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I came across this coupon in my weekly “Money Mailer” the other day and it reminded me that I’ve been wondering what other marketers think about the practice of “using” your kids as part of your promotional efforts.
Do you do it?
If not, why not?
I’ve known about this service for a very long time but just never got around to testing it out until a couple days ago.
Here’s a very cool way to spy on what the top authors in the world are doing to market their books online. I’m a big believer in learning from the success of others, and I love that SpyFu allows you to basically copy the keyword list of anyone you can think of.
Very cool stuff.
And just so you know how to use it, here’s the how-to (when the video is ready, click the play arrow below)…
I thought I’d start off the week (and the month) with a little bit of a missive. I don’t tend to “write” much here on the blog, preferring instead to post what I hope are useful and instructive videos, audio interviews, etc. But my first love is and always will be the written word. So I’m dusting off my keyboard here to write a few words about something that’s been nagging at me for a while now.
Two things spurred me to write this entry today.
The first…
…was a forum post I happened to stumble on a few weeks back. It was a “writer’s” forum where authors — published and unpublished, it seemed — could share experiences, advice, and just generally converse on what it’s like living the life of a writer.
Somewhere buried in this forum was a discussion about book marketing. This alone made the experience unique, as precious little hard drive space seems to be dedicated to actually selling a book once it has been written.
After a brief exchange related to a particular marketing strategy, one of the authors and forum members piped up to say something along the lines of: “I thought it was the author’s job to write the book, and the publisher’s job to market it.”
The second…
…is Terry Whalin’s great blog post from last week — “Find a Need and Fill it”
Funny thing is, most of Terry’s very informative post isn’t even about this particular topic. But he does touch on it right up front, and that’s what finally got me to put pen to paper here on the blog.
In commenting on a recent Twitter post from Penny Sansevieri, Whalin made a great comment about authors who expect their books to find an audience — to SUCCEED — while at the same time expecting fortune to smile on them through some unique combination of luck, divine intervention, or an Oprah invite.
Here’s the relevant portion of Whalin’s post. Tell me if it doesn’t make perfect sense…
New books are continually entering the marketplace. It is one of those realities of the market which every author needs to know about and acknowledge. There were over 400,000 new books published in 2007 which is a lot of books when you consider the typical big box bookstore only has 10,000 to 15,000 titles.
I was amused to see Internet marketing expert Penny Sansevieri’s tweet about an email from an author who proclaimed, “I don’t need to market my book because people will just find it.” Right. It’s like throwing a party when you don’t send any invitations then wondering why no one came to it. (As a complete aside, I encourage you to sign up for Penny’s free newsletter. Why? To confirm your subscription, you receive a seven-page list of Top Author Marketing Experts Confidential Contacts. A free resource for every author or would-be author.)
With the volume of books coming into the market and places like magazines and newspapers cutting back on their review space, it is increasingly difficult to get readers–and reviews of your books. Here’s where I’m going to with this post: that situation creates an opportunity or a need which you can fill–even if you’ve never been published or are much published. How are you supporting good books that you discover? Are you telling other people about these books (even if you don’t get paid for that proclamation)? It can pay off for you.
Now, far be it for me to come into a discussion like this with guns blazing, but Terry and Penny are exposing a fundamental truth that practically compelled me to start this site in the first place. You’ve probably heard the old saying that “the baker doesn’t know how to run the bakery.” It’s a shame, but in my experience most authors not only don’t know how to market themselves and their books, but THEY DON’T WANT TO.
It’s easy to get caught up in the dream — to rely on the old cliche of the writer toiling in obscurity until the world finally catches on to his or her genius, as if by accident, and elevates them to exalted status.
Here’s the reality IMHO…
No one cares about your book more than you do. Not the publisher, not your publicist, and certainly not the general public.
You have to make them care. After the writing is done, your job isn’t over. It’s just beginning. The real work is in getting people to care about what you’ve written. And that will NEVER happen without some good old-fashioned get-your-hands-dirty marketing. If you wait to be “discovered,” it won’t happen.
No matter which side of the aisle you happen to be on, no one can argue that Barack Obama was able to engineer one of the most stunning marketing campaigns in recent political history.
But how did Obama’s “movement” start? It started with grassroots campaigning — i.e. MARKETING.
How many speeches to audiences of five, 10 or 20 people in Iowa do you think Obama had to make before he was “discovered” by voters?
Obama’s remarkable fundraising base and much-coveted email list was developed first by grassroots marketing, then by word of mouth, and finally by a brilliant use of technology and social marketing run by none other than Chris Hughes, co-founder of the mega-successful “meet up” site Facebook.
I may be running the risk of rambling here, but I want to make sure my philosophy on all this is clear, as well as why I believe I’m absolutely right on this point.
EVERYTHING IS MARKETING.
Everything.
Authors, bakers and candlestick makers ALL need to market themselves to be successful. Put yourself in your publisher’s shoes. Why would I dedicate limited time and resources to promoting your book if you haven’t first proven to me that you’re going to hold up your end of the bargain?
Prove to me first that you’re willing to work tirelessly to make your book a success. Show me — really SHOW ME — that you’re as dedicated to this process as you tell me you are, and then, maybe, we’ll talk about what I can do for you. Because the bottom line is that no publisher is going to carry you through this process. It’s your book, not theirs. They expect most of the titles they publish to die a quiet death. That’s just the law of averages.
If yours isn’t to be one of those — if yours is going to be one of the ones that breaks out, finds an audience, and beats the odds, it’s going to be 99.9% because of the work YOU did to bring it to the world.
Is it worth it? Is it worth all the work? This may not be how you imagined it would be. The reality is probably not like the dreams you had when you first sat down to write your book.
The question I would ask myself is this: If my book was worth writing, isn’t it worth doing the work required to make sure someone actually reads it? If your goal is to touch as many people as you can with your book, then no amount of effort should ever seem like too much.
This is what it’s all about, guys.
Don’t throw a party and neglect the invitations.
The more I work with authors like you to help them understand the ins and outs of online book marketing, the more I see that there are 5 basic and fundamental mistakes that 9 out of 10 authors make time and time again.
If you don’t fall victim to these five book marketing fiascoes, you’ll be ahead of the pack…way ahead. So, here are five things to avoid when marketing your books online:
1. Inadequate Keyword Research
This is the #1 big kahuna and the place where 99% of authors quite simply stuff it up.
Many of the authors I’ve worked with haven’t had success online for one simple reason — they aren’t approaching it the way an Internet marketer would. The biggest problem is that there’s no plan — no plan to find relevant keywords, and to get rankings for those keywords, which is really what it’s all about.
In order to have success online, you need to familiarize yourself with the concept of long-tail keywords; to understand how to analyze your competition; and how to know, with almost certainty, how much traffic a particular keyword gets.
Lucky for us there are tools available that will do all three. You can find them at the links at the end of this article. Make sure to take a look.
2. Lack of Content
Surprisingly, even prolific authors with many books to their credit — gifted writers who can write volumes on their area of expertise — somehow think that they can skate by on the Internet with just a couple pages (or even paragraphs!) of content.
Simply not true.
Here’s the deal: Google and the other search engines LOVE content-rich sites.
This is why behemoths like Wikipedia get so much traffic. There are millions of their pages in Google’s index.
How many pages from your site does Google know or care about? If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere between two and five.
If you have the type of site, you probably won’t be able to get rankings for any search term besides your name. Bottom line: if you shortchange people online, you’ll destroy your reputation in a heartbeat.
Stop looking at your site as though it were a high-tech dust jacket. Solve a problem for someone — that’s what your book does, right? So do it online, and do it for free, before you start asking people to buy your book.
3. Not paying attention to Social Marketing and Web 2.0
If you haven’t noticed, the Internet is changing. In only the past few years, sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr.com, as well as services like Twitter, have revolutionized how we interact online.
The top-down approach to the news is completely disappearing. We don’t have to, or want to, rely on editors or producers to decide for us what’s news and what isn’t — real people are doing that now.
In addition to the sites I talk about above, there are dozens of others that, collectively, represent one of the most remarkable opportunities for authors we’ve ever seen.
(Just check out the links I’ve given you below for the resources that will make it easy to find tons of sites that can help you sell more books.)
4. Failing to Build a Base of Support
It’s unbelievable how many writers don’t take advantage of the most useful online marketing tool there is — the ability to grow a base of support and loyal fans through things like mailing lists, or “followers” on Twitter, or subscribers to an RSS feed, or any number of other methods that traditional Internet marketers use everyday.
Why is this important? Because it’s always true that people who already know your work and like it will be much easier to sell more “stuff” to.
If someone has been won over — if they’ve gone ahead and bought one of your books — then selling them books two through four (or more) is that much easier.
But if you have no way to reach the people who bought your first book, you’re going to have to go through the entire “customer-acquisition” process each and every time for every new book.
Wouldn’t you say it would be a lot easier to just send an email or two to your existing fans?
Or simply to create a blog post to announce another book?
This is exactly the way an author can build an empire.
5. Trying to Sell Your Book
What? This is a mistake? But that’s the main point, right?
Yes and no.
The argument basically goes like this: Of course you want to use the Internet to sell copies of your book. BUT, you don’t want to ignore the relationship-building aspect of what you’re doing, because it’s these relationships, and the loyal fans you’ll naturally develop out of them, that will wind up being the base of people who buy basically whatever you put out (without being “marketed to”).
What’s better — being lucky to sell one or two copies of your book a day now, or selling thousands of books every day a year from now, and considering that an “average” day?
Stop struggling.
Start building information empires the way the most successful Internet marketers do. I’d suggest considering getting away from the “selling a book or two here and there” mentality. There are people out there who desperately need your expertise — so start concentrating on getting it out to them.
Sales (at the kind of level you couldn’t have dreamed of before!) will inevitably follow.
If you’re not selling enough books online to make a comfortable full-time income, you’re not doing it right.
I know for a fact that at least 90% of authors make vital — but completely avoidable — errors when attempting to market their books online
Would you like to find out if you happen to be one of them? Get my FREE DVD and find out what the “top dogs” know that you don’t.
