Who writes the books your readers like to read? Experts do. And when these professionals share their knowledge in a new book, there’s one thing they highly covet—book reviews.

In this article I’ll share the power of a book review and how you might be able to review a brand-new book.

Why book reviews are powerful

As a blogger, you’re likely seeking hot tips and new ideas to share with your readers. A good review of a new book accomplishes two objectives.

First, book reviews highlight new ideas your readers can act upon. It also helps your base to know whether they should invest their valuable time in the book. A good book review is good content.

Here’s an example review we did of Scott Stratten’s book UnMarketing.

But a second (often overlooked) advantage is the attention a comprehensive review gains from the author. Bloggers are the press to authors. And trust me, authors watch for and read reviews of their books.

At Social Media Examiner we’ve been able to get the attention of high-profile individuals by simply reviewing their books. And in some situations those efforts have borne fruit that helped our business grow.

For example, authors often share the review with their fans and sometimes these experts have agreed to participate in our events. Pretty powerful, eh?

What makes for a good review?

The best book reviews actually share some of the ideas from the book. They go further by adding the thoughts and opinions of the blogger. A good place to start a review is to share a story from the book. For example, here’s how I did one for David Meerman Scott’s latest book.

Adding a video component when you review the book is also a great way to get the attention of authors. Those reviews can also be uploaded on Amazon for further exposure for you (be aware of Amazon’s 100MB file size limitation).

Here’s me doing a review of David’s book.

Also consider adding the cover image of the book and the author to your review.

A word of caution—be authentic in your review. Authors and your readers can tell when you’re just sucking up to the author.

Want a chance to review a new book?

On June 6, I’ll be releasing my new book: Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition (Wiley). It will share the precise strategy and tactics we used to grow Social Media Examiner into a top blog.

I want to prove that a book can be popular without the traditional media or methods most authors use to promote their books.

I’m inviting up to 50 bloggers to review my new book on their blog and receive an extra copy they can give away to their readers.

Here’s how you could win two free copies of my book:

• Apply here (it’s quick and easy) by May 10.
• Agree to review the book between June 6 and June 30.
• Give away your second copy to your readers in a creative way.

I’ll review the entries and select the bloggers who’ll receive copies of the book.

WAIT, there’s more! (I always wanted to use that line). Social Media Examiner is looking for a new person to write book reviews for our site (in a volunteer role). We’ll be looking for someone among the 50 or so people we select above. It could be great exposure for your business.

Have you written book reviews as content for your blog? What advice can you share? Include your ideas in the comment section below.

What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, related to the craft of blog writing and a number of critical factors that will help to ensure the production of high-quality posts.

#1: Attribution

“Links are the currency of the web,” writes Jonathan Bailey. “If you use someone else’s content, whether licensed directly or through fair use, it’s important to be sure to provide a clickable link to the original site if at all possible. This not only helps visitors to your site find the original work, but it also provides SEO benefits for the creator of the content and guards against your site being mistaken by the search engines as the original work.”

#2: Blog as Hub

Not long ago, the company website served as the communication hub for an organization. Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman write in their recent book, Content Rules, How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business, “A Blog can serve as your online home base or hub for content, including posts you write, curated content you pull together, press mentions, and content created about your organization elsewhere that you want to share.”

"A blog can become the central location through which you can share your thoughts, words, and ideas with the world."—Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman

#3: Comments

One of the distinguishing features of blogs from earlier websites is the ability to leave comments. As Stan Shroeder writes on Mashable, “At their core, [blogs] are about two-way communication; a blog is simply not a blog without comments.”

Lisa Barone suggests, “Having comments open on your blog is a bit like sitting on your front porch in the evening. It lets people know you’re home and invites them to stop over if they want to talk. People can interact when they have something to say and they become active members of what you’re building.” She offers insights too about how to deal with spam and moderate comments.

#4: Disclosure

Bloggers need to comply with the FTC’s December 2009 policy on disclosures, which mandates that bloggers state clearly when they have accepted free merchandise or services from companies they discuss. Learn more about creating disclosure statements.

#5: Editing

The Yahoo! Style Guide recommends a number of proofreading techniques and suggests that writers use at least one of them, or combine a few:

• Print your page. Reading a printout is a great tactic for spotting errors.
• Wait. You’ll start to see what it actually says, not what it’s supposed to say.
• Ask someone else to read your copy. Having a second reader is one of the best ways to clarify and correct your copy.
• Read backward. Great for proofreading numbers and useful when you need to make sure that a piece of text is perfect.
• Read out loud. Reading out loud, or using screen-reading software, will make you take in the words differently. This is also a good way to check the “voice” of your piece and whether the text flows smoothly.
• Read line-by-line, word-by-word. Use a spell-checker.
• Change the look; e.g., font size, background color or text color.

#6: Frequency

The one thing readers have come to expect from a reputable blog is a frequent and reliable posting schedule. The number of posts you plan to write per week depends on your resources, but whatever works for you, it’s best to commit to a regular and consistent schedule.

#7: Grabbing Attention

With an inordinate amount of blog posts being published daily, you want to strive to stand out with the topic, writing and appearance of your posts. Grab attention with great copy, memorable images and inspiring videos.

Make your blog post stand out from the crowd by grabbing attention.

#8: Headings

Speaking of grabbing attention, one sure way to do that is with the use of headings and subheadings. Not only does it help the reader to ascertain what the post is about, but it also increases the readability of the post, which is an important consideration for all web content. Heading tags (e.g., H1 and H2) will also help with optimizing posts for search engines.

#9: Infographics

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These representations are being created and posted in increasing numbers these days. What’s great for bloggers too is that many infographic designers often encourage others to embed the infographics on their blogs as long as they credit and link to the original with appropriate attribution.

Here’s a link to a cool infographic, The Journey of a Successful Blog Post.

#10: Juxtaposition

Sometimes coming up with a steady stream of ideas for blog posts can feel challenging. At times like these, you can use a technique where you reference two different posts and then write about the similarities and differences in the thinking and offer your readers a third unique viewpoint.

#11: Keywords

Using keywords in blog posts helps the post to be picked up and ranked by search engines. While it’s important to use them strategically in title tags, headings, body content, URL and meta description, it’s also important to not go overboard and keyword-stuff a post. Whiztechy has a very helpful article, “How to Use Keywords Effectively in Your Blog Posts.”

#12: Links

As discussed previously in #1: Attribution, links are the currency of the web. In addition to linking to posts you’ve referenced, you can also refer to and link back to one of your own related posts, which will also help your blog’s SEO.

#13: Mobile-Friendly

More and more readers these days are coming to blog posts via their mobile phones, so if your blog isn’t already mobile-friendly, you’ll want to take the necessary steps to make it more easily accessible. Many popular blogging platforms have mobile plugins and templates. Darnell Clayton shares helpful information in his post, “How to Make Your Blog Mobile Friendly.”

#14: Numbers in Titles

Jeremy LaDuque writes in his post, “5 Tips for Effective Email and Blog Titles,” that research has shown that “when a title contains a number, it gets more attention.” 26 Tips, anyone?

#15: Optimizing Blog Posts

As discussed earlier, using keywords and tags helps with a blog’s overall SEO. Taken a step further, Darren Rowse has a post, “Optimize a Single Post on Your Blog for SEO,” about steps you can take to go back and further tweak posts after they’ve been published by analyzing the competition, and looking further at on- and off-page optimization opportunities.

#16: Pain Points

Rich Brooks writes in his post, “How to Develop a Social Media Content Strategy,” that knowing your audience’s pain points will help you tap into conversations that may otherwise pass you by. Begin by finding key phrases and narrowing them down further so you can determine what’s most important to your audience.

#17: Question

Because most bloggers want to encourage conversation on their blog posts, many have found it helpful to come right out and ask readers questions at the end of the post, which gives people something specific to respond to. For example, an appropriate question to end this post might be “What blogging tips would you add to this list?”

#18: Readability

Michael Martin suggests that people come to your blog to read articles, and the easier they are to read, the better. He offers a useful resource, “30 Things That You Can Do Now,” which includes formatting suggestions regarding links, line spacing, pull quotes, font and background colors, structured hierarchy, italics, bold, etc.

#19: Style Guide

Blogs require a consistent style guide so that anyone who writes and edits posts will be able to adhere to the same rules. Some blogs choose to adopt the AP Stylebook and others prefer the MLA or The Yahoo! Style Guide. As Jonathan Bailey suggests, you’ll also want to decide up front how you address specifics such as post length/frequency, post titles (length, capitalization), formatting (subheads, lists), images (sources, sizes), links (number, format), attribution (quotes, photos), and author information/bio.

#20: Templates

Kit Singleton provides “7 Tips for Choosing a Business Blog Template.” She suggests thinking about key factors such as knowing your blog’s purpose, paying attention to aesthetics, the arrangement of columns, recommended blog features, modifiable CSS code, checking your blog in several browsers, and when the time comes, not being afraid to change the look and feel of your blog.

#21: Updates

At times you may find that something you wrote about previously has undergone a significant change. Rather than starting a new post from scratch, you can go back to the original post and update it with the information you’d like to add. For example, the number of users on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are constantly increasing, so you might add the new information and indicate that you’ve updated the page since the original post date. That way your posts won’t get too outdated and it’ll reflect well that you’re working to keep the material up to date. It also gives the reader a good frame of reference on the quickly changing landscape.

#22: Voice

How does your blog sound to a reader? What does it say about you and your business?

Georgina Laidlaw suggests that “Voice is the tone in which you present content…” If a message is what we say, then voice is a critical element in the tone of your content. Pace, rhythm, turns of phrase, idioms—even the way you use punctuation—all contribute to the voice of your blog.

Heidi Cohen offers 7 points to help you create your writer’s voice: personality, tells a story, is contextually relevant, listens and interacts, sounds like a real person, has a point of view and avoids sanitized corporate-speak.

#23: Write for the World

If you’ve ever looked at your blog analytics and found that a particular post was read widely in another part of the world, you’ll be able to fully appreciate this next tip—Write for the World—identified by the Yahoo! Style Guide. As it suggests, “Do not assume that you know who’s reading your website. Your audience is not homogenous; its members almost certainly vary in age, race, gender, physical abilities, nationality, culture, sexual orientation, and so on.”

Writing for the world can further be translated as banishing bias from your language; e.g., determine whether a group-specific reference is relevant, be exact, beware of false generalizations, use “us” and “them” cautiously, don’t make the characteristic the person, watch out for bias inherent in slang and other figures of speech, and don’t overcompensate.

Write for the world and banish bias from your language.

#24: Expert Interviews

Conducting expert interviews is a good content source for blogs to consider. Name recognition of someone in your field in whom your audience is interested has a good chance of increasing the post’s readership. Furthermore, if the person you interviewed links back to your site or tweets about your interview, your name becomes connected with the expert’s, and you can bring a new awareness and credibility to your blog. In the post “Traffic: Will the Expert Interview Increase Traffic to Your Blog or Site?, you’ll find a good discussion for how to go about asking for an interview with an expert, suggestions for how to conduct the interview and a list of sample questions.

#25: YouTube

There are many good reasons why you’d want to embed a YouTube video into a blog post. As YouTube says, “Video is much more engaging than text. It draws more users and keeps them on your site for longer… When looking to increase engagement, try using video as a way to start discussion or make a commentary by creating more context for your users.” Marziah Karch has a great post about how to share, embed and link YouTube videos.

#26: Zigzags and Leaps

In an attempt to keep our blog posts fresh, writers may need to explore new techniques every now and then. Books on the craft of nonfiction and even fiction writing can offer different directions for bloggers to take to get the momentum moving again. In the book Now Write! Nonfiction, Barbara Hurd offers a chapter entitled “Zigzags and Leaps.” She writes, “So the question becomes: how to make the mind move, how to make our thinking zigzag and swerve, plunge and leap as we search for the right direction? I often suggest that students with listless drafts make a series of mental moves that might open up things a bit, allow a little more in, including, we hope, the discovery that’s been eluding them.”

Final thoughts about fine-tuning blog posts: To have your blog serve as your online home base, it will require an ongoing commitment to quality content and great attention to detail. But the personal and business rewards of maintaining a blog will be well worth the effort!

What new tips will you try out? What blogging tips would you add to this list? Leave your comments in the box below.

All photos from Shutterstock.

As my recent poll shows, generating incoming traffic is the number-one need that people have right now, and for good reason. Traffic translates into:

• Attention, engagement, conversation and recognition
• Spreading your message far and wide
• Prospects and subscriber opt-ins
• Customers, increased sales and leads
• Media and interviews, which lead to more attention

… and last but not least, an ego boost.

In a previous article here I mentioned the many benefits of Twitter for your business. Now here are seven key points you need to know if you want to get more targeted traffic from Twitter:

#1: Know your audience

Growing your traffic always starts with your audience if you want to do it right. Untargeted, uninterested “hits” are a waste of time and resources at worst, and at best just pure vanity.

• What does your audience want and need?
• How do they like it delivered?
• Which topics are on their minds right now?
• Are there trends that are growing in popularity?
• How do these folks speak? What words and phrases do they use?

This means that driving traffic starts with listening and observing. Get to know your target so you can most efficiently engage them.

Twitter has a tool for this. Use search.twitter.com to find what people in your niche are talking about and follow some of their conversations.

Once you get an idea of what people are interested in, join in those conversations and talk to people.

#2: Get the “right” followers

So much rubbish is thrown around about how to grow your follower count that it makes it seem that the number is all that matters. Wrong!

You need people to want to hear what you have to say. This means you do NOT want people who auto-follow because they are either:

1. Robots and not real human beings (e.g., spam software, people trying to inflate their follower count, scrapers)
2. Not actually reading your tweets and just following to allow you to DM them

The followers you most want are those who follow you because they are interested and think they will get value from your tweets. These people are most likely to find you via:

• People retweeting your stuff, either within Twitter or using a TweetMeme button
• Referrals from other Twitter users
• Your blog; for example, your articles that say “Follow me on Twitter at @chrisgarrett and tell me what you think,” or your sidebar Follow Me button
• Other people’s blogs, when you guest post or comment
• Clicking your forum signature when you participate in discussions, or your email signature

Unfortunately Twitter closed off a really nice way that people used to get targeted Twitter followers. It used to be that we could “listen in” to conversations that people we followed were having, but now you have to be following both parties. This means we can’t discover new people that way. If someone puts something before they mention your @name it can still work, and I still occasionally get followers through that.

Essentially the advice is, put your Twitter name where it will be seen and encourage people to share it!

#3: Build engagement

Talk to people.

Engage your followers. Don’t just see them as a passive list of eyeballs! Treat folks as human beings and you will do much better at this stuff. It is called social media for a reason.

• Ask questions
• Hold conversations
• Dip into others’ conversations
• Encourage feedback

#4: Get clicks

So now your followers are seeing you as an interesting person and not a robotic “feed,” which means they are more likely to take notice when you tweet out a link.

Tweet Valuable Links

Whatever you do, don’t just tweet your own stuff. That is both selfish and boring!

Get into the habit of sharing anything cool, regardless of who created it. Retweet good stuff and other people are going to be more willing to retweet yours. Tweet out fun and useful links your friends send you in email or from the news. Be known as a person who tweets good stuff.

Timing

Not everyone is online at the same time. There is a whole world outside of your timezone, plus people have a different schedule than you. You know the feeling of confusion when you land in a foreign country. Not only have you got to adjust to local time, but also people seem to have their meals at a different time of day, shops open and close at strange hours, and business meetings seem to be held randomly. Twitter is like that, you can’t just look at a time zone converter and think people will be at their desk at a certain time.

1. Tweet the same thing a few times, a few hours apart, to give your message several chances to be seen.
2. Vary the times of day you tweet and monitor response.
3. Watch for the peaks and troughs of activity in YOUR stream (not just what works for others).

I tend to aim to catch the peak times for Aussies, the EU/Brits, East Coast USA, and West Coast USA, but it is far from an exact science!

Headlines

There are two main driving factors that affect your chances of getting a click:

1. Your reputation
2. The headline

Hopefully at this point #1 is taken care of, but #2 takes some work.

First of all, use my free download 102 Proven Headline Formulas as a starting point. There are 102 fill-in-the-blank templates which ought to give you a head start on writing a compelling caption.

If you use an interesting title and it matches your audience’s wants and needs, then you are going to get clicks.

Split test

You might not get it right the first time, so try another variation:

• Phrase it as a question
• Make it into a “How To” headline
• Use curiosity versus just the facts

A lot of this is about learning what your audience reacts to best.

#5: Measure performance

When you use a link-shortener with a built-in click-tracker such as bit.ly, you can see how well any of your links perform. This is useful for improving over time and to see which links get picked up virally.  As they say, what you measure you get more of!

With Twitter it’s not just the link clicks that YOU get, but the retweets and shares that really drive the real traffic. TweetMeme and bit.ly can give you vital reporting about how well you do, as well as your Google Analytics.

#6: Do more of what works, but test, test, test

When you find what works for you, do more of that. Keep in mind though that if you only do the same things you will either get the same results and not improve, or you will wear out that technique. Experiment, learn and mix it up.

Trends change, techniques improve, fads go out of fashion. Do not get stuck on rails, move and flow with your audience.

#7: Encourage sharing

Once you have your initial click, your job is not done!

Make sure your article has a TweetMeme button so that anyone who likes what you shared can easily share it too.

If you want to get really fancy, give people an incentive to share, such as a random prize drawing for anyone who tweets your message. Of course, the message will contain a link back to you …

Once in a while it doesn’t hurt to actually ask for retweets. Just don’t overdo it, as you will only annoy your followers. This will make them less responsive, rather than more.

Does it really work?

Here is a case study for you. For the last Social Media Success Summit in 2009, Mike Stelzner and I ran a competition on chrisg.com using all the advice mentioned here in this article.

The competition post was retweeted over 1,000 times

Using TweetMeme we can see that the competition post was retweeted over 1,000 times before it stopped tracking.

Social Media Success Summit 2009 Competition Clicks

Just the cli.gs link alone was clicked 12,753 times.

So yes, it does work.

Bottom line:

• Gather the correct audience
• Be awesome
• Share cool stuff
• Encourage other people to share it too

Does Twitter work to generate traffic for your stuff? Got any tips to share? Anything people do that annoys you? Please share—go ahead and comment below right now!

One aspect of your writing requires a great deal of effort getting right, and it is so obvious it is commonly overlooked. What is the first thing a social media user sees?

“I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and I get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves.”
George W. Bush

“It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read.”
David Ogilvy

Yes, you guessed it. It’s the headline.

Without a compelling headline, you will not attract attention, and your article will not spread as easily. If you do write a killer headline then you will get more clicks, more bookmarks, and your readers will be compelled to share it with their friends and contacts.

Creating Compelling Headlines

Take a look at the last article you wrote that did spectacularly well (or if you do not have a great example, choose a disaster).

• Does it grab attention? The first job you have to get right when producing a new article is to get it read, and your first task toward getting your article read is grabbing the reader’s attention.
• Will it target a particular audience? We are largely driven by self-interest and our brains are wired to look out and listen for any message that addresses us. If your headline identifies a target group specifically, then that group, if they have an affinity for it, will take notice. Be careful though, this can backfire!
• Is it specific? Highly specific approaches work much better to draw attention and create belief than generic and vague statements that can come across as untrustworthy. Rather than say “get great results” say “achieve 147.2% increase in profits with this simple tweak.”
• Are you generating a great deal of curiosity? What is going to get the reader not only to take notice but also take action? You need to give him or her a good reason to keep reading past the headline into the full article, and this is where curiosity comes in. Create a feeling of incompleteness; hold off on the punch line, so the reader has to find the answer to feel satisfied.
• Is the headline promising powerful benefits? Does your headline answer “So what?” Above all, there has to be a payoff. Your readers need to know what is in it for them, why should they care.

5 Types of Headline

The standard social media headline types tend toward the following categories:

1. News—Particularly breaking news, is very popular. Announce something, share a piece of gossip, and let people know what is happening now. Social news has made traditional news media look slow and dated because by the time the news has spread around the social sites, mainstream media is only just picking it up. The downside of this, of course, is that your content is not going to be perceived as evergreen—there will always be something newer, shinier, and trendier. For example: “Breaking News: White House Moves to Ban Bacon”
2. Goals—Offer a way to achieve a goal, get more, be more powerful, wealthy, attractive, healthier… whole magazines are full of this stuff. Just take a look next time you are at the supermarket checkout. For example: “101 Tried and Tested Dating Secrets to Win the Partner of Your Dreams”
3. Problems—The flipside to the goal is the problem. Fear sells just as well as positives; just ask the newspapers. The economy, health, worries about global politics, you name it. For example: “Finally! Make Your Computer Virus-Free With Open-Source Software”
4. How-to—Share a technique, tutorial, recipe or formula to achieve something practical and beneficial. It is kind of the same as the goal, but rather than a dream, it gives you the steps to create something in reality. For example: “How to Win Friends and Influence People”
5. Entertaining—Social media is full of pure entertainment. It might be a funny video, a cute picture, a joke or even a link to an accidentally funny forum thread. This is the coffee break content that social media was built upon. For example: “Nasty or Nice? Take The Ultimate Personality Test”

Most of all, you need to trigger an emotional reaction. Remember we do not just want “interest,” we want the reader to take an action—even if that action is just to hit the vote-up button.

Emotional Hot Buttons

If you want to really draw attention and get your readers to take action, even if it is only to comment or pass along your link to their friends, you need to grab them where it counts: show empathy and make them feel. Can you get your reader to laugh, cry, or shout at their screen? Take a tip from Hollywood and move your audience emotionally using these hot buttons.

1. Boost and Slam—What is the best/worst/most/least? Compare and contrast, particularly if you can combine with Contrary (see #10).
2. Laugh, Cheer, Snigger or Cry—Human interest that tugs the heartstrings always works. Especially when you combine weep, snigger and cheer. Just ask Susan Boyle.
3. Outrage, Anger, and Righteous Indignation—Listen to talk radio or the talking heads and their jabbing fingers on any cable news network.
4. Fear, Scams, Problems and Looming Disasters—Be afraid, get clicks.
5. Sexy, Cute and Attractive—Sex sells. Lust draws attention.
6. Divide and Conquer (Us versus Them)—Polarize your audience, get attention. Many of the chain letters you get asked to pass on are all about supporting one side of an argument while attacking another, particularly when it comes to politics.
7. Shock and Awe—Take someone by surprise, present something as outrageously and wildly different.
8. Curiosity, Confusion, Riddles and Puzzles—Make readers have to read just to get your idea out of their heads.
9. Caught in the Act—People love it when the rich, powerful and famous are caught doing something they shouldn’t, especially when it is against their accepted brand or persona.
10. Contrary, Contentious and Devil’s Advocate—Challenge accepted wisdom, deep-seated stereotypes and assumptions.

10 Headline Formulas That Work

To get you started creating compelling headlines, use the following “fill in the blanks” headline formulas.

1. Do You Make These ________ Mistakes?
2. The Secrets of ___________
3. What ______ Can Teach Us About ________
4. Everything You Know About _____ Is Wrong<
5. How _______ Made _____ and You Can Too!
6. If You ________, You Can ___________
7. Finally, No More _______
8. At Last! _________
9. Learn How Millions of ______ ________
10. How to Get More/Better/Cheaper _______

If you like these headline ideas, make sure you click here to download the free PDF 102 Proven Headline Formulas now.

Over to You

Share some of your best headlines with us in the comments!