Book Marketing Strategies – Using Facebook to Sell Books

July 27th, 2010 No comments »

Author marketing clinics, seminars and workshops always tout the “latest and greatest” social media tools which will generate book sales.  It wasn’t long ago that Twitter was lauded as the “key” to easy book sales. Lately, there’s a new “it” social media network and it’s Facebook so of course, the author marketing seminars are now filling seats with promises of revealing the “secrets” to using Facebook to sell books.

On Facebook – you can have a personal page – where you can choose what information to share with your “friends” – or you can have a “page” where you share everything.  This public profile page is called a “Fan Page”.  Instead of connecting with you “personally” on Facebook – the public profile page allows people to become your “fan” rather than your “friend”.  As an author, you should of course have a Facebook profile for your personal connections – and a Facebook fan page for your books.

One recent “promise” made by a popular seminar is to answer the question “Why a Facebook fan is worth $71.84.”  That claim is in stark contrast to other industry research.   Brian Morrissey reported earlier this year in AdAge that the Value of a ‘Fan’ on Social Media is only $3.60 based upon a study done by Vitrue which determined that, on average, a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over the course of a year.

So while your book’s Facebook fans may not be worth several times the price of your book, the Vitrue study does show there is real value in using Facebook to promote and sell your book.

So how do you get Facebook fans for your work?  Once again – the best author websites are blogs which allow you to easily add an appealing image to your blog’s sidebar widget to encourage your blog’s readers to join your fan page,  include a link to your Facebook Fan page and VIOLA – you’ve just implemented one of the most effective tools around to attract fans to your Facebook Public Profile.

Like every other social media tool you can put to work selling your books, remember to view your public Facebook profile as a communication tool which allows you to easily connect and communicate with your book’s readers and prospective book buyers.

No comments »

Posted in Easy Author Book Marketing

Tags:

Book Marketing Strategies – Using Twitter to Sell Books

July 17th, 2010 No comments »

When it comes to an author using Twitter to sell books – it’s important to remember that Twitter is a marketing tactic not a marketing strategy.

Twitter has been hailed as the “holy grail” of marketing and it is a great communication tool.  Forward-thinking companies like Apple, Dell, SouthWest Airlines, and GM have teams of specialists devoted to using Twitter to communicate with their customers and the public.  However, signing up for Twitter is not going to instantly increase book sales.

Twitter is a communication tool.  It’s a way for your fans to stay in touch and it’s a way for you to connect with new readers for your work.  Whether you’re a self published author or a one who has signed a five figure advance with a giant publishing house – you need to have a way for your readers to be able to “connect” and follow you.

Using Twitter isn’t hard to do.  Simply create a “tweet” – which is a message of 140 or less which you “broadcast” to those who are following you.  The whole foundation of Twitter is following.  You can “follow” people using Twitter and people can also “follow” you.  When you choose to follow someone – you are subscribing their tweets.  When someone follows you they are subscribing to your tweets.

Getting followers – the RIGHT followers – is the hardest part about using Twitter for book marketing.

Getting followers is easy – Twitter allows you to search your email for Twitter connections or you can browse Twitter’s database for others active on Twitter.  You can search Twitter’s users by industry or even do a keyword search to find who’s talking about the topics you write about.

It’s common for those new to Twitter to begin trying desperately to gain new followers.  After all, it’s not much fun to tweet when no one is listening… which is why the best author websites are blogs.  Not only does a blog act as a great way to market your book – it’s also a great way to get followers on Twitter.  Simply add an appealing image to your blog’s sidebar widget and include a link to your Twitter profile and VIOLA – you’ve just implemented one of the most effective tools around to attract followers to your Twitter profile.  There’s even a WordPress plug in which allows your blog to automatically “tweet” your blog posts.

However, there is no “marketing magic” in using Twitter to sell books.   However, if you view Twitter as yet another way to connect with readers and book buyers, it can become an effective marketing channel for book sales.

You need the RIGHT Twitter followers according to  the blog post “Using Twitter to sell more stuff”

Just as in direct mail – the “magic is in the list” – in Twitter – the magic in using Twitter for marketing is in attracting the “right” followers.  Once again – it’s better to have 100 Twitter followers who respond than 10K who are not responsive.

If you’re a fiction writer who writes about vampires – then begin tweeting about topics of interest to your audience – for example, items of interest you find on the web as you research your next book.   Once vampire genre fans discover your tweets are a great source of up to the minute information – they’ll start telling their friends.  Then, when your next book is ready to be published – you’ll have a devoted following of Twitter fans who have been following you as you wrote the book – and are more responsive as a result.

When used as part of a cohesive marketing strategy – Twitter can be a valuable tool for any author to use to sell more books.

No comments »

Posted in Marketing Basics for Authors

Tags:

Marketing your book with a blog – Rules of Thumb

August 28th, 2009 No comments »

rulesofthumbThis is yet another example of a successful author who is marketing his book with a blog.

Alan Webber is hardly a new face in the literary world.  In addition to being the the managing editor and editorial director of the Harvard Business Review for five years, in 1995 he launched the successful business magazine Fast Company which made news when it was sold to Gruner + Jahr for the second largest amount of any magazine in U.S. history.

So it’s not surprising that when Webber stepped down from performing his full-time editorial responsibilities that his next endeavor would be to write a book.  In  52 “Rules of Thumb” for business leaders, he shares his unique perspective on the “rules” for business success.

His rules include such words of wisdom as:

  • Don’t implement solutions, prevent problems
  • The difference between a crisis and an opportunity is when you learn about it
  • Learn to take “No” as a question

In Marketing your book with a blog, I wrote about Chris Brogan, who used his blog to help his book become a New York Times bestseller.   Chris gets over 200,000 visitors to his blog each month, has over 50K Twitter followers and has over 30,000 RSS subscribers – and is not only using his blog to promote HIS book Trust Agents – but he’s also recommending Alan’s book to his blog’s readers in the post “Seek the Bigger story – or tell a new one“.

Chris has already built a level of trust with his vast blog audience.  They have come to expect that Chris will only recommend the best products and services – this includes books.

This is a great example of how your book’s blog can work HARD at generating sales of your book.  Even though Alan is not a “blogger” per say – when Chris decided to create a link – he didn’t link to the book’s web site – instead he linked to the blog.

That’s because Chris knows that the blog is the place where the latest and greatest updates will be posted.  Even though Alan is not “blogging” per say – (in July his blog only had 11 posts – which is roughly a post every third day) he’s still able to communicate with potential book buyers there.

So if you thought that you had to create three or four blog posts a day to market your book using a blog – now you know that doesn’t HAVE to be the case.  Somoetimes a few well written posts do a better job than a few thousand poorly written ones.

No comments »

Posted in Author Web Sites

Tags: