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The Content Creation Challenge: 22 Tips from Copyblogger [infographic]

"I don't know what to write about!"

"I'm stuck and have writer's block!"

"I have nothing new to say."

Ever say any of those things to yourself when faced with the need to write a new blog post? It's the content creation challenge and I hear some version of those statements above all the time from clients and others in my networks. That's why I love the brand new infographic (below) from Copyblogger on 22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don't have a Clue.

I've written about the content challenge many times in the past so if  after studying the infographic, you need even more motivation and more ideas, check out these articles on Build a Better Blog as well:

Want great content for your blog? Ask for it!

Cool Tool – Use Evernote to Track Content Ideas, Links and Resources

6 Ways to Constantly Produce Quality Blog Content

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content - Infographic
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.


Got a hot tip for consistently creating compelling content? Share it with us in the comments!

Filed Under: Business Blogging
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Get a Little Love for Your Blog – Your Valentine Gift

Your Blog As Centerpiece of Business on Kindle Fire

It's Valentine's Day and I want to share some blogging love with you!

If you missed the gift in December, you have another opportunity…

For two days (February 14 and 15) you can get my Kindle ebook "How to Make Your Blog the Centerpiece of Your Business" for free on your Kindle!

Click here >>> http://denisewakeman.com/hub

I have one invitation and two favors to ask if you get the ebook:

1. If you'd like a virtual autograph (Kindlegraph) for your ebook, click here (it's cool!)
2. Click the orange "Like" button at the top of the page
3. Write a quick review of the ebook, or post a video review
4. Scroll down the page until you see the Tags. Check off the "blogging" tag and click to Accept. (I'm doing an experiment. Supposedly, the more people who aggree with a tag, the higher visibilty the ebook gets)

If you got the ebook in December, please share this post with others in your network who could benefit from the business blogging tips…

Thank you, enjoy and blog on!

P.S. You don't need a Kindle to get the ebook. You can download the free Kindle reading app for your computer, iPad or smart phone here.

P.P.S. Don't have a blog yet? Check out Christina Hills' Website Creation Workshop…by far the best training on how to set up your sites on WordPress. 

 

Filed Under: Business Blogging Tagged With: ,
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LinkedIn Tips – Use Groups to Connect with Potential Clients

LinkdedIn Tips for Groups

Recently I started using LinkedIn with a lot more intention. Working through the LinkedInfluence course, I learned quite a few important LinkedIn tips. Rather than simply adding new connections and giving occassional recommendations, I decided to really use it. The most effective thing I did was start a LinkedIn group for people who wanted to boost their online visibilty. I also optimized my profile for sending new traffic and prospects back to my blog.

The Online Visibility Group is extremely active with nearly 700 members at the time of writing this post. It's a generous group, sharing tips, resources, and helping eaching other. Most importantly, though, we actively share each other's content to help boost visibility.

My co-faculty member at Social Media Biz School, Viveka Van Rosen is a LinkedIn expert. She travels all over the U.S. doing social media seminars with a particular emphasis on LInkedIn. Below, she shares one of her important LinkedIn tips…

LinkedIn Tips from Viveka von Rosen

Viveka recommends using LinkedIn Groups to connect to potential clients. Some of the groups to consider are:

  • Jobs (with 640000+ members)
  • Toplinked
  • LinkedStrategies (Top LinkedIn Strategies Group on LinkedIn)
  • LinkChat (LinkedIn group associated with the #LinkedInChat)
  • Groups related to your industry
  • Groups related to your client's industry
  • Alumni groups
  • Local groups

To find groups simply click on the groups tab in the middle of the page, then click on the "Groups Directory." Finally, start typing in the keywords, location, group name or company group you are looking for.  Then click on Join and start exploring!

Remember, you can only join 50 groups but you can always delete groups and join others.

Get more social media marketing tips from Social Media Biz School…join me and Viveka plus Lou Bortone, Andrea Vahl and Lori Gama as we share tips you can immediatly implement in a 27 minute free webinar on demand on How to Generate More Leads with Social Media. We share our tips on business blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Viveka Von Rosen, LinkedIn Tips

Viveka von Rosen is a nationally renowned LinkedIn speaker, trainer and consultant, working with business professionals sharing the secrets and strategies of using LinkedIn effectively.  She helps clients create a more powerful presence on LinkedIn, grow a truly useful network, and build connection and relationship strategies unique to their company culture. As an early adopter of social media, she learned through her own experience how to create powerful social presences and engaging networks! Host of the weekly #LinkedInChat on Twitter, and co-moderator of LinkedStrategies, the largest LinkedIn strategy group on LinkedIn, she is constantly learning, sharing and transferring social media skills and strategies to her tribe.

Got some hot LinkedIn tips? Share them in the comments below!

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , ,
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Pinterest Drives Traffic and Boosts Visibility for Your Blog

Pinterest

Pinterest is all the rage these days. No doubt you've seen articles, blog posts, and status updates on Facebook. You may be seeing "Pin It" buttons on blogs as well.  And for good reason. Pinterest as grown nearly as fast as the speed of light in the last few months. [Not sure what Pinterest is? Click here for info.]

Naturally my interest is in how to use it for business without being spamy. I joined Pinterest a few weeks ago and set up boards for Business Blogging Tips and Online Visibility Tips, in addition to personal boards for travel, running and books. My intention is to share not only my own posts on blogging and visibility but great content by others as well so there is a well rounded selection for visitors to choose from. 

Quickly I observed dozens of "likes" and "repins" of my posts. And, new traffic to those posts. Cool!

Next I set up a community board for Social Marketing Tips. I've invited people in my LinkedIn group to share content on this board too. [If you want to contribute your posts and other great content to the Social Marketing board, let me know in the comments below and I'll add you to the community. Be sure to include your Pinterest profile URL so I can follow you, too.]

I don't know how this will evolve for businesses, but from a visibility stand point, I'd recommend anyone who deals with visual arts in any way to get started, if you're not already. Restaurants, photographers, crafts people, builders, artists, architects, and designers of all types can benefit. If you demonstrate your product and services visually, get those images pinned and linked back to your site.

Tips for Getting Started on Pinterest

  1. Take the time to fill out your profile completely, including your bio. I've clicked through to a lot of profiles that have no bio info. This is a an opportunity to tell your visitors about you and your business. Include your picture. Set up a few boards and pin a couple of things right away.
  2. Add links to your blog, Facebook page and Twitter account
  3. A recommended tactic is to post your images on your blog FIRST, then pin to a board. This is an opportunity to attract people back to your site where they can go deeper into your content.
  4. If you create your own images and photographs, take the time to add a watermark with your URL. Courtesy of Elizabeth Cottrell, here's an article reviewing several watermark plugins for WordPress.
  5. Connect your Facebook profile to your Pinterest account with the Pinterest app, if you want to share your activity with your friends. I'm getting more activity on Facebook since I added the app.
  6. Add the Pin It button to your blog and make it easy for your readers to share your images and posts. The Pin It button is included in the Digg Digg social sharing plugin and there are stand alone Pin It plug ins as well.
  7. Encourage your readers, friends and followers to pin your content.

I saw this post (image above) in my Facebook newsfeed. This is an excellent way to enage your friends. I clicked through to the article and then pinned the image to my Running board. The only thing missing was the Pin It button on the actual post (a missed opportunity). I had added a Pin It button to my bookmarks tool bar so it's easy for me to pin anything on any site.

Another cool feature is that people can embed your Pins on their blogs. This one is from Tom Treanor's board about Pinterest tips…

 

So much has been written about Pinterest for business in the last few weeks. I've curated a list of posts for you that I've found helpful if you're ready to dig deeper.

Top Tips for Brands on Pinterest from SimplyZesty.com – there are some great tips for all businesses in this article.

How an Alaskan Mom Brings Millions to Her Carpentry Blog - a great case study on Social Media Examiner

To Pin or Not to Pin: An Indepth Look at Pinterest – detailed article by Kathryn Rose

10 Tips on Using Pinterest for your Business

thenextweb.com1/20/12

The most obvious use for Pinterest from a business perspective is to market and sell your products. By adding a price to your pinned item, you can direct users to your online shop, and your post will be automatically listed …

Pinterest Drives Enormous Blog and Business Success | Business 2 …

www.business2community.com1/30/12

This is Kate. She's a hairstylist, jewelry maker, and all-around crafter based in North Carolina. Kate started her blog (thesmallthingsblog.com)

10 Pinterest Ideas With SEO Benefits | Business 2 Community

www.business2community.com1/27/12

If you haven't heard of Pinterest, it does what it says on the tin – a virtual pinboard of interesting things. You find something you like, you Pin it to.

How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business [Infographic ...

How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business [Infographic]. One of the “new kids” on the block…..Pinterest is doing very well in 6 months…….read 11 million visits in a week in December 2011 obviously you need to have a …

At the time of writing this post, Pinterest is still invite only. If you would like an invite, post your request in the comments and I'll send one to you. If you'd like to contribute to the Social Marketing  Tips Board, post your Pinterest URL in the comments and I'll add you. If you'd like to connect with me on Pinterest, click here.

Feel free to share your tips and thoughts about Pinterest below…

Filed Under: Online Visibility, Social Media Marketing Tagged With:
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How To Use Guest Blogging To Get Targeted Traffic To Your Niche Website

I've long advocated incorporating guest blogging in your online marketing as a great way to build visibility in your niche. When you carefully target the blogs you where you want to guest blog, you can generate ongoing traffic to your site and establish credibility in your subject area.

This is a guest post by Susanne Myers of DailyAffiliateTasks.com.

Why Guest Blogging?

Whenever I need to generate more traffic to one of my niche websites, the first strategy I turn to is guest blogging. I love the fact that I can get in front of an established audience (the loyal readers of the blog I’m posting on), share my content and then invite them to check out my own site. It’s a great way to get a big surge of traffic directly from the blog and to also build some strong incoming links that will help will search engine traffic for years to come. 

Where To Guest Blog?

Your first goal will be to come up with a list of bloggers that you can approach about guest blogging. You want to find about 10 blogs that cater to the same niche you are in. Don’t go after the really big names at first. Instead focus on some established blogs that are getting traffic. Look at the number of comments. I like to go after blogs that average 5 or more comments per post. This usually indicates that the blog is getting some traffic and has some loyal readers.

How To Guest Blog And Get Published?

Your next job will be to spend some time reading the blogs you’ve selected. Browse through the archives and add the RSS feed of the blog to your favorite RSS reader. You want to accomplish two things here:

  1. Get a feel for the blog and the types of posts that are published.
  2. Start commenting regularly to start building a relationship with the blogger.

After a couple of days two things should happen. You will start to get ideas for blog posts you can write for each blog and the blog owner should start to recognize your name from all the awesome comments you have left.

Write one of those guest blog posts and send it to the blogger. Rinse and repeat with the other blogs on your list. Don’t bother emailing the blogger first asking if they’d like a post… go ahead and send them the finished blog post. It’ll make it easier for them to just plug it in and publish.

To increase your chances of getting the post published, link back to one or two posts on the blog or include an affiliate link for the blogger (you can find those within other posts on the blog). The idea here is to make it even more beneficial for the blogger to post what you’ve written. The more there’s in it for them, the harder it will be for the blog owner to say “No” to your guest post proposal. 

What’s Next?

Keep writing and sending off more guest blog posts. Once a post gets published, spend a little time promoting it. Tweet about it, post a link on Facebook etc. You’ll end up getting more traffic from each guest blog post that way and you may just be invited to guest blog on those sites again.

Ready for more tips on what works and what doesn’t? Join Daily Affiliate Tasks.com for $10 per month and work on things that actually work to bring you more traffic, more subscribers and make more affiliate commissions working as little as 30 minutes per day. Learn more and join today at DailyAffiliateTasks.com.

Learn more about how to get targeted traffic to your sites in a series that includes four additional articles.

Susanne Myers, DailyAffiliateTasks.com

About the Author: Sweet and smart, Susanne Myers is a little power house with a huge affiliate marketing presence but, don’t let her quiet demeanor fool you.  Susanne’s brain works at the speed of light formulating plans and plotting to take over whatever niche she happens to be working on at the time.

The journey to a 6-figure income was filled with twists, turns and yes, failure but Susanne, never let the mistakes get her down.  She educated herself and quickly learned how to choose profitable niche markets and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, Susanne has taken her love of all things internet & affiliate marketing and has started to teach others how to claim the same success she’s found by using a step-by-step, this-is-exactly-how-I-did-it strategy and she’s willing to teach it to you.

Filed Under: Business Blogging Tagged With: ,
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3 Essential Tips for Measuring Social Media ROI

This is a guest post by Lior Levin at Producteev.

3 Essential Tips for Measuring Social Media ROI

Measure social media ROI

When a business invests staff time and cash into a social media campaign, the expectation is that an increase in revenue will result. However, every business has a limit to its resources, and efforts without a clear ROI will be scrapped sooner or later.

How can a social media manager or marketing manager determine which social media efforts are working and which are ineffective? Here are three tips for measuring social media ROI.

Potential Is Impossible to Measure

Hal Thomas of CFG Communications suggests that it’s nearly impossible to measure a clear ROI for social media since it functions more as a vehicle for opportunity, much like handing out a business card. He recently shared , “Like a Facebook fan or Twitter follower, a business card merely represents potential — so, you can’t accurately measure the ROI of a business card, just as you can’t measure the value of a Facebook fan.”

Conversion rates for particular activities on social media may provide the most helpful metrics for marketing departments looking to track their social media efforts. In other words, if you’re linking to a particular promotion on your website, track the sales and page activities linked to that promotion. However, there are benefits that come from social media that you can’t always track and quantify.

Measure the Right Things

Links, shares, and likes are just a starting point for a return on social media campaigns. While earning the good will and attention of your customers is great, you need to convert that attention into reaching your business goals. Dexter Bustarde shares on Mashable, “When you earn yourself a Facebook Like, you’ve successfully opened up a line of communication with a potential customer and his or her friends. What you communicate after that is where we should look for real lasting success.”

ROI is a business metric, not a social media metric according to Olivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. In other words, if you can measure links and website hits, you’re not actually demonstrating a return on investment for the time you spend on social media. 

Blanchard, who also blogs at The Brand Builder, suggests starting with a baseline of revenue, new customers, and transactions, tracking social media efforts on a timeline, and then overlaying the three over a period time.

How to Track Your Social Media Activity

As you organize social media campaigns, a key to determining your ROI is determining which posts and tweets are driving traffic to your site so you can make these trends to your sales numbers. In fact, very few companies have successfully managed to transition into optimizing their social media data based on their reports from services such as Atlas or Dart. Here are some options for effectively tracking your social media activity as you match it up with your sales goals and income results:

Social Too tracks your activity on Facebook and Twitter. The premium service provides additional stats and tracking tools, though the free tool is still quite useful. Users create a Social Too vanity URL that visitors to your Facebook page are routed through. This will help you know how many people have clicked on your links, where they came from, and more.

Hootsuite is another great social media tool that can manage Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all in one place, while also providing reports on the responses to your status updates and which ones were clicked. At the end of each day, use Hootsuite to create a customized report on your social media activity for a specified period of time.

ThinkUp is a powerful and completely free tool that enables you to analyze your social media data. While you’ll need to host ThinkUp on your own server, the data it provides is quite comprehensive and easy to customize with maps, graphs, and spreadsheets. It comes highly recommended for Facebook especially.

Before your CEO hands you a pink slip for poor social media ROI, invest in tracking your social media activities, performance, and correlation to sales and customer activities. You’ll not only demonstrate the value of your work, you’ll also learn what works so that you can improve your overall effectiveness on social media.

Lior Levin

About the Author:  Lior Levin is a marketing consultant for an inspection company that offers preshipment inspection services and who also consults for a company that provides a task management tool for businesses and individuals.

How do you measure social media success and ROI?

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , ,
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How to Make Your Kindle Ebook Stand Out on Amazon

You're about to publish your fabulous Kindle ebook…will it stand out from the hundreds of thousands of other ebooks featured on Amazon?

One of the most important elements you need to add to your ebook is a cover image. While it may not be quite as important as your content, it is the first thing people will see, before they even read a description or review of your ebook. 

You need to create a cover image and virtual book images of your cover you can use to promote your ebook.

There are a few ways to create your cover:

  1. Hire a graphic designer – if you have the budget, then I recommend going with a professial designer vs. doing it yourself
  2. Use Fiverr or elance and request bids for design services
  3. Create it yourself with royalty free images

I'm frugal so I like to do it myself for low cost products like a Kindle ebook. When I create high fee products , I hire a designer (I highly recommend Heidi Frieder of ArtHead).

Back to ebooks.

For my $.99 ebooks I usually buy a royalty free image and create a simple cover. Make sure to choose a large image that is colorful so it stands out on the page. My favorite source of royalty free images is BigStockPhoto. I buy credits in bulk and buy images for blog posts, reports, and PowerPoint presentations.

You can see I'm not much of a designer. I create a simple cover with the image I purchased, title, my name and the URL for my website. The next step is to use the two dimensional cover image to create three dimensional images to promote your ebook. Take a screenshot of the cover image you've recreated so you have a jpg you'll need to create three dimensional promo images.

Over the years I've bought several software programs to create 3D product images. They all required you to download software and then install it on your server. And, the results were not that great. Then, a few months ago I was introduced to a great online program called BoxShot King. Nothing to download, easy to use and more than 40 types of product images you can create in about 1 minute. Love it! The image above is a "package" of three product images I created with BoxShot King in five minutes.

BoxShot King also includes many extra graphics you can add to your image. In two of the images above, I added an badge that says "Free Bonus" since I offer access to free videos when people buy the ebook. Ellen Britt did a beautiful job on her ebook cover for The Littlest Angel, with an gold ribbon on the cover annoucing a bonus.

Why is this important? The image reassures your buyer that your content is a "real" book and that they can consume it on their Kindle device. They don't have to imagine it, they can see it as it will appear on their reader. The 3D product image can be used on Amazon, your blog, social media sites and sales pages if you also sell your ebook on your own site.

While writing this post, I realize I need to update my ebook pages on Amazon to include the 3D images. I think they are more compelling and interesting than flate 2D images. 

Would love to get your comments about using images to promote your ebooks. Do you create 3D images for your ebooks and digital products?

Filed Under: Business Branding, Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,
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13 Steps to Creating Your First Kindle Ebook

How do you get started creating a Kindle ebook? It's a question I frequently am asked.

This week I had interviews with two favorite colleagues and both conversations ended up being about how bloggers and business owners can save time by leveraging their exisiting content and get more visibility, in order words, repurposing their content.

There are many, many ways to repurpose your blog content and I've addressed that in previous posts. However, most bloggers and business owners rarely take action and do the steps necessary that will increase their exposure, drive more traffic and generate more leads for their business. After talking with Phil Hollows (CEO of Feedblitz) about how I advise clients to create Kindle ebooks from their blog content, he remarked that it seemed like a lot of work and wondered if most people will make the effort.

P1640995

Interesting question. No, most people will not do the work. And, the people who do the work, are the ones who see results and are successful.

The thing is, it's not hard to create, publish and promote a Kindle ebook. It does take a little time and effort though.

The example I use with Phil is how bloggers can use "low hanging fruit" to quickly create an ebook.

13 Steps to Your First Published Kindle Ebook

I'll assume you're already blogging for your business and have a body of work to draw on. Congratulations! The hardest part is already done! Here's how to proceed with my formula:

1. Review your blog categories and select one with 10-20 posts focused on one topic

2. Select 5-10 posts that naturally relate to each other.

3. Compile the posts into a word document and arrange them in a logical order.

4. Add an introduction to the topic.

5. Add a Table of Contents to each section.

6. Add appropriate transition content between each section.

7. Edit and update the content as necessary. Blog posts are often written in a casual style and you may want to clean that up.

8. Add a strong Call to Action at the beginning and/or end of the ebook inviting the reader to get more free information from you. Send them to a landing page to get the info.

9. Add your bio.

10. Create a cover for your ebook. You can use royalty free images to create an attractive, eye-catching cover.

11. Follow the guidelines on the Kindle Direct Publishing site for formating your ebook for their platform (this is the part that gets a little tricky. My team and I can help you with this.)

12. Upload your ebook.

13. Promote your ebook to your email list, on your blog and on social networking sites. Kathleen Gage has an excellent program for helping you create a Kindle bestseller.

See? Not difficult, but does take some time and effort. You could make it more complicated and create a stylish, fancy ebook, but this is my "down and dirty" formula for getting your first Kindle ebook published. After that, you can hone your skills or outsource to design experts. However, I know the first book is where most people get bogged down and I don't want that to happen to you. Get it done and then move on to the next. Your sense of accomplishment will make a big difference in motivating you to build a Kindle ebook empire.

To further help you out, here's a list of some resources I use when I develop digital products like Kindle ebooks.

If you want mentoring and help getting your first Kindle ebook published, check out my Kindle Ebook Jumpstart program.

Creative Commons License photo credit: amsfrank

Filed Under: Marketing Trends Tagged With: , ,
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Build Your Kindle eBook Empire to Build Your Business

At the beginning of January I saw a lot of resolutions and intentions about getting an ebook published on Kindle this year. Is that goal on your list for 2012?

In the last few weeks, it seems like there's been a frenzy of articles about ebook publishing and the mind-boggling number of sales of ebook readers in December. Take a look at some of these articles and astounding numbers:

Top 10 Self-Published Writers Make 449% More Money Through Amazon Lending Library

Why e-books will be much bigger than you can imagine

Apple's War on Amazon Starts Thursday

If you truly want to get your first Kindle ebook published and need some mentoring and “do it for you” help, I have a new program designed just for you…

Kindle Ebook Jumpstart 

Take note:

  • 5 million Kindle readers were sold in December alone (that doesn't include iPads and Nook readers that were sold too!)
  • 295,000 ebooks were loaned to Amazon Prime Members in December generating $500,000 in royalty payments to authors

This is an exciting time for you to begin self-publishing. While I'm not going to promise you'll get rich, you can build a solid stream of revenue, build your list and increase your visibility when you publish your content beyond your blog. You don't need to write The Great American Novel. You can compile content you've already written into ebooks that target your ideal client or customer. It's a great way to give new prospects a taste of your expertise and get paid! Take a look at the ebooks I'm selling on Amazon to get an idea of what you can do.

If you’re ready to tap into the Kindle goldmine, build your reputation, visibility, and business by becoming a published author on the most trafficked Internet retail destination worldwide, I’m ready to help you.

Click here to get the details and let's get started building your Kindle ebook empire now => http://denisewakeman.com/jump

I look forward to mentoring you!

Got questions about the program? Submit a support ticket and I'll get right back to you.

Filed Under: Marketing Trends Tagged With: , ,
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How to Become a Kindle Bestselling Author in Record Time [webinar replay]

Did you miss the webinar with Kathleen Gage on how to create a Kindle #1 bestseller?

You're in luck. Kathleen gave me permission to share the replay while it's available for the next few days. Kathleen delivers more than an hour of great info on the exact steps she takes to create bestselling Kindle ebooks. She also stayed on the line for nearly an extra hour to answer very specific questions about book marketing.

Watch the webinar replay here.

Kathleen shared her checklist for creating a Kindle launch, pricing strategies, mistakes she made at the outset and what she learned to streamline her efforts. If you want to know what to do after you've got your Kindle book listed on Amazon.com, this is a great introduction. 

NOTE: this is not a class about how to create Kindle ebooks. You can get that information in a webinar I hosted wtih Daniel Hall.

Amazon sold more than 5 million Kindle readers in December. There are millions more who read Kindle ebooks on their PC, Mac, iPads and smartphones.

Make 2012 the year you claim your status as a published author and get your content in front of millions of people who want your expertise. Watch the webinar now!

And, a head's up – if you need help, support and accountability, I'm creating a one on one mentoring program to help you get your Kindle ebook published fast. I'll be sending details in the next few days.

Filed Under: Marketing Trends Tagged With: , ,
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