael graduated in 2005) and current students interested in the media and entertainment fields.

The online event was announced via a Penn LinkedIn group. And the online platform used for the event was brazencareerist.com, which is in beta on its functionality. Unfortunately, as Yael said, "The concept is in alpha."

How this worked:



The concept is called network roulette, and it revolves around matching pairs of employers and prospective employees online for a five-minute online chat. The Penn event was for mentoring rather than employment purposes, but the experience highlighted the basic flaw in the concept.

The main problem, as Yael experienced, is that most people do not type fast enough to enable any kind of worthwhile conversation in less than five minutes of typing back-and-forth.

Additionally, the typed conversations on this platform are saved and are then available to be reviewed. Thus all the problems that quickly typed questions and answers might reveal are preserved.

Yael's feedback was that either the interview time needs to be lengthened or voice interviews rather than typed interviews need to be utilized for a five-minute time slot.

Now for the four tips for this type of online speed networking, which may become popular even though the issues discussed above are not resolved:

As the author of the soon-to-be released 3-ebook series for teens and young adults, I see this new interviewing platform as yet another opportunity to distinguish oneself – or shoot oneself in the foot.



1. Ahead of time – type some well-thought-out answers. Use these when appropriate to speed up the conversation by copying and pasting the answers from the Word doc.

One student that Yael was advising kept typing "I see" to everything Yael wrote. The response "I see" over and over again does not project a professional image.

If the student had not prepared some answers ahead of time, she could have at least varied her responses by typing, for example, "That's a good idea" or "I like that suggestion."

2. Do the same thing ahead of time for questions – prepare some well-thought-out ones. This way you will again appear professionally – and you will have time to correct any spelling or typing errors.

The opening question from each of these students to the different alums could have been: "What positions have you held in the media or entertainment field?"

Depending on the response from the Penn alum, the students could frame their next question more directly to those positions.

3. Ask about internships. Often unpaid, internships are a way to learn about career paths without asking someone for a paying job.

By immediately asking about internships in the specific field, you can demonstrate that you are willing to start at the bottom in order to enter this field. That willingness can serve you well.



4. If there is a warning that the quick online interview is about to end, express appreciation for the opportunity. Most people enjoy being thanked for their time and input.



Bonus tips:



While this particular site is still in beta (and needs more than a quick tune-up to function smoothly), other speed-interviewing online sites may pop up. Therefore, it is a good idea to start practicing now to quickly and accurately type with all your fingers (not just your thumbs on a smartphone).

And while you can keep a generic "prep sheet" as a foundation for each online interview, you should add ahead of time specific questions relating to a specific field and position before having the interview for that position online. You want to come across in five minutes as professional and engaging -– not amateurish and blah!

© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which is now WBENC certified and helps clients effectively use social media and other online marketing strategies.

Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

Guest Blogger Brian O'Connell Shares His "Bundle" Secret for Connecting All Your Site URLs

Here is a very important guest post from Internet and software consultant Brian O'Connell, who can be followed at http://twitter.com/Brian_OConnell. He also blogs at http://outsidethedodgers.wordpress.com/

Having a single web site is no longer adequate to support the marketing effort for your brand. With the proliferation of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and others, it is now necessary to maintain a presence on many of these sites.

Managing multiple sites can be time consuming, and it is a challenge to remember all of places that you may have set up for yourself or your client.

In addition, the 140 character limit for a Tweet leaves little room for multiple marketing links.

I have been using bit.ly along with its browser toolbar button to instantly shorten long URL links. Many other URL shortener sites can also do the same, in fact, Twitter has its own built-in link shortener.

The real power of using bit.ly is the ability to bundle many Internet links together into a single, short URL which can be sent to a prospective customer, or used just to keep all of your links in one place. The bundles can be set for public or private use.

As an example, Rick Moses, the actor who once played "Hutch" (the hit man who was sent to kill Luke and Laura on the daytime soap "General Hospital" and had the title role on the CBS dramatic series "Young Dan'l Boone"), asked me to help him with a website.

He is also a singer/songwriter and had just finished recording a CD, "Evil and Dangerous Men," and wanted to sell it online. I set up a simple website using tools from Yahoo Small Business.

As time went by, we started adding other sites: YouTube for some music videos and clips from his old TV and movie appearances, a Wikipedia article, Facebook, Twitter and the Jango Internet Radio station with all of his songs. Finally, we got his music on iTunes and Amazon. Each new link was documented via email.

This all happened over a period of many months, with no activity in between. Then I would get a call with a new marketing idea, and I would have to scramble to track down all of the links to his Internet presence. I needed a better way to keep track and discovered the bundling capability of bit.ly. Now, I can just add new links as they come along.

The link I created for myself and Rick is http://bit.ly/m3Dtno and I created other bundles for Rick that he can use for his targeted marketing goals. For people that may be interested in his spiritual side, he can send them this link: http://bit.ly/kuaBdD

I met this blog's creator and owner, Phyllis Zimbler Miller, a few days ago when I saw her Twitter link in the front of her ebook technothriller, LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, which I had just finished. I decided to tweet how much I enjoyed reading it.

We exchanged a couple more Tweets and as a result of my compliments, she was inspired to create a blog post about the power of using Twitter for authors.

Being an expert online marketer, Phyllis included links to her various activities in her blog pages. Being a curious person, I naturally clicked on her links, read her pages, then found even more links.

I decided to create a bundle instead of bookmarking all of her links. I now can easily return to any one of her links simply by going to https://bit.ly/yPd0Av

Another great reason to use bit.ly is the excellent tracking information it keeps. You can try various marketing campaigns by creating different bit.ly links to the same website. You can see the results by adding a "+" to the end of your bit.ly link, or clicking on the Info Page+ link next to each bit.ly link on the bundle page.

An example from a link to the Rick Moses website shows a wealth of tracking data. It can be seen at https://bit.ly/lNduWe+

Help getting started with bit.ly can be found at http://bit.ly/yGW6Cz, a bundle of three bit.ly sites.

Note from Phyllis: Brian's use of bit.ly for targeted marketing purposes is brilliant — and I thank him for sharing his expertise here and I hope my blog readers benefit from emulating his advice.

A Little Love From Book Authors for Twitter

I admit I love Twitter – and I probably cannot count all the ways I do.

On the other hand, wearing my author hat rather than my social media consultant hat, here are a few reasons why Twitter can be terrific for authors:

• Authors can share the love with other authors via tweets that recommend other authors and their books. (Here is one story of @Brian_OConnell sharing great feedback with @ZimblerMiller.)

• Authors can use the search function on Twitter to find audiences who might be interested in their nonfiction or fiction books and ebooks. (I just tried #collegeprep to get ready for the release of my 3-ebook series for teens and young adults.)

• Authors can sponsor book giveaways to support a nonprofit organization or cause.

• Authors can follow people who tweets links to articles related to the authors' research or book marketing or book agents or book publishers or ebook converters.

Now for a full disclosure:

It is not enough for authors to participate on Twitter by only tweeting links to their own books or to their own blog posts about their books or to their Amazon book pages.

To create successful relationships on Twitter, authors must be willing to "pay it forward" – sharing information about topics and other authors without expecting any direct "pay back."

Within these parameters, though, there are many productive things authors can do on Twitter.



I now invite other authors to add their positive Twitter experiences and Twitter book promotion ideas in the comments below.

Note: Being willing to share your best "techniques" shows that you truly understand the collaborative nature of authors on Twitter.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which is now WBENC certified.

Visit Phyllis' Google Plus profile

Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

Getting Outside Perspective on Your Target Markets

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Whether we are business owners or book authors we probably think we know who our target markets are.

After all, we are the ones who have spent time writing a book or starting a business.

What if we are not seeing as clearly as an outsider – someone not invested in our book or business the way we are – can see who our target markets are?

The reason I'm writing about this now is that I saw a comment on a LinkedIn group that piqued my interest:

The author of the upcoming nonfiction book has a very interesting topic. Yet the author believes the book's main target market is college students in certain subject areas.

While I do not know all the particulars of this book project, I would be surprised if college students are actually this book's main target market.

This author mentioned that she had done a lot of research about the book's topic. Yet I wonder what research she did before deciding on the book's target market.

Now I am not saying that you have to spend a ton of money on surveys, etc. to figure out the target markets for your book or business.

I am saying that, if you only have your own viewpoint, you might want to step back and get a little perspective.

Perhaps, for example, you can ask for opinions in a LinkedIn group related to your book or business. You can start a discussion asking for target market advice. (If you do this, be sure to provide enough specifics that people can offer their opinions based on actual information.)

Or, if you are convinced you already know your main target market, find some people in that target market and ask these people whether your book or business actually appeals to them.

You might be surprised at what you learn – and you may have to revise what the target market is for your book or business.

Why is this so important to do?

You want to try to spend your time in the right places to attract your target markets.

If you are targeting college students you may want to focus on different social media activities, for example, than if you are targeting residents of a specific American city.

Very soon Yael and I will be adding two projects to our brand – projects that are not directly related to helping clients with social media marketing and WordPress websites.

For these projects – www.UnderstandFrenchLikeaNative.com and a nonfiction ebook series for teens and young adults – we will have to expand our social media activities to places that the target markets for these projects hang out online.

And, yes, as for everyone, we expect a learning curve in discovering which places are the best for connecting with our target markets. At the same time, we are excited about connecting with new people interested in subjects outside our current Miller Mosaic brand.

If you need help with identifying the target markets for your book or business, email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com to ask how Miller Mosaic can help you.



© 2012 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which is now WBENC certified.

Visit Phyllis' Google Plus profile

Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

Do You Know Your Non-Fiction Book's Best Target Audience?

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Here is a guest post from book and blog/LinkedIn coach Judy Cullins:

One question I ask emerging authors is, "Who is your primary audience (target market)?"

They often say, "Everyone needs my message." They have an idea and just start writing. They don't think ahead with a marketing point of view, so sadly their books and their services don't sell well.

My answer is, "I know you have something to say. But before you outline those chapters or write one, take some time to make your message strategic."

You can brand yourself in your book and chapter titles, so your primary audience knows you'll write what they need and want to know. Anyway, how will you contact everyone?

Knowing your target audience is the first step to your business success. People read your book because they want answers for their specific questions. They have concerns and want solutions.

When they see general copy, they get turned off and leave. This is a "kiss of death" because, if they don't finish reading those chapters, they won't recommend your book. There goes your 24/7 sales team!

Why not take this first step to making your book a business? If you do, you will be pleased with generating more book sales and increasing your business credibility and visibility.

If you don't write for a target audience, your buckshot message will not be effective, and take so much more marketing and promotion time.

When you write your book's pre-marketing plan that includes writing out your book's benefits and your specific audience, you tailor your book's chapters for that audience. They will be happy, engaged readers who are getting specific information they came for instead of general information they are not interested in.

So many new authors think their story will capture attention. Remember, your readers don't care about you. They want answers. Instead of writing a one size fits all longer book, divide and conquer. Write a series of shorter books, each one written for the audience who really wants it.

One Size Does Not Fit All



From a recent book coaching session, a nutritionist wanted to build her brand with a book about snacks. She has multiple audiences. From checking the best keywords for her new title, we changed the general title of "healthy snacks" to one for a more targeted audience.

We created two strong keyword phrases in her evolving title. The first is "diabetic snacks," which is already searched by over 18,000 potential readers a month.

Then we added another strong key phrase to "lower your blood sugar." This benefit and keyword phrase more than doubled her search results.

This shorter book aimed at a specific target audience will bring my client bigger results. She plans to build a series of these books for several specific audiences.

She can finish this book much faster and start promoting it with blog posts right away. And because of her laser focus, her promotions will be much easier and far less time consuming.

Write for your audience who will gladly pay for what you have to say.

If You Don't Laser Focus Your Book's Audience …

Keep asking yourself, "Who really loves and wants my topic and my tips, and will pay for them to make their lives more productive, healthier, or easier?" "What will they Google when looking for answers?"

When you don't pre-plan and do marketing research, your best audience will miss out and not get your specific wisdom. You will miss out because of the high competition in your topic niche.

Only the already famous or big marketers win with general titles (think of Mark Hansen and the Chicken Soup Series). He actually made more money on his how-to-market your book seminars.

If you don't focus your book's audience, you won't create happy readers who will spread the word on social media! You will miss out on making yourself highly visible, credible, and branded as a leader in your niche.

You'll miss out on making your book dream happen when you can't sell many copies. Even more important, you'll miss out on expanding your business of which your book is just one part.

FACT: Quality content is still a top way to market you, your business and your book. Remember, your book is one important way to let your audience know who you are and what you can do especially for them to lead to much bigger sales in your programs and other packages you offer.

Also remember, to help guarantee your book's financial success you need to do some marketing research. You need to actually write out and answer upfront what I call the "9 Essential Hot Selling Points" that include knowing your specific audience, where they hang out online, and what challenges and concerns they have that they want answers for.

Knowing these is one thing, but incorporating them into your book takes some real strategic thinking on your part.

How can you know what your primary audience wants before you write your book?

This is the key question, isn't it? You need to know what you deliver is valuable to your audience. Who do you know who is interested in your information?

One answer is to survey people you think may want your information. From my experience, and hosting a group on LinkedIn, they do offer this great opportunity. Do a LinkedIn survey.

In it, ask your contacts to give you their greatest concern about their life or business. Be sure they share their background with you, so you know what questions to answer in your chapters. Even make each chapter one of their questions. Then, answer it after your opening hook.

While this seems daunting to some of you, it is all important if you really want to get noticed, respected, and appreciated by those you want to help.

Knowing your target market is step one before you get those sales you want.

___

Book and blog/LinkedIn coach Judy Cullins helps you transform your LinkedIn presence into an income stream for life. Author of 14 books for business people authors including "LinkedIn Marketing: 8 Best Tactics to Build Book and Business Sales," Judy offers free, up-to-the minute weekly publications on writing and online marketing at www.bookcoaching.com/help-writing-a-book.php