Lizzy Ford's Blog, page 65

Last week I wrote an article on "Getting the Most out of your Facebook Fanpage Picture". I got a lot of great comments about the post on this site, Kindleboards and Facebook. It's a great feeling to know that I'm helping people. While I'm not an indie author myself, I obviously have a very strong connection to the community and am glad I can contribute to it.

I also received several comments from my new Kindleboards friends saying that – while my post did a great job of explaining why you want a custom Facebook fanpage picture banner - it didn't explain how to actually make one. This comment really made me smile because it's 100% true and very surprising for someone who inserts an instructional video in most of his posts. I didn't make ours myself and I'm not a graphics designer so this is far from my area of expertise. There are a lot of great instructional videos on there on using Photoshop & GIMP (which is a free Photoshop equivalent) but telling people to go watch videos and figure things out wouldn't be my style so I made a ten minute video on using GIMP to make a custom Facebook Fanpage Picture.

I'll pause here while you laugh at my "design skills." It's now obvious to the world why, I pay a designer. I know that's not an option for everyone and it sure wasn't an option for us at the beginning so it's important to give advice to our do-it-yourself readers too. GIMP isn't the easiest program in the world to learn but I hope this at least helps you get started on the right foot. There are a lot of people who are far more qualified than I am to answer specific design and/or GIMP questions but if you have any let me know and I'll try to find out.

Once again, if you do make your own Facebook fanpage picture banner or have one made for you post it here for all to see!!

It's a giveaway extravaganza this week!  Next up: Heather Marie Adkins, who was gracious enough to let me feature an exclusive excerpt of her book "Abigail" in the back of my recent release, "A Demon's Desire."  Today, I'm featuring her novel "The Temple." Heather is another of my friends, an animal lover and a fellow member of the Indie Eclective.

To enter the drawing: leave a comment on this post; OR click the buttons following this post to tweet or post this to FB/G+; OR retweet my tweets about the giveaway; OR share my posts on G+ or FB; OR like or 1+ my posts on G+ or FB. 

Vale Avari has a mysterious past and a laundry list ofsuper-powers, but that's nothing compared to what she finds upon moving fromsmall town U.S.A to even smaller-town England.

A chance dart throw lands her in Quicksilver, an off-the-map place with a bigproblem – people are dying, and word is, it's supernatural.

At her new place of employment, a temple dedicated to the ancient MotherGoddess, Vale learns something even more shocking – women guards aredisappearing at an alarmingly patterned rate; women who possess special giftslike her own.

Supernatural powers aside, Vale isn't ready to believe in the Wild Hunt as theculprit, and she's determined to prove the deaths are acts of human violence.

Plagued by a brute with a history of domestic violence and lusting after adark-eyed man with a secret, Vale has a limited amount of time to discover thekiller before he strikes again. In the process, she'll learn things aren'talways what they seem and the supernatural might not be so extraordinary afterall.

The Hunt could ride for her.

About Heather: Heather Marie Adkins is an independent fiction novelist and avid bibliophile with the library to prove it.

Heather started writing sixteen years ago when she really wanted to be like

R.L. Stine. Several never-to-be-seen novels later, she may have changed her mind

a bit and started writing whatever she felt was right. To date, she has dabbled

in numerous genres including chick lit, historical romance, horror, mystery, and

various forms of the paranormal. Her influences include Jennifer Crusie, Laurell

K Hamilton, Kim Harrison, and Jim Butcher. She first began publishing her work

in June 2011, much to the chagrin of her mother.

She has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, though all that got her in the end was a

shattered pinkie finger that no longer bends. On the bright side, she types

faster with nine fingers than most people do with ten. She loves to travel and

would give her good pinkie and her soul for a cottage in Ireland where she could

write in peace. As it is, she has to fight through a lifetime's worth of

distractions just to write ten sentences. She also enjoys gardening, cooking,

and reading when she has time to do so.

She is the author of paranormal mystery "The Temple", as well as paranormal

romance "Abigail" and chick lit "Constant State of Disaster". She is currently

working on numerous projects, including a thriller with a ghostly protagonist

and the first in a new witchcraft series.

A practicing Witch, Heather lives in North Central Kentucky with a house full

of animals and the love of her life–all of whom drive her crazy. She can be

found at her website, facebook, twitter, and goodreads.

I was supposed to feature Diane's book over a month ago and didn't.  Bad Lizzy!!!  I've had some health problems lately, so I haven't been on top of things.  In any case, here is Diane Gaston, one of my mentors, and the woman responsible for keeping me writing when I wanted to quit!  I'm going to give three winners of the givewaway a Kindle copy of her latest book.

To enter the giveaway contest: leave a comment here, on FB or G+; click one of the buttons at the bottom of the post to Tweet or Post (to FB or G+); RT my tweet; share my FB or G+ post; or simply like/1+ the post on FB/G+.

A soldier's second chance.

Captain Gabriel Deane has known his fair share of pain, but he'd take a dagger to the chest rather than relive the torture of rejection from the woman he loves.

Saying no to Gabriel broke Emmaline Mableau's heart, but being a soldier's widow had already cost her family too much. Now she wears Gabriel's ring around her neck: a reminder of the man who can never be hers.

Two years later, Emmaline's hand trembles as she goes to knock on Gabriel's door. Now she has a proposal for him, but will he say yes?

About Diane: Diane Gaston grew up the daughter of an Army colonel, living on army posts and even in Japan for a year. Diane's first career was as a county mental health

social worker, helping others craft their own happy endings, but her secret

dream was to write romance novels. One day, when her life calmed down a bit, she

decided to make that dream come true and now writes full-time. Diane's Regency

Historical romances have won top awards, including Romance's highest award, the

Romance Writers of America's RITA award. 

Visit Diane at her website, blog, Twitter, or Facebook.  

A few of my social media and SEO posts are long and involve thinking and (shudder) math!! This post is the exact opposite. It's short, sweet and easy and requires so little thought you can read it with your morning coffee.

As I've talked about before building a Facebook following can be a tough nut to crack without paying for advertisements or giveaway prizes. One thing we all have to make sure of is that if Facebook offers us something for free that we can use to our advantage, we jump all over it.

There was one thing that Facebook was offering that – until recently  – we had been ignoring. When I realized my error, I hung my head in shame for one minute and then took steps to correct it. The thing I wasn't using properly was the Facebook fanpage picture.

This little tidbit of knowledge isn't widely known, but Facebook gives us quite a bit of latitude with our fanpage profile picture.  We all have pictures on our fanpages, and most of them look like this.

There is nothing wrong with that page at all. Until a few days ago, ours looked just like it, just with 10,000 or so less fans. The "secret" that I stumbled upon was that Facebook gives you up to 180 x 540 pixels to use for your picture. If they're going to offer me that much real estate for free, I'm going to grab every last pixel!

I thought about doing it myself but then remembered that I have no artistic ability whatsoever. Anybody who has followed our website long enough will remember the old Damian's Oracle cover that I designed a year ago and agree with me!  ;) I sent the photo specs to Lizzy and she sent them to our cover artist, Dafeenah, who came up with this:

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The image really draws your eyes to it and sets your page apart from a lot of the others. I was very happy with the way it turned out.  Adding a custom full length banner is an easy way to improve the look and feel of your page. I can also see us swapping out banners when we run special offers or giveaways in the future.

If you're handy with Photoshop, GIMP or some other graphics program then set the dimensions of your canvas size to 180 x 540 pixels and start designing your custom Facebook fanpage picture. I emailed our graphic artist Dafeenah yesterday telling her that I was going to write this article and begged her to create a Fiverr.com gig to make these banners for people. If you're like me and you want a great looking banner but you don't trust yourself to do it, then you can check out her Fiverr.com gig and have one professionally made for five dollars.

Regardless of if you make it yourself or have someone make it for you, as soon as you have one, post it here so we can check it out! I can't wait to see what ideas creative people come up with for their own Facebook fanpage picture. And as always, please feel free to post any questions or comments.

Lizzy Ford's newest paranormal romance (suitable for young adults) 'A Demon's Desire' is available for free download for your Kindle, Ipad, Nook, Kobo or eReader.

Emma crossed paths with a black witch in an ill-fated love triangle that ended in Emma fleeing and the death of the man they both loved. Two years later, the witch is seeking revenge and strikes against Emma's family. Emma turns to the only person who can help her: a man rumored to be half-demon with the power to control the shadows. Tristan agrees to help her lift the curse on her family but isn't prepared for what he finds hidden in Emma's secrets.

Spam isn't as much of an issue now as it was a few years ago due to spam filters from our email services being so much better. However like anyone else who used email before spam filters, I have fond memories of waking up to 58 emails in my inbox, 3 of which weren't Viagra related.  I therefore have a deep rooted hatred of spammers. You can imagine my surprise this week when I found out that I was a spammer!

I rarely post comments on blogs or forums due to time constraints. I know it's something I need to do more, and I'm trying to work on it. Last weekend I wrote what I thought was a long and thoughtful comment on a blog and was crushed when I pushed post and it disappeared. It was probably over 500 words and of course I didn't copy and paste it first so it was just gone. I figured it was some glitch in the system. I left depressed and gave up on the internet for a few hours. Link building is tough enough without these types of issues.

Later that day I gathered the internal fortitude to try and use the inter-webs again and went and posted on a forum where I posted several times in the past. I typed a short comment and when I pushed the post button it too disappeared before my very eyes. If these places wouldn't love me, at least our cover artist would. I went to Dafeenah's site and commented on one of her posts and THAT didn't show. I then knew I had a serious problem. Dafeenah confirmed that I did indeed get labeled as spam so I hit Google to try figure out a solution.

It seemed the general consensus was that you should contact Akismet and in a week or so they may or may not help you. I used Akismet's Contact us form and provided my name, email, website and told them that I only made 2-3 posts/comments a week and they were always relevant. Within four hours I got a reply from Akismet saying that they weren't sure what happened but that the problem should be fixed. I went to Dafeenah's WordPress site, the comment posted right away. I hit the forum that blocked my lost post; it went right through. Just to make sure that all my problems were solved I went to the blog that blocked my long comment and it worked like a champ.

Akismet's spam plugin has always impressed me but their customer service may have even impressed me more. If you notice that your comments or posts don't seem to be posting, I would head straight to Akismet and give them your information.

My friend PJ just happens to be a brilliant parody author, so I'm honored to feature her book, The Vampire Handbook this week!  She's agreed to do an ebook giveaway, too, and is throwing in "The Were/Shapeshifter Handbook" and "The Zombie Handbook."

To enter the giveaway: click on one of the links below the article to share it via Facebook, Twitter, G+, OR retweet my tweet (@LizzyFord2010) OR share the posts I make on Facebook or G+.  The winner will be chosen and contacted Tuesday and will be given 48 hours to respond before the next winner will be selected.

Synopsis: So, after a painstakingly long soul-searching (at least five minutes) and after grappling with the possible fate of your immortal soul (who cares if you're not going to die, anyway), you've decided to become a vampire.

Congratulations!

But before beginning that dark and shadowed journey into a life of eternal damnation, every vampire is required to read The Vampire Handbook, a short step-by-step guide to becoming a vampire and then adjusting to the bloodsucking lifestyle.

Some of the helpful tips in this handbook include: Rules for Living an Environmentally Friendly and Urbane, Undead Lifestyle, Dietary Restrictions for Vampires, Engaging in Battles with Other Immortals, Rules for Fitting into Society and not Scaring off Potential Meals and much more…

In addition to The Vampire Handbook, you will also get THE WERE/SHAPE-SHIFTER HANDBOOK and THE ZOMBIE HANDBOOK as well as a few sample chapters from PJ Jone's sparkly vampire parody, ROMANCE NOVEL.

About PJ Jones: PJ spends her days scrubbing pots, collecting clown figurines and chasing five squealing kids around the house. No, that sounds too pathetic.

She lives on a 70 foot yacht and drinks sparkling wine by her pool while basking in the salty air and communicating with the local dolphins. Too far fetched?

She sits in front of a computer most of the day, writing, deleting, then writing some more, until her ass is numb and her brain is fried. Better?

PJ  would LOVE to hear from her readers. Contact her via: her email -[email protected], Facebook,  Twitter, or you can visit her blog.

Thank you for visiting Lizzyland, PJ!

I decided to add a bit of structure to our posts and developed the schedule below, which I hope will serve our two major audiences: Lizzyland readers and writers who visit to read Matt's IT posts!

Mondays: Book features and giveaways.  No one likes Mondays.  We'll try to make them more tolerable by featuring great books and offering you the chance to enter into drawings to win them!

Tuesday Tech Talk:  Advice on optimizing your social media and website; other IT tips and tales from Matt

Wednesday: Lizzyland updates, writing tips, other blog posts from Lizzy

Thursday Tech Talk: More advice and posts from Matt!

Friday: Book Talk.  Interviews, guests posts, and discussions with bloggers, reviewers, and authors.

Saturday & Sunday: Free for all!  The weekend will be open for pretty much anything we want to post.

If you're doing what you know you should be doing, then you have a website or blog which you update at least once or twice a week. The bad news is that writing quality content takes time. The good news it you can use the content you write for all sorts of things. The video below shows how to take the RSS feed from your site (if you're using a blog, your site will have RSS) and automatically send it out on your Twitter feed using twitterfeed.com.

Now that we've talked about the methodology to employ to acquire high quality followers and tools to use to help you accomplish your twitter goals faster, it's time to talk about what to do with all of the twitter followers you're getting. Long story short, build a relationship with them.

The thing a lot of business in general and authors in particular forget is the "social" in social media. They treat their websites, Twitter and Facebook pages like traditional media. They blast out the messages they want to distribute at regular intervals and then come up with their next message. That dynamic misses the entire point of social media. The social media format is designed for a back and forth dialogue between you and those that follow you. I know that these types of relationships take time and energy, but these are would-be members of the fan base you're trying to build. If you're not going to build a relationship with these people, who are you going to build one with?

A lot of authors dialogue with their fans goes something like this:

Booklover14: I have a horrible headache

Author48: Buy my book, that may help!!

This example is obviously tongue in cheek, but not too far off what I've seen on Twitter. Opportunities to show interest in the lives of their fans go wasted while every opportunity to pitch their book gets pounced upon. The worst part is, sometimes the same people that act like this make it big. It happens. Sometimes someone writes one book and gets a big publishing contract. It happens. As frustrating as that can be for someone who has been grinding toward their goal of being an author for years without much success, that doesn't necessarily mean that you should copy them. We have a saying in the guerrillawordfare.com household that gets used quite often: "They're buying a lottery ticket." It's not a flattering term.

Basically, it means that they're sitting around waiting for that big break. They write a book and put it on Amazon, just like 100,000s of other people. They start a blog, just like 100,000s of other people. They sign up for Twitter and Facebook and post every time something cool happens with their books, just like 100,000s of other people. Then they sit around and wait for a "big break" the same way someone waits for their winning lottery numbers to be called. If you have real talent, you may want a big break but you might not need it. Here is a little snippet from a post on JA Konrath's blog a few weeks ago:

"As long as websites like Amazon make browsing easy, the cream has the potential to rise to the top. You don't have to be a monster bestseller. A hardcore niche group of 10,000 fans can support a writer quite easily. Write two ebooks per year at $2.99, and three shorts at 99 cents, and you're making $50k a year.

But eBooks don't stop selling after a year. They sell forever. And good books will eventually find more than just 10,000 readers. And every new book you write will find new readers along with old fans."

That math should give you hope, since those are attainable goals. You cannot afford to let chance decide your fate as an author; you have to try to seize it yourself. If acquiring 10,000 fans is what you need to be financially successful as an author then acquiring them should be your #2 priority (writing good books will always be #1). Taking the time to build relationships which help you reach your goals is a small price to pay.

In our last post we talked about how to build a targeted Twitter following for free. This post will demonstrate two popular tools that can help speed up the process we outlined. There are a ton of ton of tools out there but we're going to talk about Tweetdeck and manageflitter.com.

One of the things I love most about this system of finding followers is that you can do it in 5 minute chunks. I wish everything was so easy to fit into your daily routine! Tweetdeck helps speed the process up even more by showing you all of your different "target streams" on one page. If you have 5 different terms that you look for new followers from, you can make a column for each 5 so they're always in front of you. When you log on you can check for any tweets involving you or your friends, and then scroll over to your searches to find and follow some new potential followers.

Tweetdeck is handy, but manageflitter.com is a necessity. As we explained in our last post, un-following people has nothing to do with trying to maintain an "impressive ratio", it's about keeping your following/follower ratio close enough for Twitter to allow you to follow new people. If you let it build up then you'll hit a point where you have 800 or more people you need to un-follow. That will take some long sessions and completely defeats the purpose of using this method.

If you're using a different twitter client or bulk twitter un-follow tool and you like it by all means stick with it. I choose these two because they were free, easy to use and very popular.

In our next post we're going to talk about using RSS to automatically stream content from your blog to Twitter and some thoughts about interacting with your followers.