In this tutorial I will show you the best digital marketing for authors, tips and strategies writers can use to grow their popularity online.
As a digital marketing expert and writer, it’s my passion to help writers with digital marketing. And I am always happy to work with writers. Why not contact me and we’ll work together on your author platform and book.
Now on with my guide to digital marketing for authors.
Note that this is part 4 of my ebook special:
Part 1: Marketing your ebooks
Part 2: Writing bestselling ebooks
Part 3: Selling more ebooks on Amazon
And now let’s look at how to grow your author platform online.
The best digital marketing for authors
*for the first 58 parts refer to the previous links
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 59: Write more books:
More important than selling your ebook is selling yourself. You want people to get to know you as an author and to get to know your work (which will hopefully be of high quality). Once people know you and trust your writing ability they’ll buy into you.
The more books you have on the shelf the more chance there is of people discovering one of your books. Once they’ve discovered, read and enjoyed one of your books they’ll be inclined to read another one. This theoretically leads to exponential profit growth.
Jonas Saul is one of the more popular authors on Amazon. He’s put out more than sixteen books so far, some of which are series.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 60: Make parts of your books (or one whole book) free
In ebooks (and even more prominently in video games) free previews have become all the rage. The idea is to give your readers part of your book for free. Then they’ll start reading. Once they’re reading you then want them to get hooked. Finally, once they’re hooked, you can then ask them to purchase the book, which many will gladly do.
Candy Crush did this famously (“Play for free, we won’t charge you for anything… oh wait”). This is a win / win for both you and your readers. Your readers get to test out your work for free, and you get to ingratiate yourself with your readers before asking them to pay for anything.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 61: Make use of ebook blogs and other blogs relevant to your book:
Everyday people contact me asking me to review their books for free. I have to say no a lot of the time simply because I can’t fit the reviews into my schedule. But some of those writers do get reviewed by me, and they get posted on my blogs. That’s a free review and free publicity. You’d be mad not to take advantage of that. So go ahead and contact every blog owner that’s relevant to you and ask them to review your book, interview you, and share your work. The worst they can do is say no. The best they can do is give you a good review and a share of their large readership.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 62: SEO
There are so many ways to use search engine optimization to grow your author platform.
Make sure your sales page is SEO optimised, that it includes keywords, and that it gets good metrics in Google Analytics. That way you’ll be given a high position in the SERPs and your book will get more exposure.
Some of the questions to consider when performing SEO on your landing page include:
- How fast the page loads (should be under 2 seconds)
- Is the keyword in the title?
- Keyword in the description?
- Keyword and variants thereof in the text?
- Does it have an image with the keyword used for the ALT text?
- Does it allow for a good time on page (people should be on the page for a minimum of 2 minutes)
- Good bounce rate (less than 50%). For more on bounce rate read Google’s official documentation.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 63: “Look Inside”
This speaks for itself. People like to know what they’re getting. Show them.
If you’re publishing your ebook on Amazon or similar sites the preview will be taken care of for you.
But if you’re selling your ebook via your own blog you will need to create your own preview system.
I recommend embedding your book as a PDF on your site and (importantly) allowing people to preview your book without leaving your site. You want people to stay on your site, not leave, and you also don’t want them to have to download anything pre-purchase simply because most people don’t trust downloads (due to the prevalence of malicious code).
So, create your preview and make sure the preview takes place on your site and ideally on the same page that the book itself is on. If you’re using WordPress you might like to try out the plug-in PDF Embedder.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 64: Realise that ebooks offer more value than just money:
Ebooks aren’t just about the cash. They can also be about the sign-up. If you’re running a blog or Facebook page you can use your ebook as an incentive to get people to sign-up to your email newsletter, or on Twitter or Facebook. Even better, you can cut your book into two parts, give out the first part as the giveaway so you get subscribers and fans, and then put a “Continue Reading” link at the end of part 1, asking your reader to pay to download part 2.
This is a complete win / win.
If you also include some Facebook share buttons in the free part of your book, your readers may very well share your book telling their friends that it’s free, their friends will then start reading the free part, which naturally leads to them buying the second part.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 65: Realise that half your job is writing and the other half is selling:
You can be the best author in the world (well, you can’t, because that’s me), but if you can’t sell… well, you can’t sell. Selling your book is half your job. So if you’re not a natural salesman you might want to invest some time into learning the art.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 66: If you’re selling your book on your own blog build trust first:
It’s a big deal asking someone to buy something online, what with the amount of fraud and scamming taking place. You need to build trust. There are a lot of ways to do this:
-mentioning websites that link to you
-putting your number and address on your sales page
-using a well known payment service like Paypal….
The importance of trust cannot be underestimated.
You can create the best book in the world but if people don’t trust your site they won’t buy it. Bear in mind that some people don’t even like to click a link on a website they don’t know. They worry that clicking a link will make them download a malware-laden file. To get around this you’ll have to build trust by having a great site design, being transparent, showing your face, giving people a contact number, and doing anything else you can to tell people “Hey, I’m for real, you can trust me”.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 67: Write excellent and entertaining blog articles:
Use your blog articles as a way to make people fall head over heels in love with your writing. Then they’ll naturally want to purchase your book. But I guess this point goes without saying.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 68: Use email marketing:
Start collecting emails on your blog and then use them for marketing.
Many internet marketing specialists believe that collecting emails is one of the most valuable things you can do. Emails allow for repeated communications, an unlike Facebook they aren’t at the mercy of Edgerank. Collect emails and then use them to tell your readers about your books.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 69: Do a virtual book tour:
(but actually check how many visitor the other sites get first): Some book sites are so small that there’s little benefit to you sharing your book with them, well, except to get in contact with the lovely people who run those sites, many of whom are just awesome folk.
Other blogs receive many thousands of hits.
Visit book blogs and use Alexa to get an estimate of their traffic. Also consider the amount of Facebook and Twitter followers they have. If they seem to offer value, reach out and ask for a review / interview / mention.
Alexa is one place where you can find out the traffic and analytics of websites. You might also like to try Quantcast.com.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 70: Give your book away free for a limited time:
If your book isn’t selling particularly well, use a free giveaway as an opportunity to breathe life back into your book.
Digital Marketing For Authors Tip 71: Realise that ebooks offer more value than just money:
Ebooks aren’t just about the cash. They can also be about the sign-up. If you’re running a blog or Facebook page you can use your ebook as an incentive to get people to sign-up to your email newsletter, or on Twitter or Facebook. Even better, you can cut your book into two parts, give out the first part as the giveaway so you get subscribers and fans, and then put a “Continue Reading” link at the end of part 1, asking your reader to pay to download part 2.
This is a complete win / win.
If you also include some Facebook share buttons in the free part of your book, your readers may very well share your book telling their friends that it’s free, their friends will then start reading the free part, which naturally leads to them buying the second part.
And those are my top digital marketing tips for authors
NEXT:
Part 5: Social Media for Authors
Part 6: Building an author platform
