Tonight I had the great opportunity to speak at the City of Stirling’s ‘Mind Your Arts’ workshop series.

It’s always great to impart some knowledge, and although I seriously dislike the term ’social media expert’, it was fun speaking about how artists can use social media to promote their work and network with other creative minds.

The slides are below. Although they aren’t as useful without the verbal cues, I hope that you find something useful in them. Thanks to the team at City of Stirling for inviting me, and for those who attended; thanks for making me feel welcome and for all the great questions!

The websites I mention in the talk were

Flickr
YouTube
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Blogging (such as Wordpress)

If you attended the workshop, I hope to see you trying out social media soon!

I’ve been thinking alot recently, about the best way for an author to get attention for their book on the web. In particular, my own book, of course, but it is very interesting research about the power of the web in general.

In pre-Internet days, all you did was a book launch and then maybe some readings at book stores. I still recall being at my fathers book launches, for each of his books. Times have changed drastically for publishers and Authors now, and they are quickly grasping the web as a tool for promotion.

Luckily, my publisher SitePoint is all about the web, so we’ve got the advantage over some of the old school publishing houses that may be stuck in last century. This means, that when the book officially launches, they’ll promote it via their various online properties.

Before you read any more though, you have to watch this YouTube video by Author, Dennis Cass.

Book Launch 2.0

This is a great example of what an Author can do themselves, delivered by Dennis in a very amusing way.

So what are some of the things an Author can do to promote their book, online? There’s the obvious ones;

• Create a book-specific blog
• Create a Facebook page
• Get on Twitter
• Make a video intro for the book
• Join Amazon Connect, to control your book’s Amazon page
• Email all of your contacts
• Look for opportunities to get excerpts and interviews on other sites

Then there are other examples, such as having a ‘virtual launch’ on Second Life, creating a MySpace page, advertising the book using contextual advertising networks, sending review copies to high profile bloggers, and the like.

The trick here is be authentic – don’t just sign up to lots of social networking or social media services, looking to pimp your book – you need to be engaged with your readers and prospective readers, to get value.

Have any other online promotion ideas, yourself? I’d be keen to hear them – please post a comment below!

Image: First box of copies of my book to arrive!