This was the title of the insightful presentation that Charmaine Hammond gave on the recent SkillBites Author Teleseminar.  An international speaker, bestselling and award winning author and radio host, Charmaine shared the strategies that she has employed that have helped her substantially grow her business year after year.  Below is a summary of these strategies.

1.    Review and Learn:  Review the past year and asking yourself 4 questions:  what worked well; what challenges or roadblocks did you encounter, or feedback did you receive; what did you learn; and what will you do differently next year.  Hammond ran a contest last year, and although she gained lots of new followers, she encountered technology issues.  She also learned that some of the social media sites she was spending time on last year weren’t fruitful for her, so she will drop them.

2.    Social media:  Set up your social media posts early in the year.  Look for a marketing angle, where you can tie in your post with a national holiday (of which there are hundreds).  For a list of the national holidays, go to http://familycrafts.about.com/od/holidays/tp/specialdays.htm.

3.    Expand to other platforms:  take your book and turn it into at least 9 other products.  If you have an eBook, get it in print, and recorded as an audio book.  If it’s a long book, make smaller books from it; or if you have multiple short books, turn them into a longer book.  Make podcasts or videos from the information.  Get speaking engagements on the topic of your book.  Turn the information into a webinar or training course.  Develop checklists or activity sheets.  Use the content in blog posts and articles.  Hammond repurposes her books into articles that she publishes on ezinearticles.com and selfgrowth.com. With a little creativity, you’ll soon find even more than 9 ways to expand your platform.

4.    Blogging:  spend time getting fresh content on your blog.  It’s a really beneficial tool.  You can repurpose your book content, and use your blog to promote your book; or you can write blog posts and use the content for your next book, or for articles.  When emails go out to your network that you have a new blog post, that’s one more connection to them in your sales nurturing process. You can also have your audience repost your blog posts, getting even wider visibility.

5.    PR:  Hammond has seen her sales spike after she is seen on TV, radio or in the newspaper.  She exploits these events further with press releases, which she puts on free press release sites, and with announcements in social media.  After the teleseminar, Hammond sent a list of such sites that she uses:

•    http://www.wireservice.ca/
•    http://www.free-press-release.com
•    http://service.prweb.com
•    https://ireach.prnewswire.com
•    http://www.prlog.org/ca.
•    http://www.prlog.org
•    http://pressreleaseshq.com/submit-press-release/
•    http://pressreleaseshq.com/submit-press-release/

6.    Reviews and endorsements:  Send your book to people to get reviews, testimonials and endorsements.  These can be used on your website, in social media, in articles, in your next book, and even in case studies.

7.    Create systems:  Systematize everything you do.  It’ll make things much easier the next time around.  For instance, create a media list of stations and contact information, and a process to follow.  When Hammond has an upcoming interview, for example, she goes to all the local bookstores to let them know in advance, so they can promote her book at the same time.  When you have a process in place, it makes it easier to delegate the task to someone else.

Charmaine can be reached at 1-877-317-9797, and her website is www.charmainehammond.com.