Get OrganizedBy Sandy LenderFor PromoDay15

Organization Matters

“For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.”—Benjamin Franklin

Many of the tips in this presentation are things we writers know, but they’re things we’ve overlooked or forgotten to implement.

Our creative minds tend toward entropy. Let’s battle that to make more time for the craft we enjoy most: writing.

How would you find your book cover on this

desktop?

Make a Single Folder on Your Desktop for Your Online Marketing Items

Look at this calm desktop.

Online vs Print

Your online marketing and promotion materials: low resolution, typically include smaller word-count articles/posts, will include live links/embedded items

Your print-ready marketing and promotion materials: high resolution, typically include short links so all that crap isn’t spelled out, will include PDFs and sidebars you want to create to make your talking points easier for editors to express to the public

These items should be separate so you don’t have to hunt and guess which file you’ve grabbed for an editor

Folders Within Online Folder

Create a Folder for Images (images are not the same as facebook ads/pics, but you can certainly put those in this folder if your mind will categorize them that way)

These are low resolution—86 to 150 dpi or 120 by 120 pixels is typical

Book covers

Your professional headshot

Your profile picture for use across all online platforms (if you don’t use your professional headshot)

Photos with fans at book signings

Other photos to which you want quick-n-easy access

Folders Within Online Folder

Create a folder for documents YOU createThe text from your book’s jacket (because you don’t want to retype it—and proofread it—all the time)

Your long bio

Your short bio

Your upcoming blog copy (because having a month’s worth of posts ahead of time is smart)

Standard interview answers (because you know what inspires you, but it’s not inspiring to retype it 15 times a month)

Folders Within Online Folder

Create a folder for documents BY OTHER PEOPLETestimonials people give you

Book reviews (even if reviews appear on Amazon or a blogger’s site, those reviews can disappear; copy and paste the review into a Word doc along with the published date and original link; when Suspense Magazine started in 2009, the editor wrote a wonderful review of Choices Meant for Kings—that review no longer appears on the SM site, but you can bet I have it, see below)

Folders Within Online Folder

Create a folder of links and passwords

You are NOT going to name this folder “passwords”

The URL, username & password to your page on Author’s Den, GoodReads, Author Island

Your Amazon author page URL, etc.

The link to your bits on your publisher’s site

These links are easy to lose track of if you don’t keep a record of them with usernames and passwords, especially if you rotate your passwords

Let Technology Organize Your Time for

YouEmail sucks time from us—set up your email folders so messages automatically go into the appropriate folder; set alerts for important vendors (your agent, your test readers, your book tour manager) so those DO ping you

Buffer.com—a bit pricy at $25/month for the business package; connect up to 25 social sites/pages; provides suggested content

Use your blog’s scheduling feature

Use facebook’s scheduling feature when you find something you want to share but you have a campaign ongoing

More tech that can do the work for you…

Hootsuite—has changed its interface to be more user friendly; the pro package is not expensive and lets you schedule multiple posts to multiple social media sites for months in advance; bulk uploading available (nice)

Pagemodo—has a professional level/package that’s not expensive that gives you more variety and lets you schedule the easy-as-pie updates to covers, posts, contests, polls, etc.

MeetEdgar.com—provides content/ideas

More tech that can do the work for you…

IFTTT is an app that uses the If/Then concept to make frequent actions automatic. (it calls them “recipes”)

“If” you take a picture of a reader at your book signing with your phone, “Then” the IFTTT app puts that picture in your dropbox folder.

Another time-saver…

Know your specs!

http://bit.ly/1LMEOnR

All the website ad sizes, facebook spec sizes, twitter, linkedin, etc you want to know.

Let’s Discuss It!

PromoDay15 is built on the foundation of great forum activity during the past 14 Promo Days. After reading through these slides and their notes, check into the conversation taking place with this presentation.

I wish you all the best with your marketing and promotion activities! Getting organized is your first step so it all goes smoothly with no frustration, no crazy searching for missing pictures, no hiding links, no typos in your bio…just professional and clean copy always.

I invite you to visit me online.

https://www.facebook.com/fantasyauthorsandylender

www.sandylenderink.com