Easy Author Websites

Making Mastering Internet Marketing Easy for Authors

Archive for the ‘Marketing Basics for Authors’ category

Book Marketing Strategies – Using Twitter to Sell Books

July 17th, 2010

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: author marketing Author promotion author promotional tool blogs as marketing tools for authors social media twitter

The Best Reason to Write A Non-Fiction Book

September 30th, 2008

Just as there are two kinds of books, there are two kinds of authors. There are authors who write Fiction and there are authors who write Non-Fiction.

This post is directed to the non-fiction author.

The best reason BY FAR to write a non-fiction book is to promote your business.

This is especially true if your business happens to be selling nothing but air. Whether you’re a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist or a consultant, when your business revolves around selling a service, then your strategic internet marketing strategy should include writing a book to demonstrate your expertise.

That’s what Andrea Hess has done. Andrea is the founder of the Soul Realignment professional intuitive training program where she assists clients and their businesses worldwide in creating a new level of financial abundance. She calls what she does being an Intuitive Consultant.

If you’re an entrepreneur, struggling to make more money with less effort – Andrea is available to act as your secret weapon.

Andrea understands that she’s selling nothing but air. So, to market her practice, she’s set up a Blog Intuition in Business AND she’s written the book “Unlock Your Intuition: How to Accurately and Reliably Access Your Most Valuable Resource.”

When you visit her blog, you can easily see she’s written a book. If you think she might have the answer for your business, you can do one of three things:

You can subscribe to her blog to get more “free” information.
You can buy her book.
You can schedule a free 15 minute consultation.

Chances are, you’ll first subscribe to her blog to get more information for free. If, after a few posts, you like what you see there, the next step is to invest $11.53 to purchase her book. You’ll read her book and see if she REALLY does have the answer you’re seeking.

Finally, after you’ve taken those steps, then you’ll be ready to click on the “buy” buttons she has on her blog pages.

Writing a non-fiction book can be the BEST advertising you can do for your service based business. Combine writing your book with a blog and you have a powerful marketing strategy to promote your business.

1 comment »

Posted in Author Web Sites, Easy Author Book Marketing, Marketing Basics for Authors, Selling Books

Tags: how to write a book how write a book write a book write a non-fiction book

Book Marketing is Numbers Game

September 8th, 2008

Book marketing is really no different than any other kind of marketing. As an author, you face the same trials and tribulations every other small business person faces. In a word, marketing your book is simply a numbers game.

Many authors launch a website or blog hoping to magically draw in hundreds if not tens of thousands of potential book buyers. It’s a good plan – after all, a successful website can attract thousands of tightly targeted visitors each month and marketing is a numbers game. The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more books you’re likely to sell -it’s just that simple.

If you’ve already got a book blog or website, then you’ve probably discovered that simply launching a website (or a blog) is no a guarantee that you’ll be creating a sure fire “visitor attraction tool”.

Creating an effective book marketing blog isn’t hard – if you have the right tools.

Unfortunately, for many authors, building a book marketing blog is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle where you have to go on a scavenger hunt to find all the pieces.

To make matters worse, it’s hard to know when you’ve gathered all the pieces OR if every piece you’ve gathered really fits in your particular puzzle.

Over the past 2 years, I’ve launched hundreds of blogs for clients. Some of those blogs have been for authors who self-published their own books. At first, I thought that authors would be the BEST bloggers of all because, after all – authors know how to write!

I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

While authors are, as a general rule, GREAT at writing – they aren’t well versed in the skills of successful blogging. So while my blogging authors were creating GREAT blog content, they weren’t getting serious traffic to their blogs. That broke my heart.

After all, there are lousy blogs out there that are getting nice visitor traffic! A blog with great content could do even better – if the blogger only knew the secrets to blogging success.

That’s why I created the 8 Week Power Blog Launch. The 8 Week Power Blog Launch is comprised of 56 individual lessons. It’s a simple step by step method to increase traffic to your blog.

More traffic = more eyeballs. Since book sales are a numbers game, the more traffic to your blog, the more books you stand a chance of selling.

If you’re an author who wants to sell books, you need a blog. However, a blog you don’t know how to use won’t bring the needed traffic to sell books. That’s why you need the 8 Week Power Blog Launch.

Enter the code “author” when you purchase the course and you’ll save $20 off the retail price!