We are working on book publicity and marketing for Dr. Catherine Athans, who has two motivational, inspirational books: Make Your Dreams Come True Now! and Just Imagine.
Some of the marketing communication tools that we are using to publicize and promote Dr. Athans include:
Websites: Dr. Athans has a website that promotes her latest books. The site serves as a home base with essential information including bio, testimonials, information about her books, appearances and more. They help to enhance awareness of the author’s brand.
On her site, Dr. Athans’ video shows the work she does transforming the lives of the many people she works with (http://www.catherineathans.com).
Blogs: A blog is an essential way to be found and to build a network and fan base. Google feeds off new content with the use of strong key words added to a blog’s tags.
Using keywords increases the chances her blog will come up in Google searches and means more traffic will come to her site.
In fact, there are many people who have ongoing searches for key words within the blogosphere. All it takes is for a writer’s blog content to turn up in someone’s email account, and the writer may have a new fan.
Athans is committed to adding content to her blog at least once a week. She writes about events, issues and concepts that are in her book as well as causes she is committed to. Currently Dr. Athans is soliciting donations so that every high school junior in the Oakland Unified School District (Oakland, CA) can have a copy of her book, “Just Imagine” to be used as part of a district-wide poetry curriculum.
Twitter: Dr. Athans can be found on Twitter @CatherineAthans. With about 6-million new users a month on Twitter we find continual opportunities to get people to link to her web site, blog and ultimately her books by providing them with tidbits of information that they can use. Keywords are included in their tweets in order to attract followers interested in their topics.
And for our work on her publicity, Twitter offers us a way to directly contact journalists and have a conversation with them about our authors’ stories. We also use Twitter to tweet about book launches live events, speeches, and book signings and we promote her Twitter URL every time we talk about her in an email or through another source.
I think that it is really good that she is seeking publicity from the Placemaking Group. I feel that the website and the blogs will increase her chances of gaining more fans and more hits from searches. Would it be a good idea to maybe start a facebook account for her?
Dr. Athans does have a Facebook account, Make Your Dreams Come True Now. We do have a button to the page on the website, http://www.catherineathans.com. We hope you’ll become one of her Facebook fans!
My uncle, Brian Freeman, is an author who uses the same techniques to get PR for himself. Since he doesn’t get much help from his US publisher, he makes sure to update his Facebook fan page on a regular basis, and also his website (www.bfreemanbooks.com). It’s interesting seeing him do this, as he was once in PR himself and is now using the techniques he learned to market others to market himself.
-Mark Freeman
I think Placemaking Group is taking the right steps for the publicity and marketing of Dr. Athans’ books. Social media has become an integral part in communicating with people and getting the word out. Her Twitter account is a great way to connect with her fans/followers, and even though the use of blogs aren’t as popular as Facebook and Twitter I think with time blogs will have same the same buzz as other social networking sites.
So I do think that Placemaking Group is adapting and using the social media tools effectively. Also, if she can get her book in the Oakland School District I think that will be a big accomplishment that will generate other opportunities.