Twitter Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign with Twitter Hashtags

by Donna Gunter, The Online Biz Resource Queen (TM)

Twitter, as a popular social networking platform, is a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, I’ve recently noticed another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags.

What’s a hashtag, anyway? Also called the pound sign, the hashtag (#) is added to a tweet as a way of creating trackable categories, groups, or topics that others can use to search for info using the Twitter Search feature. One of the most common uses of the hashtag is to tweet what’s happening at an event or conference. The event organizer will request all attendees use a specific hashtag, i.e. #yourevent, when tweeting about the event to your followers. So, then, someone who isn’t present at the event but wants to follow what’s happening there can simply search for #yourevent and see what’s going on and what participants are saying and sharing about the event. Read the rest of this entry »

July 21st, 2009 was the 3rd anniversary of the opening of Aspen Mountain Press and The Romance Studio helped us celebrate with a drawing.

RoxAnn won five downloads of her choice, downloads that will go far in alleviating the dog days of summer.  What did RoxAnn select from over 220 stories?  She chose the following: Read the rest of this entry »

You know you love it, the extra crispy fried chicken not unlike what you might get at KFC (what do they do to that chicken that it makes your mouth water?) or if you are in Denver, The White Fence Farm…

Here is a recipe for a fried chicken  that will have you salivating.  Poke around the site.  There are tons of recipes for all sorts of tastes.

For those of you interested in marketing, you might want to take a look at this article:

10 Rules for Advertising on Facebook that is available at www.BusinessInsider.com 

…and I got no privacy…ooo uuu ooo

I used to think that song was a touch on the creepy side, but these days, you don’t know just who is watching you.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Asphodel Cycle 4: Apostle of Asphodel

Author: Celina Summers

Artist: Renee George

BUY LINK: http://www.aspenmountainpress.com/apostle-of-asphodel/prod_263.html

Tamsen Ka’antira has grown into a woman of incredible power as the Virgin Huntress’ player in the game of the gods. After discovering the Hippolytes, a fabled race of women devoted to the arts of combat, she must lead them back to the plains of Ilia to fight the greatest war of antiquity again. The pantheon of gods awaits her in their Hall of Judgment, where the ultimate fate of the Elven Realm will be determined. Read the rest of this entry »

The shaman “Lizard” is one of the two-souled-ones, a Berdache. Lizard must convince his proud and stubborn childhood friend, Red Wolf, one of the finest warriors of his village, that he too is a Berdache and must take the shaman training, before he loses his mind.

A call for aid comes, so the Berdache, his friend Red Wolf, and the beautiful Chickasaw slave, Born In Moonlight, take the journey to hopefully avoid a war. Will these three give in to the closeness they feel or will they be forever separated by the dangers they face from both the Spirit World, and the world that surrounds them.

Excerpt:

With the swiftness of a badger, Red Wolf’s hands clamped down on Lizard’s arms. The dream-crazed warrior yanked the Berdache to his chest with total disregard for dignity. All Lizard managed was a gasp of surprise before Red Wolf’s lips clamped down on his.

Lizard’s mouth was open from his gasp, and Red Wolf forced it open further with his tongue. The violent kiss, full of an unspoken need, aroused in Lizard a burning heat. Tongues tangled and fought, each vying for supremacy. Some force in Lizard demanded he not submit, until he was sure it was truly a choice on Red Wolf’s part, and not the dream that made him act thus.

With a moan, Red Wolf broke the kiss. “You with your maiden’s hair and shaman’s skills. You call to me like no other. I don’t understand you or the battles you fight, but I know now that you make war with an unseen enemy. It is enough.” Read the rest of this entry »

Before I get distracted (again) by emails, promo, and my latest book, I thought I’d tell you about my new office away from home.
 
Ever since my DH lost his job, I lost my peace and quiet, not to mention time in my home office. He follows me everywhere out of boredom when he’s not actively looking for work. Needless to say, my writing has slowed to a crawl despite my ever-increasing “talks” with him about leaving me alone for a few hours.
 
Desperation began to seep into my brain. Crazy schemes like drugging him into somnolence, killing him and burying him under the vegetable garden, and booting him out of the house were hatched and discarded.
 
More viable plans like getting up early (my best bio-rhythm is for morning hours and working late at night is hopeless, trust me) failed. He’d awaken, feel the empty place next to him, and come find me!
 
I don’t know about anyone else, but my income has been affected by the sluggish economy. I have to work to pay some of the bills. I can’t just take time off. I have deadlines to make, but can’t afford a leased office space, not even a shared one. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we lost two people who were influential to the last of the baby boomers.  Farrah Fawcett succumbed to anal cancer today at the age of 62.  Michael Jackson presumably has passed from cardiac arrest just shy of his 51st birthday (Aug. 29th).

Farrah’s stint on Charlie’s Angels brought about the popularity of the layered, blow-dryer look, her locks fabulous.  She also brought attention to Spousal Abuse with her portrayal of a battered wife in “The Burning Bed.”

Michael’s influence on music is as important as that of Elvis.  He made music lyrical again, imbued it with energy and creativity.  His physical ability to do amazing things with dance is still emulated.

Both Farrah and Michael endured a lot of pain, physical, mental, and emotional.  Perhaps now they are enjoying the peace that only a spirit freed of its earthly trappings can have.

May they both rest in that newfound freedom.

If any of you are on Twitter, Twitter Search #RWAFAIL and/or #RWACHANGE. If you missed it, you should read RWA President Pershing’s comments about what a bunch of hacks e-published authors are:

http://espan-rwa.com/rwa-president-pershing-responds/

I’m usually one of the last to abandon ship, but I did so this year. This shows I made the right decision.

Although all of us here know what a fiasco Trisk was, it wasn’t because it was an electronic publisher. It was a publisher that made bad decisions and had a few other issues. E publishers do come and go, and guess what, so do NY Print publishers. I guess Ms. Pershing hasn’t been reading Publisher’s Weekly recently. Pubs out of business, pubs restructuring, pubs laying off, pubs “down-sizing” their editoral and promotional staffs.

I’ve never been ashamed or sad that I choose to e publish. A) it was my choice B) My conscious feels better about being kinder to our planet C) My writing buddies made here and at other e houses have been as supportive if not more so, than any of the “published” RWA recognized authors I’ve associated with.

E Publishers come in all sizes; EC being the biggest, companies like my Aspen being among the smaller. I’m pretty sure that it is also true of print publishers (ok, so I’m being sarcastic)…and if you were to compare similar tiers in big houses to indie houses you’d probably see the same slide in royalties.

The insistance of making e companies do business the print way is ludicrous. It is barely working for the print companies right now. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was taught to emulate SUCCESSFUL models not failures. Pershing wants epublishers to throw money at authors and thus use that standard as proof that a publishing company is really a publishing company and that an author is really an author.  Another business model that doesn’t apply to e-books and one that has outlived its usefulness (rather like returns).  This is truly a case of comparing apples to oranges. Okay, so both are fruits, and other than the seeds it is pretty much where the similarity ends. Why does RWA insist on comparing ebooks to print books?

They are not the same and it is about time RWA tried trying to make this square peg fit in their round hole.

Lucynda Storey
www.LucyndaStorey.com