This edited transcript is the third installment in a four-part series from an interview on April 2, 2015. Dr. Judith Briles asks me about how authors can become experts and promote their expertise. Prefer audio? You can download it here or listen on iTunes. If you think this advice is valuable, share this link with your social media friends, followers and fans. Also let them know about my free cheat sheet for authors on “10 Profitable Ways to Use Email to Create SuperFans Who Help You Sell Books.”
Judith: Joan, we were talking about all the things authors could do to promote their expertise. Being mentioned in books was one.
Joan: Yes. That’s a great way to become a recognized expert. Right now, I’m thinking that I may even write a blog post about this—7 ways to be mentioned in other people’s books. That could be a cheat sheet too. I’ve been mentioned in more than 60 books on publicity, marketing and small business promotion.
On my order forms, I ask people how they heard about me. They’ll say, “In Stephanie Chandler’s book,” or “In John Kremer’s book,” or in someone else’s book. Maybe that author is somebody who I’ve forgotten about because I was in their book 12 years ago. But the book is still on the shelf and somebody picked it up.
Judith: And found it, yeah.
Publish Content in Multiple Formats
Joan: Think of ways you can take your content and repurpose it into a variety of different formats. For example, I could take this one-hour interview, get it transcribed and I could chunk it up into four or five blog posts. I would do a series of blog posts over a week. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to have them transcribed. Go over to Fiverr.com. You could probably get a one-hour transcript for maybe $40, less than a dollar a minute. To pay $40 to have four or five blog posts published, are you kidding me? That’s a steal.
You have to edit all this content and you have to upload it to your blog, but so what? I don’t want to have to sit here and write five blog posts.
You can then take one of those blog posts, just one—and Judith, you’ll love this one and I know you do this—you can take that one blog posts and you can chunk it up into 15 tweets.
Judith: Oh, easily. Absolutely. This is what we do after our shows. I create a bunch of tweets—you know I love Twitter—and we push out posts to show all the podcasts and that’s where a lot of our listeners come from.
Joan: Right. Then you could take five tweets that are all related on the same topic and you could create a quick YouTube video, either a talking head video or a slide show video—something for your YouTube channel.
Now remember, this is all the same content. You’re just repurposing it in a different format. When you create content to promote your expertise, you don’t always have to start from scratch. Look back to see what you’ve already done that can be repurposed.
Create an “Aha” Ebook
Judith: That’s critical. I should say that tweets are interesting. I’ve been behind the whole Twitter thing. I like the way Twitter works. I like fast, short, move it out, you’re over with it. One of the little books that I did last week went out to our speakers and I said, “Hey, give me a bunch of tweets and we’re going to put together what’s called an “Aha” Book complete with hashtags. It’s done and we will have it next week, polished up.
You could create a Twitter book of all your quotes or your ahas or whatever you bring into play. Or as Joan says, she could take a podcast, she could have it transcribed. She would have a dozen new blogs posts that she could create off that. She could then create a bunch of one-liners and rebroadcast that.
You can do this stuff!
Joan: Exactly. You mentioned hashtags. I don’t know how many of your listeners are aware of what hashtags are. But if you’re not using hashtags, you’re missing a golden opportunity to help people find your content found online. Judith, do you want to explain what a hashtag is before we go on?
How to Use Hashtags
Judith: Sure, a hashtag is the pound sign, and you use a hashtag directly in front of any keyword. You can use that in a line or you could make a statement or you could do a post on Facebook or Google+ or wherever you’re going to do it. You can use a hashtag in the title of an article or blog post. Certainly within your first paragraph so it gets picked up. (Editor’s Note: An example of a hashtag Joan uses frequently in her posts is #publicitytips )
What it does is, that let’s say you’re writing something, you’re an expert on change. You would put whatever you wrote in a line, “Change is inevitable,” you would put a hashtag in front of “Change is inevitable,” so people who follow #change and who are looking for that hashtag in search—it could be a reporter, it could be someone who is doing their own research, it could be someone who is coping with change. They could go into the search engines and literally type #change and this would start coming up. Depending on what kind of clout you have, it will make all the difference in the world on your searchability, those keywords.
Now, let me just say, because I used my example and said, “Change is inevitable,” if you are sending something out—a lot of people don’t realize this—that if you put a hashtag in front of the first word of any sentence that begins it, it will not amplify it. You need to put a period in front of it first. I don’t know if you knew that, Joan. Exampe: .#change
Joan: No, I didn’t.
Judith: Well, there’s your aha. You need to know that and take advantage of it.
So a hashtag directs people into a narrow tunnel instead of a broad, scattered field. Use a hashtag in front of a keyword that you want to be identified with or you want to make prominent in your postings.
Joan: Right. If you’re not quite sure what Judith is talking about, go online and search for “how to use a hashtag.” There’s a lot of content online about it. But we wanted to let you know that because it’s a great way to have your content found.
Judith: I’ve written a couple of blog posts on it, so if you went onto the AuthorU.org website and went down to the very bottom of the home page and do a search and put in “hashtags,” the posts will come up.
Joan: Right.
Judith: So where do we go from here? We know what experts are. I know you have more tips on your list.
Where to Promote Your Expertise
Joan: I have something that I think your listeners might want to know about. Let’s say that people start to build their expertise because they start to get out there and do a lot of the things we’re talking about. They create content, they start to speak. How do they let other people know they’re an expert? In other words, where do you refer to yourself as an expert? How do you use this word expert?
Let me give you a couple of ideas. Certainly in your author bios and in your media kit. Let’s say you’re a privacy expert. You call yourself a privacy expert in your email signature. What about your book jacket? Certainly your social media profiles—and you should all have a Google profile which follows you around the Internet. (See Joan’s Google profile.)
You could call yourself an expert in your LinkedIn headline. That’s the short description that appears right under your name on your LinkedIn profile.
Certainly in author resource boxes at the end of guest blog posts or articles you’re writing for other people’s websites.
And in your speaker introductions. The first two words of my speaker introduction are, “Publicity expert.” Example: “Publicity expert Joan Stewart…. blah, blah, blah. “Because I want to sow that seed in the minds of my audience members that I’m a publicity expert and that’s why I’m there speaking to them—because I’m an expert.
I refer to myself as a publicity expert right on my home page. You can do it in your press releases. You can have a short tagline that you use anywhere. I often say, “Joan Stewart, Publicity Expert.”
You can do it in book reviews you’re writing for Amazon or some of the book review and book recommendation sites like Goodreads. You can do it on your Amazon profile, in trade association directories, in media interviews, in your elevator pitch, in your testimonials you give other people.
Judith: So you start it and make it a habit.
Joan: Absolutely, everywhere. Here’s one: How about on your name tag when you go to events and you have the little “Hello, my name is.”
Judith: Great idea. We’re coming right up to another break here, so do you have a short tip? Actually, let’s just transition here to our final break.
Joan: How about if we promise fiction authors that we’ll tell them all the ways they can become experts? I’ll bet some of them are lost at sea on how to do this.
Judith: Many of them are, with all the research they do. We’ll be right back.
Part 4 will be published tomorrow.
Read all the Articles in This Series
Part 1: How authors become experts and promote expertise
Part 2: How controversy creates publicity for experts
Part 3: How authors make it easy for people to find them online
Part 4: Why fiction authors can be experts and how to promote it