How Can Authors Benefit From Using YouTube to Get Traffic? by Jason Rutherford

According to Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/), YouTube is the third most visited website in the world (at the time of writing), and you can quite easily harness this advertising power as long as you know what you are doing.

Aside from all of the common ways to get people to visit your website like search engine optimization, mailing lists, and affiliate programs there is a way for you to boost the traffic to your website – use YouTube.

YouTube is set up primarily as a place for people to interact with each other and share videos that they have created or that others have created which they think are cool, unique or hilarious.

It is not, at its base, a place for you to advertise for your website – but that does not mean that you cannot do so. There are a variety of ways in which you can advertise to try and bring traffic to your site without making it totally obvious, so let’s see what a few of those techniques are.

The best way to get people from YouTube to visit your website is to become a video releaser. All of the most popular people on YouTube have released their own videos, and you can too with the simple click of your mouse button.

To advertise as a releaser is easy.  Create a username that is the same name as your book, website or author name, and then make the intro and finale on your video contain the name and address of your website.

People will visit.

If you are not excited about releasing your own videos, you can always be a passionate viewer and commenter. Create a profile on YouTube that contains the name of your book and the website address and then start viewing all kinds of videos.

Comment on them, favorite them, add good ones to your blog – it’s that simple and you will have countless people visiting your own website via YouTube in no time.

Providing Value On Twitter by Jason Rutherford

Photo by lyricsboy

You might be wondering, “what should I tweet about?”

Just as with your blog, website, and forum posts, your main goal should be to provide value. If you can manage to do that, you're golden!

Here are easy ways to provide value that don't take much effort at all:

• Retweet an interesting update from someone that you're following.

• Offer links to free and interesting stuff, like articles, pictures, and videos (not all your own stuff).

• Comment on current events / news.

• Post funny/profound/inspiring quotes.

• Tweet about interesting things that happened in your day or upcoming events that you're excited about. (actual things that your followers will be interested in, not the new episode of American Idol airing tonight.... unless your niche is American Idol of course!)

• Find something on Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. that really catches your attention. Write a blog post about it first, and then link to your blog post in your tweet. This way, instead of linking directly to the source, you're linking to your own blog. If it's something really neat it may go viral, causing a potential hurricane of traffic.

After you have been on Twitter for a while, look at your tweet history. Are you selling too hard? Not selling enough? Are you providing value with your tweets or just rambling on about random stuff every day? Would YOU follow yourself?

Analyze your tweets carefully and modify your strategy accordingly. Just as with a PPC campaign, monitor, track, and make changes as needed.

Need help with writing, editing, publishing, or book marketing? thepublishingguru(at)gmail.com

Twitter Tools for Authors - Twellow and Grader by Jason Rutherford

Tweet Twellow

Twellow, at http://www.twellow.com, is another great way of finding people to interact with. People are categorized into different areas, and you can search for those with similar interests.  The main page shows you all the categories, which then have sub-categories. Click on a category and the list of people in that area are displayed.  You don't have to be registered with Twellow to be displayed, but at the time of writing this post, there were more than 30 million people showing on the site, so you will have plenty to choose from. By all means though, register yourself and set up a profile so others can find you.  When you click on a category, Twellow displays a list of people in that category and they are ordered by the number of followers they have. If you are already logged into Twitter via the web, you will be able to follow people directly from the screens where the profiles are displayed.

Grader

Grader is on Twitter as @grader and online at http://twitter.grader.com. As you get going on Twitter, you can get “ranked” by Grader with a score out of 100. It is based on a secret algorithm so people can't trick the system.  Apart from that aspect of Grader, you can have a look at who the top Tweeple are in a particular area or even by topic using the search function.  When you use the search function, it will list the Tweeple by their score in descending order. For example, if you search for “gardening” on Grader, you will get a list of all the top 100 people interested in gardening on Twitter. You can see their “bio” from their Twitter account and if you click on their Grader score, it will take you to their Twitter account from where you can follow them. Naturally, you must already be logged in to Twitter yourself to follow anyone.

Need help with writing, editing, publishing, or book marketing? thepublishingguru(at)gmail.com

Make Your Own Choices and Decide What Kind of Person You Want to Be by Jason Rutherford

Sometimes it’s not easy to recognize deceit, but then that’s the nature of deceit—to fool unsuspecting victims. In Alan Sakowitz’s Miles Away…Worlds Apart: Empowering Lessons Gleaned from Experiences of a Whistleblower, the author reveals how one man made a conscious choice to lie, cheat, and deceive innocent “friends”—all for the almighty dollar, and how a community of people made honorable choices and decisions amidst, and in spite of, this man’s dishonesty.



Essentially, Scott Rothstein imbued his world with distrust and deceit en route to orchestrating the largest scam—to the tune of $1.2 Billion—in South Florida history. On the other hand, Sakowitz contrasts Rothstein with the generosity and humanity evident in his own community. Ultimately, the author writes this book to convey how two different worlds can exist side-by-side, with values that are diametrically opposed.

Upon examining Scott Rothstein’s lifestyle, it would be an understatement to describe it as lavish.  In addition to owning twenty-one luxury cars, including a Bentley Rolls Royce and many others, Rothstein “leased a jet and bought a $5,000,000 Warren yacht… He bought a mansion and then bought the other houses on the same street. He invested in business after business.” 

Rothstein lived like a king—at the expense of the hard-earned savings of his investors. His flamboyant lifestyle brought him a fitting jail sentence: fifty years. Scott Rothstein, and many before him (e.g., Bernie Madoff) allowed greed and temptation to blind them to the consequences that were waiting at the end of the road.

Alan Sakowitz, in Miles Away . . . Worlds Apart, essentially provides a blueprint for making choices and the outcomes that can result from the paths we choose. In this important book, the reader can easily see that the choices we make determine our quality of life relative to what is truly important in life.

Alan Sakowitz portrays a genuine, unadulterated kindness and concern for humanity via the actions of his community, located only miles away from Scott Rothstein’s world of greed. From Coach Bugay—the ideal role model for little league children—to Sheila, a fire victim from the North Miami neighborhood that adopted a selfless, all-for-one mindset.

Ultimately, Alan Sakowitz’s Miles Away…Worlds Apart is a lesson plan showing how two geographically connected areas hosted two opposing lifestyles. As the author presents both sides of the world, the reader is left to make his/her own choices accordingly.
Need help with writing, editing, publishing, or book marketing? thepublishingguru(at)gmail.com

Twitter for Authors: Book Marketing and Publicity with Social Media by Jason Rutherford

Tweet

Why Twitter Is An Effective Marketing Tool

Many authors fail to see what the big deal is regarding Twitter. They read Tweets about what someone ate for breakfast or what color shirt they're wearing. They might sign up only to stare at a bare, lonely screen with zero followers.

Initially, it might be difficult to see the potential. But once you get started, Twitter has a tendency to “snowball” into a HUGE deal for authos – one that is absolutely essential for the growth of their platform and their exposure on the internet.

How Can You Use Twitter?

Here are just a few of the ways Twitter can help to benefit your global author platform:

Establishing rapport with your customers / readers.

Twitter allows for a bit more personal, less formal, more fun mode of communication. It allows them to catch a glimpse of you just as a regular person sending SMS texts from Wal-Mart, rather than as a serious, detached blogger or business owner.

Why is this useful? It allows people to connect and relate to you on a personal level – it makes you look just like a “regular Joe”, especially if you include random/fun tweets among the more serious, author-driven tweets.

Keeping your customers / readers updated.

With a blog, you might only update once or twice per week. With Twitter, you might send a handful of tweets per day, keeping your followers “in the loop” and reminding them of your existence.

Of course, it's not recommended to send a million tweets per day. This will only serve to annoy people and they will likely unfollow you.

Building a loyal, steady customer-base:

“BUILD A LIST!” As a author, I'm sure you've heard this refrain many times over. Building a list is one of the most vital steps you can take in the advancement of your online business. Twitter is pretty much the same as building a list – although it might be even more effective in the long run.

When it comes to an email list, a large portion of your subscribers won't even glance at the emails you send. Their eyes will glaze over and they may even send it to the trash. With Twitter, your followers will see all of your Tweets. They'll digest its information in about half a second and if you include a link, they probably won't get offended.

Chances are, if you included an eye-catching description, they'll probably click it! Additionally, it won't SEEM like you are marketing to them, because you're just another Twitter user tweeting about random stuff!

Building up excitement for a book launch:

Just like with an email list, Twitter can be used to build up excitement about an upcoming book launch. It can start with occasional Tweets about your “new project”, and by keeping your followers up to date and offering freebies and cool stuff that they'll appreciate, you'll build trust and anticipation. When your book launches, a well-timed Tweet may likely be just as effective as a blast to your email list.

Driving traffic to your website or blog:

Wouldn't it be great if you could instantly notify hundreds or thousands of people every time you update your blog? Twitter makes this possible. It essentially acts as an RSS feed. By building a sizable list of followers, you pretty much have access to an instant source of traffic to your website or blog.

People who would otherwise not be aware of updates and new content will be notified, giving them a chance to check it out. If your blog is high-quality, people will keep an eye out for more of your Tweets.

Building relationships with business contacts.

Twitter makes it easy to keep in touch with business partners and contacts. Traditional instant messaging is on its way out, and you'll find that most savvy internet marketers use Twitter as their primary social networking tool. So take advantage of this fact! Hook up with your contacts so you can work on building a closer relationship.

Crowd-sourcing:

Crowd-sourcing is a unique form of outsourcing. It works by calling on your friends, fans, followers, email subscribers, etc. to contribute ideas and solutions. Basically, it is a form of “group intelligence”.

By listening to the crowd, marketers and business owners can figure out the exact thoughts, needs, and wants of their customer base. In this way, innovative new ideas and strategies are born that are guaranteed to fall in line with the desires of the consumer.

By directly asking your followers what type of book cover they'd like to see developed, or what their biggest setbacks are, or what they liked/disliked most about your last book, you can gain an incredibly amount of insight!

Twitter provides a perfect platform for crowd-sourcing.

Going viral:

Social networking sites give us a great opportunity to 'go viral'. This means that you Tweet about something that really catches people's attention. Your followers are impressed, so they re-Tweet it.

In turn, each of their followers re-Tweet it, and so on and so on, and soon your little Tweet spreads like wildfire, snowballing into a huge storm of clicks and traffic.

Of course, TRYING to make something go viral probably won't work. It tends to just happen on its own. Tweeting “Hey guys buy my new book click here” will never go viral, obviously. But if you find something really interesting, little-known, valuable, funny, etc., you might have a chance.

Very often, Tweets go viral without anyone really expecting or planning on it. This is just one of the many amazing benefits of social networking.

The Forces Holding the Economy Together and the Symptoms of the Economic Crisis by Jason Rutherford

Image by Mark Wallace

The predecessor of the current global economic crisis is the Great Depression. During this crisis, circa 1930, several pertinent and incredibly successful programs were implemented that, to this day, have held the economy together. If it weren’t for programs such as Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission—serving as a regulator for more dynamic markets,—and the Federal Deposit Insurance Program (FDIC), which protects depositors up to a certain amount in the event that a bank failure were to occur, the current crisis would manifest into an uncontrollable behemoth and lead to total chaos. Juan Corradi’s second chapter of South of the Crisis: A Latin American Perspective on the Late Capitalist World discusses these solutions and juxtaposes them with the solutions necessary to save the planet from this current global crisis.



Interestingly, Corradi alludes to war as the main reason the economy got out of the Great Depression: “But we should not forget the fact that that large-scale war effectively got rid of the unrealized surplus of the economy, eliminated idle capacity in factories and enterprises of all kinds, fostered the full employment of the labor force…assuring its world hegemony for the next fifty years.” Now, it’s imperative to understand that Corradi does not advocate war. He argues that with the advancements made over the past fifty years in industrialization and the overall economy, a mass mobilization would not need to be put into effect.

Furthermore, Corradi suggests that this crisis is just the beginning. With “rising unemployment, customer diffidence, mortgage foreclosures, and the imperative need of retirees to return to work—if they can find work—in order to make ends meet,” all the indicators are signaling toward the collapse of the financial system.



Ultimately, the only constants of the economy right now are fear and uncertainty. Corradi adamantly states that the individual’s definition for economic freedom must evolve if a complete collapse is to be averted. Economic freedom can no longer be about “freedom from regulation and public intervention.” On the contrary, the crisis can be used as an opportunity to implement reforms that can help in its long-term sustenance.

Need help with writing, editing, publishing, or book marketing? thepublishingguru(at)gmail.com