Jim Devitt's Blog, page 8

Yahoo Contributor Network Inaugural Post

I recently got hooked up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network and had my first article picked up by Yahoo! Voices.

You can check it out: The Influence of Social Media in Healthcare. It was published today in Yahoo! Voices. 

You can check out my Yahoo! Contributor Network homepage here, where you can find all the articles that get published in the future. 

Stop by and "fan" or subscribe, I'd really appreciate it. Every page view to my articles helps me out! Thanks for your support.
 

An Analysis of Best Practices for Social Media Marketing

My brain on researchI attended a webinar this a while back that provided some interesting stats. The data came from one of the leaders in social media marketing, Hubspot. The results provided some surprises, both with what did happen and what didn’t happen.


I think there are some takeaways that we can implement in our own social media marketing.
Starting with Twitter, the key to successful tweeting are links. The click-through rate is significantly higher when including links in the body of your tweet. Not surprisingly, conversational tweets don’t do much for moving your platform forward. 
Your goal should be to have links in about 70% of your tweets.
What words are most effective in your tweets? The top three in achieving a click through are #1) breaking (as in breaking news)#2) sports#3) free. 
Conversely, the three worst words to have in your tweet … iPhone, giveaway, and photography. 
Shifting to blogging, there were a few interesting tidbits. I’ll start with the day of the week for posting. Monday through Friday averaged about the same when it came to views and click-through rate. Saturday had the lowest number of views and click-through rate. 
The most read time of day for blogs was 10:00 a.m. Morning was statistically significantly better for posting the blogs with the peak at 6 a.m. – 7 a.m.
When looking at headlines with the best click-through rates, the following words must be included to come out on top:Insights                                    AnalysisAnswers                                   QuestionsAdvice                                      ReviewTop                                          Best
The least clicked on titles included these words—franchise, special, and futures.
An interesting side note that the research illuminated is regarding comments on blogs. Many times, we look at the comment quantity as an indication of the strength of the blog or popularity of the blog, but their research showed that there was no significant difference with click-through rate to the number of comments. In other words, blogs with few comments were being read as much as blogs with many comments.
When looking at the most effective ways to get people to your site, paid advertisement ranks number one. 
Surprisingly, email was number two followed by social media. That shows us how important it is to capture emails in subscription links or online offers like free eBooks, white papers, etc. In their research, email links were clicked far more frequently than social media links.
Lastly, when offering a download or opportunity from your site, the “button” plays a big role. You will see the highest click-through rate with either a “Click Here” or “Go” button. What types of buttons should you avoid? There was a statistically significant decrease in click through rate with “submit,” “download,” and “register.”
I was impressed with the research; it was well thought out and analyzed with statistical methods and the sample size was bigger than anything that I’ve seen to date.
I won’t offer much in the way of editorial comments. Take what makes sense to you. I know that I’ll think twice now when constructing titles and links. I hope that you find some of this interesting and can tweak your online presence for the better.
A version of this post written by Jim Devitt originally appeared in Indies Unlimited 

Vancouver Workshop Leads Writers Down the Wrong Path

This needs to be read, especially by our friends in the Great White North. The BC Federation of Writers needs to get their act together or they will be losing a lot of quality authors.

Martin Crosbie has a list of credentials including two published books with the first one selling almost 30,000 ebook copies and became a bestseller on Amazon. He speaks at writer’s groups about self-publishing and he's been mentioned in Publisher’s Weekly and Forbes online. Amazon even called him one of their success stories of 2012. And, in Canada, the Globe and Mail did a full page story on him last year.

Here's what they won't print ... 

This post can be found on Indies Unlimited at http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2013/0...

Helping You Stay a #1 Bestselling Author on Amazon … or … Part II of Helping you become a #1 Bestselling Author

A year ago, I wrote about Amazon categories in this space. It has gone on to be one of my most viewed posts over the past year. A recent conversation has led me to resurrect the post. If you didn’t see it, you can find it here .

To summarize that article, I laid out a step-by-step procedure to develop the best category for your book on Amazon that will help it show up on the bestseller lists. You have control over that process. It takes a little bit of time and research, but, in the end, it will help you become more recognizable and (I hope) sell more books.



I’ll wait here while you go check out that post.

Oh! You’re back … and so soon.

After you’ve spent all that time getting the right category and you’ve seen your book listed in the rankings—guess what—it may not stay there.

Here’s what I have discovered recently. Amazon may have changed your categories. You see, my book, The Card , disappeared from the rankings for a while. My sales hadn’t changed, they remained steady, but the book disappeared from all the lists.

There’s been all kinds of chatter about what Amazon is doing to indie authors, so I set out on mission to get to the bottom of this mystery. Lo and behold, I discovered that category was no longer set as my custom string.

Here’s how you can find your category. If you recall, when developing a custom string, you can’t verify your category string in your bookshelf because you listed it as non-classifiable . Instead, look toward the bottom of your Amazon sales page where you’ll see a graphic like this:  





This is where you can see your current categories. If this is not what you originally intended, it’s time to contact Amazon at kdp-support@amazon.com and request them to specify what string you are categorized under, and if it is not what you want, you can follow the directions in my earlier post to get yourself back into the rankings.

Since I discovered that Amazon had changed the categories, they have corrected them (somewhat) and The Card popped back to #14 on the bestseller list for its category, after having been non-existent for nearly two months. They still haven’t set my category string back to where I want it, but we’re on our way.

The thing to remember about working with Amazon is—don’t get frustrated. Be patient, they may take a few attempts to get things right, but they will always keep working toward what you want. I’ve never been told to get lost … yet.

Go ahead, take the time to get your categories right and make sure they stay right. It could be the difference of someone seeing your book or not. If you need help, just reach out and I’ll be glad to guide you through the process.

This post was originally posted in Indies Unlimited by Jim Devitt    earlier this year.

Helping Libraries and Schools in the Northeast that were Devastated by Hurricane Sandy

I recently took part in a very cool charity movement. Author K.S. Brooks established the group Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy. After the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy, many libraries lost all resources. More than 70 independent authors and publishers from around the world have come together to donate fiction and non-fiction books and eBooks to those public libraries and schools in need. 

"This is a way to give back to these communities, and let them know that they have not been forgotten," said project founder and author K.S. Brooks, a native New Yorker now living in Washington State.



Having gone through several hurricanes, including the biggie, Hurricane Andrew in Miami, I know what it's like to pick up the pieces following a storm of this magnitude. I was looking for a way to get involved and this was the perfect solution. 


My novel, The Card, has been shipped to library systems and school districts throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to help restore the content of those facilities. With baseball season right around the corner, teens in the Northeast can forget about the tragedy and get lost in an adventure with Van Stone.

This project is ongoing, for more information you can visit http://www.ksbrooks.com/AuthorsforHurricaneSandyLibraries.htm







Look for the sequel to The Card, by Jim Devitt , coming in 2013!

Recently, Beckers ASC Review - Practical Business, Legal ...

Recently, Beckers ASC Review - Practical Business, Legal and Clinical Guidance for Ambulatory Surgery Centers published the article Five Steps to Better Billing at ASCs. I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Laura Miller and interviewed for this story. You can find it here.
Becker's ASC Review features general business, legal and clinical guidance on topics including joint-ventures, development and expansion, and regulatory and compliance issues; as well as analysis and insight for specialties including bariatrics, orthopedics/spine, gastroenterology, neurosurgery, pain management, ophthalmology, ENT and anesthesiology. Each of the nine annual issues of the publication reaches a qualified audience of more than 25,000 key business decision-holders, including surgeons, medical directors, directors of surgery, ASC administrators and others involved in the rapidly growing field of outpatient surgery. Further, every ASC in the nation receives Becker's ASC Review.
A Big thank you to Beckers ASC Review for the opportunity to contribute to their publication.

Google+ is now #2 in Social Networking

The fix is in.

In the competitive world of Social Media, Google+ has moved ahead of Twitter as the 2nd largest social network, behind Facebook.

globalwebindex.net

Wow, you might say. How much time do you spend on Google+? That’s what I thought, not much. Is that bad?


Well, let’s break down those numbers a bit. The study looked at total number of active users. Back in October, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook claimed that his platform had reached 1 billion active users. You can see his post on his Facebook timeline announcing that milestone right here.


Meanwhile, Google+ has inched up to what they claim is 343 million active users. Here’s the catch. Have you noticed how when you log in to your Gmail account that you are logged in to Google+? How about when you log in to your YouTube channel? Yup, you’re logged in to Google+. Want to write a review? You guessed it, Google+. So what we are really seeing here is inflated numbers due to “forced registry” when you want to do other things in the Google franchise.

Right now you are probably saying, “Who cares, Jim.”

You might be right. Google seems to be flaunting these numbers to act like the big player in social networking that they wanted to be, however, the actual users for “social networking” is probably much smaller.

But—we do have to care, not because of the number of people that have “signed up” for some Google service. As we have talked about before in this column, Google+ is the king of the hill for search.

Google gives preference to posts in its own platform (+) when ranking things for its search engine. If you want to get your brand, your name, your book—whatever—ranked higher, you need to be posting to Google+.

The one thing the study does show, when it comes to social networking, Facebook is far ahead of the crowd.

What’s your take on Google+? Do you find yourself regularly posting on that platform? Do you use it as an actual relationship building tool?

A version of this post by Jim Devitt appeared in Indies Unlimited in February 2013

Your Health Journal Article by Jim Devitt

A new article came out in Your Health Journal featuring Jim Devitt . You can check it out here. 
Recently, Devitt Consulting has been getting a lot of good PR. We're helping healthcare clients tip their toes into the world of social media. You can see more on our Facebook page and while your there you can "Like" us or visit our website .

What Would You Tell a New Writer

Head over to Indies Unlimited to see the top 18 tips for newbie writers. Some of them might surprise you! 




Laurie Boris rounds up the crack staff of writers for this compilation from their twisted minds in the post What Would You Tell a New Writer?

Jim Devitt interviewed by Divsion of American Medical Association

Nice article just came out in American Medical News quoting Devitt Consulting. 





The article focused on ways to handle cash in a physicians office.  You can check out the full article here ... http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2013/01/14/bica0114.htm