A while ago, I wrote a post, titled Book promotion on the web, which was a collection of thoughts about how Authors best promote their book(s) online.

I’ve had a few people ask me for more details on this subject, so here are s a few steps you can take when your book is being released (these concepts work just as well for other products as well – don’t just think books).

Start a blog
Ideally, you should buy a domain name, organise some website hosting and install (my favourite) blogging software, Wordpress. Then, choose one of the pre-existing free wordpress themes you can download, or organise a web designer to create your own individual design.

If you aren’t going to go to all of that trouble (remember, you can pay someone to do all of it for you), you can always fall back on wordpress.com, which is free Wordpress hosting, however you won’t have the same control over the back end and design templates of the blog using the latter option.

See my book’s blog as an example of the former, at The Principles of Successful Freelancing Blog

In either situation, it is important that you keep up a frequency that your readers will appreciate, and add real value content (such as excerpts, book signing dates, etc), not just a sales pitch rehashed over and over. Make sure you encourage people to subscribe to your feed, and encourage comments on your posts.

Create a Facebook page
Facebook is much more than individuals – it can be a great place to promote your product or business. Facebook marketing ideas can be found all over the web, however as a start, make sure that you have your own Facebook account, and then visit their Facebook Pages for Business page, which will get you set up with your own book’s Facebook page.

Once you’ve created the page, make sure you upload an image of the cover, and completed as much of the information fields as you can. Add your blog URL, along with any publisher contact detail and the like.

Once you’ve done that, go to ‘Applications’ in Facebook, and install Simply RSS. Once you’ve entered your RSS feed address into this application, it will display your blog post headlines on your Facebook page, increasing the frequency the page is updated, without any additional work for yourself.

Once the page is all polished and ready to promote, politely invite all of your Facebook friends to ‘fan the page’ and consider adding a link from your blog to this page, and encourage people to fan the page. Share the link using the Facebook ‘Share’ button, as well as send individual messages to friends you know who would be interested in the book.

You can see an example of a book Facebook page, at my book’s page: The Principles of Successful Freelancing on Facebook.

Remember to visit the page often, and add new content where you can. There are great stats available to you, which give you a greater insight into who is visiting the page. See the ‘Ads and Pages’ link in your Facebook homepage.

Create a Twitter account
If you haven’t already got a Twitter account, go and grab one. Twitter is a micro-blogging system which allows you to interact in real time with your readers and friends. Search Twitter for existing friends, and don’t hesitate to look for other Authors to connect with.

A handy tool available for Wordpress is Twitter Tools. This Plugin will allow you to notify your twitter followers every time you publish a new post on your blog, and you can even set it up to post your tweets back as blog posts.

Then add further value by joining in the conversation with others on Twitter, however remember the golden rule is be authentic – if you barge into conversations (both online and offline) for the pure purpose of selling copies of your book, you aren’t going to be very well received.

You can see an example of how I use this at The Principles of Successful Freelancing on Twitter. I have a personal Twitter account as well, which I have been using way before the book, which is here: @milesb (feel free to start following me!).

These tips should get you started promoting your book online – there are plenty of other ways to use online social media to market your book, if you’re interested in more, comment below!

As part of the partner blog for my book, The Principles of Successful Freelancing, I’ve been publishing short posts written by others in the industry, with a (maximum) 50 word freelance tip or hint, and a short bio about who they are. You can see the previous ones here.

Now, I’m ‘passing the mic’, so to speak, over to my readers for their own freelance suggestions, and in exchange, everyone goes into the draw to win a signed copy of the book.

Find our more over at this post, and good luck!

After three years of writing here, I finally found time to upgrade from a very ancient version of Wordpress, to the most current version, and to get a couple of the talented design team at Bam Creative (Thanks Daniel and Graeme!) to take my wireframes into what you see here. I hope that you like the result!

(If you read my posts, via RSS, I would encourage you to take a look!)

I’ve removed some elements, added new bits in, and generally did a ‘tidy up’ at the same time. If the new design is missing something you were fond of, or gives you motivation to comment about it – positive or negative, I’d encourage you to do that, below…

Image: Scribbled wireframe for new blog design.

My mate, Myles Eftos, recently blogged about this great little app, Wordle, which creates a ‘tag cloud’ based on text that you can upload.

He suggested a meme using your blog content to create a tag cloud, however rather than my own content, I used the text of Kevin Rudd’s brave Apology to the Australian Indigenous Peoples speech, delivered on 13 February 2008, to create the above.

See the larger version over at Flickr.

What tag cloud can you create using famous or important texts?

Image: Apology Tag Cloud.

It’s with excitement that I hand over the reigns of wrongwrite.com to the team at 18a Productions in the United Kingdom, dedicated to carrying on the fight against spelling and grammatical catastrophes.

Recently, I posted here about my lack of time to dedicate to the blog I started last February, so it was great that I found someone to take over the blog (it was a gift to them) and keep it alive.

Lisa and Tom are passionate about the advancement of our language, and I wish them all the best of luck in managing the blog. I’ll be sure to send in the occasional contribution!

Image: Miss Print signage, taken at a local Chemist.

I’m always coming up with crazy ideas, and normally I have enough self control to realise when I am stretched to my limits, time wise. Unfortunately, I had the best intentions, however because of work and personal commitments, I don’t have any more time for a blog I started in February of this year, wrongwrite.com.

Rather than just delete it all, let the domain name expire, or indeed let it grow cobwebs, I’m putting the word out. If you’re a stickler for grammatical and spelling errors, and gain some sort of satisfaction about mumbling about the examples you discover, online, then I want to hear from you.

You’ll need a hosting environment that can handle Wordpress, and can handle the migration of the blog and its files from it’s current location to your own choice (I haven’t got time to really help). You’ll also be happy to agree to keep the blog covering the subject matter it was set up for, or have a grand plan for it, that you’ll be happy to share. You’re welcome to redesign it, sell ads on it, etc.

If you’ve got a good idea for it, or indeed passionate about keeping it going, as is (with you posting to it more frequently than I have managed to), then I’m happy to give you the files, the existing content, the domain name (expires February 2009) and the whole site, google page rank of 4/10, 589 backlinks and all. Cost? Well a beer or two would be great – but I’m happy to give it away free, to the right person.

If I don’t get any good ideas, it’ll sit out there for historical reasons, however I simply don’t have time to give that blog the attention it really needs. Email me via miles at bam dot com dot au with your suggestions, before the end of the year…

Image: Screengrab of wrongwrite.com.

In recent news, I was honoured to be asked by the team behind SitePoint.com, the third most popular eBusiness site in the world, to join their star studded blogger lineup, to blog under the topic of Web Pro Business.

My first two posts, one posted last week, titled The Business of Building Web Sites and today’s latest post, Do you have the right personality for running your own business? are being well received, and I would love it if you wandered over there to have a read.

Please let me know what you think – and I promise to post more often here as well!

Image: Screengrab, SitePoint.com

They say a change is as good as a holiday. So I’m kicking into relaxation mode as I announce that this blog has up and moved over to its new location, at www.milesburke.com.au/blog/

I would encourage you to please update any links you have, and update your feed reader, etc. Apologies for the transition, however I assure you I won’t be moving again for a long time. There is currently a domain redirect in place, but I would imagine I shall retire it one day.

Next step is upgrading Wordpress and tweaking the theme. I’m thinking I’ll just take baby steps to reach this goal.

Image: Stained glass window, Sydney NSW.

Looking at a few previous posts (such as Most Viewed Posts of 2006 and Placing Value on your Blog), I would forgive you if you started to think I was fascinated by blogging, and by the inherent ‘is this blog interesting to people?’ thought process I’m sure every blogger has.

As a matter of course for the first few months I used to regularly trawl my blog statistics package, looking for an insight into who reads which posts and when, what posts capture interest, and which don’t. However that quickly wore off, and it’s rare I even check them out at all.

However, back in my Placing Value post, I talked about using comments as a form of measurement tool. So, it won’t come as a surprise to you that I recently started to wonder which of my posts have garnered more comments than others in the last two years of blogging…

So here it is; the top nine posts (who needs 10?), using comments as a measurement:

1. The Web 2.0 Secret Weapon was my very successful tongue in cheek look at the Web2.0 phenomenon, including Photoshop Palette.

2. Job applicants take note was a rant of mine after a recruiting campaign, at the lack of care applicants put into finding that job.

3. If Web2.0 applied to cars was another joke based around Web2.0 – get the feeling I liked to knock that trend?

4. An Absolute Honour, a recent post about my own personal achievement in winning a business award.

5. 39 hints when looking for web industry work allowed me to cover what I consider to be the basics when applying for a position at a web company.

6. Lets use English in HTML was another rant, albeit with the intention of encouraging debate, about the usage of American English spelling in HTML.

7. Make Money Blogging was a discussion around what methods bloggers go to, in order to earn a buck.

8. Design Thieves Part II was a rant about an unfortunate incident back mid last year, when we had a website completely copied. It eventually settled out of court, in our favour.

9. Well explained forms was a chance for me to get on a soapbox about a form I had encountered, and what was blatantly wrong with it.

Now, I need to start re-thinking my strategy. They say you’re meant to pick a niche, and stick to it – I certainly never heeded that advice with the above posts, nor with the other 130 or so. The above nine posts cover one huge range of subjects, albeit with some vaguely similar themes around recruitment and web2.0.

Image: Grapes in our backyard.

Another milestone reached here at this humble blog. Since May 2006, when I installed the fantastic anti-spam tool, Akismet, I have now clocked 200,000 comment spams on this blog.

Perhaps it’s my previous posts showing my fascination with comment spam (see this November 2006 post and this January 2007 post), or I am just an unwitting spam magnet, however the graph above illustrates that Akismet is catching an average of 12,500 spammy comments each month (this works out to 416 per day).

Please, celebrate this milestone with me. Let’s send our thanks to all of those peddling dubious medications, nasty spyware and other less than savoury products and services for this milestone.

Image: Graph of comment spam received at Miles’ Blog.