Barb Drozdowich's Blog, page 30

How to Market to Different Generations on Social Media part 2

[image error]Several weeks ago, I posted part 1 of this Infographic. This week we are following up with part 2.

One thing that I regularly talk about is marketing to your audience – where ever you audience is. The Infographic below talks about the likes and dislikes of various generations. Be sure to check out the original post here.

 

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Sharing some “Pearls of Wisdom” from our crazy industry #mailinglists

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One of the things that I do every week is try to keep up to date on my industry. I’m frequently jotting down pearls of wisdom to use at another time – include it in a book, share in a blog post – but today’s blog post is just going to be little pearls. I’ve included links to the articles that I quote from and I encourage you to read the full article.

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When doing some reading for my Mailing List book, I found a great article by someone who was doing tests on email. He was trying to get his newsletters out of the Promotions tab in Gmail. Here’s a great snippet from the article:

Getting out of Gmail’s promotions tab for good

So here are five straightforward ways you can increase the chance that your email is delivered to Gmail’s Primary tab and therefore increase the chances that it is opened.

Watch your image-to-text ratio. It should be approximately 40:60. Too many images and too little text sends the email straight to Promotions.

Watch your links. Include a reasonable amount of links, ideally 2-3, but remove social icons and links as they are characteristic of bulk mail streams.

Watch your header and footer. Header text like “View in the browser” and footer text like “Unsubscribe from this mailing list” or similar, makes Gmail (and probably not only Gmail) think your email is promotional. If you are sending emails using an ESP, edit the default footer (if possible) and correct it. At the very least, replace “Unsubscribe from all future mailings” with a simple “Unsubscribe”.

Make it personal. In my experience (our team investigated hundreds of test reports and messages), Gmail doesn’t like emails sent out as subscriptions to mailing lists. Personalize your email as much as possible. Write simply and clearly, as if you were composing a quick note to a friend.

Keep it simple. Try to avoid fancy email templates provided by email service providers. Create a custom template associated with your brand. Keep the template as clean and basic without background images, scripts or complex HTML coding.

One final thing that Gmail looks at besides the email content is the level of recipient engagement. So the people you are writing to can actually help you get your email out of the Gmail’s Promotions tab!

Here are some bonus tips for capitalizing on this:

Encourage a reply. Wherever possible, craft your email so that it engages a recipient in a conversation. Ask them to reply to you and share their opinion, thoughts or experience. The example below offers a great example.

Encourage the move yourself. Ask the recipient to drag your email from their Promotions tab to the Primary tab. Ian Brodie developed a good case study of how this method helped him get out of Gmail’s Promotions tab jail.

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From a post titled: Cleaning your Email list – The Ultimate Guide I pulled the following Pearl of Wisdom. The take away from this is to 1) not personally use a role-based email address and 2) to not include any role-based addresses on your list if at all possible.

Certain email addresses are set up to have a specific function within an organization and are intended only to receive messages related to that function. For example, “abuse@XYZ.com” is the email address a company uses to receive email abuse reports.

Because such accounts are tied to specific functions in a company, they’re not intended for personal use such as subscribing to email marketing communications. Aside from being an annoyance, this also raises the likelihood that somebody in the organization will report your messages as spam. That can hurt your email deliverability.

Mailing lists with lots of distribution and role accounts can also make you look like a spammer to blacklist agencies such as Spamhaus. Role account addresses are usually posted on public Web pages and often wind up in master databases, which are rented or sold to email marketers looking to build up their lists faster than they could if they used only permission-based names.

Further, some blacklists deliberately use role addresses as “honeypots” to trap spammers. They claim that any email sent to those addresses is spam by default because the address was obtained and used without permission.

Thus, these types of email addresses should be spotted and removed from your mailing list.

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Thanks for reading today’s post. Feel free to send me a contact note or subscribe to my blog using the widget over there on the right >>>.

I’ve also put together a page listing all my YouTube videos – 40 of them now – all free and available to help you with little technical issues.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can use Goodreads to your advantage, I have a free course here.

[image error]Lastly, my first book, The Author’s Guide to Working with Book Bloggers is on Kindle Countdown sale for the next few days.

A Kindle Countdown sale is only available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk If you have access to those Amazon platforms, pick up a copy of my first award winning book for 99 cents. Great bargain!

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50+ Keyboard Shortcuts for WordPress (infographic)

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Today’s midweek little goodie is for those of you who would prefer to use your keyboard rather than your mouse. I found this interesting infographic this week here that shows the existing shortcuts that can be used.

 

Enjoy!

 

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Website Security Explained for Beginners

[image error]Today’s topic is security.

For the last year or so the amount of my time that has been spent on security issues has significantly increased. I spend time updating and malware scanning sites. I spend time explaining to authors measures they need to take to ensure that their sites are safe. I spend a lot of time explaining to authors why they need to take these measures!

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If I had a dollar for every time an author told me that they don’t thing they need to be overly concerned about their site’s safety, I’d be a millionaire…well, not really…but you get the picture.

Hacking into a website is a crime of opportunity. Everyone is potentially at risk – you don’t need to be famous to be a target – everyone is a target to one extent or another.

In today’s post we’re going to talk about two different security issues.

Brute Force Attacks
Theme or Plugin weaknesses

 

1) Brute Force Attacks

We’re going to start with an explanation of Brute Force Attacks. I read a lot of technical stuff each week and one blog that I follow quite closely is WordFence. Wordfence is a company that provides the free plugin that I use on many of the sites that I monitor. I has a number of security features that I like to take advantage of. I like the blog as they regularly post about security issues in somewhat understandable language. In a recent article, they posted a definition that I’ll share below:

What’s a Brute Force Attack?

Fundamentally, a brute force attack is exactly what it sounds like: a means of breaking in to the back end of a website with relentless successive attempts. With a brute force attack on WordPress websites, a hacker attempting to compromise your website will attempt to break in to your site’s admin area by trial and error, using thousands of possible username/password combinations. This is usually accomplished with automated software specifically designed to generate and then try countless combinations one after the other, over and over, with the aim of finding a needle-in-a-haystack combination that will let them into your WordPress admin area. From there, they can wreak havoc on your site to their hearts’ desire.

Quote from Wordfence

The article goes on to explain that the automated software that they talk about is something that a very basic programmer could create – this isn’t fancy coding.

Why would someone do this? The article goes on to outline some of the reasons:

Defacement or destruction of your site (malicious)
Malware distribution (your site could be taken over to distribute malware elsewhere)
Spamvertising (your site could display spam or be used to connect to other sites)
Redirection (visitors to your site could be redirected to an affiliate site to make money for the hacker)
Stealing system resources (hacker could use your hosting resources for their own)
Fun or a test of skill (bored kid)

The protection against this type of attack is fairly simple – for your login credentials, use something other than “Admin” or “Administrator” and use a password that is complex.

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I’ve posted the above two graphics to indicate the severity of these attacks. These two graphics are taken from the daily stats for one of my sites. The top graphic shows the countries that have had users blocked by my site and the bottom graphic shows the specific IP address of who has been blocked. These graphics are taken on different dates and I chose them to illustrate a few things.

a) not all hackers live in Russia or the Ukraine

b) certain computers/people try over and over again to get into sites

2) Theme or Plugin weaknesses

A theme is something that is added to your website to denote the other all look and feel. It determines where information will be placed, the font used, the colors, etc. Plugins are extra bits of code that can be added to a website to help with a specific functionality. Plugin is the name that WordPress uses, but this type of functionality exists with most types of websites. Plugins can be free or they can be purchased.

Both themes and plugins need to be kept up to date. They need to be kept up to date for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, as time goes on, vulnerabilities are found in the coding of these items that need to be fixed.

Just like what happened with the Wannacry incidence a short time ago, hackers can take advantage of identified weaknesses and gain access to a website. The Wannacry incident took advantage of a weakness in the Windows operation system, but the principle is similar to what happens with themes and plugins.

Just because you aren’t aware of weaknesses doesn’t mean that first of all, they aren’t widely known in the on-line world. Just a quick search produced lists of plugins with known weakness along with the number of times they have been attacked in the month of May of this year. If I can find these lists, hackers can as well.

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A selection of themes with known weaknesses and the number of times they were attacked in May of this year.

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As users of technology, we don’t need to understand why these are weaknesses, we just need to understand that they have issues and that we need to actively keep our sites up to date to avoid being a target.

Developers of themes and plugins that are actively maintaining their product become aware of weaknesses that are discovered in their products and most developers actively work to remove the weak point and issue a new version of their product. A sad fact is that many plugins and themes are abandoned by their developers and at that point there is no one to repair the weakness for you.

More on what to do if you you have a theme or plugin that has been abandoned in a future post.

 

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Thanks for reading todays post. Feel free to send me a contact note or subscribe to my blog using the widget over there on the right >>>.

As I wind down the school year and make plans for work to accomplish this summer – my eyes are on updating my current books and perhaps work on putting together more YouTube videos and a new course. To keep up to date, subscribe to this blog or subscribe to my newsletter. 

The book that was highlighted to my newsletter subscribers this week was my latest:

The Complete Mailing List Toolkit

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Is a broken mailing list holding back your author career? Discover how to transform your marketing and attract dedicated readers.

Does emailing your subscribers feel like shouting into the void? Are you struggling to come up with newsletter ideas that resonate with readers? Author consultant Barb Drozdowich has spent decades teaching writers how to navigate the technological pitfalls of publishing. Now, she’s here to help you master your mailing list.

The Complete Mailing List Toolkit provides a holistic approach to reader engagement through the power of direct communication. This bundle of four essential books provides strategies for list building and step-by-step guidelines for creating content that turns readers into lifelong fans. Through a series of easy-to-follow explanations, you’ll finally discover how to optimize your use of MailChimp and revolutionize your author platform.

In The Complete Mailing List Toolkit, you’ll discover:

How to create attractive newsletters your readers will eagerly anticipate
How to troubleshoot deliverability issues so you can reach more readers
How to understand and measure open and click rates to gauge your success
How to tailor your message to meet the needs of your unique audience
Why quality engagement matters more than subscriber quantity, and much, much more!

The Complete Mailing List Toolkit is your how-to guide for mastering email outreach and connecting with more fans. If you like practical solutions, down-to-earth explanations, and empowering guidance from an industry expert, then you’ll love Barb Drozdowich’s career-changing box set.

Buy the box set today to jumpstart a new phase of your author career!

Available on Amazon

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What happens when you ask questions…

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I love asking questions! I’ve been asking questions of folks that sign up to my newsletter for the last few months, and because life keeps getting in the way, it’s taken me a bit of time to consolidate the questions to date and start to make a plan.

My ultimate goal is to be as helpful as I can be. I’ve often said that many of my blog posts are born from questions that I’m asked directly or subjects that I deal with repeatedly with my work with authors. As you can well imagine, when I was putting together this list, there were a lot of repeats. Some of the repeats I have left in place to show some the variety of emphases people have; others I took out as they were identical.

I consider this list my marching orders for the next few months. As you can well imagine, some of these subject areas are more time consuming than others, and some might be turned into future books.

For now, read through the list below and see if you want to add anything.

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– Finding a step by step way to set up marketing

 

– Networking

 

– Author platform

– How to build an effective author platform without spending thousands and getting overwhelmed

– Visibility

 

– Building a simple website

 

– What to do once the book is ready for publishing

 

– Best program to write on

 

– Publishing A – Z

– What is “going wide” and is it worth it

 

– Getting the book in the hands of readers.

 

– Marketing

 

– Learning to format

 

– Understand how social media can market my book

 

– Marketing – Getting reviews

 

– Blurbs

 

– List-building

 

– Learning to format a picture book

 

– Getting money to complete publishing

 

– Learning how to put what is in my head, onto a computer screen.

 

– Marketing, marketing, and earning money

 

– Revisions, marketing, learning new technology

 

– Writing them, then formatting them–since I’ve self-published.

 

– Finding a publishing company that is willing to publish stories that won’t fit easily into just one category.

 

– Affordable proof-reading

 

– Time Management  with respect to finding time to write and finding time to promote

 

– Spreading the word, the excitement, and the curiosity to advance sales and author recognition.

 

– Marketing… I’m always happy to learn more about strategies that take little time but make my books more visible

 

– Gain publicity

 

– Where the hell do I start? There is so much out there on how to get noticed, but it all seems overwhelming or contradictory.

 

– Format for picture books

 

– How to reach more people (marketing) with a minuscule budget.

 

– Learning how to use social media better in order to find work and better promote myself and my work

 

– Help me sort through US or UK publishing companies, the translations of my books might have a chance with. I know the German market (mostly), but am struggling with foreign markets, especially since the rules are slightly different (the US market dealing more with literary agents than the German market does, but also being more “forgiving” when it comes to self-publishing).

 

– Teach people how to be virtual author assistants with an emphasis in social media and customer service. Huge untapped market, every established author I know wants one.

 

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Thanks for reading todays post. Feel free to add to the list using the comments or sending me a contact note. As I wind down the school year and make plans for work to accomplish this summer – my eyes are on updating my current books and perhaps work on putting together more YouTube videos and perhaps a course. To keep up to date, subscribe to this blog or subscribe to my newsletter. 

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Why don’t authors leave reviews for books?

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How have you all been? Spring is finally arriving to my neck of the woods – which is a good thing and a bad thing. Warmer weather is starting to appear, but we’ve had so much snow this past winter that creeks and rivers have been flooding with the snow melt. It is nice to see the end of this past winter, however…

I’ve also finished my taxes for the year…sigh…I hate doing my taxes!!

As part of all the paperwork for doing my taxes, I need to figure out how much I made from royalties.

WOW! 

Thank you all very much! I sold quite a few books last year!

The whole reason for writing the books that I do, is to be helpful to as many people as I can. I hope that people have found my books helpful.

This brings me to the subject of reviews.

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If I sold thousands of books last year, why do my reviews number less than 50 for each title?

It’s true that I’ve had quite a few reviews removed from Amazon. com by Amazon. (note – the reviews have only been removed from Amazon.com, not the other Amazon platforms) The excuses vary from ‘Authors are not allowed to review other author’s books’ to ‘You have a personal relationship with the author.’

Amazon seems to apply these rules unequally, however. My co-author for one of my books and two of my siblings have reviewed my books and these reviews are still present. Clearly the ‘personal relationship’ isn’t equally applied. And since my only audience is authors, the ‘Authors are not allowed to review other author’s books’ is a bit of a problem. However, when I look at the reviews that still stand, and do a bit of research, most are from published authors. So, clearly that rule isn’t evenly enforced either.

The experts say to disconnect all your social media from Amazon…truth or wild guess?

One comment that is floating around the internet is that Amazon determines who your connections are by who follows you on various social media. The advice that is handed out is to disconnect social media from Amazon and Goodreads – in essence, hide your social media connections from Amazon. I don’t do that as I feel that removing various connections points is hindering my ability to grow and foster my online presence. To remove my connections from Amazon prevents current readers and potential readers from finding and following me. Essentially cutting off my nose to spite my face.

So I went looking – and as far as I can figure, everyone who has reviewed my books on Amazon.com follows me on one social media – most on more than one. In fact, several of my reviews are from people who I interact with regularly on social media.

And although I haven’t had any reviews taken down by Amazon in quite some time, I remember the notes that I would get from people whose reviews were taken down – the outrage! In quite a few instances, I went looking for those people on my social media streams – they weren’t there. These people didn’t follow me – and I didn’t know them from Adam.

What this all adds up to is Amazon cherry picking which review to remove and which to not. Just like the recent stories of authors having their accounts shut down for alleged manipulation of the system – something clearly triggers an internal algorithm at Amazon and action is taken. Amazon sends the ‘offender’ a form letter that generally isn’t helpful. It is up to the ‘offender’ to follow up with Amazon. In my experience, Amazon seems to be more responsive to authors who have had their account taken down than reviewers having their reviews taken down. Perhaps understanding the difference between taking someone’s livelihood away vs removing reviews.

 

Are authors lazy? 

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Most authors that I talk to are VERY aware of reviews – of the importance of reviews on Amazon, of the importance of reviews as social proof in various places.

That begs the question…if authors are very aware of the importance of reviews and my only audience is authors and I’ve sold thousands of books – why don’t I have a larger collection of reviews? Doing a brief scan of relevant research, I see that only 12 – 24% of purchasers leave reviews. That’s a pretty small number, yet that is from a general audience, not an educated audience – and audience that is seeking the same thing – social proof for their work.

So is it a case of authors saying “Do as I say…Not as I Do?”

What are your thoughts?

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[image error] Yes, the latest book has been released. Too much going on lately to share news properly, but anticipate an announcement mid-week. If you are interested in a sneak peek – here’s the Amazon link.

If you are a first time visitor here, be sure to subscribe to my blog using the subscription form on the sidebar –>

Pick up your free books here and check out my YouTube channel and free Goodreads course.

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Interviewed on The Blog Chronicles

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One thing that I claim you should never do on your blog is apologize for your absence or comment on how you’ve been too busy to blog. A lot of reasons for that – it creates a sense of self-importance perhaps and gives your readers the feeling that they aren’t worthy of your time.

The reality is that life frequently gets in the way. I encourage creating blogs in blocks and then scheduling them in advance so that life can get in the way and your readers won’t really notice. Frankly, even that fails on occasion.

I’ve been busy, distracted and downright overwhelmed over the last few months. I’ve gotten a lot accomplished and have a lot of announcements to make over the news few weeks. But I have been a bit absent

Spanning the Decades: How to Market to Each Generation on Social Media (infographic)

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Today, I’m going to share an infographic that I spotted when trying to find graphics for my upcoming talk on “Networking with Readers.” One of the things that many authors over look is where their demographic hangs out. They go for social media that is comfortable to them, but are often unaware of exactly where their audience hangs out on line.

So, I hope you enjoy the information that is shared on this infographic. Please read the full article which can be found here.

For those of you who are wondering where the heck the new book is…just formatting today! I had a few issues with title and cover but those are gradually being worked out and I hope to have it uploaded to Amazon by the end of the week.

 

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10 Tips for a Smooth Running WordPress Site

[image error]Just a quick post today.

In today’s busy world, we often try to find the fastest way to get things accomplished – find shortcuts where ever we can.

Today’s post is an infographic – I know, I haven’t posted many of these recently – that provides a checklist of activities that can help you organize your WordPress website. I found it while doing some of my regular reading, and thought it would be perfect to share.

Feel free to read the original post here.

 

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Be aware of the fine print – learn from my $900.00 mistake!

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Welcome back!

Today’s topic is painful. It involves a $900.00 lesson.

Yes, you read that correctly – a $900.00 charge for one mistake.

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Today’s post is about a mistake that I made on GoDaddy.

I first started using GoDaddy many years ago – I liked the price point and the 24/7 technical support.

Here’s the part of the story that is relevant to today’s lesson.

5 years ago I did a favor for a friend and set up a hosting account with GoDaddy. I created two sites for her. At the time there was a significant cost savings to purchase multiple years of hosting and so we did. Five years worth were purchased on my credit card.

Life went on.

Eventually both sites that I created were redesigned and moved away from GoDaddy – to be hosted by the designer in both cases. It’s not unusual for website designers to offer hosting as part of the development package.

As this was happening, I said to my friend, “Don’t forget to cancel the hosting package with GoDaddy.” She assured me she would.

I didn’t go in and check to make sure she did. I treated her like an adult and assumed she would do as she said. And in fact, everyone involved with these sites thought the hosting package was cancelled. But we had no proof.

When the VISA bill arrived on my doorstep on Friday (March 3rd) with the charge for $899.04 I was shocked, to say the least. I had long since stopped using that VISA for hosting charges. All my website charges go through a different VISA. My husband handed me the bill and asked me to look into it.

I went searching for who’s GoDaddy account produced such a massive bill. I’m used to bills for $20.00 or $40.00 but $899.04 was a new high for me! After a few hours of searching through my records, I discovered the answer. I sent a note to my friend and asked her to to call GoDaddy and enquire. She replied a bit later to say that since it was more than 30 days since the renewal, nothing could be done according to GoDaddy’s policy.

I checked my records – sure enough, the charge was applied to my VISA on Jan 25th and it was now March 6th. Clearly more than 30 days.

But in fact, the 30 days passed before I even received my bill – so in fact, I didn’t have a hope in hell of meeting that 30 day criteria.

Apparently the notifications from GoDaddy had gone to my friend’s spam folder where they sat unnoticed until searched for.

I decided to phone myself and see what I could arrange. An honest mistake. The hosting was thought to have been cancelled and hadn’t been used in quite some time. Surely to goodness they could look at the facts and come to some compromise.

I politely explained the mistake and asked for some help. There was no way that I could have met the 30 day time frame because I used my VISA card rather than putting the charge through Paypal.

I asked what the policy was.

I was told that a cash refund was never available.

Within the first 30 days after the renewal/purchase, an in-house credit could be applied but no credit back to the VISA.

I politely asked if the in-house credit could be applied to one of my many other GoDaddy accounts? The answer was NO.

I politely asked if I could reduce the bill by paying the 5 years of renewal at the current posted rate of $6.99/month instead of the billed amount of $10.99/month? The answer was NO.

I politely asked if I could learn my lesson my paying something less than $900.00? The answer was NO.

I politely asked if I could do anything at all to reduce the bill of $900.00? The answer was NO.

Feeling like I was at a dead end, I thanked the customer service agent at GoDaddy and hung up.

I decided to phone my credit card company to find out if anything could be done. The short answer was no. When I opened the hosting account at GoDaddy, I agreed to their Terms and Conditions. (Did I read them thoroughly? Probably not, but I usually scan these types of things.) Without proof of cancellation CIBC VISA couldn’t do anything. And since no one took a screenshot there was no proof.

Again, human error.

There was nothing that CIBC VISA could do but remind me that I had agreed to the Terms & Conditions.

I had.

Lesson learned – but did it have to be such an expensive lesson?

I’m not a rich person – $900.00 is a huge amount of money to me. Like many of you, I’m sure, a bill for $900.00 is be difficult to handle with no notice. It’s something that we save up for.

I decided to take one more crack at GoDaddy. I thought, surely there was someone at GoDaddy that would understand that a $900.00 lesson was a bit harsh by anyone’s standards. Customer Service was polite, but reinforced their policy. Several times pointing out the fact that 30 days had elapsed and there was absolutely nothing that could be done.

So…I have learned a $900.00 lesson. I’ve done a quick search of other hosting companies and can’t find one that has quite so draconian a refund policy as GoDaddy – but I didn’t look at them all.

Please learn from me. Read the fine print – be aware of what refund policies are available (or not available as in this case). Make intelligent decisions – be aware of what your rights are and what you are agreeing to.

And for God’s sake – don’t make a mistake. 

 

(ed note: Thanks to a Twitter campaign, a partial refund has been reached with GoDaddy. A refund should be arriving on my VISA statement by the end of March)

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