The document provides guidance and information for learning social media marketing skills. It outlines key concepts students should understand, such as writing tweets, emails, press releases, and social media plans. Assignments include reviewing case studies and best practices. Budget guidelines are provided for common marketing activities, ranging from $500-5000 for overall book marketing to $1500-4000 for a landing page. Tips are given for writing media releases, pitch letters, and developing personas to represent target audiences.

1. Review & Test Prep
Nov 22, 2013
Contact Details
Monique Sherrett
monique@boxcarmarketing.com
778-837-9012
Office Hours TBA

2. Learning Objectives

3. You Should Know
• Social Media Tools and Best Practices
• Show you can write a tweet, email subject line, press release headline
• Recommend, Improve or Reverse Engineer a company’s social media use
• Write a pitch letter
• Identify pitch angles, selling points, talking points, keywords
• Write a persona
• Show a grid view of a plan
• Calculate CPC, conversion rate
• Know reasonable budgets / costs for marketing activities

5. Assignments & Readings
Review the readings, especially Friends with Benefits
and Open Brand
Review Cluetrain Manifesto and best practices for
conversation, community, collaboration
Review assignment feedback

8. http://www.slideshare.net/GoodreadsPresentations/2013-bea-goodreads-201

13. Write down what you
know about these
things or questions you
have

15. What Makes a Good Tweet
Define your goals. Know what you want to accomplish before you create your tweets:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pass along news
Offer discounts and promos
Generate leads
Build customer loyalty
Answer customer service questions
Shape opinions
Sell products
RT, #hashtags and URLs are important
To be shareable (& discoverable) aim for 115 characters vs. 140.
• 55-70 characters for the description
• 18-20 characters for ow.ly or bit.ly
• Up to 100 characters with hashtags
• 25 reserved for RT

16. Good Email Subject Line
Useful (promised msg is valuable to reader)
Ultra-specific (know what’s being promised)
Urgent (need to take action now)
Approx. 50 characters

17. What makes a good pitch letter?
• Dear Name (Name is spelled correctly, Name is the name of the blogger. It’s
personalized, never Dear Blogger)
• You’ve checked the About page and search for “Pitch Policy” or “Review Policy,”
PR, publicist--confirmed the person is open to pitches. If not, be prepared to be
embarrassed online with a rant. See Beauty in the Ruins blog.
• The title is spelled correctly, i.e., Long Gone Man not Lone Gone Man. The
author(s) name is spelled correctly.
• You’ve included a link for more details: publisher detail page, author website, press
release link, etc.
• Call to action: You have included the “ask” or clearly articulated what you are
offering and how you want them to respond.
• You have provided a closing and signature with your contact details.

18. Pitch Angle (or Building the Hook)
• So what? Why now?
• Have they reviewed the previous title or this author before?
• Do they regularly write about this topic? How is this book different?
• What are the selling points of the book? Can you turn those into newsworthy
talking points?
• Look for bloggers with a social media presence in particular GoodReads and
Amazon as they’ll likely post multiple places.

19. Headline
Summary
Date
1st Paragraph
Link
Body
Boilerplate
Contact
Attachment

20. Tips for Writing a Good Media Release
• Start Strong: You have a matter of seconds to earn attention.
• Be Newsworthy: The headline, summary and 1st paragraph should clarify the news. The
rest of the release provides the details. It’s not a marketing pitch or advertisement.
• Use Keywords: The headline and summary use keywords people are likely to use when
searching for this type of information.
• Identify Yourself: Identify the company, brand or product in the headline and summary.
• Economize Your Words: Be concise. Aim for 60 characters including spaces for the
headline and 1-4 sentences for the summary.
• Pick an Angle: Make sure your release has a good hook.
• Proofread: No spelling or grammatical errors.

21. Common Traits: Media Release & Pitch Letter
Headline
=
Email
Subject
Line
• Keyword
Rich,
En0cing,
Makes
You
Want
to
Read
the
Full
Thing)
• 60-­‐170
characters
1st
Paragraph
Keyword
Rich,
En@cing,
Makes
You
Want
to
Con@nue
Reading
• Includes
a
link
to
relevant
content
Body
• 300-­‐800
words
• Newsworthy,
Timely,
Factoids
that
Provide
Context
to
Bigger
Picture,
Reason
for
Other
People
to
Care
Contact
Details
(with
phone
number)
Links
&
ALachments
(Valuable
Content)

22. Influencers: How trends & creativity
become contagious
http://youtu.be/jysFtg9hfzs

23. Developing Personas
•
Personas are character sketches of individual audience members who represent
the intended audience for the book.
•
Think of it as “Playing Barbies” or G.I. Joe
•
Personas are sounding boards. They move you away from what you personally
think and feel and towards what the persona wants.
•
Ideally, a project will have both primary personas – common audience types
who are important to the success of the book – and secondary personas –
audience types who are very different from primary users but whose needs still
need to be addressed for the success of the book. This helps to ensure that all
audience needs are outlined. i.e., a primary persona might be the book reader
while the secondary is a media reviewer.
•
Personas are also used to make a better book, or promotion campaign, that is
more relevant to the audience.
http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog/defining-your-target-audience-with-personas/

24. Persona Worksheet
http://bit.ly/persona-worksheet
• Name & Title
• Basics: Demographics (age/life stage, gender, location), psychographics,
likes or dislikes, leader or follower (adoption curve)
• Professional & persona background: Employment, leisure, hobbies
• Quote: Encapsulate the persona’s attitude towards the book or author(s)
• Consumer experience: How do they currently interact with brands, Social
Technographics Ladder—comfort with online activities
• Top 3 Favourites: Websites, stores, experiences
• Goals: What do they want to do? Motivations or desired outcomes?
• I need / I want: What do they need or want in relation to the above goals?

25. Things that lead to sales
Acquisition
Goals related to creating awareness
Activation
Goals related to generating leads /
potential customers
Retention
Goals related to keeping those
prospects
Referral
Goals related to sharing, word of
mouth, referrals, recommendations
Sales
Goals related to making $$$

26. Grid View
Goals
Goals should be
specific and
measurable.
Show target # or %
Marketing
Actions
This is an overview
of what tactics you
plan.
Desired Audience
Response
Think about the
customer life cycle
and all the macro
and micro actions
that would show
intention towards the
goal
KPIs
Metrics should relate
to the goal and
desired response.
Show alignment.

27. Online Advertising: Cost per Click
• Pay per Click (PPC) advertising or Cost per Click
• Cost per Click (CPC) is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad
• If you spend $5,000 on ads and get 10,000 clicks, this is a CPC of $0.50
Cost ÷ Clicks = CPC
$5,000 ÷ 10,000 = $0.50

28. Conversion Rate
% of visitors who convert to a desired action: buy, sign-up, download
In ecommerce, it’s % of Visits that convert to a purchase (make an order)
Number of Orders ÷ Number of Visits = Conversion Rate (E-commerce)
Say you run a Facebook ad sending people to your book detail page. You get
1500 impressions and 125 clicks on the ad. That’s 125 ÷ 1500 = 0.083, as a
percentage 8.3%.
Of the 125 people who click on the ad, 5 buy the book. What is the ecommerce
conversion rate? 4%

29. Marketing & Publicity
http://bit.ly/7Sentence-Pub355W
• Budgets. You don’t have one. Most marketing budgets are eaten up by co-op
(merchandising with Amazon or Indigo).
• $500-2500 is a common book marketing budget
• Find cheap & smart ideas
• $1000 at Amazon. Good because it’s a sales channel.
You want the placement at retail channels.
• Goodreads is the 2nd best place. Target audience when they are ready to buy
or interested in books
• Selling point: make it clear what is important about this book. 1st sentence of
jacket copy, email, press release etc. is important.
• Media needs the So What & Why Now: talking points/selling points/pitch angles
• Identify the competitors: Similar pricing, comparable in terms of author
reputation, subject matter, used to establish target #s, market research

30. Budgets, Costs and Time
• Approximately 2 hours per channel per week in maintenance mode
• 50-100 hours for a 2-week contest or in active campaign mode
• $200 for contest badge or ad design
• Facebook contest using 3rd party app, $100-500 (extra for promotion)
• Facebook ads, est. $1000-5000
• Media release Newswire.ca, est. $300-600
• Publicity $3-5000 per city
• Landing page: $1500-4000
• Microsite: design $2500, programming Wordpress $5-7000
• Display Ads on blogs: per ad $750-1500+
• Video: $3-5000

31. Merchandizing Program: Major Retailers
To gain greater visibility for titles:
• Category promotion: $1500
• Seasonal Booklists: $500
• New & Notable (w/in 60 days of pub): $1500
• Paperback Picks (w/in 60 days of pub): $500
• Single Title Campaign: $7500
• Spotlight: 100+
• Email Blast: $4500
• Exclusive Landing Page, Books Homepage (1 week): $10-20,000

32. Contests
• Like-Gate the Contest
• Photos & Video can be a barrier to entry, aim for text that you can re-purpose
• Add an incentive, share for more votes
• Add a secondary action like sign up for newsletter. Don’t make it mandatory.
• Don’t run the contest too long or too short
• Most votes for random draw; grand prize for best entry based on jury
selection
• Provide a contest name, details

33. Ok, questions.