Twitter

Twitter is a great way to expand your online reach.   Twitter.com is a great site to use for expanding your online reach.  Twitter is like a online business card. You can use twitter to advertise new services that your company may have, advertise your blogs and create awareness of services you offer. Twitter is also very resourceful in assisting you in targeting your target market. Your followers can be individuals that you can learn from. Your profile can be customized with various backgrounds and you can summarize your available services on your profile. This is definitely a modern word of mouth tool.

Have you tried Twitterbeep? Twitterbeep will track conversations, Plug in a keyword about your book if you are a Author or about the type of service you provide. Twitterbeep will match you with perspective customers who may be looking or talking about that service or product.

There is not much that I would like to see changed when using Twitter except that when typing a message you are limited in the amount of words you can use. This sometimes prevents communication via Twitter. If you are a Twitter fan checkout Bubbletweet,  Twitxr, TwitPic, Twtqpon, Tweepler, TwitterFox,Tweetburner, Twit This, HelloTxt and FutureTweets .

MySpace

MySpace is a great place to meet and business network. If your target market is people working in Creative industries such as Entertainers and Authors MySpace.com is the place to be. Finding friends seems to be the main way to connect with people who work in industries that may need your services now or in the future and make them aware of your service offering. Your Myspace profile is a advertisement of your business.  Compared to other social media, MySpace allows for more creative control of the design elements of there profile. MySpace also has some great online job advertisements. Unfortunately MySpace group selection is limited and so is its blog utility.

Linked In

The biggest disadvantage of Linkedin is the profile. You are very limited in the information that you can provide in your profile. The template offered is very plain. Linked in’s security restrictions make it very hard to network with new people who could share a common interest. Many times the security settings want you to know the potential contacts email address. The opportunity to comment in Linkedin groups is a great way to build relationships with other business owners. There are some wonderful groups to join. This makes it simple to meet your specific target market. Once you comment the chance to connect with this person and add them as a contact becomes greater.

Facebook

Facebook.com started out as a social networking website for students. Facebook is a entrepreneurs dream. Facebook is an excellent place to post your blog. Your blog can quickly be picked up by the search engines and be listed under your company name. Facebook is a great way of advertising events. This allows the opportunity of meeting individuals in your target market face to face. This feature replaces the old fashion joining of business networking groups in your area.  Facebook groups are not as interactive as Linkedin groups. Facebook has added recent changes to their Fan Pages. You can now view insights. Insights are statistics about how your page and posts are doing. You can now track page activity. The removal of the left hand sidebar makes it  difficult to let your viewer know what your company does without the viewer flipping pages.

The newsfeed reminds me of a newspaper. There is constantly new activity to read. Best of all there are ways to interact.
Building relationships offline and online is still paramount to your business success.  Social media helps you to gain an insight to know various individuals  business, learn about their struggles, and through these observations  you can learn their needs and therefore provide them with a much needed product or service. There has been some changes to the newsfeed that is limiting the ability to read all your friends posts. This should change.

The main thing that you need to remember is that there is no point in collecting a huge amount of friends or connections if you are not going to communicate with them. Most importantly these connections should communicate with you. You need to be available to answer questions. The best method of communication is leaving a private message.
Please provide feedback about your favorite Social Forum.

Are you tired of packing, taking time off work and carrying boxes of books? Then a Virtual Book Tour may be for you.

Virtual Book Tours can be done with or as an alternative for live book events. A Virtual Book Tour is an advertisement of online book events.

Virtual Book Tours can increase your market share. Your book will be appearing all over the Internet without ever leaving your home and best of all your exposure is global.

The author stops at a given number of websites in a given amount of time, usually a month, the same as they would do at bookstores during a real world tour. At these stops, the author may be interviewed, may blog themselves, may answer questions from readers or get their book reviewed. The author may appear on radio shows or on podcasts who will read and recommends the book.

Now what! You need to line up interested bloggers, podcasters and website owners who would be willing to host you. The main thing you need to consider is do these blogs generate enough traffic. The audience needs to be interested in your topic. Remember to have a media kit available to show perspective bloggers and website owners.

Remember to make available for purchase through link backs to your book’s sales page on your website or through Amazon.com or BN.com (Barnes and Noble). Another hot tip, contests also attract listeners.

Many Authors that I have spoken with have told me that they like Virtual Book Tours because it is less expensive. Is is also longer lasting and they have no public speaking worries. Some Authors prefer Live Book Tours because they enjoy seeing the audience’s reaction. Which do you prefer Live Book Tours or Virtual Book Tours?

Let me help you with all of your important tasks. This would allow you to focus on the job that only an author can do, which is writing great books. Learn more about Virtual Book Tours here.