[ Thurs May 31 12 ]

The Northern California Books Publicity & Marketing Association hosted a panel on Community Engagement & Publishing at San Francisco’s Hotel Rex, moderated by Kat Engh with Evan Karp, Meghan Ward, Peg Alford Pursell, and Stacey Lewis. Below is a basic index of each video:

1. Kat introduces the panelists, who introduce their projects
2. What works: panelist successes:
   1. Write regular, well-researched blog posts
   2. Be timely
   3. Provide a physical place for community; promote your members
   4. Track your statistics and understand them; grow into a web presence that corresponds to your interests and activities
3. What doesn’t work, why, and what should we do about it?
   1. Google Analytics
   2. Meghan Ward on blogging
   3. Know what you have to offer of value to the community and be personable
   4. The power of e-mails and newsletters
4. These are the things you should be doing
   1. Don’t force anything on yourself; make it easy on others to help you
   2. Pinterest
5. The question of what people can reasonably expect
   1. It’s more important to know what you’re doing and to make it the best that you can; make your project as open to the public as possible
   2. Community rules: what do you do about people who do not respect the tone of the community?
   3. Be transparent! and start the conversation
6. Separating business and personal life on social media: a good idea?
   1. Investment in the community and the right to feedback
   2. What do you tell authors who are not natural born schmoozers?
      1. What makes sense to them? Join an online community: write a book review or an essay or a blog entry: The Rumpus, for instance
      2. It should be an extension of the author
7. Authors who love social media: how to optimize it?
   1. Follow your interests and know it will take time
   2. The quality of your followers is more important than the quantity
   3. Take the time to figure out each platform before diving in
   4. Google+ | Red Room | Tweepi | Bay Area Book Publishers
8. Misc
   1. Litquake Author Sponsors
   2. City Lights events

Click “Play” to watch all, “Next” to skip forward, or the small “Playlist” screen (to the right of the video time) to see thumbnails and watch them directly.