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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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Authors, What’s Your Social Media Game Plan?

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Every book you write is an invitation to potential readers, clients, and influencers. It’s a chance for them to connect with your stories. That will only happen if you can get your book in their hands. How do you do that?

Create a social media game plan.

Social media is a key part of your overall marketing strategy. Here are some important reasons why:

  1. It’s an inexpensive way to get your book in front of a large audience.
  2. It refers traffic to your website, blog, landing pages, and vendors so they can purchase your book.
  3. Social media is filled to the brim with avid readers looking for new content.
  4. It’s a great keystone to building enthusiastic fans and a strong community that supports your work.
  5. It’s a unique opportunity to connect with your readers.
  6. Where else can you see a fan from another part of the world share a picture of your book on their Kindle for all to see?
  7. It’s an effective marketing tool.
  8. It helps readers connect with you on an emotional level so that they’re more invested in buying your books.
  9. You can help people in real time.
  10. You can build up momentum and enthusiasm for an upcoming book, or relaunch an older title to introduce new readers to your content.

So how do you get started?

You begin with your end goal. What do you want to accomplish with social media?

  • Launch new products and services
  • Engage with readers
  • Build your author platform and become visible
  • Gain feedback and provide customer service
  • Sell more books
  • Build your mailing list
  • Reinvigorate your author career

There are a hundred other reasons, but they all start with visibility and building your author platform. You must have a consistent image across each social media network. Your name, description/about section, professional headshot (do NOT use a selfie), and website should be visible.

Now, you need to create a plan of action.

  1. Connect with your readers by asking them what they like, sharing things you enjoy, and responding to comments.
  2. Show the behind-the scenes effort of writing a book. You can create Instagram Stories of your author day. Take some pictures of your morning beverage next to your handwritten, and slightly blurred, notes to show that you’re ready to get started.
  3. Spotlight interesting facts that you found when researching your book.
  4. Encourage readers to post pictures of your book in their hands or on their mobile device. This serves as an extra helping of social proof that gets others interested in your book, as well.
  5. Host a live unboxing of your print books, author swag, or fan mail so that others can participate in your joy.
  6. Create ads that are compelling and connect with your ideal reader.
  7. Use images and video to capture the senses.
  8. Create unique content geared toward a specific platform. Hashtags are great on Twitter and Instagram, but are ignored on Facebook. The only exception to this would be keyword hashtags in groups to make things easier to find.
  9. Decide how you will respond to specific types of comments. This is called a response matrix, and it will save you a lot of time and creative energy if you have it set up ahead of time. If you have a reader who complains about download problems with a particular vendor, have contact information for that company ready to copy and paste. If you receive spoiler comments about your latest book, be prepared with a response. Do you ignore it? Do you delete it, and explain the situation? If you receive a critical review on your Facebook page, how will you handle it? Arguing won’t do you any favors. If you have a response ready to go, it can help separate your heart from the situation so that you don’t type anything you’ll regret. Fans and readers are watching how you handle potentially negative situations.
  10. Create quality content for your readers. If you’ve built a fictional town in East Texas, provide a town map for them to download. If you’ve created a compelling book on leadership, have a free printable that will coincide with your chapter affirmations.
  11. Ensure that your posts maintain the brand you want to portray. If you’re an author, the last thing you want is for your readers to be turned off by your spelling mistakes. Take your time.
  12. Schedule ahead of time. If you’ve got a launch, prepare your social media in advance and save yourself the misadventure of last minute panic. Create social media content for your most avid supporters and ask them to post on specific dates to support your book launch.

What social media strategies do you use?

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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!