Begins when you publish. Whether you are a traditionally published author, hybrid author or independently self-publishing, you will need to market your book and online is the place to do it. So, here’s our step-by-step guide on how to launch your book online using social media.
Today’s post is by author and social media marketing strategist Peg Fitzpatrick, and was originally published by The Huffington Post.
How to Create an Online Book Tour with Social Media
Social media marketing is the hip version of the old book tours where authors trekked from city to city selling their books. Today, publishers don’t have the budget and only the biggest authors get this treatment. Have no fear, you can recreate this with less money and some elbow grease.
In the months leading up to your online book launch, you will need to be planning for what I call the modern-day book tour. Hopefully, you’ve spent time building your author platform and boosting your online presence so people are going to be interested when you launch your book.
Some of the tools you can use to build your book tour:
When you’re launching your book (online or offline), you want people to hear about your book in as many ways as possible. Create a media blitz with as many of these as you can so people can share them with their networks.
These are a few examples of what you can do to make a big splash on your launch day.
Be ready to work hard
Working with Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch on APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book, we planned many events to launch the book online to boost their social media marketing. Guy and Shawn were guests on Google+ Hangouts and were interviewed about the self-publishing process sharing what they learned writing the book and self-publishing it. We were guests on Twitter chats and hosted our own Twitter chats. We chose the #ApetheBook hashtag and used that consistently since the book launch. Guy did up to three interviews per day via Skype, phone, or Google+ Hangout for months.
How you can do this:
Build your own buzz
Another way to build buzz is to create your own event. Jennifer Miller, author of The Year of the Gadfly, has created several unique online marketing events for her book. Jennifer is a traditionally published author who is building the buzz for her books with social media. She created the month of the Gadfly and her goal was to hit 100 book clubs in thirty days to break a world record. She got a lot of great press for this. Jennifer was my guest for #MyBookClub chat on Twitter and wrote about it on The Huffington Post in an article called Savvy Authors Surfing the Web to Bridge the Digital Divide.
How you can do this:
Create a media blitz
Jay Baer did a fantastic job with the online launch of his book: Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype. Jay, although traditionally published, built a team of people to work on his marketing even before the book launch. Full disclosure, I worked on a project with Jay for Youtility, but I learned post launch that Jay had a whole crew. This was very smart. This gave Jay a whole crew of people ready to cheer on his project and want to it be successful.
Jay used the following marketing pieces (and probably more): a book trailer, a SlideShare presentation, and at least twenty-five articles excerpted from his book that were published on high-profile blogs. Jay has spent time building a network of friends who are at the same level in their career as he is: published authors, high-profile speaker and fully vested in their social media platforms. He also built trust and readership with his popular blog: Convince and Convert.
How you can do this:
Share your adventure
New York Times best-selling author Hugh Howey started as an indie writer and is now a hybrid author. He has built an enviable fan base online that is watching the progress meters on this current writing projects with bated breath, which then creates a ready-made audience when he launches his next book. How does he do this? He is 100% himself and shares interesting content. He creates fun unboxing videos when he gets copies of his books or products, shares photos from his travels at book signings and events as well as truly engaging with his fans.
How you can do this:
Make a media kit
You’ll need to build your digital assets prior to launching your book so you are ready when people want to interview you. Sarah Robinson did a great job on her book website and media kit for her self-published book Fierce Loyalty: Unlocking the DNA of Wildly Successful Communities. You’ll need:
How you can do this:
I hope this gives you some ideas on how you can prep for the big day when you launch your book online. A book launch is a marathon not a sprint and doesn’t stop the day after your book is released. Invest the time in your social media marketing to create an interesting presence. You’ll notice that none of these are hard sell methods of marketing or sales pitches. Social media marketing is not a sales pitch, as a writer your goal is to help people find your books and learn about you as a writer.
What are you waiting for? Get started!
