Chess StrategyAnn Handley predicts that companies will produce “kick-ass content to attract and retain customers, rather than randomly grabbing folks off the street.” Greg Verdino believes that what is currently missing from marketers is a social media strategy. In Peter Kim’s Social Media Predictions 2009 document, one of the reoccurring themes is the need for companies to create a thorough and cohesive marketing game plan before jumping into the social media pool with both eyes closed.

For book publicists, when we sit down for a positioning meeting to write up a publicity plan for a particular title, we look at the book’s proposed content and the author’s platform to figure out what’s the best approach to get the word out. If the topic is timely, great! If the topic is controversial, even better! How can we spin such-and-such so reporters and editors sit up and take notice? Almost from the beginning, we can tell right away whether or not a book has ‘media potential’ or not. Then, online publicity plans gets tacked on without much strategy in mind. (Hey, I’m not saying every publisher does this! If your company incorporates online marketing into a book’s publicity plan with the whole picture in mind, I’d love to hear about it.)

But it’s true (and you can google it!) that online publicity plans should work cohesively with offline ones. Here are some suggestions off the top of my head:

  • If your author is invited onto the David Letterman show, tape the show and put it up on YouTube, then invest in strategically placed advertisements to complement the show’s segment. 
  • Or if you need video footage of your author to pitch to David Letterman, create your own funny video to put online, then pitch the producers with a link to said video. 
  • How about a three-part marketing plan where consumers will see one part on tv, a second part online, and a third in newspapers? Where each part makes little sense on their own but put together, they produce an ‘Ah HA!’ moment. 
  • Instead of randomly sending out the occasional book to a blogger, how about producing your own viral content to strategically drive consumers to where you want them to go? Then when soliciting reviews for your book, pitch the viral content as well as the book.

Photo Credit: Waponi on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

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Social Media in 2009 Series
Introduction
Part 1: Get Personal 
Part 2:  Quality Over Quantity
Part 3: A Need for Strategy
Part 4: Measurements
Conclusion