E-Marketing Strategy: The Power of the 
Blogosphere

Optimizing Content 
for the Blogosphere

Many book publishers (rightly) shudder when they think about giving away their book content for free. Money must be made and, therefore, only the most daring publishers are willing to give away everything for free. A far more cautious approach is to give away the ancillary book content that many book publishers do already: excerpts, introductions, forewords and sample chapters. Instead of approaching only the traditional media outlets with these, try reaching out to the blogs on your list as well. They may not have the readership of some of the more traditional outlets, but there are other advantages to pushing this content out via the blogs, including:

• clickable content directing people back to your site;

• direct links to your bookstore (or Amazon, etc.);

• exposure and improved ranking on search engines;

• the exponential potential of social media sharing;

• exposure to new audiences;

• viral RSS syndication (a major blog's posts tend to be reposted via RSS en masse by other outlets).

You are not limited to book content, of course. Quick Q&As with authors, video interviews, 60-second tutorials, author editorials and other promotional content can work as well. It is important that all of the content you create and distribute has each of the following components:

• a link back to your website in the body of the text;

• a link to where the reader can find more information;

• a link to where the reader can buy the book;

• a header or footer that highlights the source of the content (the book), or the related book.

If your content is compelling and people find it valuable, readers will repost it to other blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on. It is vitally important that your content has each of these four links somewhere in the main body, so that when the content is shared, the links travel with it. This appropriate placement of content (onto your niche's blogs), and the natural distribution across social media (via inspired readers), will help your content travel—on its own—to your ideal online audiences.