Quora is a website where people can ask questions and get answers from the community. In some ways, it’s similar to LinkedIn Groups, where members ask a question and others respond. In other respects, it’s like Twitter, where you have followers and see a feed of the latest questions scroll up on your home page.

Beyond that, I haven’t quite figured it out. I find it difficult to use (I know I’m not the only one) but maybe it’s because I haven’t spent enough time exploring it yet.

Authors, are any of you using Quora and finding it a great way to talk to people? What tips can you share?

The idea: take selected tweets, gather them all on a single web page, then share them with your followers in a familiar newspaper-style format. Paper.li is an app designed to do just that.

Lots of people are using it. If you’re on Twitter and haven’t yet received one of these daily newspapers, you probably will soon. But is Paper.li a new and helpful tool that you, too, could use? Or is it just another waste of Twitter time?

Let’s take a closer look.

What Is It?
Paper.li “newspapers” are generated from lists of people on Twitter or a Twitter hashtag.

The Paper.li engine pulls the tweets of all the people on the list you specified into a web page that looks something like a newspaper layout. The software automatically sorts content into sections, such as technology or health, much the same way a print newspaper has sections. If a tweet has a link to a website or a video, that linked content is pulled right into the newspaper.

Once your Paper.li newspaper is created, you can choose to tweet about it to your followers. Here’s where things get tricky.

The Complaints
More and more people are using Paper.li and are tweeting their followers every 24 hours about the latest edition. It’s an auto-generated tweet and it’s the same every day. If you’re following a person who’s publishing a Paper.li newspaper, you’ll get this tweet whether you’re interested in his paper or not. As a result, some people are complaining that Paper.li is spammy.

Another complaint I’ve seen about Paper.li: It imitates an archaic form of communication that’s slowly dying. In other words, why make your tweets (new media) look like a newspaper (old media)?

When Could It Be Useful?
I see a few different reasons why a Paper.li edition might make sense:

• Your audience isn’t on Twitter but you know there’s information circulating there that could be valuable to them. You cull the best tweets and present them with a daily web-based digest.
• Your audience is on Twitter but finds it overwhelming. They don’t visit frequently and when they do, they can’t find what they want. Again, you cull the best tweets and present them with Paper.li, a daily web-based digest.
• Your audience enjoys reading a newspaper. They appreciate Paper.li’s format and find it easy and intuitive to navigate.
• Your audience is strapped for time and would appreciate a curated selection of content on your topic, rather than scrolling through a long tweet stream.
• You audience is on Twitter but doesn’t follow all the people within your newspaper, nor do they want to start following them. They read your paper periodically to catch up on content they normally wouldn’t see.

I’m sure there are more. (Leave a comment if you have another.)

Lesson #1: Paper.li isn’t for every audience, but could be phenomenal for some.
Don’t publish a Paper.li newspaper just because you can. First, make sure it fits and could offer value to the people you want to communicate with.

I decided to experiment by creating my own daily Twitter newspaper.

I based my first paper on a list of people in the Highspot book trade directory. What I hoped to get was a gathering of relevant and valuable publishing industry content. What I got instead was a newspaper that had hardly anything to do with publishing, and a lot to do with politics, food, and television shows.

I tried again with a different list out of the directory. This time I got a lot more book-focused content.

Lesson #2: Build your newspaper carefully.
Presumably, you’re publishing a Paper.li newspaper around a specific topic or theme. It might be self-publishing or women in finance or pitbulls. If people are going to find value in your paper, the content needs to be tightly focused on your theme, and that means you need to be building your paper around people who you know tweet consistently on your theme.

If I was going to use Paper.li as a tool to communicate with my followers, I’d start by custom-building a Twitter list whose sole purpose was to form the basis of my newspaper.

The Bottom Line
If used thoughtfully, Paper.li has the potential to be helpful to certain audiences. First, decide if the people you want to speak to would appreciate a Twitter summary. (You might even use Paper.li to bring Twitter content to a whole new audience segment.) If the answer is yes, curate the content carefully so it’s focused and helpful.

Do you publish or read a Paper.li newspaper? What’s your take?

The days of having just a traditional PR person pitching you as an expert are long past. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the old mass pitching methods of fax, spam mail, and phone do not see the uptake they once did.

More than 50% of journalists and bloggers are freelancers. It’s vitally important to remember they are actively on the hunt for the next great story because that’s how they’ll get paid!

That next great story could be YOU.

As a longtime journalist turned online visibility strategist I’ve seen many of my clients apply the power of their social media content to connect directly with journalists and secure media coverage.

Here are five tips on how to use your blog content to garner media attention.

1. Set up Google news alerts that match your expertise and respond to at least one major media article that comes through those alerts on a weekly basis. Link to the article in a blog post, and give additional insight from your perspective to the article’s topic. Don’t be snarky. Give actionable insight.
2. Subscribe to three e-newsletters from publications that cover your topic. When you get those e-newsletters, read through them to see if there’s a wonderful article you can cite in your own blog. Again, give your take on the article. (Extra tip: After you’ve made your blog post, go to the site where the original article appears and leave a comment. Always comment authentically, not just to get a link back to your site.)
3. Be a news breaker. Offline PR people spend hours scanning the news and trying to determine how their clients can comment on breaking events. You can do the same by monitoring media stories and using your blog to comment as things happen. If you’re a fiction writer, for instance, you might keep up with the latest sales in fiction and share your insights with your readers.
4. Don’t leave out the local and regional. Too often we’re focused only on national blogs, media, and coverage. Once in a while, blog “close to home” by sharing some local insight or linking to your local paper. You’ll begin to catch the local media’s attention. Imagine if your local paper is The Washington Post and the editor is scanning blogs for local folks to comment on business stories.
5. Stop waiting for just the right blog-bite. The longer you wait to start sharing your insight on your blog, the more the competition will outpace you. Take 30 minutes today and write up 10 things you know that you could effectively comment on to the media. Start building some content around those topics on your blog.

You will succeed!

———

For more tips on how to use social media to promote your book and garner media coverage, join Highspot for a free teleclass with Nettie Hartsock on September 28. Full details and registration here.

Nettie Hartsock is a digital strategist and teacher who works with individuals and companies, helping them create and convey their messages to the online world. Find Nettie on Twitter at @nettiehartsock.

With all the excitement and novelty and momentum surrounding social media tools such as Twitter, people sometimes forget the “social” part of the equation.

Twitter is like any other community or network where abiding by a few friendly rules helps everyone get along.

You know that annoying n00b who shows up at parties and networking events? You know the one I mean — the person who dominates the conversation with loud talk that’s all about them. The person who’s telling you all about their manuscript or book before you’ve even had a chance to finish saying your name.

Don’t be the Twitter equivalent of that n00b. Instead, practice the Twitter KISS: Keep It Short and Sociable.

Short: Well, duh. You only get 140 characters per tweet. That’s the easy part.
AND
Sociable: That’s the really important part.

Being sociable on Twitter means:

• Participating in conversations
• Asking and answering questions
• Being helpful to others for no immediate gain
• Being supportive of others
• Being enthusiastic
• Freely sharing resources and information
• Building relationships

Yes, you can talk about yourself sometimes. That’s part of sharing. But make sure the conversation isn’t all about you all the time.

And don’t forget that Twitter isn’t a way to lob your manuscript or book idea over the virtual transom of every publishing employee in the land to see if someone wants it.

If you’re not using the Twitter KISS, you might find yourself getting the kiss-off.

If you’re an author, you should be on Twitter. If you don’t know what Twitter is, it’s time to learn.

You’ve probably at least heard of it by now — the service has about 6 million users and is growing every day — but maybe you haven’t taken the plunge. You’re not sure what it’s all about or aren’t convinced of its benefits.

If that’s the case, make it a goal in 2009 to get started. Twitter is a micro-blogging tool. You get 140 characters to answer the question, What are you doing?

People share news about what they’re working on, what they’re learning, conferences they’re attending, people they’re meeting, books they’re reading, food they’re eating. OK, that last one isn’t really all that important, though people do tweet about it. People tweet about anything and everything under the sun.

Why Should You Care?

• Twitter is an amazing way to meet people and participate in conversations on an endless array of topics. You can start to “follow” people in the publishing industry, as well as potential readers, and begin building relationships with them. I’m active in several social networking venues but the people I meet in Twitter are usually people I have not, or could not, meet anywhere else.
• You’ll see an endless stream of as-it-happens news, be led to wonderful websites and blogs, get sneak peeks of products and content in development, and hear what people think about what’s going on in the world.
• You can tweet about new blog posts you’ve written, upcoming book signings, or your latest podcast. You can tweet about the chapter you just wrote, or the free download you just made available.
• You can ask questions and instantly get responses. The Twitterverse is a friendly place and people like to help and share their opinions.

These benefits only scratch the surface of what Twitter can do. You’ll need to try it to get a sense of just how powerful it can be.

Getting Oriented
Here are some basic pointers to get you oriented:

• Everyone has a Twitter handle. The protocol is to refer to people as @TwitterHandle. For example, my Twitter handle is jennifertribe so I am referred to as @jennifertribe.
• You can talk to other Twitter users by starting your tweet with their Twitter handle. If you tweeted @jennifertribe Wow, Twitter is cool! I would see that message in my Twitter stream. It becomes part of the public conversation so others can view it too.
• You can send private messages to other Twitter users. These are referred to as DMs (Direct Messages). To send a DM, you start your tweet with d TwitterHandle.
• Linking to websites you’d like to share can eat up valuable characters, especially when the URLs are long. So use a URL shortener such as TinyUrl.com or is.gd
  
• It’s considered good form to pass along interesting news from other tweeple (people on Twitter) instead of just talking about yourself all the time. RT is the Twitter shortform that means “retweet” or “retweeting”. It indicates that you are re-stating someone else’s tweet. Always give credit to the person you are retweeting. For example, here’s a tweet I made a few days ago:
  RT @booksin140 Hotel turns forgotten books into library for guests. Surely more hotels do this? http://tinyurl.com/67gmyb
  It tells people that @booksin140 made the tweet first and I am passing it along.

@jennifertribe’s Recent Publishing Tweets
Here is a selection of my tweets from the last couple of weeks. In addition to showing you some sample Twitter content, there is lots of good publishing-related information contained in all the links. You can follow me on Twitter to receive information like this as I post it.

Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan (yes, THAT Algonquin) offers guests loan of Kindle device and free e-book with each stay http://is.gd/ckoN about 2 hours ago from web

Facebook group to support Pages bookstore: http://is.gd/c3sa. See letter from city councillor in discussion area. 7:59 PM Dec 16th from web

Why am I just learning about this? Pages bookstore in TO is in trouble. Rent is doubling: http://is.gd/c3qx 7:57 PM Dec 16th from web

RT @booksin140 RT @mdash A look at literary agents in Canada, from the National Post: http://is.gd/bFkx 11:07 AM Dec 16th from web

RT @booksin140 Hotel turns forgotten books into library for guests. Surely more hotels do this? http://tinyurl.com/67gmyb 11:01 AM Dec 16th from web

RT @CanMediaLayoffs Canadian magazine industry is optimistic on weathering tough economic times. http://bit.ly/8188 10:29 AM Dec 16th from web

I’m loving this idea of curated subscription http://is.gd/ba9A 10:02 AM Dec 11th from web

If you haven’t bought your Amazon Kindle yet, you’re out of luck until Feb. (Say what? Not re-stocking for holiday sales?) http://is.gd/aTUL 4:56 PM Dec 9th from web

RT @sarahw Improvement in Canada’s book publishing climate http://is.gd/aQel 9:39 AM Dec 9th from web

RT @booksquare post with great comments about ebook prices. Publishing people, note how real customers think: http://snurl.com/7nwtz 3:44 PM Dec 8th from web

McMaster U in little ol’ Hamilton, ON has a POD Espresso Book Machine — one of only 9 in the world. Who knew? http://is.gd/a5Ur 3:12 PM Dec 3rd from web

9 cool gifts for authors and self-publishers: http://is.gd/a5wi 2:27 PM Dec 3rd from web

Dean Hua of Sachi Studio recently posted a great article on how authors can use Facebook to promote their books. A shortened version of his 8-point tip list appears below. For the full article, visit Dean’s blog.

1. Create a “page” for your book. A page is a mini-site on Facebook that is dedicated to the product or service you are selling. You can post videos, messages, pictures, and links. Other Facebook users can click a button to become a “fan” of the page, and your page then shows up in their profiles.
2. Create a group around the topic of your book. For example, if your book is about wealth management, create a group that discusses wealth management tips and strategies.
3. Import your blog entries into your Facebook notes. This helps you capture a new readership base and adds more interactivity to your Facebook presence.
4. Keep your profile dynamic. Don’t just create a Facebook account, add 5 friends, and then wither away. Update your status regularly with news about your book or business. Post photos – think networking events, book signings, talks, conventions, and more. Answer wall messages and emails to be sociable (it is social media, after all) and stoke the fires of conversation.
5. Incentivize your outreach strategies. A few suggested prizes include a free, signed copy of your book, a special edition of your book, a free consultation, or anything that may be appropriate. Offering prizes and incentives helps expedite word of mouth.
6. Befriend members who read your book. Do a search for members who list your book as one of their favorites. This is one of the more time-consuming outreach initiatives that you’ll develop. If you have a lot of members listed, look for ways to filter down the list and add only those who are most important. Look for influencers.
7. Create events. Facebook allows you to create events that you may be hosting such as a book tour or speaking engagement. Create these events and invite your friends. But don’t just stop there. Encourage your friends to spread the word by inviting their friends to the event on Facebook as well.
8. Add a badge to your website and blog. Facebook allows you to create a badge (a mini-banner) that lets your website visitors know you have a Facebook profile. This makes it easy for visitors to find you and encourages them to connect with you.

Example of a Facebook badge

Print newspapers continue to cut back their book review sections. Anyone surprised? You shouldn’t be. Waaaaay, way back in 2001, dwindling book review sections were cause for alarmist headlines about the war on culture.

Today, the print space dedicated to books continues to decline. And yet book buzz is greater than it ever was. It’s just moved to a Web 2.0 space.

Even while print publications cut down their book space, many of those same publications have recently launched new book blogs. Check out Paper Cuts from the New York Times or Jacket Copy from the Los Angeles Times as just two examples.

Then there are the countless blogs run by readers and other “amateur” reviewers, and the thriving social networks built around books. Look at Shelfari, a social network where members swap book info, or LibraryThing, where users can build a virtual bookshelf and delve into discussions with other members.

As in many industries, the power of buzz has moved away from a small number of credentialed cultural arbiters to online communities and social networks. There are countless opportunities to get the word out about your book, without having to worry about a big print review.