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Promoting Your Book? Build Excitement for Your Work Online

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You have a new book coming and you want the world to know. If you don’t build up excitement and get people talking, that release may fail to reach your expectations. Never fear! We have some great tips for building excitement for your work and creating that buzz you’re wishing for.

Get Creative!

Your book is unique to your audience. It’s easy to fall back on standard promotional tactics, but that’s not going to get your audience pumped for your next book. Instead, figure out what’s unique about your book and try to showcase it in some way.

Let’s say you wrote a time management guide to launching a home business when you’re already working full-time. You could provide free printables or digital templates to guide readers through the process.

Fiction books have many options of their own. What if you wrote a thriller that took place in an abandoned theme park? Try to take a tour of one and bring your readers along via vlogs, Instagram stories, and more. These personal touches change the scope of promotion from salesy to inspiring.

Social Media

Sharing on social media is a wonderful way to build excitement, but don’t forget to make your content easy to share! Embedding a retweet button that automatically populates a precrafted tweet is a wonderful example. Social Media Examiner shows you how to do this for PDF documents. This is perfect for any printables, chapter excerpts, or other downloadable content you create in your promotion package.

Social share buttons are also important! It provides instant social proof to first-time visitors of your page. You want people to share your work. The more shares a post receives, the more you’ll pique the curiosity of your potential readers.

Ads

Build targeted ads is a great way to gain a readership. This may take time and effort, but social media and ad analytics can help guide you in the right direction.

Press Release and Launch Pages

Create a launch page that provides ways for others to get the word out about your book. It should contain your book cover, title, blurb, links to any free content you offer (first chapter, outline, printables, workbooks, etc.), promotional images, preset retweet links, Facebook presets, and links to all other books in the series. It should be easy on the eyes and mobile friendly.

Get Your Readers Involved

Your readers want to get the word out, so give them incentive to do so! Contests, swag, and recognition can work wonders at getting people excited about your book. After release, hold contests where people share images of them holding your book.

Behind the Scenes Content

Everyone loves to see what goes on behind the scenes. Show your research notes, snippets of interviews, favorite non-fiction books and documentaries that helped you along the way.

Create a Discount Run with Another Book

If your book is part of a series, discount the first book. If it’s in a similar niche, do the same.

Videos

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of videos. Whether you vlog about your book, interview people to share research, record testimonials, create book trailers, or just make teasers, video is an exceptional way to reach a wide audience.

These were just some tips to get you started. Which one will you tackle first?

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Finding the Right Balance of Self-Promotion When Marketing Your Book

book-1313472_1280Are you trying to promote your next book but don’t want to risk sounding too arrogant or pushy? No one cares for an author who comes off like a salesman. As an author, it can be tricky to find the perfect balance between growing your network and bragging about your writing. Here is a six-step guide to finding a balance when it comes time to promote your next published project.

Show, Don’t Tell

Rather than telling people about how skilled or talented you are in your given field, show potential customers how you add value to their life. Naturally, people want to know what you provide, especially if it’s something they wouldn’t be able to either do themselves or find someone else to do for them. However, don’t spend a lot of time creating content with the intent of convincing your audience that you are worthy. Show them what you are up to. Take photos and post videos, answer questions, and share content of value. Just like with your writing, showing your followers is going to be more powerful than telling them.

Consistency

By having a consistent presence on marketing platforms, you will build up your credentials. When the time comes that you are ready to sell your work, your followers will be more willing to respond. Nobody wants to be overly bombarded with sales pitches but if you have a presence that involves more than promotion, people will enjoy and engage with your content and brand. This is going to mean developing an editorial calendar and sticking to it. You can post a week, or a month, worth of content in one sitting. Let go of the frantic need to come up with something new to post each day by doing some pre-planning.

Boundaries

An author that markets their books all the time doesn’t have time to expand their marketing and provide valuable content to their audience. It’s important to set boundaries to avoid burn out and maintain a healthy balance. Schedule out the times of the week you will work on your marketing and stick to those guns. It’s easy to get distracted and prioritize ineffectively.

This concept also applies to your potential customers. You should not be constantly pushing out sales pitches on all of your marketing platforms because then you will not only burn yourself out but your potential customers as well. Marketing posts should be 80% educational, informational, and entertaining; and only 20% sales pitches. This will keep your followers engaged while also promoting your value. If you don’t have time to create additional content of this nature, do a search for similar posts to share that your audience will appreciate.

Build Your List

It is always useful to expand your network, not only for the sake of increasing sales but also for the sake of potential partnerships down the line. If you create valuable relationships, you are more likely to have positive engagement down the line when it’s time to launch your book. Your network will already trust you and will be more willing to recommend your business to their friends. Don’t only grow this list when you are about to launch a new book – get in the habit of building this list all year round.

Engage

People love knowing that there is a human being on the other side of a marketing platform. If you respond and engage with your potential customers, your audience will feel connected and valued. Rather than having an automated tech service respond to your network or worse, not responding at all, show your followers that you care and send a personal response. Build in a timeframe that works for you to respond to comments and engage with your followers. Don’t stay plugged in all day long – your productivity (and possibly sanity) will suffer.

To find the right balance for promoting your published work, you will need to dedicate some time to creating a list of priorities, developing a calendar for content, and setting aside time to schedule posts and engage with your readers and fans.

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Using Social Media to Promote Your Next In-Person Event

book-2160539_1280Finally! Your book is officially published. It’s been a long road to get where you are, but you’ve made it. Now comes the part many authors avoid: promoting it.

A common promotion tactic for authors is to host an in-person book launch event. These can be great for getting the word out about your work while connecting with people in person. This only works if you can actually get warm bodies in the room.

How do you get the word out about your event? You use social media! Here are 6 suggestions to motivate readers to come to your next book signing or other promotional events.

Build Your Online Presence

Before you write the first word of your next best-selling novel, get your social media accounts in order. Think of these profiles as your written 30-second elevator speech. Make them succinct and information-rich.

In the “about” section tell people what you are working on. Or if you already have books available, add links to where readers can buy them. This way the next time you host an event, people can easily look you up to find more information about you. Of course, you may already be behind the 8-ball on this one. Don’t worry – better late than never! Get those profiles built and start posting consistent content and teasers of your work.

Maximize Your Profiles

Once you determine which social media platforms are best for you, spend time making the social-network-76532_1280most of each site. Each social media option acts as its own search engine so make your descriptions robust. Include images and links to your other work. Leave no field empty and no stone unturned. If you know anything at all about keywords, insert them into your copy, but keep your tone and flow natural.

People can tell a lot about a person by just looking at them. Make your first impression a good one by using a high-quality photo of your face, and only your face. Your profile photo should tell people that you are a likable person and someone they can relate to.

But wait, it’s always fun to see pictures that include family members or pets. You can still show off those pictures by creating an Instagram account. Personal images will show who you are behind the scenes and enhance your brand online. Readers love to see what an author’s life is like.

Create Branded Material

Posting only all-word text updates will do more harm than good. Even though it is your job as a writer to write, your message will get lost in the (very large) sea of social media posts. Plus, some of the platforms penalize posts that are text-heavy or text only. To combat this, add a photo, image or video with each post. Links work well too! Adding media better catches the reader’s eye.

If you are creating your own content, brand it with your logo, name or website. That way – if it gets shared – the source is always visible to the audience. Word of caution: make sure you have permission to use the content as copyright infringement is a serious issue.

Not sure where to start to create your own branded graphics? Check out Canva.com, a free drag-and-drop design tool, perfect for creating quick images.

Learn Your Platforms

Often people will post the same thing to each of their social media accounts. Instead, use the different designs and options of these networks to your advantage. For example, the intention of Facebook is to reach out to people you know like friends and family. This is contrary to LinkedIn where here you promote your skill set to a group of strangers. The dimensions of an Instagram post will vary from a Facebook one.

Understand the audience on each site, your purpose for using that platform, and how to best utilize the site with your marketing. Format your message to each platform, which will, in turn, grab the attention of your key audience.

Engage!

Social media is…well, social. That’s the whole point! Use social media platforms to post about more than just your book or upcoming event. Ask your readers questions to get a discussion going, and don’t forget to respond to their comments. Even if the comment is a negative one, don’t take it personally. Your audience is watching so thinking carefully about how to respond – don’t avoid it.

Use social to network with bloggers and other authors. Share their posts with your audience and most of the time, they’ll do the same for you. Consider influencer marketing and give it a try. When done correctly it can be surprisingly effective for reach.

Reuse Your Content

instagram-2166645_1280You don’t need to think of something new to post every time you hop on your accounts.

The algorithms filter your content so your followers may not see your original message the first time around. Using the same posts more than once is okay if you do it appropriately.

Remember, your intention is to create buzz about your event, not to spam your followers. Brainstorm ways you can repurpose the same content. You can pull quotes from a blog, build an infographic on Canva, do a short video, or create a branded image – all using the same piece of content!

Now all you have to do is prepare to speak in front of a massive crowd waiting to know about your book!