Tag: personal

Write a Letter to Your Readers in the Back of Your Book

Posted on by Sue L Canfield

Once a reader has finished your book, how do they connect with you? Write a letter that you include at the end of the book. Here’s a sample.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading [Book Title]. I hope you learned [the main point you wanted the reader to learn]. If you have any questions or comments, I invite you to contact me at [your email or website contact page].

Please consider leaving a review wherever you purchased this book. Reviews help other readers decide which books to read next, and I would greatly appreciate yours.

Let’s connect on social media too. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn here: [add your social media handles].

I look forward to connecting with you. [Your Name]

Randy Ingermanson’s 10 Commandments of Marketing

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

This gem of a list dropped in Randy “Snowflake Guy” Ingermanson’s newsletter today.

The 10 Commandments of Marketing

  1. Always know what is the special magic that delights your Target Audience.
  2. Focus all your marketing efforts ONLY on your Target Audience. This means that all your marketing should be designed to delight your Target Audience.
  3. Never do any marketing action without a reason. (And you need to know what that reason is.)
  4. There are three valid reasons for any marketing action—either it Attracts or Engages or Converts someone in your Target Audience.
  5. You must first Attract someone before you can Engage them.
  6. You must first Engage someone before you can Convert them.
  7. Any valid marketing plan must sketch out at least one complete Marketing Pipeline—in which you Attract someone in your Target Audience, then Engage that same person, and finally Convert that same person. You can use any combination of marketing tactics you like, as long as they make a complete Marketing Pipeline.
  8. Always measure every possible element of your Marketing Pipelines. You can usually measure more than you think. If there is no way to measure any element of a Marketing Pipeline, then you are not doing marketing, you are doing wishful thinking. Never execute a plan that is just wishful thinking.
  9. Look at your measurements on a regular schedule. Stop doing things that don’t work. Improve things that could work better.
  10. As much as possible, design your Marketing Pipelines as automated machines. It’s hard to make money if a Marketing Pipeline depends on you interacting one-to-one with each person in your Target Audience. If your personal effort is an essential part of a Marketing Pipeline, then try to apply that effort in one-to-many mode, not one-to-one.

Anyone who works with Ausoma can tell you we believe these commandments and implement them so nonfiction authors can be social and get noticed.

This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the Snowflake Guy,” publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Taking 80/20 to the Next Level: Engagement Content

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

We’ve discussed that about 80% of your online posts and comments should be generous, giving useful and interesting information, with self-promotion only making up the other 20% or so.

Let’s take that to the next level: engagement content.

What is Engagement Content?

As nonfiction authors our impulse is to teach, to share practical and actionable content.

Guess what—the 80/20 principle can help here.

Yes, make 80% of your ‘giving’ posts usable tips, educational content.

The other 20%? Engagement content.

In other words, personal, friendly, sharing, about-you-but-not-self-centered content.

Your day at the beach. A great movie or band you saw or plan to see. A beautiful sunset. A kind act someone did for you.

Why?

Because your goal is to be social and get noticed.

Even at a business mixer or a client meeting, don’t you discuss Pat’s new puppy or Sawyer’s trip to wherever? Of course you do. We’re people, and we engage most with people we like.

Give your followers, not just something to learn, but something to like.

Math geek alert: this would make “engagement content” 20% of 80% or about 16% of your overall content. Don’t sweat the precision.

How do you keep up with all the changes in social media algorithms?

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

Short answer: you don’t.

For the long answer, watch this 1-minute video:

Let Insiders (and Outsiders) Choose Themselves

Posted on by Joel D Canfield

We all subscribe to newsletters we mean to read and then don’t. And then we transfer that feeling to our readers and worry they’ve done the same thing. I combat that by regularly asking folks to unsubscribe. (And if I discover I’m not reading a newsletter, I unsub myself. There’s only so much time. We can’t do it all. What we cull is as important as what we keep.)

Telling them it’s okay to leave helps cull the folks who are staying because they’re too nice to unsubscribe.

Everyone is busy. I see the choices as (a) be easy to ignore, and become One of Those Newsletters, or (b) be so good they don’t want to ignore you.

Yeah, (b) is harder. It’s also the professional choice.