Years ago, my focus was book marketing and content marketing, but I ended up gravitating more and more toward writing, specifically children’s writing.
Why the change?
The thing is, writing has a beginning, middle, and end; marketing and selling your book is never-ending. And, the information you need to write about changes a lot. I found I like the consistency of writing about writing.
While I decided not to focus on marketing, I do know book marketing is crucial to ever author. Because of that, I keep up with new trends and strategies.
When I read Neil Patel’s article on his content marketing formula, I knew I had to share it.
Before I dive in, let me explain these terms.
This marketing strategy is ‘everything’ you do to bring visibility to your book and actually sell it.
While there are some authors who just want to have a book written and don’t really care about selling it, most authors want to sell their books.
This is especially true of authors who spend money to self-publish their books where costs can be from under $1000 to well over $1000.
A few of my clients have spent well over $10,000 for just ONE book.
Recouping the money invested in your book is a big deal to most.
And, it’s just as important if you’re traditionally published. Your publisher will definitely want you to help sell your book/s.
In fact, it you and another author both submitted great manuscripts to a publisher, a determining factor on who gets the contract could be who has a better book marketing platform.
So, here are a few elements to know about before and after your book is available for sale:
- Create a book worthy of publishing and learn about pricing it effectively
- Create and maintain an author website
- Write articles and post them on your website’s blog
- Be active on social media and share your blog posts and those of other users
- Get an email list going and maintain it
- Look into guest blogging and interviews
- While doing all this and more, start on your next book
Once your book is available for sale, you’ll also need to get book reviews and create an Amazon Author Page.
Content Marketing
This strategy is about writing and sharing content to your specific target audience.
According to Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
To clarify a bit, it’s about bringing visibility to you and your product/s through content (things you write and share, usually online). It’s about building a brand (what you want people to think of when they see your name or logo).
The marketing world is driven on content.
Below are a few strategies of content marketing:
- Blogging
- Video
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Sales pages on your website
- Books
There are many other elements that go into these marketing strategies, but this should give you a basic understanding of both these terms.
And more importantly, it’s important to understand that pretty much everything you do to sell your book is a form of content marketing.
Now on to content marketing expert Neil Patel’s tips:
#1 Optimize your headline.
Everything you write, whether a blog post or a description on social media, starts with a headline.
An example of this is the title of this article.
There are thousands and thousands of tidbits of information online, why would someone click on your bit of information?
The very first reason would be the headline. It’s what will initially grab the reader’s attention.
#2 Add three internal links.
Internal links is when you link from one page on your website to another.
It allows you to bring the reader at your website to other of your website pages and/or blog posts through clickable links.
You can check out this article to learn more about internal (inbound) links:
#3 Share your content on social media.
Once you put up a blog post, use sharing tools, like Shareaholic and WP Social Sharing Plugins, and share it to your social networks.
#4 Message everyone you link out to.
This tip pertains to external (outbound) links. Links from your website (usually from your blog post) to other websites.
Patel recommends that you contact the site you’re linking out to and let them know that you’ve linked to their site from your blog post or webpage.
Ask the site to stop by and share the article.
#5 Email blast your new blog posts.
Email your subscribers every time you post new content.
To learn the basics of email marketing, check out this article:
Email Marketing – 10 Top Reasons to BE Doing It
I know some of this may sound too complicated, but just knowing the basics will be of tremendous benefit to you.
So give your book every chance at finding readers and making sales.
For a more in depth look at marketing your books, check out:
Build Your Author-Writer Platform
