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.

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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.

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Marketing Your Book with Your Blog

August 19th, 2009 4 comments »

The other day, I read on a message board a plea from an author for advice on marketing her book.  She has written what she feels is an incredible resource which isn’t getting much attention from her publisher and she’s frustrated.

Rather than write a response there, I’d like to share here with you the story of a first time author who using his blog to market his new book.

Chris Brogan is not your traditional author.  He’s the President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency.  His company works with large and mid-size companies on how to use “new media”.   New media means the internet plus social networking tools like blogs and Twitter.

Chris Brogan has a popular blog and almost 50,000  Twitter followers.  He is now marketing his book – Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

This is Chris’ first book.  First books usually don’t become best sellers – but in this case, Trust Agents is well on it’s way.

You might be surprised to learn that  within a week of it’s release that Trust Agents is in the top 100 in book sales at Amazon.com.    But you shouldn’t be surprised.  See, Chris has been doing a LOT of promotion surrounding his book.

Chris gets over 200,000 visitors to his blog each month.  Despite all of the other demands on his time, he still blogs regularly.  His blog has over 30,000 RSS subscribers – which means when he posts to his blog – which he does on a regular basis – over 30,000 people are notified that he has made a new post.  He’s been actively promoting his blog for YEARS to gain this kind of following and support.

Through his blog, Chris has been talking about writing the book with his readers for months.  He’s been offering a free ebook with a sample chapter of the book as a “legal bribe” to encourage you to subscribe to his email newsletter.

Yes, Chris Brogan not only has a blog -a facebook profile – a linkedin profile and a twitter account – he also maintains an opt-in email newsletter to communicate with the people who want to know what Chris knows – which Chris willingly and freely shares.

At this point, I want to point out that Trust Agents – Chris Brogan’s new book – is NOT self published – it’s being published by Wiley.  Chris has made the traditional book release marketing rounds such as doing book signings and jumping through all of the other hoops that Wiley has asked him to jump through in the promotion of his book.

On August 17, Chris posted “The Big Push” to his blog and told his 30,000 RSS subscribers – and his 200K blog readers how they could help make his book a success.   In that post, he makes this offer:

If you purchase 200 copies of Trust Agents, I’ll fly out and spend a half day with your organization for free. I’ll let you know right now that my consulting rate is far more than the price of 200 books, so it’s a pretty darned good deal, so this might be the chance for a two-fer. You can give your group some books, and you can get specific consultation about how your organization can use online tools to be human at a distance and deliver business value.

Talk about going above and beyond – Chris is really giving his all to put his book on the best seller list.

For the author who posted the plea – the one who is sitting back and waiting for her publisher to begin working hard to market her amazing book – I have news for her.  It probably isn’t going to happen.

However, the good news is she can start TODAY.  She can launch a self hosted wordpress blog and begin using it to begin developing a following for her amazing book.  Just because the book is already published is no reason to think it’s too late.  If the book hasn’t been remaindered – there’s still time.

If you’re ready to begin marketing your book – but don’t know where to begin – stop by Keys to Web Site Success for an easy step by step suite of tutorials to help you to begin marketing your book with your own blog.

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Posted in Easy Author Book Marketing