Online Marketing Technologies

Let's make this discussion forum a place to share, highlight, and critique the growing number of new technologies that are available for marketing and selling your book online.

To start, has anyone heard of www.bookbuzzr.com?

In their own words it's primary service provides:

"A portable author website in the form of an embeddable book-widget that's shareable across multiple social networks. And with book-pages
that look and act like pages from a real book.""

Their is also a version of the widget that can be embedded on an author or publisher's website, and it looks like they are working to expand their free product offering as way to be as useful to authors as possible.

Has anyone used this? and if so what do think? Is it helping you to sell books?

Tags: Marketing, Online, book, bookbuzzr, sales, technology, tips

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Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on August 18, 2011 at 12:15am

Sherry,

I'm also interested in this concept, but I've not yet had a chance to convert that interest into use with an actual product.

If you happen to set something up, we'd love to hear about it here on SPANnet, and if I find something to set up as a Tweet-worthy product first, I'll make sure and let you know..

bradley

SPANnet.org

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on August 18, 2011 at 3:16am

While writing a reply to Sherry on 8/18/11, I thought of a few interesting points of consideration in regard to a business' marketing strategy for a Pay with a Tweet model and I'd like to document a few of them here, in note form, while they are on my mind.

The Pay with a Tweet model is basically setting up what is known in the web development world as a Paywall with a low barrier to entry.

This Paywall creates a level of protection between your content and the general public. It can be a very specific feature on a website, or more of a more general concept describing aspects of a websites shopping cart. For example, if you are selling your book on your website then you have a Pay Wall that can be opened for the cost of that book.

The Paywall in a Pay With a Tweet model puts a variable level of value on whatever you have behind the Paywall because everyone's Twitter account is different.

If someone who has 400,000 respectful followers pays with a tweet, that tweet has a much higher level of literal value (through trusted word-of-mouth exposure) than someone who is paying with their very first tweet.

Of course, for that first-time twitter user, taking the time to set up an account to pay for the tweet costs more in sweat equity than does someone who is already a twitter user. It may be a negligible amount for most buyers, but the potential for inconvenience (which leads to a potential for a rapid increase in the cost of entry) is worth considering with respect to your demographic.

Do your potential buyers already use Twitter? If not, how does this effect the crafting of your marketing copy?

Consider how you want to present the relative worth of the tweet with respect to the relative worth of the Product behind the paywall.

If you offer your book for a tweet, for an unlimited amount of time, what does that say about your inventory?

What if you offer your book for a Tweet, to your Twitter followers, for one hour only, once a month..

I've allot more to say in these regards but I'm out of time for the night. If ya'll out there have any thoughts in response, please share them with me, as I would be interested to hear what you think.

bradley flora

SPANnet.org

Permalink Reply by Sherry Ellis on August 18, 2011 at 6:36am

Those are interesting thoughts, Bradley. I'm not sure how you could even determine the value of a tweet through a basic computer program. I think you just have to decide what you are willing to give in exchange for one tweet. I don't think it would be an entire book. If I did it, I might offer a few chapters of a book. Another concept would not be to offer your book, but rather an article to help authors/your target market. For example, I write about children issues in my books, so I might write an article on tips to encourage your kids to clean up. I would add a blurb about my book at the end so that this information is in the Tweet. That would be the product I offer in exchange for the tweet.

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on September 12, 2011 at 8:33pm

SPAN member Jason Scott henderson recently shared his website with us, and I was impressed by his use of embedded technologies on his site:

http://speakoptimisticdiversity.com/

Specifically, on every page there is a minimalist animation in the top right corner that operates as a vector to allow visitors to both explore his book in more depth and as a link to a direct sales page for his book.

I'm interested in learning more about this technology, and I have invited Jason to share more about it with us here.

bradley flora

SPANnet.org

Permalink Reply by Sherry Ellis on September 13, 2011 at 6:26am

I took a look at Jason's website. The animation technology is very interesting. I'm looking forward to learning more about it, as well . Thanks for sharing.