Leach, Anne (ed.). Marketing Your Indexing Services, 3rd ed. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2011.
The ASI book Marketing Your Indexing Services, 3rd ed., edited by Anne Leach, is a treasure trove of marketing information and ideas for indexers. It was a major resource for me in building the fall meeting workshop, “Playing the Marketing Game.”
The book opens with an introduction by Madge Walls, who moved from real estate to indexing. She networked among her friends in publishing to secure indexing jobs—she writes fiction and belongs to several local publishing organizations—and provides us with a real-world overview of the book.
Anne Leach opens the book with the PR side of marketing: Our self-marketing also involves the marketing of professionally written indexes. She says that our success in marketing indexes could result in more and better-paid indexing work, which sounds good to me.
Resources that provide the names of target audience publishers and organizations start in Anne Leach’s chapter and extend to the next chapter, which spells out a marketing action plan. Author Susan Danzi Hernandez provides step-by-step detail on finding and contacting potential customers.
Current ASI President Ina Gravitz spells out self-marketing basics, focusing on brand recognition to combat the intangibility of our product. Susan Danzi Hernandez offers newbie indexer résumé strategies that deemphasize newness, such as writing the résumé as if you are already an indexer.
Anne Leach continues with the positive aspects of marketing, noting that our product is useful, valuable, and in demand. With this attitude adjustment, she steps through how to market indexing services, encouraging us to be No! Getters as she details the five keys of successful marketing.
Matthew Spence directs us on how to get clients with the strategies that put him in business as a freelance indexer in less than a year and Carol Roberts offers 50, count ’em, 50! outside-the-box marketing strategies. Then Carol Roberts spells out marketing by word-of-mouth, including how to introduce yourself at face-to-face events and exercises for telling everyone you’re an indexer.
Enid Zafran offers tips to improve your ASI Indexer Locator listing. As she says, the customers come to you! In this chapter, Enid relates editor top priorities for indexers:
1. Make the deadline. 2. Make the deadline. 3. Make the deadline. 4. Write a quality index.
This list guides us when we follow Anne Leach’s marketing directive to sell to the editor’s needs, Key #4 in her five keys of successful marketing mentioned earlier.
Sylvia Coates continues by telling us how to keep editors happy, giving insights on how editors view indexes and indexing. She includes one editor’s view that a résumé accompanied by a sample index is more likely to receive her attention. Sample indexes are discussed throughout this book, as can be seen in its index entry. Sylvia Coates also provides an anecdote supporting my contention that backing up your work files is marketing, underscoring the editorial priority to make the deadline.
Mary Harper takes us on a detailed walk through website design, including choosing a domain name, methods for website construction, and website marketing concepts that include search engine optimization and Google AdWords. Her discussion of blogging goes hand-in-hand with the current advice for search engine optimization—content, content, content—while addressing newbie indexers as indexing experts and also the PR of indexing. Notice that one of the references in her additional resources section discusses typefaces designed for on-screen legibility.
Ted Janusz tackles social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, making these virtual worlds more concrete. Seth Maislin continues the discussion with specific suggestions for your social networking strategy to fulfill your fundamental marketing goals.
As you read this book, keep a pad of paper and pen nearby: Besides providing the names of resources, this book is a springboard for generating marketing ideas and you’ll find yourself jotting down notes. If you’d like to inspire your marketing efforts, start with this book.
