Here’s the thing, it brings up the question ‘How real is too real?’.  How much do you share with people you only kind of know (or don’t know at all)?  How much is too much?  How do you evaluate what may or may not be too much?

Each of us must answer the above questions for ourselves.  Wether you like it or not, transparency is really no longer an option. Things like social networks and social media have made it easy to find information for just about anyone. Reality is, we have to consciously decide what information about ourselves we’ll be putting out online.

Gretchen Rubin of ‘The Happiness Project’ has some standards that she keeps as part of her checklist before she posts something.

•           Am I being funny?

•           Am I giving interesting information from science, history, literature, etc.?

•           Am I revealing my character?

•           Am I telling stories?

•           Am I showing what it’s like to live in New York City?

•           Am I linking to other bloggers?

•           Am I comfortable with my parents reading this? (I never work blue.)

•           Am I criticizing anyone except myself?

Facebook and other social media were not something that I was automatically comfortable with.  It took me some time.  Honestly, I’m still not sure where my line is. How much information I really want out on the big world wide web about me and my personal life.  I think a checklist is a great starting point to gauge what I want to post.

Below is a video that shows some of the details about social media, the web and how things are changing.  While you watch it pay close attention to the words and what’s being said. What do you think?  Have you thought about it?  Have you really put conscious thought into what kind of personal information you want exposed?  I would love to know where you stand, might help me come to some of my own conclusions

First, both blog advertising and email advertising reach targeted audiences. A blog has a well-defined niche, as does a good email newsletter. They are both voluntary in that no one is forced to read a blog or sign up for an email list. This makes the targeted readers also willing participants. If your book is something that interests either the blog visitors or the email newsletter subscribers, then your ad has a good chance of catching the eye of your customer. Certainly, that is a better chance than persuading tough-as-nails bookstore buyers through pre-pub journals or actually reaching your reader through general newspaper ads.

BLOG ADVERTISING

If you have considered blogs in your marketing plan, good for you. Blogs just may be the most powerful way to market. There are lots of ways to market with blogs, but for now we’ll just cover advertising. If you read a blog and notice they have advertising, you can probably figure out how to advertise with them. If not, try these blog advertising options and in very short order you can have a blog ad campaign running.

b5media
With more than 290 blogs, 15 vertical channels and over 10 million unique visitors a month, b5media offers advertisers a large, loyal and growing audience for companies looking to promote their brands and products. For more information, click here.

Federated Media
Federated Media sites generate more than 365 million page views every single month across a small portfolio of hand-picked, leading independent sites. You can see rates right on the site and even launch your date-specific campaign by hand selecting on which sites you want to advertise. Find out more here.

Blog Ads
The original blog advertising service. Compare blog traffic and ad prices on 1500 of America’s most influential blogs or handpick blogs from among more than fifty niches. More can be found here.

EMAIL ADVERTISING

In addition to sending out your own email newsletter, you should consider placing advertising in other email newsletters. This is a great way to expand your audience. The best place to start is newsletters you already receive. If other folks are advertising in them, so can you.

If your book targets a business audience is in one of the following industries you should look into advertising in one of the SmartBrief email newsletters. Industries covered: Aerospace and Defense, Business, Construction, Distribution, Education (K-12), Energy, Finance, Food/Consumer Products, Health Care, Hotel and Lodging, Real Estate, Manufacturing, Retail, Telecom/Media, and Travel. It is not cheap to advertise here, but if you are reaching your exact B2B target audience, it may be worth it. Check into SmartBrief here.

Resource for Ad Design
If you need someone to design the ad graphics for you to use, I can recommend BannersMall.com. I’ve used their services before and they are very affordable, fast and the ads look amazing.

One Last Thought
Since you’ll be doing online advertising, the call to action in your ads will be to go to your website. A click on the ad should take them right to where they can learn everything they need to know about your book to make a buying decision. Your site must be selling books for you to see any results. Make sure that you have a strong conversion rate before launching an ad campaign. If you don’t know what that means, read this article to get started.