Design and Distribute Marketing Content all across Social Media for your book and get the wider world to give you and your work a good close look.
If you want to be an author these days, you need to know how to market a book. And marketing is one of the tasks that will stress authors out the most. But cut it up into pieces and it becomes a little more manageable
Author Website
To have any kind of visibility, you’re going to need a solid internet presence. This will act as the central source for all things you, allowing you to easily direct people to all your books, your social media accounts, your mailing list, even buy your books from your site.
It doesn’t need to be over the top. More a personal, but highly efficient site. Make sure you keep the design clean and easy to navigate and keep it up to date!
Not much more to it really. It’s relatively simple and needn’t cost a lot. And remember, you are going to be linking people somewhere. That somewhere has to exist and it has to be interesting.
Marketing Collateral
You already have great marketing collateral by way of your synopsis, blurb, headlines and images. You may already have used it to create your press release and other items.
Follow the guidance and apply it to the content you already have. The idea is to gather together all the component parts and create posts, articles, tweets and pretty much everything you’ll need to market your book.
But before you dive in designing the content, there are one two things you’ll need.
Research
You will have researched your genres and keywords and competing novels in earlier stages. They will be hitting the same audience as you are.
Have a look at the marketing content offered by other authors in your genre. How the various components like author profile, that exciting news press release headline, your blurb and your synopsis would come across.
How do they present their marketing material. When they post on Facebook, does it tend to be interesting or fun? Like three quick questions about why any number of men cant change a light bulb.
Reader Avatar
Consider the demographics of the average reader in your genre. What kind of income level do they have, how quickly do they read books, and what are some of their other common interests?
You’ll start to construct what’s called a “reader avatar.” Your typical reader. Picture a face, an occupation, their car, what they do at the weekend. Get to know them.
Some writers even find a real world example of their avatar and interact with them. You can refer to your avatars when making all your future marketing decisions. If your avatar is filled out enough to have character, ask them what they want.
If your avatar is the type of person who likes three quick fun questions, that’s what you should give them. They’ve told you the best way to reach them, If your avatar would turn their nose up at something you suggest, don’t do it.
Reach that person. After all, the best marketing strategy is specific; trying to market to everyone will mean that you’ll reach no one.
Social Media
You’ve made a beautiful and professional book and you know your avatar like you went to school with her.
You’re ready to pull it all together, create your posts and articles and engage social media.
The social media environment is all about the visuals.
Pay attention to all design elements, such as colour, shape, size, and arrangement. You need to discover that special vibe that you’re going to spread throughout all your posts on social media. When people see a new image, they should recognise it’s yours.
Social media is also all about the hashtag #
Putting the # in front of a word has strange power. It can make your book recognisable, and it can build an entire community around it.
You can create a hashtag with the name of your book, or with a specific concept that’s part of it.
And Social Media is also all about great Promotional Content
Creating fan pages and interacting with the audience is not enough. You have to be the one triggering that interaction, and you’ll do that with great promotional content published on a regular basis.
The problem with most professional writers is that they don’t know how to write content for marketing purposes. They wrote a brilliant book, but have no idea how to create buzz. Now, you should. Your competitors are doing it and you can do it at least as well.
What do you have to offer?
Well, a book of course but what else? Probably more than you think.
Serialise your book for free. When you decide to give away a free chapter of your book, spread the news across social media. Ask your followers to become email subscribers at your website, so they can receive the chapter. Don’t forget to include tweet this buttons in strategic spots, so the readers can share quotes and attract other social media users towards your book.
Expertise in the book's subject matter. You wrote it. You must have researched it. Add posts about the wider issues of your book. If you write about a young girl from Ireland caught up in the Magdalene Laundries scandal, post more about the scandal. If your books content matter is of interest to people, fuel that interest.
Develop community topics through your social media presence. Perhaps you might object so strongly about the Magdalene Laundries that you are active in making things right and maybe you want to post about that news as well and maybe some folks want to join you.
We’ll move onto seminars and webinars in a later module and they’re a great way to present yourself as a thought leader in particular field. And that’s what you’re trying to do here.
Preview a new book or article or video thats you are just about to bring out.
Talk about what it’s like to be a writer.
There are dozens of things your avatar might want to talk about. Ask her.
Give something new and interesting away in each post, maybe a snippet from the book with regard to a point of interest in your post, maybe. A free coffee mug for the 1000th tweet.
Offer some general giveaways and incentives. If anyone buys this book, they get the next one free or similar.
Plan a posting schedule. It’s a campaign and a campaign has a start and an end. Let’s say your book has 28 chapters. Let’s make it a 28-post campaign then. Try weekly to start and pick it up after a few weeks with freebies or offers.
Post 1 talks about the launch and press release. Add some news about your book’s subject matter, talk about major players in that area, maybe get an interview or two. Offer a fun quiz about the subject matter and promise them a free chapter next time.
Post 2 also has a free chapter, topic news and a quiz and maybe a random thought to image.
Always try and keep something new happening. It’s a 28-post story after all.
If you get enough folks all chatting about the topic, maybe organise a live podcast or webinar and continue the conversation, which itself only makes for more …. news and posts.
Good content makes its own schedule.
Mailing List
Mailing lists are the number one way to grow and reach your fanbase, even in today’s social-media-saturated world.
And neglecting to learn how to use it effectively will only lose you sales. Be sure to set up and nurture your list right from the start.
And keep your list categorised properly. Sending an email to the wrong person is not professional.
Send the same type of thing you’ve been posting on social media and refer to those posts.
Revisit your Amazon pages
You'll still be making most of your sales through Amazon so, make sure any information you’ve learned is updated on your author and book pages so that more people can find it and want it. Include an incentive in your author bio, and you may even be able to build your mailing list straight from Amazon.
Network with other Authors
The first people you can start reaching out to are your greatest allies of all: other writers. Far from being your competition, these people will often become your greatest champions. After all, they know what it’s like, and can offer support and encouragement, as well as become trusted business partners.
Newsletter swaps. Each of you promotes the other’s sale or new release in your own newsletters. A great way for both authors to gain exposure with new audiences.
Or join together with multiple authors, and you can run a shared sale where each of you puts a book on discount (or even available for free), and all promote the whole event at once!
Start up conversations through social media and in-person conferences and events. You never know what kind of critique groups, friends, and useful connections you’ll make in the writing community.
Keep landing those Reviews
Hopefully, you’ve already lined up some reviews all ready for launch.
Your Street Team started off as advanced reader copy reviewers. Now, your street team can start to include people who bought your book and subscribed with you.
We’ll be talking about reviews and street teams in a later module but it’s really important to have people reviewing your book before you launch. It kicks off your book’s life with currency, stars.
And don’t stop. Currency doesn’t deflate after launch. Keep reaching out to subscribers and readers and ask them for a quick review.
Remind any reviewers you did get of the power that they have to help make this book a success, just by leaving a simple, one-line review on Amazon.
Price Promotions
The other advertising tactic all authors should know is how to run a successful price promotion. By putting your books on sale and running ads through book promotion services such as Bookbub,
You’re able to dramatically raise your sales rank on Amazon and increase visibility, which in turn will drive full-price sales and Kindle Unlimited page reads even after your promotion is over! This is especially effective if you “stack” your promotional efforts, advertising across multiple promo services during the length of your sale to create a powerful advertising punch.
Expand your Horizons
If you really want to harness the power of your marketing, you’ll want to seriously look into growing that one book into a series, or even an expanded universe.
It’s simple math. If you sell just one book at $3.99, you’re only making $2.79 after Amazon’s cut. But if you hook a reader and they follow through to purchase all five books in your series, now you’ve made $13.96.
Scale that up by 1,000 readers, and suddenly you’re looking at almost $14,000!
Sure, not every reader is guaranteed to buy all the books in your series. But if you’re going to publish ten books anyway, wouldn’t you rather those ten books helped sell each other, rather than having to market ten individual titles from scratch every time?
Series are one of the easiest ways to scale your efforts, as they allow you to condense your marketing strategy, freeing up more of your time to write still more books. And the more books you write, the more books you have to sell, and the more you can earn.
Advertise
The old adage is true. You have to spend money to make money.
The days where you could just put your book on Amazon, sit back, and wait for the sales to pour in without an advertising campaign are long gone. Thankfully, there are lots of different advertising options available to authors, but you’ll need to familiarise yourself with them so you know what works and what doesn’t.
Amazon and Facebook
The first things you’re going to want to know how to use are Amazon and Facebook ads.
Amazon ads display on both the product page of other books, as well as in the search results when people are browsing.
They’re a powerful way to reach people who are already looking to spend money on books, and using them correctly can really boost your sales.
Facebook ads, meanwhile, appear on, well, Facebook. They can be used to sell your book directly, but they’re also a powerful way to gain more subscribers by asking folks to subscribe in exchange for a freebie.
Or you can run multiple ads at once, targeting different users, to see what works best for your books.
Anyway, just a few ideas. Some will work a treat for you.
Others maybe not so much but there’s traction in everything and you will find your channels.
Best of luck.
