How to Create a Bestseller with Social Media: Interview with Marnie Pehrson

How to Create
a Bestseller
with Social
Media
Creating Massive
Visibility to Establish
Expert Status, Dominate
Your Niche, and Sell
More Books, Products
and Services.

Interview with
Marnie Pehrson
Founder of
IdeaMarketers.com

How to Create a Bestseller with Social Media
Interview with Marnie Pehrson
Founder of IdeaMarketers.com
You can get the complimentary audio program that accompanies this interview for no
charge here.

“You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind.”
[attribution unknown]

Denise: I want to welcome and thank you for taking action and
carving out some time in your day to join me and my guest for what I
anticipate will be a very enlightening conversation about what goes on
behind the scenes to create massive visibility and bestseller status for a
book on Amazon.com.

I’m Denise Wakeman, your online visibility mentor. I help you boost
your visibility on the web, guaranteed. It’s all about taking action to
transform your idea into income. That’s why I invited my guest to tell
her secrets.

What you are going to learn about today is about creating massive
visibility so you can create expert status, dominate your niche, and sell
more books, products and services.

I’m really excited to be hosting this call today. I want
to go through a couple of quick notes before I do
introduce my guest.

Marnie Pehrson is a bestselling author, speaker and
online publicist who helps entrepreneurs find their
place in the world, deliver their message online. She
is the creator of the longest running content directory,
www.ideamarketers.com. You can promote your
articles, press releases, information products, videos,

2 © Copyright 2011. Denise Wakeman. The Blog Squad, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

audios and expertise.

Marnie is also a wife and mother of 6 and author of 20 fiction and non-
fiction titles. She knows what she is talking about here, guys. If there is
truth or talent to be highlighted, Marnie is your girl. Her mission is to
help you live yours. You can get a free audio, Deliver Your Message to
the Hearts of Thousands With Half the Effort at MarniePehrson.com.

Welcome Marnie. I’m so glad, I’m so excited that
we are able to have this conversation. When I
saw what you were doing with Trust Your Heart I
was so impressed. That’s why I quickly grabbed
you and said, “Let’s talk!” Thank you.

Marnie: Thank you. It means a lot to me that I
can impress you. You are always impressing me.
Thanks a lot.

Denise: You created a really exciting event -- a
whole marketing scheme around the book. Before
we get into the details of that, why don’t you set
the stage? What was the genesis for the idea for the book?

Marnie: For some time it’s been in the back of my mind to create a
compilation book and include submissions from our experts on
IdeaMarketers. We have a really good group of experts on there. That
had kind of been percolating for a while.

It was back in December 2010, I was talking to my branding guy, Phillip
Davis (http://tungstenbranding.com), and he always asked me these
really pointed questions that get down to the root of things. He was
asking me, “What is your core message? There was probably a single
event or a choice that set everything in motion for you, what was it?” I
thought back to how I started my business 21 years ago because I
wanted to stay home with my children. The story's in the book so I
won't go all into it. I decided to trust my gut and stay home, create a
business, and be able to be there for my kids. Everything else has
stemmed from that.


As we talked we realize that a lot of people probably have those pivotal
moments in their lives where they throw caution to the wind and just
trust their heart on something and it makes all the difference. As we
started to work through the idea, that’s where it came from.

We were thinking Trust Your Gut in the beginning and we thought, “You
can’t make a good logo out of Trust Your Gut.”

Denise: It wouldn’t be very attractive.

Marnie: You’ve got an intestine or something? I don’t think so.

Brainstorming led to Trust Your Heart and went from there.

Denise: A lot of compilation books (or at least a traditional model for
compilation books) are that the authors pay a fee to be included in the
book. Then the publisher (that would be you) would then do the
marketing for the book and the author of the chapter gets 10 books to
promote themselves. You didn’t follow that model. How did you go
about choosing the authors for your book?

Marnie: I started first with our core experts on IdeaMarketers, the ones
I knew well from working with them over time. There were some that
were just too busy and couldn’t schedule fit it into their calendar. Maybe
they will be in an upcoming one.

I started with those people first. Then I started thinking about a handful
of people who I had worked with and joint ventured with, like yourself,
who are team players, who I knew I could count on to do what they
said they would do. I approached those people about being involved in
the project. It’s basically my clients and the people I have joint
ventured with in the past.

Denise: What made you decide that it would be invitation versus pay to
play?


Marnie: I don’t know. I just can’t resist promoting people. I am not
much of a pay to play kind of person. If I’m going to do something I
want to do it because it’s fun for me to promote the people involved. I
can get excited about everybody in the book.

Denise: Okay, well I think that’s what makes people love you so much
too. You are very generous and giving in that way.

Marnie: Thank you.

Denise: You self-published the book. Could you talk a little bit about
your process for making the decision of self-publishing versus pitching
the book to a mainstream publisher and going that route?

Marnie: I’ve done both, gone traditional versus self-publishing. There
are a couple of things I ask myself before I decide either way. One of
them is: How much control do I want to have over the project? The
cover, the content, how it’s edited. If I want to have a lot of control,
then self-publishing is a better way for me to go. If I don’t really care
then the other way is good.

Another question I ask myself is: How fast do I want it released? Does
it need to be on my timetable? In the case of this book, I really wanted
to do a live launch in conjunction with the Radiant Success Event we
were doing in April. December to April -- I knew I had to self-publish
that book if I was going to make it coincide. The themes were both
ideas to income.

Denise: So it was December to April. December is when you had the
idea. April is when the finished product was in your hand.

Marnie: Right.

Denise: That’s very fast. Excellent. Speed and control wins over
mainstream publishing. I’ve heard stories of it taking 18 to 24 months
to get a book published by a mainstream publisher.

Marnie: Yes, it can take a while.


Denise: Let’s now go into the marketing aspect of this. That’s really
what the meat is. How did you create this bestseller? When you were
thinking about this project late last year and had the idea and started
approaching people, what were some of your marketing goals for Trust
Your Heart?

Marnie: The main goal I had is to make this an Amazon bestseller. I
had done a Barnes & Noble bestseller before and Amazon is more
impressive. It’s harder to obtain. That was my goal for it so that
everybody that’s in the book can say they are an Amazon bestseller.
That was my end objective. I had a lot of confidence that we could do it
with the team we’ve assembled here.

It was funny because the girl who helped me do the launch, was a big
part of it, had never been a part of an Amazon launch before. She
admitted to me afterward that she was on pins and needles the whole
time while I was really relaxed. She was like, “How could you be so
relaxed?” I knew we could do it.

Denise: The biggest goal was to make it an Amazon bestseller. That
was the big overarching goal. There are a lot of elements that go into
creating a bestseller. You don’t just put it out there and it becomes a
bestseller. It takes a lot of work. How far in advance did you start
developing your marketing plan? Was it concurrent with the creating of
the content?

Marnie: Yes. It was going on the whole time. We were brainstorming
around how we were going to market it from day 1, December, how it
would be done.

Denise: The bestseller, the actual public launch was in May, not April.
April was when you introduced it to a live event. In May-it was just a
few weeks ago that the actual launch happened. Was there a reason
that you didn’t want to do that concurrent with the event? Is May a
better time? What was the reasoning around that?


Marnie: The reason I did it that way was I know the time intensity
involved in one of these launches. I knew I couldn’t be over in Raleigh
presenting an event and managing a bestseller campaign. I just did it
logistically so it wouldn’t be a nightmare for me. It really doesn’t matter
when the launch is. I mean, I wouldn’t launch the week of Christmas
probably. It’s a little too late in the game to take advantage of the
holidays. As far as April versus May, it’s no big deal.

Denise: Let’s get into the social marketing aspect of this. Was that a
very deliberate on your part to use social media? Was it the primary
part? How prominent was social marketing in your overall marketing
plan?

Marnie: It was a big part of it; the prelaunch, the launch and the post
launch promotion of it. We leaned heavily on Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube, blogging. We created blogs and emails and tweets that our
contributors could send out. I actually had somebody create all that for
me so I could just delegate that off. She created all of that
( http://www.LisaRaePreston.com ). Then I wrote some custom blogs. I
noticed some of our contributors, like you, customized what we sent
you and put it up as Facebook notes and things like that. That was all
part of it from the get-go.

Denise: What about in addition to social marketing, what other tactics
did you include in your plan? You can just give a broad overview.

Marnie: I’ve done some local radio interviews, some blog talk radio,
the contributors are being interviewed on blog talk, email marketing of
course was a big chunk of it, run ads on IdeaMarketers, we’ve done
press releases and of course, promoting the book at the live event as
well.

Denise: Would you say in terms of how much time was allotted-how
much time was pre-promotion and during the launch and then what’s
happening post-launch? It’s been a few weeks now. Have you seen any
evolution there in how you are promoting it and how other people are
promoting it?


Marnie: Of course all of it is much more exciting, ramping up and then
the day of launch. Your tendency is to let it wane afterwards. I’ve been
fighting to try to keep the promotion going on that. We are doing some
off-line PR and different things to try to get it more national exposure
and things like that and parlaying off the Amazon bestseller launch. It’s
definitely much more time intensive the weeks around the launch. It’s
something I intend to keep promoting on an ongoing basis.

Denise: Okay, good. A typical Amazon bestseller campaign that we’ve
seen over the last maybe 10 years-I think people have been doing
Amazon bestsellers. I can remember one from 2001-the first one I ever
remember noticing. A typical bestseller campaign includes enlisting a
ton of partners that give a gift and agree to send solo emails to their list
so that 2 million people get this promotion at the same time. You didn’t
do this specifically. Did you consider that format?

Marnie: Honestly, I didn’t. It’s been so overdone in my opinion that
that wasn’t a viable method that I wanted to do. We were looking for a
new way.

Denise: So, what did you do? Why don’t you tell us about how you did
it differently? I think that’s a big key to this. In addition to the actual
promoting of it, there had to be a hook besides just the book, right?

Marnie: Maybe I’ll tell you a little evolution of how we came to this. It
will give you an idea of how it flowed. What originally struck me was
Ellen Britt’s Cash Flow Telesummit. Do you remember that?

Denise: Yes, I do.

Marnie: I love the way Ellen did that. She time released the interviews
over the course of the day and week. Then she pulled them off, but you
could have the mp3s if you bought them. It was $97 to buy them.
When I saw that, I knew I had 19 contributors I could interview. I could
easily do a telesummit format. Instead of buying mp3’s they'd just have
to buy the book. They would have all the mp3’s.


We went from that intention, but not too long before the actual launch I
was brainstorming with Lisa Rae Preston, who has been my right arm
on this. Lisa thinks way out of the box, always looking outside the box.
She was challenging me to, 'Lift your lid. Do something that’s never
been done. Try to think totally new and come up with something that’s
a win-win-win for the readers, for the contributors and for us.'

As we were talking and brainstorming she came up with this idea where
anybody who buys the book, would be able to put their give-away on
the download page. They would have a link to their site and their opt-in.
We would be encouraging the readers to trust their hearts and turn
their ideas to income. It became a proactive thing about the reader. It’s
now about them and involving them in the process. I was like, “Wow.
That’s a cool idea.”

She wrote a lot of the copy that went in to explaining that ahead of time
and I programmed it.

Denise: I thought that was a brilliant idea because I haven’t seen
anybody do anything like that before. It’s always about, “Here, get all
this other stuff from other people,” rather than letting the customer if
you will-the customer who bought the book participate in the
abundance of the launch. I thought that was quite brilliant. How would
you rate the success of that bonus? Did you get a lot of people
submitting their-it was to submit a link to their own list. To their freebie
or their newsletter, correct?

Marnie: Yes. I would call it a major success. The day of launch we were
constantly looking over these submissions and putting them up. We had
to verify they were okay first. I had a girl helping me do that. She had
to take a break during the middle of the day and this left me to do it
along with my other duties on the launch. I felt like Lucy with the
conveyor belt of chocolate to keep it all going. It was a lot. It was
constant-people coming in all day long within a 24 hour period. We
actually let it run 36 hours so I had quite a few by the next morning
that we were still trying to do. That was a big success.


I think what it did is it showed people that we cared about them. I think
that’s a piece that sometimes is missing in marketing. We care about
you and your success. It helped people actually get into action around
their ideas.

I had people email me (and other contributors said people emailed
them) saying they had never created an opt-in page and didn’t have a
give-away. This made them get in action around their idea and actually
create those pivotal pieces of what they need to be able to do business
online. It got them to step in action.

Denise: You are absolutely right. I had forgotten about that because I
also received emails like that, “I’d really like to participate but I don’t
have a squeeze page. What do I do?” It took them from buying a book
to moving into action. That’s a big message throughout the book. There
are 19 different stories but many of them are about 'just do it.' That’s
what created the success for everybody in that book. We all took some
form of action, even when it was scary.

Can you tell us how many people or a percentage on how many buyers
submitted their information? Just to give us a sense of how much
participation you got out of that?

Marnie: I should have gotten a count. I’ll be conservative and say
about a third of them had submitted something for the download page.

Denise: That’s a pretty good response. Pretty good conversion I’d say.
The thing around that that was interesting to me is that by giving that
gift to your reader, to your customer who bought the book, you in turn
empowered them to go out and market the book for you as well. Did
you find that that happened quite a bit? That those people, once they
submitted their list building information that they would then tweet and
post on Facebook and that sort of thing?

Marnie: Yes, most of them did that. That was something I was keeping
up with too. Not only was I keeping a lookout for people liking the
IdeaMarketers page, I was going and friending them back. Almost all of
them went ahead and did that extra step. They’ve already done the


hard part. Why not just post it on their wall and like a page in order to
get their listing on the home page of IdeaMarketers as well.

Denise: In fact, the viral nature of social marketing really was a perfect
fit for this specific kind of promotion where you are inviting others to
participate.

Marnie: Right.

Denise: Excellent. Of all the various tactics of Facebook, Twitter, the
bonus what would you say is the tactic that really produced the best
result in terms of creating visibility for the book?

Marnie: Just the whole process of prepping them to be able to take
advantage of being listed on that download page. We crafted 4 emails
that we gave to each of the contributors to then send out. Three of
them went out ahead of time before launch that said, “It’s coming.
You’re going to be able to be featured here. We want to promote you.
Here’s how to do it. Get your stuff ready.” Prepping them into that until
they were ready on launch day helped them say, “Great. I've got all my
stuff ready and I can’t wait to get my listing.”

I think part of what that did is we taught them how to craft an opt-in,
so they'd know what to put on the download page. Not only did we say,
“Get this stuff ready,” we sent them examples of how they might write
a compelling bio, how they could write something that somebody would
want to take action on. We showed them that, “We want you to succeed.
Here’s how you do it.”

They emailed me. They emailed Lisa. Shannon Cherry told me her
people were emailing her saying, “Is this good? Is this what I should
put in?” We were even kind of coaching them over email whether they
ought to tweak what they had crafted. That whole 'getting them excited
about it ahead of time' and showing them we cared what they put on
that page was a big piece of the success of it.


Denise: It was really about engaging your community and helping
them be successful and then giving them visibility-selling the book was
almost a side benefit.

Marnie: Right.

Denise: It started out as the primary objective. By promoting all these
other people in such a very visible way that as a result the book did sell.

Marnie: Right. It was a no-brainer. A $9 or $10 book and you get all
this help.

Denise: Right. My favorite part of each chapter is the lessons learned.
What lessons did you learn about this campaign?

Marnie: Probably to challenge yourself to do something that’s never
been done before. Don’t settle for what everybody else is doing. Make it
your own and think outside the box.

Another one would be to show people you care enough about them to
create this win-win or win-win-win, in this situation.

The other would be logistical. Hire a few more people on launch day. It
was really intense - I was worn out.

Denise: I bet. I was following you throughout the day. I was like, “Oh
my gosh. I don’t know how you’re doing all this.” You were doing all the
data entry, for lack of a better word, putting that stuff on the site,
everybody’s opt-in offers.

Marnie: Luckily the buyers had put them in. The submissions went into
a database and all we had to do is review it, make sure it worked. A lot
of times people put stuff in that didn’t work. I wasn’t having to do the
bulk of that. I did have somebody working on that, other than the few
hours I was left to man it myself. The social media piece is what I was
doing a lot of.


Denise: Specifically, what were you doing around the social media
piece?

Marnie: For one thing, I was manning and looking at the Amazon
status. I’d go back and check it. I found that 15 minutes after the hour
is when Amazon updates. I’d say, “Okay, it’s 15 minutes after the hour,”
see where we were and then I’d post the update of where we were on
the Facebook page. I would usually tag a few of the people in the book
so that it would appear on their pages. I kind of randomly picked
different ones at different times.

Once we hit #1 on the Amazon mover and shaker, I got a screen shot
and tagged all of the contributors in the picture so that then it would be
on all of your pages and get some good conversations about that. That
made the contributors get a little bit more involved.

It was kind of funny, I talked to some of the contributors afterward and
they kind of perceived it as, “Oh yeah, I’ve got to submit that chapter
for Marnie. Oh well. It probably won’t be any big deal.” Then when they
started to see all the hubbub, “Wait a minute. I might be a bestseller.”
Even they had to sort of be sold on it. This process of keeping them


updated and tagged got them all excited. They started talking about it a
little bit more as the day progressed.

When the people did like the IdeaMarketers page for doing the extra
promotion, I would look at them, reply to any of the replies on that
Facebook page because people were replying there, befriend them, go
check on their Facebook wall and see if they posted about the book,
thank them, make some kind of comment about that. I was staying
involved in all the conversations about the book. I can’t remember what
all I was doing, but that’s a good snapshot of it right there.

Denise: It sounds to me like Facebook was probably the strongest
tactic that you employed there. Would you say so?

Marnie: Yeah, it was. I did do a video or two where I made a couple of
promo videos, like Sizzle videos spotlighting different groupings of the
contributors. I would post those to YouTube and Facebook and Twitter.
We were tweeting too. I usually delegate the Twitter off to my VA. She
had preloaded tweets going out prelaunch, launch and post launch. The
bulk of my individual attention went to Facebook.

Denise: Facebook has that strong viral component built in to it that I
think makes a lot of sense. Do you know-did you get any sense of
getting any kind of traffic, results or commenting or buzz from the
videos? We haven’t really talked about video.

Marnie: I got some. It wasn’t as big as I thought it might be. People do
watch the videos on the sales page. It’s probably-I don’t know the hard
and fast figures but it’s not as much as you would think. It might be 20%
of the people are looking at the video when they go to the sales page.

Denise: It’s interesting because everybody is like, “Video, video, video,
video. It’s the biggest thing. It's the thing that converts the most.”
Sometimes I wonder about that. I kind of think that it’s email that
converts the best. Then, Facebook probably.

Marnie: Facebook overall was. Email was where we got a lot of the
sales. Then the Facebook kept the momentum going. The thing about


Facebook that was interesting is we might not get comments from
people, but I went to church a couple weeks later and a couple ladies
stopped me to say, “You did that big Amazon bestseller launch. I’m
going to buy a copy of that.” They would be people I didn’t even think
did anything business related.

Somebody else went to a family reunion and all the people in her family
started asking her about 'that book' that she was a part of. People are
looking and seeing even if they’re not commenting with social media,
with Facebook especially.

Denise: I think that most-in general, with blogs, with anything on
social media, most people are lurkers. They will read and absorb and
move on and maybe about 20% are very active.

Marnie: That sounds about right.

Denise: Just to recap here, you published a book, Trust Your Heart:
Transform Your Ideas into Income. As part of the launch, you gave
a couple of bonuses. One of the bonuses was interviews with each one
of the contributors. Those were audio interviews that once you bought
the book, you could submit your receipt number and then you would
get access to interviews with all of the authors.

In addition to that, during that 36 hour time frame-it was 24 but it
became 36 hours-anybody who bought the book also had the
opportunity as an additional bonus to submit their own opt-in offer.
They would get exposure on the download page. After the next person
bought it, then their offer would also be included on that download page,
correct?

Marnie: Right.

Denise: I just want to make sure that the people on the call
understand what that process was. I’m not sure I explained that well at
the beginning.


Marnie: Those buyers-submitted opt-in offers are still there. If
somebody buys the book today, they’ll get the audios and they’ll get
the things that the readers submitted as well.

Denise: I see. There were about 30% of your buyers who took
advantage of that offer when they bought the book on launch day.
That’s how you become a bestseller, correct?

Marnie: Correct.

Denise: How much time does Amazon give you-what’s their time frame
for determining a bestseller?

Marnie: I don’t know that I could ever get a straight answer out of
anyone on that. I don’t think anybody knows. It seems to have some
momentum to it. It does look in the last hour. It is somehow
accumulating what you have done hour to hour throughout the day.
Then it’s also looking specifically at what happened in the last hour.

Denise: So it’s just-you just need to sell a lot of books.

Marnie: You really don’t have to sell as many as you think you do. It
doesn’t take that many books, really.

Denise: Are you willing to divulge that information or is that
proprietary?

Marnie: The day of the launch, I don’t have the exact figures, but I
think it was probably within a 350 book range.

Denise: Okay, that’s a lot of books. Many authors never sell more than
10 books. It takes a great deal of effort as you can see to get those
numbers up. When you consider that Amazon, just Amazon, there are
how many books for sale on that site? Millions. Millions, millions. You
have to cut through the noise and all those other books out there to get
people to buy yours and not somebody else’s. That’s the point of why
people do these launches, correct?


Marnie: Right.

Denise: You were creating an enormous amount of buzz and visibility
in the days leading up to the launch. As one of the authors, you were
keeping me posted every few days of what was happening, what I could
expect, how it was going to work, etc. Also keeping the general public
apprised of what’s about to happen. It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming.
Those emails that we were provided to let our audience know. That was
building up the anticipation. Then on that day, there’s got to be an
incentive. That’s how these Amazon campaigns came about where 500
people gave gifts. Personally, that’s not why I ever buy a book. I almost
never ever look at what the gifts are. I just want the book.

Marnie: I think people are on information overload already. To give
them 500 bonuses-it’s just like, “Oh, don’t dump anymore on me.” At
least that's how I feel. I don’t want to wade through all that. I just think
that’s overdone.

Denise: Exactly. That’s why I thought it was very interesting what you
did by turning things upside down and saying, “Instead of getting all
this stuff, let us promote you.” That’s also in perfect alignment with
what you do at IdeaMarketers. You are promoting other people.

Marnie: Yes, it’s all about promoting other people and getting their
messages out. It dove-tailed perfectly.

Denise: What are your plans for moving forward and keeping the book
top of mind?

Marnie: I’m continuing to create these videos, whether they get looked
at or not, I think they do help with search engine positioning because
you can include the link that you want people to go to in the description
of the YouTube video and it starts building links back to your site. I’m
taking little snippets of the audio interviews that I did with each of the
contributors, putting some pictures with it and creating little 5 minute
videos that I can upload on YouTube. I’ve done yours and Kathleen’s
[Gage] so far. I’ll probably just keep doing that with each one of those.
That’s one angle that we’re doing.


Another thing that we’re doing is a contributor contest that I’m starting.
It’s a Trust Your Heart story contest. Anyone will be able to submit their
story of how they trusted their heart and their business. If that story is
good, then we’ll include it on the blog, on the
www.trustyourheartseries.com blog. We’ll include your resource box
and your link. We’ll give them a catchy button like, “I trusted my heart.
Have you trusted yours?” something like that. It will link back over their
story on our blog. Then, the people who get the most useful comments
(and we’ll kind of watch these and see who is getting some chatter
going about what they’ve submitted) we’re going to have a gift that
we’re going to give to the people who get a lot of buzz going about their
story.

Then, every entry that is good enough to make it on the blog will be
considered in our next book in the series which is going to be more
along the lines of trusting your relationships in your business.
Relationships specifically that affect your business like collaborations,
customer relations, partnerships, family even. You’ve got an option to
actually be included in one of the next books.

Denise: So, guys you heard it here first. I think.

Marnie: You did.

Denise: You have an opportunity to get your story out there and get
massive visibility for your story on the Trust Your Heart series blog. I
would encourage you all to go do that
www.trustyourheartseries.com/blog.

Marnie: Yep.

Denise: I would encourage you, if you’ve got a story that you want to
get out there to the world to submit it. I didn’t know that Marnie was
going to be talking about this. This is brand new information. Go ahead
and post your story. This is going to help you build your visibility on the
web as well. You can hear what Marnie is doing. She is actively
promoting, not only the site but the whole concept of Trust Your Heart.


I saw at the end of last week, I think it was, when you did the video on
the snippet from the audio interview that we did. I was so impressed.
You pulled pictures off of my profile, which were great. Then just put
those pictures to a 6 minute clip from the audio.

I would advise everyone who is listening now and on the replay, to take
a look at that model. It’s a beautiful model for repurposing content, for
one thing, and getting it on other platforms which again extends your
visibility on the web and brings more traffic back to your site and more
traffic to your business.

I was really impressed with that Marnie. I think that’s a great tactic
there. Again, when you are doing that, from what I observed in my own
actions on that, as soon as I saw that I was like, “Oh, I’m going to go
click ‘like’ and favorite that video because it’s of me.” We all want to
have ourselves shown off.

As soon as I do that, because of the settings I have set up on YouTube,
it immediately gets posted on Facebook. You get more visibility. I get
more visibility. It immediately gets posted on Twitter. Again, expanding
the reach. I’ve started noticing it’s getting re-tweeted.

It just keeps the cycle going. This is what I want everybody who is
listening, this is what I want you to get out of this. All these little
actions can have a very long term effect and really keep you top of
mind in front of your ideal audience. It doesn’t have to be a book
necessarily. You can do this with a product or your service. That’s what
I liked about what I watched you do. Everything you did can be applied
to any kind of product or service that you want to promote. Wouldn’t
you say?

Marnie: Yes, definitely. The more you can collaborate and involve other
people, you help other people get what they want, they’re going to help
you get what you want. Involving, like you say, you tag the other
person who is in it and they’re happy to pass it along if they are
spotlighted in it.


Denise: That’s right. That’s right. The more you spotlight others, they
turn it around and spotlight it back on you.

Before we get to some of the audience questions, there are two things I
want to do. First, I want you to let people know how they can find out,
get more information about Trust Your Heart and also about what you
do, the services you offer. Then I’ll be announcing the winner from the
live call who is going to get a book from me. I bought a bunch of these
books on launch day so that I could give them away. I’ve sent them to
clients too.

Why don’t you, Marnie, first tell us how you can help people with
creating a bestseller or getting more exposure for their business?

Marnie: My main thing is helping people get messages out. You can go
to MarniePerhson.com. I have a free audio there on that page that will
let you get my philosophy on how you get messages out, how you
connect and how you help people realize that you care about them. I
think that’s one of the main things you need to cut through the noise.
People need to feel that you care about them. It's called, "Deliver Your
Message to the Hearts of Thousands with Half the Effort!" If you want
marketing your products, services, and message to be easy, natural
and fun, then this is a great audio for you to listen to.

There are other resources on my site as well. IdeaMarketers is a big
part of what I do in promoting people, promoting their expertise.

If you want to submit your story for a future book, go to the Trust Your
Heart Blog at http://www.TrustYourHeartSeries.com/blog . On that blog
I posted very quickly before our call, some basic instructions on how to
submit your story. You’ll see that entry there.

Denise: Perfect. Of course, if you are inspired to get the book there is a
link on the webcast page. Just click on that button, “Trust Your Heart,
get the book,” and that would make everybody happy, especially you
the reader. It will make you happy because it’s a very inspirational book.

Are you ready for some questions Marnie?


Marnie: Let’s go for it.

Denise: There are a lot. Some are very specific about the book process
and others are a little bit more general. We have addressed a lot of the
questions in one way or another.

Melanie is looking for advice for marketing a book when you are just a
co-author or ghost writer. Her book is Cancer Freedom, it’s the story of
her co-author’s battle with cancer. When the book came out she did
interviews and other publicity. Now she doesn’t want to be involved in
the marketing. Is there anything the co-author can do when it’s not her
story?

Marnie: That’s kind of a tough one. I know in promoting other authors,
sometimes it’s hard if they don’t want to be involved at all. You could
maybe back up and look at it sort of like as if you had written a novel,
like a history, or a biography. Promote it like you are promoting a
person. The tactics that I would use to promote someone else. You
could use those kinds of tactics to promote that book and you could still
talk about her and what she’s done and everything. You don’t have to
come at it from the angle that it’s all about you.

Sometimes it’s almost easier to promote someone else than it is to
promote yourself. You could come at it from that angle.

Denise: Okay, good.

A question from Terry, “Marnie, did you send your book to Amazon
book reviewers before publishing?”

Marnie: I did not. One of the things I dropped the ball on.

Denise: Have you been getting reviews on the book?

Marnie: Yes. We’ve got 9 reviews up on Amazon the last I looked.
We’ve gotten some people sending in reviews. In fact, if you like the


book and send me a review I’ll post it on the site with a link to your
website.

Denise: There you go, more visibility.

Marnie: There you go.

Denise: One of the things I talk to my clients about around visibility is
writing reviews on review sites like Amazon because that does give you
more exposure. One of the things that a lot of people don’t do on
Amazon, for example, is they never complete a profile on Amazon.
That’s something that can really help your exposure. You get a whole
page on Amazon with your name and links to your stuff. If you do a
review, make sure you complete your profile there.

Can you talk a little bit about the process of getting a book posted on
Amazon? Ellen asks. She says she’s written a book of poems, how does
she get it on Amazon?

Marnie: I go with the process of using a printer that is a subsidiary of
Ingram and Baker & Taylor. When I go through that printer, I’m already
in the distribution channels and they will post it up there. You also want
to make sure that you go back to where you got your ISBN, like
www.isbn.org or www.myidentifiers.com. Put in the description. You
bought your ISBN, now you’ve got to go in and put the title, summary,
all about the author, photo, etc.

A lot of the sites are pulling from the Books in Print catalog, that
database. You want to do that for sure. You need a distributor or you
can go the other way around which I’ve never really done with Amazon.
The back door where you just list it yourself. I always go through the
distributor.

Denise: You work hand in glove with your printer and they handle that
aspect of it for you.

Marnie: Right.


Denise: If somebody is interested in finding out about your printer can
they contact you to get that referral?

Marnie: Yes.

Denise: Okay, perfect.

Judy asks, “Have you used CreateSpace which is a division of Amazon
to self publish?”

Personally, I have not, so I can’t give any information on that.

Marnie: Me neither.

Denise: I’m trying to think of-I know somebody has that-

Marnie: I’ve heard people say they’ve used it. I've never heard
anything bad about it.

Denise: Sorry Judy. I can’t answer that one with any experience.

“My book is ready to be published as a Kindle on Amazon but I’m
waiting for reviews. How long do you suggest I wait? I have one very
nice review in hand and a bunch more that are promised but have not
come in yet.”

Marnie: Well, as you can tell, I don’t hold up anything for reviews.

Denise: I would say go for it. Don’t wait for the reviews.

Marnie: You can add them later.

Denise: Exactly. Now is Trust Your Heart available as a Kindle?

Marnie: It is. I’m not really sure why they’re not linking it to the book.
I’ve added it in. If you search “Trust Your Heart” under Amazon it
comes up under both formats.


Denise: Okay, perfect. I think I saw somebody ask that question. Again,
there’s so many here.

Do you know what kind of percentage-Mike is asking, “What percentage
of your book sales were Kindle?”

Marnie: None of those were Kindle on launch day.

Denise: Really?

Marnie: Yeah.

Denise: Do you know if Kindle books are included in bestseller stats?

Marnie: I have heard debates both ways. I can’t give you a hard and
fast answer on that.

Denise: Do you think that the Kindle book sales were not a part of the
launch because there was no link on the page?

Marnie: Yes.

Denise: People just weren’t looking for it. They were being sent to a
page for the hard copy.

Marnie: Right.

Denise: I think we answered the question about what you have to do
to become an Amazon bestseller. They don’t really tell you. It’s a
mystery.

Marnie: They don’t want you to know.

Denise: Right. It’s a mystery. We’ve heard Marnie say that
approximately 350 books were sold on launch day. That created-why
don’t you mention where the book-what heights the book reached. I
don’t think we mentioned that.


Marnie: It was #1 on Amazon’s Mover & Shaker list, #1 in Business
Entrepreneurship, #1 in Business Economics, #6 in Business overall
(that’s a super broad category, business), it got to #58 on all of
Amazon.

Denise: I just want to put it out there that is really an achievement.
Again, when you think about the millions of books that are available on
Amazon, and it got to #58 on all of Amazon. That’s huge. That’s the
top 100. That’s a really enormous achievement. You’re going up against
things like John Grisham and Malcolm Gladwell, people like that. People
who are well known, globally recognized authors. To be able to achieve
that level of status is fantastic. Congratulations Marnie.

Marnie: My 12 year old, I guess we jumped over some athlete-was it
Jeter? What was his name? I don’t know. My son is a sports fanatic.
“You just beat the guy who advertises on ESPN Mom!” He was so
impressed.

Denise: That’s great. This is an interesting question from Ginger Marie.
She asked, “Did you have any snags?” Were there any snags in this
whole marketing process? Any bumps in the road that you learned from?

Marnie: I would say the main snag that we hit was that we came up
with this idea so late in the game, with the 4 emails that needed to be
sent out, some of the contributors when we sent them the emails
simply had no room in their calendars (their broadcast calendar), so not
everyone sent all the emails. They were prepared for one or two emails,
not 4. I believe almost everybody sent at least one or two. There were
some people who totally made room and did it or adapted it and put it
in with another email. We probably could have gone a lot bigger had we
known we needed 4 emails ahead of time to give them the dates so
they would be able to send all four.

Denise: I imagine that you’ll be, for the next iteration or your next
book-I mean you’ve got 21 books under your belt already. I know
there’s more coming down the road too. Now you’ve got a timeline you
can work with.


Marnie: Right. We’ll know to do that a little better.

Denise: Excellent. That was going to be one of my questions. How
much participation did you get from the contributing offers? Did
everybody participate in this promotion? Or did some not? You don’t
have to name names.

Marnie: I think there might have been one that didn’t do anything. One
maybe that sent one email. There were some who sent 2 or 3 and did a
blog or something. Then there were people like you who just jumped on
and ran with it, like you, Kathleen Gage, Shannon Cherry. You all really
helped me out. I really appreciate it.

Denise: I got all wrapped up in the excitement on launch day too. I
had the Amazon page open in a tab and I kept checking it every few
hours to see. That was fun.

This is more of a mindset question. I know that that’s something that
you work with your clients on. This is from Raz Beaudin, “Selling your
story novel through social media is not easy. Myself, and I believe
others, are timid or outright scared to make that first big step. How did
you make that step?” (to get your story out on social media).

Marnie: I just have a mantra, "Learn it, document it, share it. Learn it,
document it, share it." I have a habit of documenting my epiphanies or
documenting my ideas. Just immediately putting them out. It’s almost a
knee jerk reflex sort of thing for me. I haven’t had a lot of fear around
it so I don’t know. Maybe just do it. If you do it one time-

Like a colleague was terrified of doing videos. I got her together with
two or three other friends who were also scared of making videos. They
set a deadline by which they would each make a video and post it
privately to YouTube and only each other would see it. Then they met
on a call, everybody looked at it, gave them positive feedback. Once
they made one, you couldn’t stop them from making more. They were
all excited.


Sometimes it’s just making yourself do it the first time even if you kind
of trick yourself into doing it.

Denise: Yes. It’s just taking the step. It’s hard to know what’s going to
be able to trigger you to make that step. Know that people want you to
succeed too. Nobody wants to-nobody is out there waiting to nail you if
it’s not perfect. One of the favorite things that somebody said to me,
I’ve heard many, many people say and I often return the favor and tell
my clients is, “Better done than perfect.” You can always tweak it down
the road.

Do you have time to take a couple more questions?

Marnie: I have maybe 5 minutes, then I have to go.

Denise: Okay, we’ll wrap it up quickly. One thing-you’ve mentioned
other people working with you. Connie did ask a question about your
team. How many people are on your team? I know you didn’t do it all
yourself. How did you work that out with your team? How many people
were a part of this process?

Marnie: There was one person who worked with me heavily, Lisa Rae
Preston, on the launch. I have a VA and a part-time PR person who
work with me. So, four including me.

Denise: You were very hands on too.

Marnie: Yes. I did a lot of it.

Denise: Let me just find one more question.

This is a good question, “Is it possible to do this for any book? I’m
writing a philosophical novel and want to get it out there as well as a
mystery.”

Marnie: I think it’s going to come down to you thinking outside the box
of another way to do this and get some people involved. You definitely
want to leverage the friendships, the colleagues you have in some way.


I don’t know that it would work exactly like we’ve done here. People
who read a novel probably are not the ones who are going to want to
promote themselves on a download page. I don’t know.

I believe where there’s a will, there’s a way. You’ve just got to wrap
your mind around thinking outside the box.

Denise: Right. One thing we didn’t really talk about because it wasn’t
the subject of the call, but it helps to have an established platform,
already have people in your world, in your circle to make these things
happen too.

Marnie: Yes.

Denise: You’ve been working online since 1994 or something?

Marnie: Yes. I know, somebody asked me how I did it. I said, “Step 1,
spend a lifetime creating wonderful relationships.”

Denise: There you go.

Marnie: People who will say, “Sure, I’ll help you with that, Marnie.”

Denise: There you go. That’s what it all boils down to. The
relationships you have with people. You’ve really demonstrated that not
only with how you put together the content, with people who you
already had a trusted relationship with. It wasn’t people buying into the
book that you didn’t know. It was people you hand picked that you
already had a relationship with. Providing a way for your community to
benefit on so many levels, as a contributor, as a reader, as someone in
your world. I hope that that comes through here. Everything that you
did around using social media to build visibility is all as a direct result of
the relationships that you built prior to this even becoming an idea.

Marnie: Right.

Denise: I know you’ve got to run. I want to thank you for joining me
today Marnie. I really appreciate your generosity and sharing your


tactics. This has been a great call. If you haven’t picked up a copy of
Trust Your Heart, I hope you will consider doing that. You can click on
the button at the left of the webcast page and then you can go to
www.trustyourheartseries.com and grab your bonus interviews with
each of the authors.

Again, thank you so much Marnie for being here with me today. I really
appreciate it. I’m going to be watching with great interest to see what
you do next.

Marnie: Thanks Denise, I really appreciate it.

Denise: Everyone take care. Blog on.

You can get the complimentary audio program that accompanies
this interview for no charge here.

Marnie Pehrson has created a detailed program on how she
created her bestseller launch. You get every email, video and
checklist she created so you can model her success…

The Anatomy of An Amazon Bestseller Launch

About Denise Wakeman

Denise Wakeman is an Online Visibility Expert and
Founder of The Blog Squad. She works with authors,
speakers, service professionals, and small business
owners to optimize and leverage great business blogs
as well as strategically use social media tools to gain
visibility, build credibility and make more money selling
their books, products and services.

Denise writes on two marketing blogs, is a columnist
for SocialMediaExaminer.com and is a contributing author on business
blogging in "Success Secrets of Social Media Superstars." She


frequently speaks at conferences about business blogging and how to
gain expert status through social marketing. She has been quoted in
the Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, Newsday, Canada's
National Post, FastCompany Online, as well as many other online and
offline publications. Denise was recently featured in a documentary
about successful women in business: Women in Business 2.0.

You can learn more about Denise at http://www.DeniseWakeman.com.

Post questions and comments for Denise on Facebook at
Facebook.com/BlogSquad and Twitter at Twitter.com/DeniseWakeman.

Learn more about how you can work with Denise Wakeman to
become a highly sought after super star in your niche >>> Click
here.


Resources
Get the free audio version of this transcript here:
http://denisewakeman.com/events/marnie

Idea Marketers: www.ideamarketers.com

MariePehrson.com: http://bit.ly/MarniePehrson

Trust Your Heart: http://amzn.to/TrustHeart

Phillip Davis: http://tungstenbranding.com

Lisa Rae Preston: http://www.LisaRaePreston.com

Trust Your Heart Series: http://budurl.com/trustaudio

Trust Your Heart Blog: http://trustyourheartseries.com/blog/

Complete Your Profile on Amazon: http://bit.ly/iYG0cA

ISBN: http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp

ISBN: https://www.myidentifiers.com/

The Anatomy of an Amazon Bestseller Launch:
http://bit.ly/bestseller-anatomy

Success Secrets of Social Media Superstars:
http://amzn.to/starsecrets

Women in Business 2.0: http://budurl.com/WIB20

Denise Wakeman: http://www.denisewakeman.com

Denise on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BlogSquad

Denise on Twitter: http://Twitter.com/DeniseWakeman

Work with Denise: http://denisewakeman.com/work-with-denise/


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links in this report may be affiliate links which means I earn money if you choose to buy
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DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES:
The information presented herein represents the view of the author as of the date of
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inaccuracies or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. If
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How to Create a Bestseller with Social Media: Interview with Marnie Pehrson

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