Sometime last year I joined a group then called the Digital Publishing Group. Now it's called the Publishing Point, and it's essentially a group of publishing professionals who are interested in the future of the industry in the digital world.  About once a month there's a brown-bag lunch on a variety of topics, with a guest speaker. We heard Seth Godin last fall, and yesterday I went to a session called "Market Yourself, and Books While You're At It." The guests were Max Kalehoff of Clickable and Stephen Baker, a journalist and author, formerly of BusinessWeek magazine. (If you want to read some of the tweets, including mine, head over to Twitter and search the hashtag: #pubpt.)

As you all know, I've kind of thrown myself into the digital world pretty heavily over the last year. I read tech blogs, I made friends with the thought leaders. (My best friend is one of them, which gives me an inside track.) On the the business end, we've tackled it full-force from majorly upgrading the agency website to a fabulous platform, to growing a Twitter following, to doing all kinds of interesting marketing for CANDOR, especially the podcast.

And you also know that I've been looking for the answer to, "What next?" How do I capitalize on these efforts and growth and convert that to sales?

What I got yesterday was a little more of the reiteration of today's conventional wisdom about internet marketing and becoming an influencer. Let me bullet point some of it for you, pretending I haven't done so several times in the past:

• BE YOUR OWN BRAND: Trust in corporations is dropping, and workers have to become free agents (and be visible) to maintain some job security. Individuals need to develop themselves into a brand. Authors need to be more involved in their own promotion. The goal is eventually to get people to follow YOU and not just what you're covering but this takes time.
• ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE: To sell something, you have to listen to the marketplace, and find the people who are interested in the content you are providing. Then you have to actively engage them. Example, you can search for your book title on Twitter and start following anyone who is talking about you and your book. This creates a relationship, and gets people invested in you. 
• BUILD TRUST: Consumers and audiences like to know they are getting something more than just what they're paying for. Give away things for free. Offer something on top of the ticket price of your product. Get them talking, get them loyal. And make them like you. Have some personality, be a real person. People like connections. And free stuff, of course. That keeps people coming back to actually buy the product.

The trick on all of this is that is just takes time, and you have to be proactive about it. And dedicated for the long-haul. I blogged about this last week. Sure, I have nearly 2000 Twitter followers (by the way, a query critique or a free book/galley goes to lucky follower #2000), but it took me a year to get there. And I will keep building, cultivating, and gardening, as actively as I can. My authors should hopefully be doing the same thing now too. Welcome to Elana Roth: The Brand. Enjoy your stay!

In any case, back to the starting point... While the session was a bit 101 for me, it probably is important information to repeat here. And I was able to get in touch with Max Kalehoff (through Twitter, of course) afterward, in hopes of keeping the conversation going and learning some more advanced tips and tricks. 

I'll let you know what I turn up.