Here is how a professional or consultant should promote their practice (and their books and speeches) with an online publicity campaign. The list was developed with the help of Jenny Lemmons and Ted Ehr, who will be speaking at my “Marketing With A Book Summit” on November 13 and 14, 2010 at the La Jolla Shores Hotel (details in the events section).
Most publicity campaigns are not a sure thing. But an online publicity campaign to promote a consultant or a professional is a 100% sure thing.
- Smart Blogsite. Put “how- to” articles on a Smart Blogsite. Like a Smart House or a Smart Car, a Smart Blogsite takes advantage of automatic programming to achieve increased effectiveness. This special type of Web site will feature photos, videos, links to your profiles on social media and elsewhere online, and most important, the blogsite feeds search engines with consistent, relevant content about the book. The blogsite should collect names of those interested in more information or book updates through an e-mail provider like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp.
- Search Engine Optimized Blog Posts. Take Web site content, past articles, book chapters and other content and ideas and convert the information into weekly posts on your blogsite.
- Search Optimized News Releases. Distribute search optimized news releases nationally via PR Newswire. But don’t pay $600. You can get it for half of that at http://www.prleadsplus.com/toptiermedia You will be amazed at the number of quality links to your blogsite or Web site this can produce.
- Social Media Integration. Your blogsite should automatically link with your social media presence via auto-syndication to your Twitter/ Facebook/ LinkedIn profiles to provide a weekly stream of updates about new blog posts.
- Search Engine Optimization Keyword Research. Research the keywords of interest to your clients. Spending time and energy trying to write content around keywords is a waste if you don’t know which variations of your keywords to be integrating. There is usually a surprising variation in traffic and competition just by making key terms plural or other minor edits.
- Monthly Email Newsletter Distribution. Because e-mail marketing campaigns have the highest ROI (return on investment) of any other direct marketing campaign (according to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association), we recommend building your e-mail newsletter database and sending a monthly e-mail newsletter that highlights and links back to your Smart Blogsite. This not only will keep your interest list in the loop with your updates, but increase your search ranking by driving traffic back to your blogsite to read your full blog posts.
- Integrated Email Subscription Web Forms. Rather than purchase leads, you should generate them organically by inviting visitors to your blogsite to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter in return for a piece of useful information, namely a teaser chapter from your book.
- YouTube Videos. Use a pocket video camera with an external mic (Kodak has a good one, the Zi8) to create quality “how-to” videos. Put these up on your own YouTube page.