Michigan Publishing Marketing Guide
From MPublishing
Contents |
Marketing & Promoting your Publication
We start from the idea that each of the publishing parties has expertise in different areas and that by working together, we will be most successful in marketing and promoting your publication. Already, authors promote their work widely by talking about it at conferences, teaching it to students and engaging in the scholarly conversation. In addition to these usual activities, we’d like to ask you to consider using social media tools to draw attention to your work, and can provide you with guidelines to help you use these tools.
We also welcome your suggestions for how best to draw attention to your work. Filling out our Promoting your Publication (Media:Promoting_your_publication.pdf) form will help us announce your publication to the widest possible audience.
Michigan Publishing’s primary goal for your work is to enhance its discoverability online so that anyone who is interested in it can easily find it and read it. A fully searchable electronic version of your text will be freely and permanently available through our publishing platform. The publications we host are indexed by search engines, which help readers find your work.
As a library-based publisher, Michigan Publishing has expertise in the library community and works to let libraries know about your journal. We catalog publications upon release and make the records available to libraries worldwide through WorldCat
Michigan Publishing is pleased to work with you to further promote your publication upon launch. Here's what we do & what we need for you to facilitate this process.
Getting Started:
What Michigan Publishing does for all publications:
- Request an ISSN or assign an ISBN as appropriate
- Create metadata for the resource to be cataloged and indexed by aggregators such as OAIster
- Add the resource to our website and post a notice on our blog
- Would you be interested in participating in an author/editor Q&A, for the Michigan Publishing blog? If so, would you prefer to write the questions and answers yourself or to have a Michigan Publishing staff member write the questions for you to answer?
- If applicable, add an RSS feed so that readers can subscribe to automatic notifications about the availability of new content
- Notify our local community at U-M, as well as our publishing & library peers, about the resource
- If applicable, add the resource to online directories of scholarly resources (like the Directory of Open Access Journals)
How we can work with you to increase visibility:
- Write a press release with you to announce the new resource.
- Brainstorm audiences and engagement methods for blog posts, press releases, and other announcements.
Please download and complete our Promoting your Publication (Media:Promoting_your_publication.pdf) document to help us craft a press release, blog post, and other announcements to promote your publication.
If you're interested in seeing how people are using your publication:
- We collect statistics about usage of our publications, which you can access through our stats system. Instructions for doing so are on our wiki.
- Google Analytics reports are available upon request.
- You can set up a Google Alert for the name of your publication to monitor how your publication is being talked about on the web.
After your publication launches, here are some things you can do to help get the word out.
- Set up an e-mail address that you can use to facilitate the regular communication needs of you publication.
- A great way to help get the word out about your publication with minimal effort on your part is to create an email signature with the name and URL of your publication. Most email clients provide a way to set up an email signature, using something like the following procedure:
- Access the “Settings” or similar feature of your email provider. For example, for Microsoft Outlook the menu route is “Tools”->”Options”->”Mail Format.”
- Proceed to the “Signature” section and include a message such as “Visit The Journal of Baubles and Trinkets here: [link to publication home page]."
- Build a rich network of in-bound links to your publication. This is important for making your publication more visible on the web because it improves your performance in search results.
- Encourage friends who are bloggers to write about and link back to your publication.
- Encourage friends and colleagues who are Wikipedians to add content to Wikipedia that links back to your publication (when appropriate).
- If your publication has a website hosted elsewhere, please link to the site hosted by Michigan Publishing.
- Add links to the publication wherever it is mentioned on the web; from your CV (if it's online), your departmental homepage, or your personal website or blog (if you have them).
- Encourage contributing authors to do likewise!
- Set up accounts on social media sites for your publication. [See Specific Media Guidelines]
Social Media Guide
Using social media can be a great way for authors and editors to publicize their work. Below you'll find a guide to establishing a presence on three common sites: Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia. The following information is adapted from the U-M Social Media Guidelines
Before you sign up for accounts on various sites, taking a moment to think critically about your goals will help you to choose an appropriate channel and use it successfully.
Goals and Objectives
- Why are you establishing a social media presence?
- What do you plan to achieve through this channel? To Inform? Encourage dialogue? Announce news? Network?
- What is the audience you are trying to engage?
- Does that audience prefer one kind of platform to another? (e.g., Twitter vs. Facebook, Instagram vs. Pinterest, etc.)
- How will you measure outcomes to know whether you have met your goals?
Execution and Maintenance
- Who will establish your presence (or your publication's presence) on this site?
- Who will administer and/or maintain the account? Will you have a team of administrators sharing duties? Or will you be flying solo?
- Are you prepared to keep your content fresh and to post on a schedule that meets the rhythms of your chosen platform? (e.g., at least daily for Facebook; multiple times per day for Twitter)
- How will you keep passwords (especially shared credentials) strong and secure?
General Tips for Using Social Media
Based on the University of Michigan Social Media Guidelines.
- Security: Use strong passwords and change them often.
- Respect: you are more likely to achieve your goals if you are constructive and respectful.
- Thoughtful contribution: only post information if you are sure it will be of interest to others.
- Focus: engage in open discussion about your publication or your areas of expertise.
- Clarity: clearly state your role and goals to help others understand and contextualize your content.
- Caution: double check your content for errors, tone, and professionalism.
- Made a mistake? Be upfront and correct yourself.
- Balance: be mindful of what response your posts may provoke.
- Keeping Up: be sure to regularly check your social media accounts for new comments and to add new material!
- Speech: talk to your readers, friends, and followers like you would talk to real people in professional situations. (Except in the case of a Wikipedia article, which is in the format of a reference work, not personal communication)
Wikipedia
Purpose
- To provide background information about and establish a widely accessible presence for your publication
What to post
- Background information about your publication, such as when it came into print, major plot points or theories, or a detailed description of your work. You will have to cite your information for Wikipedia to consider you a valid and trustworthy source.
- According to Wikipedia's About page, "Wikipedia content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with cited external sources, and neutrally presented." It is important to cite the information you include in your article, linking to the sources you use where possible.
Getting Started:
- First you will need to create a free account (only necessary if you are creating a new article; you can edit existing articles without registering) by clicking the Create Account button in the upper left hand corner.
- From here you can create an article about your publication or search Wikipedia for articles related to your publication's subject and add your publication as a reference.
- When creating a new article be sure to take a look at Wikipedia’s Manual of Style to be sure that your article meets its standards
Remember: Wikipedia is maintained by a an open community of editors, so once you post a new page others will be able to edit your work or criticize your formatting. It is wise to check on your page regularly to be sure that any updates that have been made by others are relevant and correct.
Purpose
- Communicate with students, potential students, alumni, and interested community members through a medium they already use.
What to post
- News, events, and announcements to do with your publication. Be sure to respond to questions/concerns posted by your users. Encourage discussion and postings on your page to encourage people to return frequently.
Understand the lingo
- Page—standalone page; mimics the profile page of a person but designed for an entity rather than an individual; followers are called fans rather than friends
- Group—collection of people for a common purpose, can be private
- Cause—collection of people who may join for a common goal, usually to collect money
- Person—individual who might belong to groups and causes, become a fan of pages, and interact with others through a network of friends.
Facebook naming conventions
- When creating a page for your publication or organization, think first and foremost about searchability. Search engines such as Google and Facebook’s own search engine will pull up accounts based on keyword relevance, so pick something obvious and relevant.
Customizing your page
- Facebook lets you choose your profile photo, which will be seen in search results and by your “friends. So, your photo should be easily recognizable to your target audience. For instance, consider using your author photo or the cover of a well-known publication.
- When you create your profile, Facebook will encourage you to fill in your interests as well as a variety of other information. Keep in mind that all of your “friends” can see this information, so don’t post anything you would prefer to keep private, such as an address or phone number.
- Review and customize your privacy settings to control who can see your profile or group page (for example, friends only, friends of friends, or everyone)
How to communicate through your page
- Wall posts: wse the wall to post messages, photos, videos, or links, all of which fans of your page can comment on. These posts will also show up in the newsfeed of every fan of your page.
- Links: when you post links on your wall, you have the option to include a summary, image from the linked page, and your own comment. Fans of the page will be notified of new links posted.
- Video: You can either upload your own video or post videos from sites like YouTube, and fans or friends will be able to stream the video directly through the Facebook interface. Fans and friends will be notified of new videos posted.
- Photo gallery: fans and friends will be notified of new photos posted
- Discussion board: a no-frills message board where fans can post comments that will appear on the discussion page.
- Events: each event gets its own page. Each event page has its own set of options, including an invite option that you can push out to all fans of the page. Event pages are opened and closed by date and then archived as past events, which you can access from your home page.
- Notes: a space to write a message to your friends and fans that is too long to be posted on a wall. Notes can contain text, photos, links, and the ability to link to other groups and people. Fans and friends will be notified of new notes that you post. Do not use notes for private communication to one individual or a small group, because everyone in your network will be able to see it.
- Messages: are private communications to an individual or group of people, comparable to email.
- Other custom applications including RSS readers, news feeds, and custom HTML
- Listing by URL (Ex:[ www.facebook.com/universityofmichigan] for the University of Michigan's main page) is available after your page has 100 fans. This option is not available for groups.
- Email capability to all fans for direct communication.
- Insights: allows you to see traffic to your page, user demographics and interactions. This feature is only available for pages. There is a 48 hour lag before new data becomes available
Purpose
Twitter is, in essence, micro-blogging (each post must be no longer than 140 characters). Use Twitter to release brief news, provide links to additional information, find out what your colleagues are up to, and provide support for others by sharing their posts.
Twitter naming conventions
- Your username is limited 13 characters
- Think about searchability. Search engines such as Google and Twitter’s own search engine will pull up accounts based on key word relevance. Pick something obvious and relevant.
- If your work is directly affiliated with a university or larger institution, you might use it in your username
Understand the lingo
- Tweet: Your post, which must contain 140 characters or less
- RT: A re-tweet, when a person or entity copies a tweet posted by someone else and posts it from their own profile. Credit is given to the original author by preceding the tweet with “RT @username”
- Including "@username" in your tweet creates a direct link to that user's twitter profile page. This is a great way to collaborate with, give credit to other users, reply to, or grab the attention of other users.
- # and hashtag: a # or hashtag is used to tie a post to a larger idea or conversation. End a post with a hashtag (like #umich) to track trends about your topic. Use sites like Tweetchat to follow hashtags in real time. It is common for conferences and other gatherings to assign a hashtag for all tweets related to the event.
- Check out Twittonary.com for a searchable Twitter term dictionary.
Adding URLs, links, or images to your Tweets
Because many URLs are long and would take up most or all of a single tweet, services to shorten URLs, such as http://bit.ly, have become popular. Some of these sites also track click-through rates to your links and what devices they are coming from.
- If you need image hosting to supplement a Tweet, you can use a service such as Twitpic, which lets you share photos on Twitter.
Feeding Twitter to your Facebook and other social media
Third-party applications allow you to link your twitter updates to automatically update your Facebook status. Contact socialmedia@umich.edu at MM&D for help linking Twitter to your other social media outlets.
Building Credibility
Building credibility on Twitter is important, because there are many active spam accounts. Become more credible by filling in all appropriate information on your profile and customizing your page. Follow credible sources that are pertinent to your work, and cite your tweets by including links, or giving credit to other users when appropriate
Customizing your page
Twitter provides a variety of backgrounds to choose from but you also have the option of importing an image to use as your background. You can also use outside applications to customize your background and profile such as Themeleon.
