Tag Archives: createspace

Friday Finale – Tips for writers part 5: Promoting Your Facebook Page

Posted on January 11, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Today we bring our week long series of articles from our friends over at CreateSpace to a close with some tips on using Facebook to build your brand. Check out the rest of the series here.

In today’s marketing environment, the key to building an author brand is giving readers access to…well, you, the brand. Authors today rely heavily on social media to build their fan bases. That means in addition to promoting your books, you are now in the business of promoting your social media presence.

To keep it simple, I’ll focus on promoting the Facebook page dedicated to your author brand. However, you’ll find most of these strategies can be applied to promote your presence on other social networks as well. Here are five quick tips for promoting your Facebook page:

  1. Link your Facebook page’s URL in your email signature. Email is arguably not as popular for marketing as it used to be, but you can still take advantage of its promotional possibilities. The email signature is the perfect place to link to your Facebook page because it gives people a chance to connect with you outside of the inbox.
  2. Link to your Facebook page on your blog. A separate page on my blog lists all the different ways people can contact me. I’ve received a number of Facebook friend requests and fans by making this information accessible on my blog. If people are already hanging around your website, chances are they’re interested in seeing you on social networks as well.
  3. Include link information in your YouTube videos. You’re doing videos, right? Of course you are, because we’ve talked a lot about how it can build your author brand! Your videos present golden opportunities to promote your Facebook page. Just include a graphic at the end of each video telling viewers where to go.
  4. Personalize your Facebook page’s URL. Facebook gives you the option of creating a customized URL that can tout your brand and make it more attractive to search engines. The customized web address will look something like this: http://www.facebook.com/yourauthorname. A personalized URL is easier for fans to remember and pass along to their friends.
  5. Include your Facebook page URL in your author bio. If someone is interested enough to read your bio, you want to give them a place where they can learn more. What better place than a Facebook page to give readers direct, personal access to their new favorite author?

Building a brand sometimes feels like an around-the-clock task, but in this case, the hard part is putting the pieces in place. For instance, once you’ve included your Facebook page URL on your email, bio, and blog, you won’t have to do it again. If you want your brand to grow, give your readers the access they expect from authors today and invite them to join your conversations in social channels. Just remember, when fans contact you, engage with them. The more you engage, the more they’ll spread the word about your work.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that you can find us on Facebook. Leave a link to your Facebook page in the comments and check out our Promote Yourself section on ACX for more social media tips.

This article originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. For more helpful articles and blogs for authors, visit CreateSpace Resources. Reprinted with permission. © 2013 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved

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Tips for writers part 4: Setting Goals For Your Brand

Posted on January 10, 2013 by | 1 Comment

We’re rolling right along with our series of articles from CreateSpace, and today its time for part 4: Setting Goals For Your Brand. The rest of this series can be found here.

Because your brand is created by you being you, it doesn’t usually require much problem-solving. However, one cannot count on luck to build a successful brand. By and large, brands are built through one simple element: consistency. Rather than just popping up, brands are built over time after accumulating a history of a consistent style and approach.

No one can dictate to you as an author what your personal style is, but I can offer a recommendation on how to acquire that consistent history that will eventually define your brand: set branding activity goals. In short, schedule when you’re going to blog, Tweet, vlog, etc. If you’re new to the branding game, you’ll want to start off slowly and increase your activity over time. Ideally, you should be contributing to the history of your brand every day. Here’s an example of goal-setting for beginning brands:

  • Daily Goal – Social Media: Use social networks to cultivate your closest virtual relationships. Contribute to sites like Twitter and/or Facebook every day. Set your goal in the beginning to tweet a favorite quote, quick writing update, book-related news, or commentary on current events at least once a day. One short, but sweet tweet may seem like a drop in the bucket, but if you stick to daily tweeting, at the end of the year you’ll have accumulated 365 pieces of content that add to the record of your brand. Chances are you’ll fall into a pattern and end up exceeding one Tweet a day. For me, Facebook is the social network of choice. It’s fun to connect with my community, and it’s helping me establish my brand.
  • Weekly Goal – Blog: Pick a number of times you want to post to your blog every week. I used to recommend doing daily blog posts, and I still don’t think that’s a bad strategy. But if you are active in the social networking community, blogging once a day isn’t as crucial as it once was. I now recommend blogging at least three times a week. If in a year you have begun posting meaningfully to your blog daily, bravo on accelerating your brand-building history!
  • Monthly Goal – Vlog: Do a short personal video once a month for the first six months. Get used to the format and concept, and then increase the number of videos you create. You could set your goal to schedule one vlog each week, which helps personalize your brand, build your history, and make your brand more dynamic.

Track your progress on a calendar. If you miss a scheduled branding activity, find a way to make it up. The bottom line is you can’t have a brand without a branding history. Setting and keeping small goals like the ones above will help you create that history and help you build a successful brand.

Check out our Promote Yourself page on ACX for more great marketing tips. And make sure to tell us what works for you in the comments!

This article originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. For more helpful articles and blogs for authors, visit CreateSpace Resources. Reprinted with permission. © 2013 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved

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Tips for writers part 3: What to Tweet

Posted on January 9, 2013 by | Leave a comment

It’s time for part three in our series of articles from our friends at CreateSpace, titled “What Should Authors Tweet?” For parts one and two of this series, click here.

Twitter can be a great marketing tool, but many authors have no idea what to tweet after they’ve announced that their book is available. On the flip side, many authors tweet all day long about things that are so irrelevant and/or annoying that it makes me not want to read their books.

Here’s my advice for how to do it right:

If your book is non-fiction, a smart marketing strategy is to position yourself as an expert in a particular area, and Twitter can help you do this. Let’s say your book is a guide to financial management for parents with young children. Of course you can tweet tips and statistics pulled directly from your book, but you can also tweet interesting tidbits, articles, and general news about financial management that aren’t in your book. You can even provide links to information about parenting in general. The key is to be seen as a trusted resource for information that is relevant to your target reader. (If you write novels, like I do, you can tweet about writing or publishing, or maybe even things related to the themes in your book.)

How do you find this information? One way is through Google Alerts. If you set a Google Alert for a particular term (e.g. financial management), the search engine will notify you any time that term pops up in a new piece of online content. Then you can quickly evaluate the link and decide if it’s something you want to share with your followers. (To set a Google alert, do a web search for the term “Google alert.” It’s very easy.)

The key to building a Twitter following is to provide useful information in a consistent manner. Unless you’re a celebrity, people don’t care what you ate for breakfast (except maybe your mom).

Our mom definitely cares what we had for breakfast, even if we don’t tweet about it. To catch all the cool stuff we DO tweet about, check us out on Twitter. When you do, say hi and tell us some of your favorite Twitter marketing tricks.

This article originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. For more helpful articles and blogs for authors, visit CreateSpace Resources. Reprinted with permission. © 2013 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Tips for writers part 2: Grassroots Marketing

Posted on January 8, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Here’s part 2 in our series of articles from our friends at CreateSpace, titled “Three Grassroots Marketing Tips to Put in Place Today.” For part one of this series, click here

For many authors, both traditional and self-published, marketing a book is harder than writing one. If you don’t have a background in marketing, you may feel confused, overwhelmed, and even a little freaked out by the idea of it. Plus you may equate marketing with advertising and immediately think, Marketing is expensive, there’s no way I can do it! But the truth is you can. You just need to be clever about how you go about it.

Here are three things you can do today – for free – to generate some buzz for your book:

1.  Put the entire first chapter of your book on your website and include a link to it in your email signature. If you don’t have a website yet, build one tonight! GoDaddy.com has free templates with very inexpensive hosting packages. (Appropriately, it’s called Website Tonight.)

2.  Add your book to your own “reading list” on LinkedIn so it will show up anytime someone views your profile. (You can do this under the “more” tab along the top.) If you’re not on LinkedIn, setting up an account is free and super easy.

3.  Sign up for a free Square account so you can take credit card payments with your phone. Then start bringing a book with you everywhere you go. You never know who your next customer-and future fan-might be! I’ve sold books in some pretty random places, including on a plane, because I was able to accept payment via credit card.

Grassroots marketing is about being creative, not about spending a lot of money. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you can do it!

If you’ve got some marketing tips for your fellow authors, make sure to put ‘em in the comments. And check out our “Promote Yourself” section on ACX for even more advice!

This article originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. For more helpful articles and blogs for authors, visit CreateSpace Resources. Reprinted with permission. © 2013 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Tips For Writers part 1: CreateSpace shares their expertise

Posted on January 7, 2013 by | 3 Comments

We’re big fans of our fellow Amazonians over at CreateSpace. Through their services, you can sell books, CDs, and DVDs for a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing, while maintaining more control over your materials. They also have a ton of great resources for the creative community, and we will be featuring their articles all week. Here’s part 1 in our series, titled “Make It Easy For Your Fans To Help You.”

Even if readers love your book, it might never occur to them to tell other people about it. That’s why it’s important to make it easy for your fans to spread the word.

One great way is to create a fan page on your website. (If you don’t have a website, stop reading NOW and go make one.) You can direct readers to this link, especially those who proactively tell you they enjoyed your book.

Following are some of the elements I have on my own fan page. At the top it says: “Did you enjoy Perfect on Paper, It’s a Waverly Life, and/or Honey on Your Mind? If so, please help spread the word!”

Then I include the following suggestions with active hyperlinks:

  • To post a review on Amazon, click here
  • To order a signed copy for a friend, click here
  • To like Maria’s author page on Facebook, click here
  • To like the books on Facebook, click here
  • To post links to the first chapters on Facebook/Twitter/etc., click here
  • To subscribe to Maria’s newsletter, sign up on the right; side of this page
  • To follow Maria on Twitter, click here
  • To invite Maria to speak at your event, click here
  • To post a comment on this site, click here

We all know people who overshare the daily minutia of what they’re reading/eating/watching/doing, but not everyone is wired this way. For the more restrained readers out there, a fan page gives them a gentle nudge to help get the word out.

For more great tips, check out our “Promote Yourself” section on ACX. And if you’ve got some great tips for your fellow authors, leave ‘em in the comments below.

This article originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. For more helpful articles and blogs for authors, visit CreateSpace Resources. Reprinted with permission. © 2013 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

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