The Importance of Online Marketing for Authors

This was the title of this week’s #WatfordWriters workshop run by our very own Cynthia Marsh. It’s something I’ve been giving thought to over the last month. Many authors don’t like the idea of it, but it’s the reality that if you want to get published and sell books, you need to market yourself. But where do you start?

1.    Define and build your personal brand

• Who ARE you? What are your books about? What are your values? Who is your audience? What benefit do they want from their interaction with you? What visual identity (logo/symbol/font) fits with that?

2.    Pick your digital channels

• Set up a website. You can buy URLs from godaddy for a few pounds a year. Ideally buy both the .com and .co.uk. You also need to pay for hosting, and the build of the website. This isn’t expensive anymore and you can buy packages that allow you to do it yourself, or call in a favour from a friend.
• Alternatively, like me, you can set up a blog at www.blogger.com. This allows you to start building up a mailing list and is free.
• Get yourself on social media. The most important sites are still twitter and Facebook, but Pinterest is growing.

3.    Content is King

• Your blog will bring new traffic to your site, it will keep people revisiting, and it will help build up your fan base.
• Don’t be too clever with the titles of your posts. Use known words in the heading because that is what will draw visitors in from Google.
• Blog a couple of times a week.
• Blogging is more like article writing. Forget long descriptive paragraphs, fancy metaphors, similes and personification.

4.    Look professional

• Get a decent photo taken (not like me!)

5.    Get up the rankings

• Define your keywords and use them throughout your site.
• Google loves fresh content.
• Google prefers validated content, so get back linked from other sites.
• Measure your traffic via Google Analytics.

6.    Make money

• Become an Amazon affiliate and sell yours and other people’s books or other merchandise.
• Use Google AdSense and get paid for others clicking ads on your page. But don’t try to beat the system by clicking on the ads yourself as Google will know!

7.    Remember copyright!

• You need to have permission if using other people’s quotes and images. Check out free stock photo sites like shutterstock and wikiimages

8.    The rules of social media

• It is not just about you. For every post promoting you or your book, there should be 9 that don’t. And it’s a conversation – connect with people and start a dialogue.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin. Better to do one social media site and do it well so you build a following there.
• Twitter: find your audience and follow them. Search for anyone with ‘amreading’ ‘avidreader’ etc. in their biography.
• Use to drive traffic to your blog or website.

9.    Share your work to build a following

• Wattpad and www.Lulu.com allow you to give away your novel or part of it to build a readership.
• It’s a good way to get your work out there. You can use it to share the first few chapters and then drive people to Amazon – but make sure you are very clear about that up front! You don’t want hundreds of disappointed readers…

“But,” said John, “what if we spend all our time marketing ourselves, and forget about the writing?”

Cynthia put it simply. “Life’s a balance, John.”