Marketing 101 For Writers
Get ready to take some notes, people.
If you’re an indie author, and you’re going it alone, writing your book is only 20% of becoming a household name.
As Brenda Perlin stated in her blog piece So, you’ve written a book. What now?, our job is to go out and find the people interested in our stories.
But, how the hell do you do that? Where do you even begin?
I have had plenty of authors come to me within my career asking me to help them further their book sales. The first question I always ask them is, “What have you done in terms of marketing?”
Cue the blank expression and the shrug effect that follows.
If you don’t have a publishing deal, which includes marketing, then I have news for you: your book should sell itself, but it won’t. You have to spend quality time getting to know your audience.
The goal is to become more than just an e-book. You represent that body of work which, in turn, serves as your individual brand.
I have three steps for marketing yourself and your book(s), which will make your lives a bit easier and your pockets that much fuller.
Step One: Social Media
Yes, I know, it’s the dreaded social media. While we may love to hate it it is an incredibly useful marketing tool.
Some marketers will tell you to pay for advertisements or followers. DO NOT DO THIS. I have many years of research behind me, and I know that paying your way to the top doesn’t work in the long term.
Unfortunately for you, unless you already have deep pockets to pay someone like me, you are going to have to work hard in this arena to get noticed. Pay no mind to the amount of followers you have. Quality of your followers is much more practical and beneficial to you. The impression rate (on Twitter) and your reach and engagement (on Facebook) is your gold.
Watch these stats wisely because they will give you much needed insight into what your followers like to see from you.
Social media is very much trial-and-error but, with the nature of the speed at which social media runs, it’s also forgiving. You make an error, no big deal. In less than 20 minutes, on Twitter at least, it’s old news and no one pays attention to old news.
You need at least a Twitter and Facebook account. I hate Facebook, but for indie authors, the groups and pages communities are effective networking tools. More about this later.
On Twitter you need to be tweeting at least 6 times per day as yourself, 20% of these tweets can be book promotion; the other 80% shouldn’t be about you at all. It should be about anything but you, or your promotional material. If your followers do not get engagement from you, go ahead and wave bye-bye to that potential customer.
Use external tools and services to schedule your tweets at peak viewing times. Something like Buffer, which I highly recommend, does most of the work for you. Don’t pay for external companies to send direct messages to your followers. Remember: they want to talk to you, not an automated robot.
Use Twitter lists. This will most definitely help funnel the content you want to engage with. I never go to the Twitter homepage, ever. The home feed is where you’ll find junk tweets, ads, and all kinds of rubbish content that you don’t want to read, let alone engage with.
Use hashtags creatively, sparingly, and intelligently. Using the “rule of three.” Three is the magic number, don’t you know. And, while I could sit and talk all day about hashtags, I won’t. In fact, we have another blog piece all about hashtags coming up for you soon.
When it comes to Facebook, you should only post up to 3 times a day. I would even go so far as to suggest that one post is enough. Facebook should be primarily be used for networking, which I will go over later in this piece.
Step Two: Blogging and Email Marketing
If you want to reach as many readers as you can, along with producing fresh content you can share on your social media, then blogging is a must. Blogging is often overlooked and, when I say blogging, I don’t mean Tumblr. WordPress is your go-to place for blogging. It has a huge user base and is totally customisable to suit your needs. You could even sell your e-books as digital downloads directly from your blog by using a plugin called WooCommerce.
With WordPress, plugins are your friend. Whether they cause you a headache or not, most are free, and almost all of them are “plug and play.” In other words, you can install them, open them up and use them straight out of the proverbial box. Think of WordPress as your own personal website. You have the ability to pick your theme, your pages, your plugins, and all of the contents. Voila, you have a fully functioning author page that you can link to wherever you like.
Back to plugins for a second:
I’d like to suggest you get social plugins that drag and drop your social media posts directly into your blog. This is extremely helpful in building your web presence. The more places you connect your digital dots, the easier it is for your readers or potential readers to find you.
The second plugin, which leads me into my point regarding email marketing, is the MailChimp plugin. This plugin allows your readers to enter their email addresses into this fillable form, which gives you the opportunity to reach out to your audience personally.
MailChimp has different levels of packages, one of which is a freebie. Who doesn’t love free, right?
Email marketing campaigns are often very successful and a good way of furthering your readers’ knowledge about your brand (read: you and your books). Don’t get too spammy. One email per month is more than enough. Share news about your book releases, special offers on your books, or give your readers, also called “subscribers,” exclusive discounts. The sky is the limit.
Remember to blog at least once a week. Share that blog piece on your social media, set up your MailChimp plugin, and begin emailing your audience with that information as well.
Step 3: Networking.
Earlier on I briefly mentioned Facebook. The author community on Facebook is extraordinarily large. This is something you need to take full advantage of. The more you network and support fellow writers, the more they will do the same. You really do get out of this what you put in.
I have seen many authors throw online book parties for the release of their books, even for their book cover releases (also called “cover reveal parties”). There isn’t really much you cannot achieve here. Authors will often hold twelve-hour events, whereby fellow authors take over their author page and will captivate the audience for an hour, ready for the next guest author to take over. We have an upcoming blog post with more information on Facebook takeovers and parties coming soon, too.
Build these relationships. They are extremely important for many reasons. One, they will give you endless support. By engaging with people on social media, they are more likely to share your book (and blog posts, etc.) with their audience- this all helps to grow your network, which is made up of members from your target audience. Secondly, people you engage with are more likely to read your book. Which means they’re more inclined to review your book and not be as overtly critical when doing so.
I know this all sounds daunting, and a bit of a ball-ache. However, I cannot emphasize enough that, if you do these three things, you will get more downloads now and in the future. Being an indie author and choosing the self-publishing route isn’t easy, but you get the freedom to write and market yourself exactly how you want. There truly isn’t anything better than that.
I’ve given you the insight, now go and make your words count.
Sammie Thomas is a marketing and management professional, writer, and social media manager in the UK.
She currently serves as Marketing and Media Director for Prose, LLC. and has provided a host of marketing and related strategic services to independent authors from all over the globe.
To read more of her work, be sure to follow her on Prose. and Twitter @Sammielee46.
