Marketing and selling books is getting tougher and tougher. You need to make your content (articles and blog posts) do double duty to try to stay afloat.
The competition is fierce, and the internet ‘noise’ is getting louder and louder.
According to an article at Neil Patel.com, under the subheading “Content is Getting Harder,” there are over 1 billion blogs, and 1.7 billion websites. Along with this, “roughly 7.5 million articles get published every day.”
That’s a lot of noise. And to be in the ‘selling books’ game, you’ve got to be a part of this noise.
And to add to this, now AI search is in he mix.
So, what do you do?
There’s not much you can do except create content on a regular basis. And for most of us, this can be a struggle.
And even if it’s not totally overwhelming, do you want to continually write content to share on social media and guest posts?
The answer would be NO for most of us.
We’re authors and writers. We want to spend our time writing to be published, and writing to make money.
If you’re not careful, marketing your book can eat into your book writing time, or your freelance article writing time.
A way to ease the ‘content creation burden’ is to repurpose the content you write. Over at American Writers & Artists (AWAI), it’s called ‘content continuum.’
Ways to make your content work for you:
1. The first step is to write an article that’s relevant and helpful to your audience. It needs to be search-worthy.
2. Turn that article into a PDF, a video, a podcast, an ebook, a webinar, and anything else you can think of.
You might combine several articles into a call-to-action freebie for your subscriber list.
3. Send the content you created out in a funnel series*, a newsletter, social posts, guest posts, and so on.
You can also add the content to sites like LinkedIn, Medium, Google, AuthorsDen, and so on. This creates ‘touch-points’.
So, one article can create multiple touch-points (connections to the reader).
The reason you want to connect with your reader with multiple touch-points is to make them familiar with you and your work.
This actually refers to Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s “The Rule of Seven," which is also known as ",drip-fed marketing’.”
The philosophy is that to penetrate an overly put-upon market, you need to reach a prospect, person, or reader at least seven times before they’ll take action. This means before they’ll buy from you or click on your call to action (CTA*).
Now, though, instead of the rule of seven, you need to have closer to twelve touch points.
A marketing touch point can be anything to do with your platform. It can be your website, blog posts, web content, or your guest posts. It can even be as simple as someone seeing your logo.
It’s about continually building exposure without constantly having to write content.
*A funnel series is similar to your initial welcome email to your newsletter subscribers that automatically sends a few newsletters over a two or three-week span.
*A CTA is an acronym for call-to-action. It’s the action you want the visitor-reader-prospect to take. They might land on your website or see your social media posts. You want to motivate them to click your link, bringing them back to your website, or to sign up for your newsletter, or respond to another CTA.
I’m a working children’s ghostwriter, rewriter, and coach. I can help turn your story into a book you’ll be proud to be the author of, one that’s publishable and marketable.
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