Is Your Book-Marketing Up-to-Date?

Book-Marketing

Not only authors, but everyone who wants to build a platform and brand in order to sell something needs to update their marketing efforts.  Knowing the new trends as an author will help you to change and succeed in presenting yourself and market your writing to your audience.  
Bringing value and spiking interest in your books is the key to gain readers. Here are a couple of examples how you can deliver value, but they are just the basics:
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Content is King!

Great content will compensate for the “Facebook problems”:  the decline of Facebook organic reach, where the number of news feeds from (publishing and other business) users and the way books and authors can be seen in users news feeds, has tremendously decreased – which forced account owners to change their marketing strategy on Facebook.
Write short, 300 word articles for your Facebook book & publishing pages (NOT your personal ones) instead of book “ads”.  And write more articles for magazines, newspapers and blogs!  Get your name out…

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Depending 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 important: write more on Google+, which can be up to 500 words.

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Sharing / Follow Buttons are Imperative!
Get a higher chance of increasing the amount of visitors and also increase reader engagement. In an earlier blog  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.  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.

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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.   Twitter is allowing people to search through every tweet, ever published.  Make sure you have at least 2-3 hashtags on each tweet you post.

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Target Audience: Very 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.
Choose your following carefully and understand the meaning of Social Media – being SOCIAL and NOT constantly talking only about your book!
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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, for example in this blog article.

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Blogs and Websites Must be Mobile Friendly.
Alone in 2015 visitors to online presences were 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 improved.  Read my former blog on this topic: 5 Tips How to Create Mobile-Friendly Blogs and Websites via providing of:

  • Quick Access,
  • Short Landing Pages
  • A “No-Zoom Page”
  • Providing Value for Readers
  • 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 or Fiverr. 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 three years will help you to become even stronger in the future.

 

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