By Mariah T.
When you’re an author, exposure is everything. You can get the competitive edge that you need with a few digital marketing tricks. As you get your book in front of more people, you can potentially increase your sales.
Social Media
The popularity of social media is increasing exponentially. It’s important that you utilize all of the different social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Goodreads is an author/reader platform that can be beneficial to an author because it gives them the opportunity to receive reviews from a community of writers. It will allow you to promote your book, obtain reviews, and interact with readers too.
Each social media platform works to engage your audience in different ways. If your goal is to attract new readers and cast a wider net, then you’ll want to be active across different platforms. Facebook has the largest user base and is an essential platform to share events and interact with readers. Instagram tends to attract younger audiences and proves useful in promoting young adult content. Twitter is a great way to establish your public voice, gain more followers, and connect with a network of like-minded individuals. Ultimately, you engage with a larger audience when you take utilize multiple social media platforms.
You can make the most of social media by using a variety of tools. Schedule posts to ensure that you’re hitting all of the time zones. Plus, you can use ads to reach even more audiences.
Reviews
Reviews are important in the algorithms of Amazon and other booksellers. When you have a high number of positive reviews, it will make it easier for people to find your book. Links for Google reviews are easy to get, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t try to get them. Many people are willing to leave reviews. All you have to do is ask people to leave them. Place a reminder at the back of your eBook with a link to Amazon, Kobo, or another book buying site. You can also use social media as a way to remind readers that they should leave reviews for you.
Blogs
A lot of bloggers are out there, talking about books on a daily basis. It’s a good idea to make friends with bloggers who focus on your book genre. The main benefit of tapping into bloggers is that they already have a large following, which can lead to more followers for you. As bloggers create posts for you on their website, it provides you with backlinks that can help with search engine optimization, too. Offer bloggers a copy of your book and see if they’ll give you a review. However, keep in mind that you shouldn’t expect a review in return for sending them a book. Otherwise, you may be in violation of Amazon’s review policies.
Book Trailers
Videos on YouTube often appear in search engine result pages before web pages do. This means that you should not negate the importance of book trailers. You can create a book trailer for every book that you publish. Whether it’s made of slides, quotes, animation, or live video, it allows you to have a video that you can upload to YouTube. Place the same video on social media and on your website, too. It may capture people’s attention more than a book blurb. Plus, it can help you gain more visibility on the search engines when people are looking for a new book to read in the genre that you write.
Email Newsletters
It’s important to build email newsletter subscribers so that you can communicate with your readers. Growing your newsletter can take time. You may want to create an invite inside of your books. It’s also helpful to run contests where people have to enter using their email address.
You can use different newsletter tools that help you to create professional emails. Send email newsletters out monthly so that you can keep your readers up-to-date with all that you’re doing. This can include new releases, book collaborations, book signing dates, and even promotions for other authors in your genre.
Communication is key. When you’re getting ready to promote a book, you want to make sure that people see it in different places. Utilize an array of digital marketing tricks so that people know all about your book.
