This week on #USABizParty, we discussed how to promote your book to reach your ideal audience.
Tag: book promotion
Book Launch Party (Virtual)
Note: This was originally written for in-person book launch parties. Things have changed and I’ve updated with information in italics for a virtual book launch party.
Time to celebrate the launch of your book! It’s fun and exciting to host a party and invite your friends. This is a big accomplishment. Here are some things to consider to make this a successful book launch party.
Venue
Where will the party be? If you can arrange to have it somewhere that is likely to attract more readers, that would be ideal. Consider your local library or local bookstores.
Updated for virtual event: plan a Zoom or Facebook Live party and invite your friends, email list, and share it on social media.
Who is Invited?
The more the merrier! Of course you’re going to invite your family and friends. Don’t forget your business associates. If you’re having the party at a library or bookstore, prepare fliers to be posted at these locations at least a week in advance so the general public can attend. Then post it on social media so a larger audience is aware and invited to come.
Updated for virtual event: now you can invite everyone online!
Refreshments
Refreshments don’t need to be elaborate. But a few treats and drinks will keep people around longer which may mean they are more likely to purchase your book – or additional copies for friends.
Updated for virtual event: invite your attendees to a virtual refreshment. Perhaps post a photo of your favorite drink and invite them to do the same. You could have some fun engagement this way.
Books and Book Signing
Remember to bring enough books. It’s better to have too many than to run out. How will you sign the book? Decide that in advance. And if you’re going to write the buyer’s name, be sure to ask how to spell it.
Updated for virtual event: having physical books and signing them is not an option here. However, you might have some postcards or bookmarks made up, sign them, and run a contest. Winners get a signed postcard or bookmark sent to them.
Tell a story
Keep it brief. You might share a short story about the process of writing your book or about who you dedicated the book to. Remember to thank those who came to the party. Talk to your guests individually. If possible, try to speak to each person who attended to thank them for coming. They will appreciate your personal interest.
Updated for virtual event: here’s one thing that doesn’t change much. You’ll now be doing it on camera instead of in person.
Thank You
Remember to send thank you notes to anyone who helped with the book launch party and to the venue if you held it at a library or bookstore. Focus on building relationships, rather than selling books, for the most successful book launch. Those relationships may lead to future book sales.
Updated for virtual event: thank everyone during the event who joins you for your virtual book party.
Get more support for your book launch and download our checklist.
Don’t Miss the Publicity Boat!
Whether you are about to launch your book or are continuing your book marketing efforts long-term, you are looking for publicity opportunities. Don’t miss the publicity boat! One of the biggest mistakes we see authors make is timing.
When you are contacted by an interviewer or media person, respond promptly—immediately! If they ask for additional information, provide it as quickly as possible or at least let them know when they can expect it. Any delay in replying might mean that someone else will reply promptly and get the publicity opportunity you were hoping for. This applies to responding to HARO requests as well. Even though you reply within their deadline, they usually use the first replies received. Respond promptly.
Timing is important with press releases as well. Plan to send press releases out in plenty of time for the media to respond. If you post it too late or too close to the event you are promoting, you may have missed the boat.
6 Ways to Get Your Book Noticed Using Social Media
There are of course many ways to market and get your book noticed on social media. Here are two specific ways for each of the following social media platforms. Some of these are less in-your-face book marketing and more about connecting with people so they want to learn more about you and your book.
- Promote interesting quotes from your book. You probably have a ton of interesting tips or tidbits in your nonfiction book. Share those quotes in fun ways that engage your audience and encourages them to share with your audience. It’s fun to use a graphic-design tool such as Canva.com to do this. If you have images in your books, you can upload these to Canva, overlay your quote, and share these on Twitter. Images like that tend to get more likes and shares than plain text messages. You can do the same thing with book reviews. Take your 5-star book reviews from Amazon and post short excerpts of them in an image that you share. Here is a PDF I created with some sample images I created for my own nonfiction book.
- Tweet Your Milestones. Did you just send your manuscript off to the editor? Did your cover designer just give you the final cover design? Did you just sell 100 copies to a local school? Tweet about it. And you can make it fun for others to share by creating an image in Canva.com with the text being your milestone (Just sold 100 copies!)
- Like other pages related to your topic. Do this as your own page. Here’s how: go to a page you want to like and click on the box with the ellipses right under the main banner and to the right of the Like, Follow, Share boxes. A box pops up and one of the options is Like as your Page. That’s what you want to click. You may find that page reciprocates and likes your page as well. The big advantage here though is that now you can like and comment on their page as your own page – not just you as your personal profile. This is a great way to get more exposure for your own page. Your comments might be tips you can share from your own book. You don’t want to be too self-promotional when you do that. Just share the tip as your own page and say there’s more information found in Chapter 10, for example, of your book. Let people come ask you more about it. I also suggest sharing your Facebook page posts on your personal timeline with a comment.
- Invest in ads. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. In fact, you can spend as little as $1 per day. I suggest starting small and testing to see what works and what doesn’t and then later you can work with a larger budget if you want. Several of my clients have run a one-week ad for just $7 and found they get great results. They get more page likes, engagement, and their posts reach a much larger audience. I learned about this $1 per day idea from Dennis Yu of Blitz Metrics and highly recommend investing in his course. You can sign up for the course at blitzmetrics.com/fdd/. With the recent changes at Facebook, this is one way your page is more likely to be seen – particularly if you pay to boost posts that are already getting engagement – which means people are commenting on the post.
LinkedIn
- Publish articles on LinkedIn Pulse. Write articles related to your book topic and publish these on LinkedIn to showcase your expertise. It’s very easy. When you log in to LinkedIn one of your choices to post is to write an article. Include an image and a link at the end of your article to where they can learn more about you – your website or Amazon author page. These articles can be seen by people who aren’t even connected to you. Be sure to follow up and reply to any comments made on your articles. Remember to view the analytics for your articles to see how many people are viewing them, liking them, and sharing them.
- Utilize groups. If you haven’t yet joined any groups, do so. Find groups related to your book’s topic and join them. Then engage in conversations already there. As with any social network, enlighten and educate with your comments. Show your expertise so people will want to come view your profile, connect with you, and eventually learn about your book. You might even consider starting your own group.
If you like this post, you’ll want to check out our Be Social – Get Noticed monthly service packages.
4 of My Favorite Tips for Twitter and More
Here are 4 of my favorite social media tips. Perhaps you could plan to implement one each week next month.
- Use Twitter’s 280 characters creatively. Now that Twitter has doubled their character limit from 140 to 280 authors have room to get more creative. Something I’ve done is to write a tweet related to a book’s topic, perhaps including a link to an outside source. Then after a space, write a short tweet mentioning that, say, Chapter 10 of my book addresses that topic.
- As an example, one client has a self-help book with a chapter on how creativity is therapeutic. She links to an article at Huffington Post titled, Is Creativity Therapeutic and Can Art Make Us Happier. Then tweets, Chapter 6 of my book has a section on this very topic, Creativity is Therapeutic and Clears the Mind, and links to her book page on her website.
- Tag People. Use the @ symbol to tag people on Twitter. You can also tag people on Facebook and LinkedIn. Do this when you mention that person in your post. Perhaps you are sharing a blog post that includes a quote from that person. Tagging is a great way to let them know you’ve mentioned them and they may share what you’ve posted. On Facebook you can tag business pages if you’re mentioning them in your post.
- Use Twitter Lists. I’ve created and use several lists. One is a list of others who, like Ausoma, tweet about social media for nonfiction authors. I use that to find something relevant to retweet every day. Other lists are of literary agents, editors, and publishers.
- Use Analytics and Insights. As with any marketing, you want to see what’s working, what’s not, and where you can improve. Use the analytics and insights provided by Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn to see what posts are getting the most likes, shares, comments, etc. and which ones aren’t getting any engagement. Then you can see what types of posts to keep creating and which ones aren’t effective.
3 Keys to Successfully Using Social Media for Book Promotion
- Social media marketing needs to be viewed as a long-term investment. Nonfiction authors successfully using social media to market their books realize that it is an investment and they are in it for the long haul. They realize they need to continually market their book if they want to keep selling copies of it.
- Social means engagement. Get to know your audience. Find out what they want and need. Converse with them. Offer valuable information. Then they will be more likely to choose to purchase your book.
- Review your social media marketing profiles and book marketing efforts at least once a year and update as needed. Mix it up. Do something different. Be Social. Get Noticed.
If you like this post, you’ll want to check out our Be Social – Get Noticed monthly service packages.