You’ve written a fabulous book and it’s going to hit the virtual bookstores in a few weeks…

You’ve created your masterpiece online training product…

You’re hosting a fundraiser for the cause you’re most passionate about…

Here’s the rub. A lot of other smart, creative entrepreneurs are also promoting their wonderful products and causes. If you’re having trouble getting noticed, then it’s time to figure out how to get your “thing” more visible in a noisy world.

Where do you start?

My mentor coach, Andrea J. Lee, recently hired me to help her get the word out about her new book, We Need to Talk: Your Guide to Challenging Business Conversations. She had done a soft launch in the Fall to her Wealthy Thought Leader community. Now, it’s time to get it out to the world.

There are thousands of ways you can promote a book or product or service and I’m not going to go into them all in this post. There are hundreds of books to help you build a visibility campaign for your thing. I do want to share one of the tools we’re using to get the word out about We Need To Talk, since it’s one you may want to incorporate in your future visibility campaigns.

Create a social media flash mob!

Collaboration is an important value in the WTL community so I suggested we use Thunderclap as one of the tools to get the word out on the book’s birth (launch) date. 

Thunderclap acts like a social media flashmob… a single message is mass-shared at a specific time so it rises above the noise. Supporters can choose to share on Twitter, Facebook and Tumbler… one network, two or all three. Your supporters share a tweet or status update you have pre-written for them. On the scheduled date and time, it is posted on their chosen social networks.  Click here to see the campaign and add your thunderclap!

If you’ve ever tried to promote anything on the Web, you know you need help from your friends and colleagues. It’s the only way to extend the reach of your message beyond your own network. Setting up a Thunderclap gives you an attractive, fun way to gather your fans and followers and allow them to help and interact with you. They become invested in your campaign and its success.

Yes, you must promote the campaign in order to attract enough supporters. You need a minimum of 100 people for Thunderclap to send out your message (for the free version). You can invest $45 or more, to guarantee your message goes out whether or not you meet your minimum. But, why wouldn’t you do everything you can to get at least 100 people involved in your campaign? The more people, the bigger your reach. I’ve seen campaigns with numbers in the millions.

Caveat: not to be a downer, but don’t get overly excited by the big numbers. Reach is simply the sum of all the followers of the people supporting your campaign based on their chosen networks. Reach doesn’t mean every single one of those people will see the message. It’s the potential, and you and I both know that every single Twitter follower does not see every single tweet you share.  The key word is “potential” including retweets on the day of the Thunderclap.

Set up your campaign between 14 and 60 days before your official launch day.  

When you set up your Thunderclap campaign, you’ll need to have figured out a few things first in order to streamline the process. Do the prep work and create a document with the following information (some of which you’ll need for other promotion tactics so it’s good to have on hand in one doc):

• Your bio (short, like on Twitter)
• Title for the campaign
• The message that will be tweeted and posted (no more than 130 characters)
• Your story – why you’re requesting help, a testimonial, more detail about who your are
• Twitter handle 
• An image for the campaign page: 600 x 280 pixels

Once you complete all the required info and click the Submit button, you wait until your campaign is approve. For the free service, it could be a 3-day wait. If you upgrade, the wait time goes down to 24 hours. When I submitted the campaign for We Need to Talk, it was approved in about 10 minutes.

Then, you go to work promoting the Thunderclap. It’s more fun and more engaging for your community to participate in the building excitement around the launch. And, when you keep them updated as you get closer and closer to your goal of 100+ supporters, many will jump on board to share your progress with their followers as well, encouraging more activity and engagement.

For Andrea’s launch, we set up the Thunderclap 14 days out. The next steps are:

1. Send email to list inviting subscribers to participate
2. Let members of private, inner-circle promotion group know about campaign; ask them to share
3. Promote the Thunderclap on social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
4. Keep the inner-circle group updated on progress
5. Send a follow-up email to list a couple days before launch with a reminder about participating
6. Add widget (see above) to blog sidebar

What’s next…

A couple of things to keep in mind…A Thunderclap campaign is just one tactic in a launch, no matter what it is you’re introducing to the world. Ideally it will work hand in hand with the other marketing tactics you’re implementing to make a splash on your big day.

It’s not something you set and forget. To be successful, you need to be committed to promoting the Thunderclap and connecting with supporters who step up to help you. The Thunderclap doesn’t require a lot of management, but as part of a bigger promotional campaign, you will need to keep your eye on it and sustain communication so it doesn’t fall through the cracks. It would be sad to miss your goal after going to all the trouble setting it up and inviting your fans to help you.

Have fun and good luck with your launches!

Need some guidance around creating a strategy to get your message out to a wider audience? Let’s talk! Click the image below to request an appointment.

The post Getting Noticed in a Noisy World appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

Whatever you call it – community, tribe, posse, cheering squad, raving fans, platform – you need a group of people who are ready, willing and able to come to your aid when you need help with your project.

As I get further in to my Adventure in writing a book, I realize there is a tremendous opportunity to engage the people in my community in a new way and really get to know the individuals.  One way to do this is to ask for help.

I invite you to look at this strategy with an eye to how you can implement it with your own books and products…

Before you can sell a book or a product or a program, you need to build your platform. “Platform” is a clinical way to describe all the people who follow, friend, like, subscribe, and buy from you. It’s all the content that attracts those people and that contributes to your expertise and the footprint you leave on the Web. The bigger the better (quality is important, too).

Keeping up with everything you need to create can be daunting and overwhelming at times.

As I make notes and contemplate how I want to structure my book, I realize I need some help. 

This is where crowdsourcing content comes in. 

One of things I want to include in the book are quotations to illustrate or clarify topics and ideas. I collect a lot of quotes and have a big file in Evernote. But, I decided to enlist my cheering squad and you, if you’re game, to help me find exactly the right quotes about adventure, introversion and entrepreneurship.

Collectively, you and I and others in my community, we can create a resource with the best quotes to choose from for the book. You help me and I’m grateful. I acknowledge you and you get a bit of extra visibility from the book project.

Thank you @shelleywebbcso @juliaaspinwall @deniseoberry @moltenwrx @writingeekery for submitting #quotes for my book! #writing #author

— Denise Wakeman (@DeniseWakeman) January 17, 2014

Want to play?

I have created a form on Google Drive that makes it super easy to add a quote (or a few). And, if I use your quote in the book, I’ll give you credit and include the URL for your site. Go ahead and submit a quote in the form below.

How can you do this for your project?

First, take a look at the scope of your project. Make a list or outline of all the elements you need to create and collect. With a book, the list seems endless.

In addition to your content, you may need images, quotes, graphs, charts, etc. You also need to have a cover designed. The book needs to be proofread and edited…more than once. 

Identify what you need help with and what you’re willing to get help with. 

Create a private group on Google+ or Facebook so you can maintain contact with your helpers. 

Keep your helpers in the loop with regular reports on your progress and how they can assist you. 

Guy Kawasaki has reported that when he wrote APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, he asked friends and people in his community to help him with the initial proofreading. 10 friends + 60 testers + 2 authors found 1400 mistakes! The 60 testers were fans who stepped up from Guy’s huge social community.

Why not create a group of select people who know you, love you and believe in you and your message? These are your cheerleaders. They want you to succeed so use their enthusiasm, skills and talents to help you with your project.

• Get help sourcing content (like quotes)
• Get feedback on cover designs
• Get help with proofreading
• Get help with promotion
• Get words of encouragement and motivation when you’re feeling stuck

This is crowdsourcing. You don’t have to do it all or do it alone. (Oh, and always acknowledge those who help you!)

The result is a community of raving fans and more buzz and visibility for you, your project and your fans!

Have you crowdsourced content for a project? How did it work for you?

Would you like to be part of my cheering squad? Click here to request an invitation to join my private Google+ community and go on the adventure with me (you need to have a Google+ profile).

The post Crowdsourcing Content to Engage Fans and Write a Book appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

What I do know is that your readers probably love list posts as much as any other audience and thanks to Tom Treanor of Right Mix Marketing, I discovered a fabulous tool for creating lists that is easy to use and can create a lot of visibility for you and anyone else you care to share the spotlight with on your blog.

List.ly is a social curation tool that enables you to quickly build a dynamic list of links that can be embedded on your blog. You get visibility when others embed your list on their blog, when it's shared and when you allow others to add items to your list.

I set up a list a couple of days ago and as of the time of writing this post, it is trending #3 on the List.ly home page. And that's before I posted it on this blog. 

To be totally transparent, I did post a link to the list in my LinkedIn group, on my Facebook page and on Twitter. I also invited anyone who had written an article about driving traffic to a blog or website to contribute to the list.

This is what crowdsourcing is all about. Create valuable content featuring contributions from many smart people. It's a win-win-win: for your audience who gets to take a deep dive on a subject, for your curators who get visibility on your blog and everywhere the list is shared, and you who get to share great content and get more visibility when your curators and others share the post with their audience.

Here's the list I've started on Top Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Blog:

[listly id=1XJ layout=full]

You're invited to contribute a link to an article you've written about driving blog traffic, or one you've read and think is great. Click on the pink tab at the top of the list. And please share the list, as well. There are many excellent tips featured on the list!

If you have created a list on List.ly, you're welcome to post a link to it here in the comments. Would love to see what kind of lists are being created!

The post The Ultimate Tool for Building a List Post appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.