At the start of this year a
story
appeared on printweek.com about Bristol printer Business Forms Express
(BFE), who had made the bold move to drop their own website in favour of
a Facebook page. At the time, managing director Colin Roberts, said the
company was “moving with the times”. I’m not too sure how that move has
worked out for BFE, but it certainly highlights just how much social
media is regarded as a marketing and business tool.
No
one could have predicted the growth and strength of Facebook when it
was launched in 2004. After all, it was originally designed for horny
college students to track down girls. Fast forward seven years and it is
now worth $50 billion, and as of July 2011 it has 750 million users.
And whether you are an indie author like me, or a printer based in
Bristol, the great thing about social media sites is that they are
absolutely free to use. Self-publishing my novel,
The Drought, means I am solely responsible for all of the marketing.
“Conventionally
published books previously held the public eye, funded by publishers
with vast marketing budgets and contacts in high places,” Sarah Juckes,
Head of Company Marketing at self-publishing house
Pen Press,
explains. “But now, the balance has shifted, giving the indie author
the chance to reach a mass audience that was previously unavailable
without huge funding. Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs have become
must-have marketing tools for every author.”
But the
real challenge with social media is that you are competing with millions
of people all trying to promote one thing or another; whether it is a
business or simply someone who is willing to shave their hair off if
they get one million people to 'Like' their group. It doesn’t matter how
many friends you have on Facebook, you cannot simply rely on these
people to be your customers. You need to expand. Like any marketing
strategy, the key is to plan your attack on this huge audience. My book
should be published in August, but my digital and social media marketing
campaign started over eight months ago. I wanted to build up some
momentum so when I had a publication date, I would already have started
to raise awareness.
Personally I believe a website is
just as important as any social media tools available, because I use it
as the central hub that points at everything that I do. I specifically
planned to have my website
created at the start of the year because I found out that it can take
up to six months before search engines like Google start to trust your
content and therefore improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
ranking. I had my site created by a fantastic small web design company
called
Advanced Web Creations
who specialise in websites for small to medium local businesses. They
were extremely accommodating, professional, and perhaps most importantly
– great value for money.
Content is key when it comes
to a website, as you want as much related content to your product as
possible in order to appear high in the natural search. This is one of
the main reasons I started performing at open mic
stand-up comedy
nights. My book is a comedy novel, so I was able to film my
stand-up comedy shows and upload them to YouTube
as well as my own website.
Anyone searching for "comedy" could now
potentially stumble across my website. I am now tapping into the
video-sharing community, as well as getting my name out there as a
comedian and raising my profile. If people like my comedy, then
hopefully they will take an interest in the book. Keeping with the
comedy theme, I also started to blog about my
experience on the stand-up circuit, and linked everything back to my
website. I was slowly starting to build my online “brand” across various
different websites, and increasing my SEO presence across different
platforms.
These rules apply to any type of business, whereby you upload content about your products and services, and that is the mindset I am trying to get into - an indie author is a business.
LinkedIn
is undoubtedly a fantastic business tool, but how could I use this as
an independent author? This is where you have to start mixing and
matching your social media activities. I have been blogging on
printweek.com about my experience of self-publishing with Pen Press
since April, so I found relevant self-publishing groups on LinkedIn and
posted the URL to my blogs in these groups, as well as in any
self-publishing forums I could fine online. This has produced feedback
from other authors and those working in the publishing sector across the
globe, and has made my name aware to people I never normally would have
gotten the chance to put myself in front of.
So now I
have the website, the YouTube videos, and the blogs. It was time to
unleash this content on to the big boys of the social media world –
namely Facebook and Twitter. I have had an account on
Twitter
for a couple of years, without really doing anything with it other than
informing my 9 followers what I was having for dinner. But since using
my tweets to promote both my stand-up comedy and the upcoming release
of my novel, my followers have grown to 174.
“Twitter
allows the author to set up a voice among the millions, following and
engaging with his/her targeted readership,” Sarah Juckes told me. “The
author can tweet about the book’s themes, characters, plot etc, and
cause a stir that could quite literally spread to the masses. Every
tweet has the ability to cause worldwide interest.”
But how?
“It
isn’t enough to tweet to an empty room – Twitter, like everything,
takes work,” Sarah continues. “The author must engage - using tools like
the hashtag (#) to tap into discussions, Direct Messaging and @ing
individuals to build up a reputation as being someone worth following.
Once they have a follow base of readers, the author can start selling,
directing the masses to the book on Amazon, the blog with free snippets
of the book, perhaps even to the free eBook downloads as rewards for
those who help spread the word.”
“Once Twitter has them
hooked, Facebook can keep them in the boat. A ‘like’ of the author/book
page means that person will see updates and giveaways amongst their
friends’ personal updates every time they log in. Facebook is for
friends – it is more intimate. This is how you can get a casual follower
to become a guaranteed book buyer – perfect for those sequels.”
Creating a Facebook
page has been the most recent piece of my social media marketing
puzzle. For someone to “Like” you on Facebook, there needs to be a good
reason. My stand-up comedy gave me a reason to develop a page and 105
likes later, I now have a decent sized audience, who have bought into my
brand of comedy from my open mic performances, that I will be able to
promote my book to.
“Of course, this just the tip of
the iceberg,” Sarah says of the social media opportunities. “YouTube and
the boom of the book trailer is a great way of directing people to your
book – giving them a feel in pictures and sound rather than tweet after
tweet saying the same thing.
Goodreads and
Shelfari
allow the author to tap directly into a book-buying demographic. The
blogs of others generate discussions the author can involve themselves
in, and their own blog will normally allow readers to subscribe to the
blog and updates.”
Social media can be as much about
research as it is anything else. Whatever type of business you are in,
take the time to do your homework before launching into a social media
marketing plan. Could you really imagine creating your own video
advertisement 10 years ago to promote one of your products? Social media
has opened up that door to the masses. Use it in the right way, and you
will get results.
I am not suggesting that social media is the only tool you will need. Printed marketing material is just as important as digital, and that is why I contacted
Authors Essentials who
specialise in various book marketing needs from eBooks to websites to
printed material. They are also currently promoting a
short story competition
with the prize being a Bronze publishing package with Pen Press.
(Competition closes August 20 - check out link for more details). But
this is a story for another blog...
I’m off now to film my book trailer – Hollywood here I come. Well, sort of.
