7 Online Marketing Trends for 2015

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Online-Outlook

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The year 2015 is just two weeks old, and you might have read a couple of predictions already in the last days and weeks.  Here are some in terms of digitally marketing books.  Knowing the new trends as an author will help you to change and succeed in presenting yourself and market your writing to an online audience.  These  are my seven predictions for 2015:

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#1 Content is King!
Great content will compensate for the “Facebook problems”. They tremendously decreased the number of news feeds from (business) users and the way businesses can be seen in users news feeds, which forced account owners to change their marketing strategy on Facebook. Businesses will need to find good writers and turn to content marketing in order to compensate the decline of Facebook organic reach.

What it means for author-publishers:
Write short, 300 word articles for your Facebook book pages (not your personal ones) instead of “book ads”.

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#2 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Will Depend on Content Marketing
No more SEO tactics and tricks anymore – which will also improve the search experience of Google users. One of the many contributors to a high ranking on Google is how many websites link back to your site.

What it means for author-publishers:
They can get SEO through blogging, e-books, and resource guides, in order to fully take on content marketing. Way more importantly: write more on Google+ up to 500 words.

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#3 Sharing / Follow Buttons are Imperative!
Get a higher chance of increasing the amount of visitors and also increase reader engagement. In an earlier blog (March 2012) we wrote about the necessity of sharing plug-ins and explained that these sharing buttons can mean up to seven times more visitors.
Blog-Share-Icons-Top-Side Features such as social sharing buttons and social login can do just that.

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure you have all the social media follow buttons (where you can be found), and the sharing buttons for all Social Media on the market. After all there are still people on MySpace…

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#4 Tweets Need to Be Optimized for Twitter’s Search Engine
Similar to GooglePlus, the inclusion of the right keywords in tweets will allow you be more visible in search queries. Using the right hashtags, links, and images will set you up to be more optimized for Twitter searches. With the recent Twitter search engine changes, Twitter achieves one of their long-standing goals of allowing people to search through every tweet, ever published.

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure you have at least 2-3 hashtags on each tweet you post.

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#5 Target Audience Will Be More Important
Authors who do nothing but sell, sell, sell, will get ignored, dismissed and overlooked by followers and readers. Yes, the internet offers marketers the opportunity to have a very large audience. But you need to choose and pick your target audience: book lovers, readers, book reviewers etc.
and really interact with them. It also means dedicating more time to answer reader questions and provide more value online.

What it means for author-publishers:
Choose your following carefully and understand the meaning of Social Media – being SOCIAL and NOT constantly talking about your book!
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#6 Data Driven Marketing Will Be Essential
Trade Publishers and Online Retailers have the potential to capture massive amounts of data related to sales, personal customer information, purchase history, search activity and many more. Data that has proven to be very valuable for them. Authors on the other hand rarely know who their readers are when selling through online channels only.

What it means for author-publishers:
Diversify, diversify, diversify!  Don’t sell through online retailers only. Use your website or blog to sell your books and get your customers data.  There are dozens of ready-to-go online stores available, called “e-commerce” which can be installed in your existing website or blog – relatively easy and quick.  The benefit: Much higher revenues, faster payments and most important: you know who are your readers.
Get in touch with your readers: Install a sign-up form on your website and contact potential readers directly through email newsletters. Offer value and get your future (or present) readers to know. Don’t give your readers data to online retailers for free! Get the data yourself. There are many more tips for getting to know your readers, but this will be a different blog article. Stay tuned.

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#7 Blogs and Websites Must be Mobile Friendly
In 2015 visitors to online presences are growing to over 50% of all users worldwide. Think also about the growth of wearable tech, which is another reason why your website should be mobile friendly.  So, it’s a no-brainer that your blog or business’ website needs to be mobile-friendlyRead my former blog on this topic: 5 Tips How to Create Mobile-Friendly Blogs and Websites.

  • Provide Quick Access,
  • Provide Short Landing Pages
  • Provide a “No-Zoom Page”
  • Provide Value
  • Provide Simple Forms

What it means for author-publishers:
Make sure your blog or website is optimized for mobile. And if that sounds to “nerdy” get an affordable freelancer on Elance.com who can do it for you.

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Conclusion:
The need to stay on top of these growing trends will be a priority for all authors in order to make sure their efforts will help to establish their brand, using digital platforms. Valuable tips we provided here on this blog in the last two years will help you to become even stronger in 2015 and we will continue to inform you about everything that could boost the success of your books.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

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