Tag: marketing strategies

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The Intentional Writer

Stop Feeling Overwhelmed, Adopt a Quarterly Focus

The intentional writer

I am easily overwhelmed when I think about all the things I should be doing to market my book and increase my platform. Grow social media following, SEO research, lead magnets, guest posts, ad split-testing, etc. (Not to mention working on my next book and dealing with the rest of life.)

I work on one thing for a day or two, then I hear I should be doing that other thing, so I switch to working on it instead. And at the end of the week I feel like a failure because I haven’t made any significant progress in any of them.

Does this sound familiar?

Then read on…

A simple strategy to avoid feelin project overwhelm

Stop trying to do it all!

Really.

It’s impossible to focus on every marketing tactic at once, anyway. Not only is is impossible, it will lead to poor results and lots of frustration. Instead, focus on one area at a time.

Big projects like marketing a book—or writing, polishing, and submitting a book—are marathons rather than sprints. The overall success is an accumulation of efforts over a long time span.

This allows us to prioritize one aspect for a period of time and then switch to another. The key is choosing a long enough time period to allow for success.

Try the quarterly approach

Break your year into three-month quarters. Assign a different marketing focus for each quarter. Plan out at least four or five quarters, so that you can cover all the important bases.

An example of using the quarterly focus strategy:

QuarterMarketing focus
April-June:Grow email list
July-Sept.:Grow social media following on one or two accounts
Oct.-Dec.:Run ads and offer a discount to boost sales
Jan. – March:Get spots on podcasts or radio shows
April-June:Learn how to use a new platform effectively (such as Facebook Live, or YouTube, or TikTok)

This quarterly focus strategy helps you:

  • Stay focused
  • Stay motivated
  • Manage time wisely
  • Avoid feeling overwhelmed and giving up
  • Have more time to really do something well
  • Assess how your area of effort affects book sales (because you aren’t trying five things at once.)

Of course, you shouldn’t completely ignore other marketing tactics in the meantime, but you can give yourself permission to do the bare minimum to maintain them while keeping the chosen area the priority.

I hope this quarterly focus strategy helps you face your next big project with more confidence and less stress.

Lisa E. Betz worked as an engineer, substitute teacher, and play director before becoming an award-winning mystery writer. She brings her analytical mind, quirky humor, and positive outlook to all she writes. She draws inspiration from thirty-five years of leading Bible studies to create entertaining mysteries set in the world of the early church, and then she fills that world with eccentric characters, independent females, and an occasional sausage-snatching cat. Her first novel, Death and a Crocodile, garnered a gold medal in the Illumination Book Awards.

In addition to writing novels, Lisa blogs about living with authenticity and purpose. Visit her at www.lisaebetz.com. Facebook LisaEBetzWriter Twitter @LisaEBetz and Pinterest Lisa E Betz Intentional Living.

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Guest Posts

TikTok For Beginners: Ultimate Guide To Market Your Brand In 2021

Guest posts

TikTok is currently one of the most popular video sharing applications in the social media world. It’s filled with lots of videos such as dancing, lip-syncing, duet, performing stunts, and comedy clips. 

Once you start to scroll TikTok videos on the For You page, you won’t want to stop. Because TikTok videos encourage users to watch videos again and again. Whether you’re relatively new to TikTok or already a member, the following tips will help you to go viral on the TikTok app. 

However, whether you’re just a viewer or planning to upload videos yourself, you have a clear idea about how to use TikTok to become a famous person in time. 

TikTok – Short Intro

TikTok is the combination of all social media content with short and long form videos from 15 to 60 seconds. It has an effective music library, comedy, dancing, and trending videos. You can find popular videos, follow people and explore hashtags on this platform. 

There are two main reasons that TikTok is really unique: 

  • Type of content you post
  • How posted content is reaching your audience

Set Up Your TikTok Account 

Before you get the TikTok For You page, you need to create a TikTok account. Here are the steps to create a TikTok account: 

  • Go to the google play store/ App store. 
  • Search the TikTok app in the search bar and download the app. 
  • Once downloaded the app, sign up for your account by using Facebook, Twitter, or email. 
  • Otherwise, use your email to create a new username and password. 
  • Once logged in to your TikTok account, you’ll get a TikTok homepage to access videos.

Optimize Your TikTok Profile

Are you ready to edit your profile?

A profile is a place to show your identity across the world. You can add your unique profile image, username, short bio with clickable links, and attractive emojis. 

To edit your TikTok profile, 

  • Tap the ‘Me’ profile icon in the bottom of the screen. 
  • Click edit profile.
  • Here, you can change your profile picture. TikTok allows you to choose either a static image or a video. 
  • Next, you can add a unique username that easily remembers and identifies your audience. 
  • Add a short bio to your profile, and it will appear at the forefront of your profile. 
  • You can add your website link, Instagram, and YouTube profile links in the bio section. It will display at the bottom of your bio, so people can directly visit your website. 

Create And Upload Your TikTok Videos

TikTok is the best social media platform to create amazing videos and engage people to follow your profile. Here are few ideas to create your TikTok videos:

  • Click the + icon at the bottom center.
  • The camera will open, and you can start to film your videos. 
  • But before starting to record videos on TikTok, you need to choose your song. 
  • However, if you want to capture videos at the moment, you can skip the option and start filming videos without music. 
  • Like Snapchat, TikTok provides AR filters and effects, which helps to change the look and color of videos. 
  • Click the effects option on the left-hand side to find more features.
  • The world tab includes options like environment and the effective background designs. 
  • On the right side of the recording screen, you can see a beauty button to change the look of your face. 

TikTok allows you to create videos from 3 to 15 seconds, and you can also merge multiple clips together for up to 60 second videos. 

Once you start to post videos regularly, try duets, dance, and lip syncing features because these videos are more popular among the TikTok audiences and viewers. 

TikTok For Marketers

Nowadays, many applications have helped businesses to promote their products and services and reach target customers. TikTok is undoubtedly a fast moving platform to get maximum reach and reach your message to the viral audience. Marketers use different strategies for brand awareness and increasing sales growth. 

Here are some most effective strategies to brand a particular product or service on TikTok: 

  1. Make a Trend 

TikTok is the best platform to find trendy content and hashtags. One of the best ways to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website is by making the most recent content and using a perfect hashtag to get your content in front of the exact audiences. 

  1. Engage With TikTok Users

Engagement is a two-way process! Uploading engaging content for your TikTok followers is important. Additionally, spending some time to see your post comments and commenting back to the audience is also needed. You can also comment on other users while watching trending videos, which helps to create good conversation and build strong relationships. 

  1. Promote Hashtag Challenges      

Hashtags are the most popular and inspired activity on every social media platform. It will help you to generate audiences and spread your message organically. Hashtags challenges are a non-sponsored method to reach potential customers. Even you can grow organic TikTok viewers by using trending hashtags that may help you achieve immense growth. 

  1. Partner With TikTok Influencers

Like other social media platforms, TikTok’s influencer presence and growth are huge. Partnering with TikTok influencers to promote your brand is a great way to increase brand awareness and generate sales. 

In fact, people are more likely to trust a brand and buy products based on their influencer recommendations. That’s why influencer marketing helps to improve your marketing growth and establish your brand to loyal followers. 

Conclusion: 

TikTok provides endless opportunities for users to create TikTok accounts and become more popular among younger audiences. Incorporating TikTok into your marketing strategy is a long process. But, with a perfect guide, you’ll be able to create awesome content and attract many people to visit your TikTok profile. Therefore, don’t miss this amazing platform for your business success!

Alison Williams is a social media content writer who works at Flatfitty, she is an experienced social media analyst, and her passion is to contribute to engaging content for authority blogs and websites. You can also visit her online at Twitter.com!

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Guest Posts

7 Unique Instagram Marketing Tips For Beginners

Guest posts

Introduction: 

Are you looking for the perfect guide to improve your marketing strategy on Instagram? Follow these 7 effective steps that will help you to enhance your business. 

Before we enter into the main topic, a quick look about Instagram marketing. 

Instagram is one of the most popular and influential social networks in the world. As more and more people use Instagram to update their valuable information. Instagram is an excellent platform for publishing your visual thoughts. 

Instagram marketing is the process of promoting your brand among Instagram users. It helps you to reach a large & new audience, increase brand visibility, build strong brand & customer relationships, and generate more sales and revenue for your business. 

Okay, shall we move to our main topic: 7 unique Instagram marketing tips for beginners:

Tip 1: Make A Great Profile 

When someone enters your profile, the first thing they see your profile picture, short bio, and your most recent posts. Your Instagram profile clearly explains who you are and what your business does. It can help to show your brand personality and get people to notice your actions. 

Here are some important parts of your Instagram profile:

  • Profile Image: The image that you use should be relevant to your brand or business. 
  • Username: Add the right username that is searchable. 
  • Bio: You have 150 characters to write an effective bio. So, spend some time making the right impression. 
  • Clickable Links: Bio is an excellent place to take people to your product page directly. 
  • Call to action: You can insert additional call to action buttons such as call, email, etc. 

Tip 2: Follow A Unique Content Strategy 

A solid content strategy is essential to succeed on Instagram marketing. Without useful and relevant content, it is hard to grab the attention of your target audience. 

So, you should analyze what type of content is best to gain more potential followers to your account. 

But, how to find & improve your content strategy?

  1. You should upload more photos and videos that are relevant to your brand/products. 
  2. You can make videos that show your company culture and give a behind the scene look. 
  3. Create a mixture of contents with different formats. 
  4. Focus on high quality and subject matter contents. 
  5. Post one or two times per day when your followers are more active. 

Tip 3: Collaborate With Target Influencers 

Influencer marketing is the best strategy to reach out to your potential customers and gain followers on Instagram within a short time. Partners with the right influencers can show your brand in front of a wider audience. 

According to the research, more and more people purchase products based on the content of influencers. 

Usually, Instagram influencers have a large and loyal follower base. So, most people trust their recommendations to make a successful campaign. 

Ensure that you should choose to partner with those who have a highly relevant audience based on your product and services. 

If you partner with the right influencers, you can easily build strong brand awareness with your target audiences. 

Tip 4: Take Advantage Of Instagram Stories 

Instagram stories are similar to Snapchat posts, and it is a great way to keep your followers engaged and get more engagement. 

Instagram stories are easy to create and get more user attention when compared to Instagram photos. Because Instagram stories appear at the top of your followers feed. So, your followers can easily notice your stories and expose your content to a lot of people. Moreover, stories are a great feature to get more views on your profile page. 

When you boost Instagram story views, you get a chance to increase organic views for your stories. It can also help to drive traffic to your profile and expand popularity within a short period. It even encourages people to share more of your content with others. 

Tip 5: Use Powerful Hashtags 

Hashtags play an important role on Instagram, and you can use up to 30 hashtags per post. Hashtags can help you get more people to see your content and connect your brand with a wider audience. 

There are two types of Instagram hashtags that can get more visibility:

  1. Brand Hashtags 

A brand hashtag is basically your company name or the name of your marketing campaign. You can create branded hashtags to promote your business on Instagram easily. But, make sure your hashtags are easy to remember, unique and trending. 

  1. Content Hashtags 

The content hashtag is essential for getting more and more people to discover your content. You can use these hashtags within your content when it is relevant to it. 

If your content wants to become popular on Instagram, using a content hashtag can help you to show your content in front of your target audience. 

Tip 6: Leverage Instagram Ads 

Most marketers use Instagram advertising to enhance their brand to a huge audience. On average, there are 2 million users who use Instagram as an advertising platform. 

Here are few strong reasons for you to use Instagram advertising:

  • You can introduce your brand to a target audience through Instagram ads. 
  • Instagram ads are more engaging, which can help you to get a better conversation rate. 
  • It provides huge creative features for both images and videos when promoting your products. 
  • Instagram ads increase the chance of generating more sales and getting revenue. 

Tip 7: Access Right Metrics

Understanding your metric performance is the first step to improve your marketing strategy. Instagram provides a free inbuilt analytics tool to measure the success of your profile, content, audience demographic and more. 

These include: 

  • Follower Growth Rate:  The number of followers you have in the last 7 days.
  • Engagement Rate: It includes likes, comments, and shares per post. 
  • Click Through Rate: You can know how many people are clicking through to your URL. 

The above metrics will help you to market your business more effectively on Instagram. 

Conclusion: 

Instagram marketing strategies are the best marketing strategies in the digital world! You can use the above mentioned 7 marketing tips that can develop your marketing level and help to move the next! As a beginner, you must know the importance of Instagram marketing and their stats. 

Good luck for your business! 

Caterina Taylor is an experienced social media marketer and writer who works at PlanYourGram.com. She loves to work on content creation for social media blogs and has the potential to deliver engaging content on various platforms and networks.

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Guest Posts

Top 7 Email Marketing Strategies for Self-Published Authors

Guest posts

Emails and newsletters are the most effective digital marketing tools to promote books by self-published authors. Sending an email is much cheaper than many other marketing tools, and yet it is more effective.

Campaign Monitor reported that for the past decade, email marketing has generated the highest ROI for businesses worldwide. In fact, for every 1$ marketers spend on email marketing, they receive $38 back.

 Given its affordability and its effectiveness, Email marketing is the best promotional tool at the disposal of self-published authors. Let’s take a look at 7 tried and tested strategies to help you get more bang for your buck through email marketing:

1. Segment your Email List

First things first, you must divide your email list into small segments based on geographic, behavioral, psychographic, and demographic factors. Your subscribers and potential readers will hardly be a homogenous bunch.

They will differ from each other in terms of preferences, interests, personalities, behaviors, and other features. Therefore, it makes sense to divide them into smaller groups and design email content specifically for each segment.

Geographic Area

Sort your email list based on their geographic location. Why? Research suggests that people are more likely to open emails at certain times of the day. Marketers consider midweek, between 1 – 3 PM, the ideal time for sending emails.

However, 1 PM in one part of the world means midnight at another place. If you send one email to all subscribers, only those in your time zone will end up opening it. Hence, it’s better to divide the subscriber list according to geographic area and send emails at the appropriate time.

Open rate, purchase history, and user status (new/old) are some other segments to consider when dividing your email list.

2. Develop an Email Sequence

Next comes the sequence of Emails. Are you bombarding the reader with information in the first go? If yes, then try a different tactic for more success. Make use of Drip marketing, a strategy in which you send multiple emails to your subscribers at certain times and dates in order.

What does this do? Instead of an in-your-face sales pitchy approach, the email sequence prepares the reader for purchase by providing them the information they will find useful and interesting.

Here is a sequence that you can try:

  1. A welcome email to new subscribers.
  2. Email containing an excerpt from your book based on the reader’s previous reading history with a CTA button.
  3. Email containing an incentive such as sale price, reward, bundle pricing, etc., with a CTA.
  4. Email containing a limited time only offer with a CTA.

You will need an email automation tool to set up this sequential email marketing strategy, which brings us to our next step.

3. Get a Reliable Email Service Provider

You may be thinking that johndoe_01@gmail.com is a good enough address for your email marketing campaign, but rest assured it’s not! ESP accounts are more likely to end up unread in the spam folder.

Hence, you should get an official email account such as Gmail business suite, MailChimp, MailLite, and more. If you have an official website, you can even install a plugin, which will allow you to create emails from your own server.

Secondly, you will need email automation tools. Mailchimp and MailLite have their own automation tools. You can also use third-party software for email automation, such as software from Hubstaff or Moosend.

Email automation will help you keep track of your emails, what has been sent, what is scheduled, and so forth.

4. Focus on your Strength

Many self-published authors bog themselves down by worrying about email design. They end up wasting a lot of time on the perfect font, image, and style, that they forget the essence of the email.

Yes, it is true that emails with multimedia are more likely to succeed. However, it is not a given. You can simply write to your readers in a natural way to get a conversion. If you want to add design, you can use premade templates from your email marketing software instead of wasting hours designing the perfect layout.

5. Be As Natural As Possible

You are a writer, so do what you do best; write. Write the content of the email from your heart rather than adopting a corporate-esque stoicism. You readers, the ones who subscribed to your website because they love your writing, are more likely to respond to your words than some formal, template-style email.

Here are a few tips that you can keep in mind:

  • Use a friendly tone and talk to the subscribers as though you are familiar with them. It will invite them to continue reading your email to learn more.
  • Use simple language; resist the urge to add hard to read, fancy words. People connect with what they understand and what feels real to them.
  • Speak to them like you are speaking to a friend. If you are sending emails to old readers, share an inside joke, catchphrase, quote, or poem from your previous book to make them feel like they are a part of an exclusive club.

6. Freebies do Work

Take a hint from Software as a Service model and offer free previews to hook your readers. If you are selling e-books, then you can include a free preview for the first few chapters to entice the reader into buying.

Similarly, you can offer discounts, additional perks like buy 1 book and get the audiobook free, and so on. Perks and rewards never fail to convert if done in a classy way.

7. Include a CTA

Always include a clear and visible Call To Action (CTA) button in your email. What do you want to achieve with the email? Do you want the reader to subscribe? Purchase? View? Download?

Whatever your intended result, include a CTA to drive action. You can include the CTA at the end of your email and highlight it, so it pops up.

A few examples of popular CTA are:

  1. Subscribe Today
  2. Download Now
  3. Purchase Here

You can experiment with the CTAs and see what works for you.

Arslan Hassan is an electrical engineer with a passion for writing, designing, and anything tech-related. His educational background in the technical field has given him the edge to write on many topics. He occasionally writes blog articles for Dynamologic Solutions.

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Guest Posts

5 Ways Content Marketing Affects Your Book Sales

Guest posts

Perhaps, among all the ways to promote your book, content marketing is the most powerful tool since it allows you to instantly reach out to your target audience online and start your conversation with them. Here is how content marketing can be helpful in your book promotion directly affecting the level of sales and the number of engaged fans.

#1 Content Marketing Improves Your Landing Page’s Conversions

First and foremost, consider creating a dedicated landing page for your book. Landing pages have been effective for ages and are still widely being used by all kinds of sellers. Fortunately, they are particularly useful for promoting and selling a particular product instead of focusing on a wide variety of products which means selling your book with the help of a landing page will be the perfect route to go for you.

That being said, it’s important to understand that what you place on the landing page is what really will help you sell your book. You might be directing a lot of traffic to the page, but without good content, it won’t work the way you want it to. For example, some key characteristics of your book, a synopsis, reader and critic reviews, and a sample from the book can be placed throughout the page as well as a button for purchasing the book. This way, you will keep all the attention only on the book itself while promoting it.

#2 Content Marketing Allows Your Readers to Stay in Touch with You Via Social Media

Social media marketing is known to be one of the most effective types of online marketing – and it’s a part of content marketing. Indeed, all the content you create for social media as a part of your campaigns will actually fall into the category of content marketing. This means that you can tie social media into your campaigns seamlessly and integrate them or attach them to other platforms you use for promoting your book (e.g. email marketing).

The best thing about social media platforms is that they help authors stay in touch with their readers at any time from any place. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or any other platforms you decide to use as a writer will help you connect with your audience better while providing some kind of insight into your life to your most dedicated fans. Having an online social media following will also help you maintain a base of readers that will always come back to get more content from you – and more books.

#3 Content Marketing Boosts Your SEO Results

SEO or search engine optimization has been a major part of all digital marketing campaigns for ages now. In addition to that, SEO is needed both on your website and on your social media which means it is crucial for your content marketing as well. Optimizing your images and videos, adding keywords to your articles and blog posts, using hashtags on social media – all of this is a part of SEO just as much as it is a part of content marketing.

As Jocelyn Fry from the essay writing service reviews site Writing Judge puts it, “Content marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand. If you don’t adjust your content correctly, it won’t be discovered organically by search engines and your website won’t rank in search results. Likewise, it will be harder for you to get discovered on social media if you don’t use hashtags and tags. Many people who are just starting out forget just how important SEO is, so if you remember about it and you do everything right, you will have a big advantage.”

#4 Content Marketing Establishes Authority with The Help of Your Reader’s Testimonials

It’s easy to forget that content marketing is not just about the content you create – it’s also about the content your readers create that you can then share with your audience. No matter how much you try to persuade your potential readers to try to buy your book – other readers will be able to do it much better which is exactly why UGC or user-generated content is so important for the success of your content marketing and digital marketing campaigns. Here are just some examples of UGC that you can use:

  • Reader Testimonials: Reader testimonials or reviews help you establish authority and show that you are a good author writing good books. In other words, it’s a way to attract more potential customers and persuade them to actually buy your book.
  • Fan Content: Fan content such as fanfiction, fan art, cosplays, etc. helps you get more exposure, especially on social media, and attracts even more potential readers to check out your book. Such content can also help you create a stronger bond with your audience and create a lasting relationship with returning readers.

#5 Content Marketing Helps Leverage Your Efforts with Paid Ads

Last but not least, content marketing can help you improve the results achieved by your paid ad campaigns. Paid ads are usually used to generate more traffic (to your website, your landing page, or your social media page), but the content is what actually helps you sell your book once the paid ad has taken your reader to the place you want them to be. Moreover, knowing how to create good content will also help you write better ads that will be more efficient and effective.

If you aren’t so sure about your marketing abilities, it’s definitely worth checking out some books about marketing your own book before you launch any digital marketing campaigns. After all, if you want to achieve success, you need to be ready to have to learn some new tricks and techniques that will help you promote your book the right way.

Final Thoughts

All in all, content marketing is definitely an amazing tool that will help you improve your digital marketing campaigns and will help you best the sales of your book. Use the tips in this article to improve your content marketing strategy and start promoting your book more effectively.

John Edwards is a writing specialist who is looking for ways of self-development in the field of writing and blogging. New horizons in his beloved business always attract with their varieties of opportunities. Therefore, it is so important for him to do the writing.

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Platform and Branding

How to Market Your Book in 2020

The difference between filing your carefully edited pages on your computer and readers reading those pages, is marketing.

Books come alive when readers read them, but in order to read them, they must know it exists. It’s the imagination that puts skin on characters and personalities in dialogue. Without readers, your book is a black and white stack of words.

One of my writing friends once said: “The brutal truth is you may have the greatest book ever written, but if you cannot pitch it, no one may ever know.”

Swap the word pitch with market, and you get a similar result.

So, how do you market your book, especially when life looks quite different now than it did a year ago?

Start with your pitch.

Online marketing can help you so much right now. You can do it from home, but still reach hundreds if not thousands of potential readers. However, just as every word counts in writing, every word counts in marketing. For someone to be willing to stop their scroll, it’s important to be succinct and catch their attention.

If you’re on Twitter, try formatting your pitch to target potential readers (and don’t forget to hashtag #WritingCommunity!). This will hopefully pique interest and if you leave it with a question, opens the door for comments.

Market your protagonist’s character arc.

Readers connect with the human side of characters, and often the humanity of characters means they have flaws. You want to keep the ending a surprise, but give enough to engage their desire to find out what happens. What’s your inciting incident, how does your protagonist respond, and what does this say about him? These can be good questions to ask when considering how to portray character arc.

Note: Keep your target audience in mind, because you want to remember not just what you’re pitching, but who you’re pitching to.

Shine a spotlight on your theme

              Your theme is what holds your book together. It’s the current that carries your protagonist, and your readers, from the first page to the last. It’s what makes them pick up your book instead of the one next to it on the shelf, or add your book to the cart instead of one in the customers-also-bought list on Amazon.

Let your passion for your book overflow as you market, but remember readers often purchase not just because of the genre, but because of the story in the genre. Your theme is what sets your story apart and your character arc helps hold up your theme, whatever it is.

Best wishes as you spread the word on your project!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

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Writing for YA

Do’s and Don’ts When Forming Your Launch Team

Congratulations, your book baby is now ready for release! What comes next? It’s time to celebrate your book release with friends who are ready to shout out your book news on social media.

As a blogger, writer, and voracious reader, so far, I have been on nearly twenty launch teams. I’ve gathered some wonderful ideas and went through some “growing pains” with friends as they crafted their release teams.

Take a deep breath, and exhale. We’re here to make sure your launch team is everything you hoped it would be… and so much more.

What Not to Do

Any timeline suggested is a guideline, not written in stone dates to adhere to. If you are early, start working on what you can. If you’ve passed a “deadline” you can probably catch up (although some scrambling might take place).

Don’t #1 Where’s my tribe? Two or three months before your launch, place an all-call on your social media, website, author blog, and newsletter asking for launch team members. Give them details of what they will need to do if they become part of your team. Not everyone will be able to do what you require.

Don’t #2 No spending limit! You’ll want to have a budget that fits your financial needs for contest prizes both within your launch team and on social media at large: books, branded author items, possible postage, etc. We all love those cute paperclips or notepads, or any office supplies in general, so please remember to keep an eye on your wallet and get creative about your prizes.

Don’t #3 Accept everyone (more accurately, choose wisely). Are the interested persons tech savvy? Do they have all the large social media outlets in regular rotation on their computers and/or phones? Have they written reviews before, created memes, recommended books to friends? The more your team is promotions oriented, the better the reach will be to interested persons. AKA, your readers.

Don’t #4 No GPS? We’re ready for a party. But where is it located? This is a huge event in your writing life, celebrate with your new and longtime friends on Facebook by creating a group. Helpful hint-have several trusted and knowledgeable author/writer friends serve as administrators or moderators on the page along with you. You’ll have “more eyes” on the page when questions or comments arise from launch team members.

Don’t #5 No Guidance. For some of your group members this might be their first time on a launch team. It’s okay to have newbies, sometimes they are the most enthusiastic! But you’ll want to set parameters for the launch team such as participation expectations, how to post reviews to booksellers websites, where they can post, and when to name a few.

The Fun Stuff

Okay, you know what not to do, now what about the things you Do need to take care of?

DO #1 Create a fun atmosphere for your group. Your team is part of a community. Create a fun, vibrant, place for them to visit and chat. Let them get to know you and each other better through this group.

DO #2 Prizes. Everyone loves prizes! Have meme or video creation contests centered around your book, photo scavenger hunts for objects, colors, something that appears in your novel, and even your website. Remember, the prizes don’t have to be pricey. Get creative.

DO #3 Show your appreciation for them being part of your group. Tucking some bookmarks in the ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) you send to them and writing a “thank you” note are simple things you can do to build the team relationship further. Other things that can be done are sending some chocolates, a few “while you’re reading” tea bags, or an author branded item. Even is they are reading your ARC digitally, you can still send some of these goodies to them.

Do #4 Keep the sizzle in social media. Your 10-day countdown Ask your top ten performers to create a meme to post on their assigned day so all the launch team members can share it on their social media. You can tweak the posting timeline to suit your needs. It is an exciting way to celebrate your upcoming release, whether it is a 10-day countdown, or 3 or 4-day countdown. It is totally up to you.

Do #5 Have a release day party on Facebook with your team members. Let them know how much their participation means to you. All of you deserve to celebrate on this special day, and it’s a great way to thank them for the work they’ve done to promote your book.

When book launch time arises for you, have fun, remember to breathe, and celebrate because you did it! Congratulations! All the best to you and your future book launching teams as you bring your book babies out into the world, one confident step at a time.

Stacy T. Simmons helps writers of Christian fiction in her role as president of ACFW-DFW and at her blog, Fueled by Faith and Caffeine.

Stacy writes uplifting fiction that delights the reader’s romantic sensibilities. Thirty-three years of marital bliss is a great contributor. By day, she is an office manager for an insurance agent. By night, she is happily working on her manuscript, or her blog, Fueled by Faith and Caffeine. Her home is filled with family and a menagerie of pets she likes to call “Noah’s Ark.” Connect with Stacy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. She loves to interact with her readers.

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The Intentional Writer

Lead Magnets 101:A Useful Tool for Growing Your Audience

The intentional writer

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is a marketing term for a free item or service that is given away to potential customers for the purpose of gathering contact details, such as their email address. Examples of lead magnets include free ebooks, webinars, and printable checklists.

How do lead magnets help you?

The purpose of lead magnets is to attract potential customers, who hopefully will become actual customers after interacting with your lead magnet. Even those of us who don’t yet have a book to sell benefit from lead magnets, because lead magnets build your email list, which enlarges your platform.

Here are some ways they can attract customers.

  1. People like free stuff. Marketers have been exploiting this fact for years.
  2. If your freebie is on-brand, it will attract the kind of readers who are most likely to be interested in your writing, and thus and purchase your products in the future.
  3. They give potential customers something helpful, which A) builds trust in your brand and B) makes them more likely to return and purchase something from you.
  4. They help you acquire potential customers for future sales by growing your email list, which is still the most effective way to convert book sales.

Before you create a lead magnet, you must consider three parts of the definition:

  • the What (the free item or service)
  • the Who (potential customers)
  • the Why (your purpose for gathering contact details)

Don’t put the cart before the horse

To create the best possible lead magnet, you need to consider the Why and Who before worrying about the What.

1. The Why: Consider your specific purpose

What do you want the lead magnet to accomplish? What is your end goal? Possibilities include:

  • Gain author newsletter subscribers
  • Gain blog followers
  • Get people to try your product/service in the hopes they’ll want more
  • Get people to read your free ebook, so they’ll want to read more of your books

2. The Who: Define your target audience (and their felt needs)

The more specifically you can define your target audience, the easier it will be to create a valuable lead magnet that meets one of their felt needs.

  • What are the target audience(s) of your author brand?
  • What subset of that target audience you are targeting with your lead magnet? You will need different lead magnets for different goals and audience subsets.
  • What are their felt needs or pain points? The more specific you are at identifying these pain points, the better your chance of creating a lead magnet they will love.
  • What social media platforms do they spend time on? Optimize your lead magnet for that kind of media.

3. The What: Create a freebie your target audience will love

The ideal lead magnet will:

  1. Meet a felt need or pain point the user has
  2. Be something the user can use immediately and easily
  3. Be something the user can use repeatedly
  4. Make the user feel like they’re “stealing” from you—i.e. getting a lot of value for free
  5. Reinforce your brand.
  6. Deliver what is promised. Don’t disappoint the user with content that doesn’t live up to the hype.

With those goals in mind, begin to brainstorm:

  •  What helpful service or information can you offer that meets a felt need of your target audience? .
  • How might you package that information into a downloadable form? (Printable pdf, How-To video, ebook, free link to a training webinar, etc.)
  • Which kinds of media and content do you feel most comfortable creating? A quality lead magnet combines a useful idea with good design. If you’ve never created a video before, it’s probably not the best format for your lead magnet.

There are tons of websites that offer lists of ideas. Here are three to try:

Three fiction lead magnet ideas

Lead magnet examples from successful authors.

A comprehensive list of 101 ideas with a handy table of contents.

Finally, don’t stress out! (And stop trying to create the perfect lead magnet.)

There’s no such thing as the perfect lead magnet, so stop stressing over whether your idea is “right”. Your goal is not to spend the next six months analyzing your target audience, coming up with eight dozen possible lead magnets ideas and then rejecting all of them.

Your goal is to make your best effort, put it out there, and see what happens. So have fun.

Award-winning writer Lisa E. Betz believes that everyone has a unique story to tell the world. She loves inspiring fellow writers to be more intentional about developing their craft and courageous in sharing their words. Lisa shares her words through speaking, leading Bible studies, writing historical mysteries, and blogging about living intentionally.

You can find her on Facebook LisaEBetzWriter Twitter @LisaEBetz and Pinterest Lisa E Betz Intentional Living.

Categories
Guest Posts

How Authors Can Market a Book with No Budget

The biggest misconception that most authors have is that they need to have hundreds or thousands of dollars to market their work. This is not true. Spending a lot of money on marketing is not a guarantee that people will buy your book. In our world today, there are lots of opportunities for authors to connect with their readers and make more sales.

You need not be a marketing expert to connect with your audience. Marketing is all about connecting with people who share similar interests with you. With this fact in mind, marketing becomes a simple puzzle. The best thing about marketing is you can connect with anyone in the world. If you don’t have enough money to market your book, here are a few tips that will help you make rapid progress.

1. Start immediately

Don’t wait to complete your book to start marketing it. If you do, it might be too late. When you start marketing the book while writing it, you’ll have enough time to build relationships and bond with your readers. According to best custom essay, connecting with your readers will help you know their needs and expectations. You can also put yourself in their shoes while writing the book. Knowing your target market and their interests in advance will make it easier for you to market the book.

2. Focus on a few promotions

To market your book effectively, you need to pick a few promotions and focus on them. When you spread yourself too thin, you’ll have a hard time marketing your book effectively. Focus is a key ingredient of success. Picking lots of promotions will not only affect your performance but also lead to stress and anxiety.

3. Small audiences are great

When you compare yourself to famous writers, you might think that you have a small audience. However, a small audience is good. Remember, we all start with nothing. According to essay writing service, every person who signs up or buys a book plays an important role in your success. You should treat them like royalty. Find out where they buy their books, how they find new books, and which blogs they visit frequently to name a few. A small audience will help you discover more details and insights that will help you reach other people.

4. Make plans

Don’t just throw everything together and expect great results. You need to think things through before acting. Think about your goals and how your book can help you accomplish them. Create a clear strategy that will help you reach your destination. People who write down their plans and goals are 42 percent more likely to realize them.

No matter how small your budget is, the one thing you should do to make your book a success is to invest in time. Set aside at least two to three hours every week to focus on your book and marketing.

5. Know your reader

I cannot emphasize enough on the importance of knowing your ideal reader. When you write your book with your ideal reader in mind, marketing will be a simple puzzle to solve. Remember, you are not writing for yourself but for your readers. As assignment writing service reports, failing to know your ideal reader will make marketing extremely difficult. No reader wants to invest in a book that he or she will never read.

6. Focus on opportunities in your area

In most cases, writers tend to focus on the big opportunities that they’ll find in cities and international libraries whilst ignoring their own backyard. There are lots of opportunities around you that will help you generate money without having to spend a fortune. Think of the local bookstores, libraries, schools, festivals, breakfast, and literary organizations around you. These institutions will not only provide local support but also help you connect with other bigger merchants.

7. Contact publications and local news outlets

Writers often overlook local news when it comes to attracting the attention of the public. This is the best place for writers to start if they want their efforts to pay off in the long run. A Google search will help you get contact info for the local newspapers, talk shows, websites, and blogs to name a few. Remember to look at their requirements before making your submission.

8. Use your hobbies

How do you spend your free time? Do you draw, knit, garden or paint? You can use your hobbies to connect with other people. According to the essay writers, the more people you connect with; the more people will be aware of your work.

9. Create amazing visuals

Human beings are visual creatures. We all love looking at beautiful pictures. The first thing people look at before buying a book is the cover. A great book with poorly designed visuals will not sell. You need to take your time to design a book cover and your posters to market your book easily. Apps such as Adobe Spark will make your work easy. And the best part is, most of these great apps are free!

10. Don’t forget family and friends

One of the biggest challenges most writers encounter is getting book reviews, particularly on Amazon. Your family and friends can help you with this. Most of the time, our loved ones are ready and willing to help. However, they have no idea what they should do. Give them a copy of your book and ask them to review it.

11. Connect with other authors

According to custom essay help, you shouldn’t see other authors as the competition but allies. Connecting with other authors will allow you to get mentored and also promote your work. You can help each other progress and grow your audience.

Conclusion

Effective marketing is all about creativity. You need to know the strategies that other successful authors are using and adapt them to get similar results. Always start simple. Start by knowing your ideal reader and using the opportunities in your own backyard. In the end, your book will sell without having to spend a fortune.

“Kurt Walker is a skilled freelancer and editor at a professional writer service and resume writer review service in London. He is one of the many UK essay writers specialized in essay writing and assignment help. In his spare time, Kurt plays the guitar and takes his dog Shay for a walk.”

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Embrace the Wait

Survival Tips for the Waiting Part of Writing Tip #17 – Prepare a successful launch

I think writers must contemplate individual words much more than the average person. If that weren’t true, I’m convinced we would see hordes of people staring into space much more often. The word launch conjures up everything from ships sailing to teens leaving for college. But for a writer, the word launch encompasses those same concepts and so much more. The day a book launches is the day a dream becomes reality. But to give that dream the best chance to reach its full potential, just like an adept captain or a diligent parent, we must prepare in advance for the big event. Here are a few tips to get your book ready for launch.

1) Rally your tribe. Enlist as many launch team volunteers as you can. As the clock ticks closer to your release date, keep your team engaged through emails and/or by forming a private group, through social media, just for them. Use group posts to generate excitement and to remind your team about important tasks. You can do this in fun ways, like offering weekly giveaways or posting teaser excerpts or illustrations from your upcoming book.

2) Get the word out. It’s likely that you have potential readers out there who have never heard of you or your book. One way to find them is to use your launch team and other connections to introduce yourself. Social media is a great tool for this kind of word of mouth exposure. When a reader first sees a friend’s post about your book, they take casual notice. Then they hear about your amazing book from another source—and it cues their mental radar. But when the potential reader hears about the book a third time, it puts them into action mode.

3) Consider a virtual launch party. Covid has made face-to-face book signings and launch parties almost impossible. But no fear, there are multiple resources available to help you engage with your anxiously awaiting public—via the internet. Online social gatherings and conferences are becoming the norm, and fortunately, we can glean from the experiences of others who have gone before us. Facebook Live, Zoom, and StreamYard are great forums for a launch party. The first place to start is by doing a Google search for online launch parties, specific to your genera. Notice the platforms used, check for what worked and what did not with other parties, then steal your favorite ideas and create the party of your dreams to celebrate the birth of your book baby.

Technology has become the bridge between writers and their audience during this social distancing season. If you find yourself lacking in the tech skill to prepare your book for launch, know that you are not alone. But don’t let that intimidate you. Network with other authors for information and take full advantage of YouTube tutorials to educate yourself. Together, we can do it! Check out the link in the resources below for more information.

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1

Fun Fact or Helpful Resource:
How Do Writers Create Book Launch Content?

How to Throw a Virtual Book Launch Using Facebook Live:

https://www.janefriedman.com/how-to-throw-a-virtual-book-launch-using-facebook-live/

My FB Author Page and My Launch Party Invite:

Annette Marie Griffin is a award-winning writer who speaks at local women’s group meetings and women’s retreats on the topic of biblical womanhood and finding our identity in Christ. She is the Operations and Events Coordinator at a private school for special needs students and is the editor of their quarterly newsletter. She has written custom curriculum for women’s retreats and children’s church curriculum for Gateway Church in San Antonio, Texas where she served as Children’s Ministry Director and Family Program Director for over twenty years. She and her husband John have five amazing children and two adorable grands. She’s a member of Word Weavers International, ACFW, SCBWI, and serves on the Board of Directors for The Creative Writing Institute.

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Guest Posts

Four Things Book Marketing Bloggers Aren’t Telling You

On its surface, the internet is a wonderful resource to learn about how to sell your book. With a huge variety of book marketers sharing their tips and winning strategies, alongside a sparkling resume of accomplishments, it can be easy to be sucked into their rhetoric and believe that they have all the keys to book marketing success. The issue is, they don’t. More often than not, knowingly or unknowingly, they are leaving out important realities about book marketing and trying to convince you that, like the Jackson 5, it’s as easy as one two three. Sorry to say, but it’s not, so next time you read a top ten list of tips and strategies, bear in mind these four things they’ll often ignore.

Specificity

The internet is awash with recommendations on book marketing strategy, but how detailed are they? Smartauthorslab.com ran a survey of authors and book marketers and found that the number one frustration behind selling books is not knowing where to focus time, effort and resources. While marketing bloggers are great at suggesting tips and tricks, when it comes down to numbers they’re falling short.

How many social media posts a day? When is the best time to advertise? How much money should I spend on targetted ads? Questions like these are rarely answered in these short form blogs, and it’s because the answers are more complicated than they’d like to let you believe.

What perseverance really means

Read any book marketing blog and they’ll likely mention that marketing a book is all about perseverance. Keep at it, and you’ll get there eventually. While this is certainly true, they rarely talk specifically about what this perseverance means, and how long you may need to keep it up to get your book out there.

Many marketing bloggers will gloss over the sheer amount of time they take to implement their ‘tips’. For example, when a blog tells you to test your market, they rarely mention the authors that take years learning about their audience, testing their ads, and drafting and redrafting book covers before making a sale. Much like requesting reviews: this is something every blogger will recommend, but few will acknowledge that you might have to send your book to hundreds of reviewers before they even read them, let alone give you a collection marketable favourable reviews.

“This is the problem with success stories. So many bloggers focus on the ones who made it, often despite seemingly insurmountable odds. What they seem to overlook is that, for every champion, there are thousands of similar cases that ran out of time, money or patience,” warns Camilla Vitali, a marketer at Big Assignments and UKWritings.

The Luck Factor

Part of the reason so many book marketers don’t succeed is that they were simply unlucky, another part of book marketing most bloggers won’t mention. Now, marketing a book isn’t just about luck. Putting more effort into the marketing process certainly will make it more likely to sell than if you didn’t work at it at all, that’s obvious. But not every great book becomes a classic, or even a bestseller. When it comes down to it, there’s a lot of luck in book marketing.

“There are countless examples from the classics of literature that prove the importance of luck time and again. The Great Gatsby only sold 20,000 copies when it was first released, 50,000 fewer than expected,” says Tom Barry, a business writer at Via Writing and Essay Writing Service.

There is no winning strategy

Probably the biggest lapse in book marketing blogs is that there is no winning strategy to get your book sold. At the end of the day, no matter how respectable and accomplished a marketing writer is, all they can do is suggest strategies that can point you in the right direction.

They can tell you to open up social media accounts, they can implore you to learn about targeted advertising, they can give you reams and reams of lists of book reviewers to approach. But when it comes down to it, none of that will actually sell your book. You will sell your book, in your own particular way.

Beatrice Potter is a professional copywriter at Best Writing Services and Academized review. She specializes in all kinds of topics from marketing to business to social pursuits. She is always open to sharing her personal experience at Boomessays Review and likes to give advice to beginner writers on innovative ways to create content that sells.

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Platform and Branding

Nailing Your Metadata: Keywords

Last month we talked about categories. Now we’re going to dig into the other side of the metadata equation: keywords.

Nailing your Keywords

Your keywords are the 7 (on Amazon) particular words/phrases that you’d like your book to come up under if someone searches for them. Most authors make the mistake of picking a few descriptive terms like “bible study” or “romantic comedy”. Unless you’re a NYT Bestseller, it’s unlikely that you’ll rank first on this page of results.

Alternatively, some people pick keywords that no one is interested in or actually typing in. If you are trying to rank in ultra-competitive keywords, you’re in shark-invested waters without a float. If no one is searching for the keywords you’re using, you’re in the desert.  So what’s the key? Picking keywords that are being searched for often, but don’t have much competition. There is a fine line, and it’s a tightrope to balance.

 There’s a statistic that says if your book ranks first overall for a search term, there is a 27% chance a shopper will click on your book. If your book is the second result, that number drops to 12%. The odds of someone clicking on your book if it ranks on the second page are only 7% (for all 10-15 results on the page).

So, you want to be on that first page, and you want to be that first result if possible. But you also want to make sure there are people actually interested in that keyword.

Your job is to research various terms related to your book and analyze the market for it. You need to break down the monthly traffic volume for each possible term, and then look at how fierce the competition is based on the highest-ranking titles’ sales rank. With these numbers in mind, you can choose the 7 most effective keywords to keep your book visible to the right audience.

Pro Tip: How do you analyze the traffic of each term? Well that’s a good question. I use a tool called KDP Rocket to analyze traffic data for all of my clients. It digs into the Amazon numbers to tell you just how often (per month) a term is being searched for, and how competitive that term is. You might be surprised by the results. This is the best tool I’ve found to help with keyword research.

Putting It All Together

Optimizing your metadata might not become a bestseller overnight. It doesn’t have the kind of immediate effect that ad campaigns or discount promotions have. But what it does give you is a competitive advantage and the ability to maintain long-term success from the short-term sales strategies. By updating your categories and keywords, you instantly become more discoverable to target readers, and that is always a good thing.

Vincent B. Davis II is an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and soldier. His first novel The Man with Two Names was published in July 2017 and has since become an Amazon International Best Seller. He is passionate about helping authors improve their brand and platform. He works with publishing companies and individual clients to help them sell more books in the modern publishing environment. Vincent is also the Senior Editor for blueridgeconference.com. If you are interested in contributing a blog for the site, or have any other queries, you can reach him at Vincent@thirteenthpress.com

Categories
Platform and Branding

Nailing Your Metadata: Categories

What is Metadata?

Metadata is the information you give to Amazon (or other distributors) that instructs them on where your book should be located, and to whom it should be shown. Most readers will never know what your metadata entails, and just as few will care about it. Amazon’s algorithms, however, care about it deeply. If your metadata (namely, categories and keywords) aren’t correct and optimized, Amazon will not help readers find your book, and therefore it will drift into obscurity and be undiscoverable.

By adding the proper keywords and categories for your book, you help Amazon’s algorithms guide your target readers right to your book. If you have these elements in place, your book will be much more visible to shoppers, and you’ll begin to see an increase in sales.

Keywords and categories are very simple once you understand them, but they can be a bit more complex than most authors think. Let’s dig in to categories:

Nailing Your Category

Your category is not the same as your genre. They can be one in the same, but categories can also be much more complex.

For instance, I personally write in the genre of historical fiction. As far as I know, it’s the only genre my book fits in. However one of my categories looks like this: kindle ebooks -> literature and fiction -> historical fiction -> Italian. The other looks like this: kindle ebooks -> history -> ancient civilization -> Rome.

Whereas my chances of ranking high in the historical fiction category is very  improbable without a huge marketing budget and a well-established platform, I almost always rank within the top 20 of my first category, and top 10 of my second.

Why is that important?

Because people looking through the bestsellers list will see my book at the top of those charts.

It’s all about visibility. Allowing Amazon to do a little bit of visibility marketing for you can lead to a lot of book sales in the long run.

If I had stopped with the most obviously categories, such as historical fiction or historical thriller, I likely wouldn’t have that added visibility by being at the top of my category charts.

Your job as the author is to research your genre to figure out the most optimal categories for your book to be listed in. You do this by analyzing the competition and it’s difficulty, while also testing how popular the category is.

Through the KDP platform, you can select up to two categories for your book to be listed in. Your goal with each should be a book that your book can easily rank within the top 100 in (the bestsellers list for each category shows the top 100). After that box is checked, you want to find categories that you can confidently make a push into the top 20 (the first page of a bestsellers list shows the top 20). At last, if possible, it’s always good to shoot for a category that you have the ability to rank #1 in. You might not be able to stay there very long, but it is nice to know that if you focus your efforts and spend a little bit on marketing, you can make a push for #1.

If you do, you’ll end up with a nifty little status like this:

Bestseller in America

Bestseller in Canada!

Bestseller in Australia! Have you ever wanted to be an “international best seller”?

 How do you do this, one might ask? Well, it’s fairly simple. You need to spend a lot of time yourself digging into the many niche categories on Amazon to find one that your book can accurately fit into. Next, you’ll need to look at the ASBR (average best seller rank) of the #1, #20, and #100 book in that category. Once you have that number, head over to the KDP Calculator, and type those numbers in to see how many books per day that title is selling. If you feel confident in being able to sell that many books per day so that you can place within the top 100, top 20, or have a shot at number 1, than it is the category for you.

Pro Tip #1: If there is a category you find on Amazon that you cannot find within the KDP dashboard to add your book to, you can always email KDP support and ask them to add your book to a particular category. All you need to do is provide the book title, the ASIN number and the FULL category chain, and KDP will do the rest.

Pro Tip #2: If all of this sounds tedious to you, or your want to ensure you have the most accurate data, you can purchase the KDP Rocket software, which distills all of this information in a quick and easily digestible way. I use it personally for all of my clients, and for myself. I can’t recommend it enough, and it will make your category searches much more efficient.

Vincent B. Davis II is an author, entrepreneur, speaker, and soldier. His first novel The Man with Two Names was published in July 2017 and has since become an Amazon International Best Seller. He is passionate about helping authors improve their brand and platform. He works with publishing companies and individual clients to help them sell more books in the modern publishing environment. Vincent is also the Senior Editor for blueridgeconference.com. If you are interested in contributing a blog for the site, or have any other queries, you can reach him at Vincent@thirteenthpress.com

Categories
Dear Young Scribes

How to Create a Marketing Plan for your Book—Before it’s Contracted

Marketing isn’t exactly an author’s favorite job. After all, aren’t writers supposed to keep producing books and rely on their publishers to sell their books for them?

That used to be the case. But now, agents and publishers search to sign with authors who understand how to market a book. They want to trust that the writer will be committed and work hard toward placing their book in front of its target audience.

This is why it’s vital that aspiring authors don’t just learn how to write a book; they must also learn how to create a marketing plan. And yes, it’s smart to do this even before your book is contracted.

For my clients at Hartline Literary Agency, I like to walk them through the process of creating a marketing plan in their proposal. A plan they can put into action when the book releases.

Most writers, I’ve noticed, only include brief promotional ideas under the “Marketing” section of their book proposal. But rather than writing a brief paragraph about a few of your marketing ideas, why not create an action plan—just like you’d do if the book were preparing to release?

Doing this will do 3 things:

  1.  Prove to the editor that you know what it takes to market a book.
  2. Increase your chances of selling the book to a publisher.
  3. Make marketing easier for you once the book is released. How? Because you’ll already have your plan in place.

Even if you haven’t reached the book proposal creation stage, I highly recommend that you go ahead and begin crafting the first draft of your marketing plan.

That way, once it’s time to put your marketing section together for your proposal, you won’t be tempted to write the following paragraph:

“To market this book, I’ll hold book signings at bookstores and sell the book at writing conferences. Some other ideas include: hold giveaways and contests on my social media accounts, do a blog tour, and speak at schools and libraries.”      

Please do not write that into your book proposal. If you really want to stand out and impress the editor, then you’ll want to create an actual marketing plan.

Here’s how:

  1. Categorize your plan into the type of marketing.

For example…

ONLINE MARKETING

PRINT MARKETING

TV/RADIO MARKETING

CREATIVE MARKETING

SPEAKING

PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS

  1. Beneath each category, list about 3 – 7 steps you’ll take once the book is published. Be specific by listing the newspapers, magazines, radio stations, etc. that you’d like to reach out to once the book is published.

For example:

ONLINE MARKETING:

  • Arrange a 10 – 30-stop blog tour surrounding the release of the book
  • Submit articles to teen websites, such as [list here]
  • Hold a 15-day Instagram challenge using the hashtag #PursueYourDreams
  • Invite my street team to read an early copy of my book in exchange for an honest review
  • Plan a book cover reveal with my street team members

As you create your marketing plan, keep in mind that you are not expected to do it all. If your marketing plan is too extensive, then the editor probably won’t take it too seriously. Be sure to write a plan that you will put into action. Make it realistic and reasonable by giving ideas that you know you can follow through with.

Only choose marketing efforts that 1) you’re passionate about, 2) you can logistically put into action, and 2) that will reach your target audience. Even better if your marketing strategies can intersect the three!

My advice? Familiarize yourself with how to market a book. Don’t wait until you have a contract. Not only will this impress an agent/publisher, but it’ll also take pressure off of yourself once you do sign a contract and begin navigating the intimidating waters of marketing.

Who knows? You might even discover that you enjoy the idea of marketing more than you thought you would!

What are your favorite marketing strategies? Do you enjoy the process of marketing, or would you prefer to spend the time writing instead? Let me know in the comments!

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