Link wheel

A few weeks back I had a call from a man who is the admin for a website called BookClub Reading list. I had forgotten all about signing up for this.  In my usual disorganized fashion I had not kept a written record. In any case he needed me to fill out more forms on the site that he referred to as a 'press release'. Before getting on to the main topic of this blog I will say that Bookclubreading list is a list of authors and books who make themselves available to book clubs and not the virtual kind--these are real flesh and blood people who are looking for good books to read. So far I have not been contacted but maybe...

During the course of our conversation Chris brought up a marketing tool that I was completely unfamiliar with. The link wheel. Simply put the link wheel is a series of blogs designed to point toward a main site in the middle of the circle. Of course for me this main site is www.wolfmoontrilogy.com. Since he is also an author, all of his blogs point to his book as well--The God Complex--each blog takes a particular subject from the book and expounds on that. Then this blog links to another and so on around the wheel. The links go only in one direction. On the bookclubreading site is a youtube video of Chris talking about the link wheel. If you can't find it, go to this youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqWE8Usi5Os. I found that his link wheel is different from others I've looked at and makes more sense to me in terms of marketing a book rather than some other type of marketing.

On the Bookclubreading list is a link to a google search tool in which you can search for a certain phrase, let's say 'godsanddeities' since that's one I've chosen for my link wheel. This tool will tell you how many times a month or a year people google that phrase and also what the competition for that phrase is--you want the competition to be low.

And so I bought six domain names through hostforweb since they seemed to be the best price per year...each domain cost me $12.95 or somewhere in that range. According to Chris, these blogs should be static and be done through a hosting site rather than blogspot or wordpress. That sounded right to me and so I spent two full days trying to set up one blog. I contacted support and then I contacted support again. I asked my husband to come and take a look since he's way more computer savvy than I am--he shook his head.

Giving up on my hostforweb domains, I spent a couple of hours setting up the first two blogs through blogspot. Simple and easy. I used the closest I could come to my original domain names which I had researched for the most google hits. Four more to go! I've decided to keep the domains--I may need them in the future. If you are familiar with the Wordpress interface, by all means go the hostforweb route but for now I'm sticking with blogspot.

mostly marketing

I have several things on my mind today so bear with me if I meander...since mercury is now out of retrograde I feel an edginess that I need to explore even if I've talked about these subjects in previous blogs...

1. Hashtags on twitter: Just yesterday I realized that I've been posting links to twitter without sending it to the places where my readers might be hanging out...I'm sure most of you know this already but for me it was an epiphany...

2. The goddess principle: This is connected to the hashtags--my book is filled with goddesses and at the risk of sounding weird, a goddess wrote my book using my computer and my fingers to type it out...so how do I employ the goddess (feminine) principle to my marketing plan?
   
3. Twitter: I need to have a theme for each week and places to go--for instance, #mythology or #druid/pagan  etc...tweet once a day on the theme of the week--fifteen minutes max. (good luck)

3. How to organize the social media marketing in general: Advice to myself: get on Facebook and Goodreads at certain times of day--spend a half hour or less at those times--and then, step away! Hard to do since now I'm on 'indie authors', 'fantasy authors', 'bookjunkies', 'authors pitch for readers' and a few others--getting caught up in the threads is not only time-consuming, it takes energy from my writing, draining me before I've begun.

4. Reading blogs: This one is unbelievably time consuming and yet it's vitally important. If I expect others to read mine I have to make the effort...and many bloggers have kindly taken time to read my book and review on their blogs...many thanks to all of them!

5. Writing blogs: I have two blogs on blogspot as well as one on my website...I love the exercise of writing and I love the disparate subjects I'm writing about--so time spent doing this is good.

6. Website: My extremely expensive website is languishing. I don't know how to get people there--I've put links on this blog but have no way of knowing if anyone uses them. Wordpress is unfamiliar to me and more complicated..plus I don't like the black with white type--but it's part of the template and can't be changed.

With my second book about to come out I need to think about a blog tour--contest/giveaways, all things I'm unfamiliar with...luckily all the author pages I'm on will be a tremendous source of information...

Sorry if I've repeated myself here...and thanks for reading! Comments are greatly appreciated.

And last but not least: The Moonstone will be free on Kindle from August 10-12th

http://www.amazon.com/The-Moonstone-ebook/dp/B007DXI9SM