What may come as a shock to some writers is that many agents and publishers need to fall in love with your idea, as well as you (as someone they want to work with) often before even reading your work.
You need to hook potential agents and publishers with something that sparks their interest. You also need to help them understand how you and your work are ‘sellable’.
Why? Because agents and publishers only make money if your books sell. A good agent/publisher knows the market and the readers, so they will want to determine from the outset what your commercial appeal is.
The good news is that you can increase the chances of agents and publishers buying into you and your work with a simple concept: Same, Same but Different.
As part of your pitching and querying, you will want to make clear your ‘Same, Same but Different’ proposition.
Same, Same
Same, same refers to how you and your work are similar to other authors and books.
Do you have good comparison authors and/or books that are similar to what you have to offer?
If not, start researching and come up with some.
You will want to choose comparison authors or titles that are well known within your genre and preferably they should be fairly recent examples to demonstrate you understand the current market.
The purpose of comparison titles/authors is to help agents/publishers understand where your book would sit on the bookshelf. Where would your work fit in the marketplace?
Do the hard work for them and give them relevant examples. For example, if you are writing a story about a female assassin in Regency England you might say it’s Atomic Blonde meets Pride and Prejudice. The comparisons don’t always have to be books, they can also be films or TV series, for instance.
If your work is particularly unique or you really want to get someone’s attention you can choose comparison titles that are very different from each other, as shown above, which brings us to ‘Different’.
Different
To use a well-known marketing term what’s your point-of-difference or unique selling point (relating to you and/or your writing)?
Your difference is important after demonstrating where you fit in the marketplace, because you need to show what would make someone choose you or your book over a similar author or title.
This can be achieved quickly and easily in your pitch by using clever comparison titles or adding to your comparison spiel.
Let’s say you’re writing a contemporary love story about zombies. Then the same, same but different proposition may be: It’s the Notebook meets the Walking Dead or It’s the Notebook with zombies.
Okay, so the above examples are fairly unique sounding concepts so the same, same but different is a little easier. For less obvious differences you may need to dig a little deeper, but this is incredibly important if you want to get an agent or traditional publisher.
If the plot isn’t typically unique is there something unique about the setting, the points of view used, the structure of the book? Is there a unique reason you are the best person to write this book?
So what are you waiting for? Get started on your Same, Same but Different today.
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I’m super excited to be delivering more workshops over the next two months. One is a FREE Social Media for Writers workshop and the other is Build Your Author Website in a Day.
Social Media for Writers – FREE Workshop
On Saturday 4 May I will be at Helensvale Library on the Gold Coast facilitating a FREE 2 hour workshop on social media for writers.
Whether you’re an aspiring or established writer, this workshop will teach you how to use social media to enhance your writing career and/or author platform.
Discover the variety of platforms available, what type of content to post and when, how to create and schedule great content, and the secret to getting more followers and keeping them engaged. Find out more here.
Build Your Author Website in a Day
On Saturday 8 June I will be back at the Queensland Writers Centre delivering Build Your Author Website in a Day.
You will walk away from this workshop with a published website. Create an online presence for your writing and author brand, whether you’re just starting out or already published. No technical or website experience needed. At the end of this workshop, you will have a live wordpress.com website. Find out more here.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an (aspiring) author in possession of a book (idea) to sell, must be in want of an author brand or platform.”
I’ve taken some liberty with Jane Austen’s words but I’m sure she would have agreed with the sentiment.
Jane Austen lived at a time when books by women were usually published anonymously. I like to think she would have jumped, in a most lady-like manner, at the chance to promote herself as an author.
Why then do many (aspiring) authors, who want to
get their books out into the world, consider marketing a necessary evil, or
just downright evil?
The answer lies in the undeniable fact that
creating an author brand or platform can at times be frustrating, confusing or
annoying – ‘you mean I actually have to do social media?’.
The good news is that many of the objections or
challenges relating to marketing can be overcome with a little persistence and
the right guidance.
Unfortunately, this does nothing to address the
many misconceptions that continue to plague marketing and stop some writers
from embracing their author brand.
I’m here to restore your faith in marketing by
busting some of the most common myths surrounding author brand and related
topics.
Branding is for Businesses
Not Authors
The easiest way to clear this one up is to ask
yourself whether you want to make money from selling your books.
If you answered yes, then you need to treat your
writing as a business, otherwise, it’s a hobby.
Being a professional writer or author entails
all of the regular activities a business owner needs to undertake, marketing
being one of them.
Your author brand is the foundation of all of
your marketing activities, and it is much more than having a beautiful logo and
business cards.
Brand is the experience or feeling you create every time you interact with the world. It is what you say and how you say it – it is how you make people you communicate with feel.
It is about creating a consistent voice for you and your writing that resonates with readers, publishers, agents, and other people important to your success.
I Don’t Need to Worry About
Brand Yet
If you haven’t published a book yet, you may
think it’s okay to wait before developing your author brand.
In fact, the best time to start marketing yourself as an (aspiring) author is now!
The more time you have to build your platform, get followers and refine your messaging, the easier it will be when you are querying agents and publishers, or are ready to launch your book.
I Don’t Like Selling Myself
So I Don’t Like Marketing
Guess what? Most people don’t like ‘selling’
themselves and no one likes being ‘sold’ to.
Fortunately, marketing isn’t about ‘selling’. It is about making meaningful and authentic connections with people who are interested in you and your work.
Connecting with the right people through social
media and other communication channels builds a support network of people who,
when the time comes, won’t just buy or invest in your book, but will do the
‘selling’ for you. They will become your brand fans and ambassadors.
To stay in the know about my writing projects and to receive regular writing tips and articles like this, sign up here.
Marketing and social media are surrounded by a lot of misconceptions and myths which can mean the difference between failure and conquering your online presence.
Here are my top tips for how businesses and (aspiring) authors can avoid the biggest rookie mistakes when it comes to social media.
1. Don’t like it….’say’ you like it
You probably have heard that engaging with other people is key to your success on social media, and what you’ve heard is right.
Liking other people’s posts and comments is a great way to build a network of supporters and people interested in your work.
But ‘liking’ content will only get you so far.
When you see something you really like on social media, something that resonates with you, then ‘say’ you like it. It’s far more effective to add a comment expanding on why you like it.
This is likely to get you more engagement and appreciation than a simple ‘double tap’ or thumbs up will get you.
2. Numbers don’t count…unless they are the right numbers
Many social media users can get hung up on the number of followers and likes they get, but here are a few things to consider.
On some platforms, particularly Twitter, you may find it reasonably easy to get followers – sometimes without even trying. But when you drill down to look at those followers, how many of them represent your ideal target audience?
While the number of likes are one indicator of engagement levels, they can also be skewed. There are bots, particularly on Instagram, that automatically like photos. Even if that’s not a problem you’re experiencing, as we said above, double tapping or giving a thumbs up is a quick way of engaging in social media content but also can be an indication of ‘low investment’ in your content.
Real engagement is measured in terms of the relationships you form with your followers, through conversations.
3. Automated posting is okay…as long as you back it up with engagement
These days there are loads of options to automate or schedule your social media posts, but this is considered passive posting, unless it is coupled with engagement.
What I mean is, you can’t just set and forget when it comes to social media. This kind of posting is the equivalent of going to a party, announcing loudly to the room who you are and what you’re doing, then walking out again.
No one is interested in a party guest, or social media user, who only wants to talk about themselves. Real engagement comes from two way conversations.
It’s absolutely okay to use automated or scheduled posting for some of your posts, but you also need to take the time to monitor and check your feed and engage in other people’s posts, as well as respond to users who engage in yours.
4. Followers will find you…only if you are looking for them
Unfortunately social media on the most part is not a case of ‘build it and they will come’.
Sitting back and waiting for people to find you and follow you, will limit your overall number of followers but also the kind of followers you get.
The best way to increase your follower base is to consistently search for social media users who reflect your ideal audience and post content you like. You can use hashtags or the built-in search facility on social media platforms to find accounts relating to topics you are interested in.
What you will see is that a lot of the time you will get follow-backs and you are building a targeted community of people who resonate with you.
It’s best to do this very regularly, rather than in one big burst. This way you can keep your follower/follow back ratio in check and you won’t exceed any follow limits.
5. Always follow people back…unless…
One of the most effective ways of getting followers is to follow back those people who follow you.
Generally I follow back people who follow me unless:
They say they are The Rock, Prince Harry or some other celebrity that they clearly are not.
The user does not have a profile picture.
The bio is riddled with mistakes or information that doesn’t make sense.
The follower is clearly unrelated my areas of interest, and I’m not even sure why they followed me. I find this is often a bot that has followed me, looking for a follow-back. Soon after, bots just as often unfollow you, even if you liked them back.
They haven’t posted recently or at all.
Their profile and/or bio contains offensive material.
I’ve gotten pretty good at screening followers, and a quick glance at their profile and/or bio usually determines my follow-back.
I do sometimes find out that an account I am following doesn’t turn out to be what I expected and I immediately unfollow or even block if needed.
That all being said, I generally follow-back and try to do so in a timely manner (within 2 days of a follow).
6. Be the most interesting…listener
You should never set out to be the most interesting person on social media.
That doesn’t mean you should strive for boring. It means you should be yourself. Show the best version of yourself, but at the end of the day, be authentic.
But that is not the most important thing to take from this.
On social media it’s vital to be ‘interested’ rather than ‘interesting’.
Be a listener. Ask people about themselves and their content? Start conversations not a one-way showcase of how amazing you are.
7. Post exactly what you’re thinking…within reason
We all have issues, people and topics we feel strongly about but it doesn’t mean we have to vent all of them on social media.
Sure if there is something you really believe in or is highly relevant to your work, that you feel compelled to share, even if it may upset some people – then by all means go for it (as low as it’s not unlawful or defamatory to do so).
Generally, I choose to avoid politics and rants, as well as anything really personal. If I do share something potentially controversial, I usually share something from a credible third party rather than just ‘my opinion’. I also choose not to show images of my child, unless his face can not be identified. That’s just my personal choice.
Where possible I will share content that has a positive angle to it, where action is being taken to right a wrong.
For me, it’s important for people to feel inspired, interested or entertained by my content, rather than angry or outraged.
Of course for some people it is important for them to share their authentic voice in its full glory, and I support this. In fact I follow a lot of people with very strong views.
In any case, there are always consequences for posting on social media. Even the most innocuous posts can rile up a person in the most unexpected way, resulting in them making nasty comments on your account.
When this happens, you can ignore it, politely and professionally respond, or block the person if necessary. It’s your call.
Bonus tip for aspiring authors
To finish up, I’d like to share this tip for aspiring authors. Generally, the writing world is a very supportive one and even highly successful authors are happy to engage with their followers.
Don’t assume that just because someone is famous or a best selling author that they won’t be interested in you or your content.
Take the time to engage in their content and you may be surprised to find…they’ll engage right back.
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The idea of marketing yourself as an author can be understandably overwhelming, especially if you are in the early stages of your writing journey.
Aspiring authors may wonder what they can do to enhance their chances of making money from their future books. Recently published authors may question what they can do to increase their profile and book sales.
The answer to both of these conundrums is to look to authors who have made it big and see what we can learn from their approach to marketing.
Before we go any further, let me pre-empt and clear up one of the most common misconceptions about this topic. That is, the belief that “marketing is easy for authors who are already famous. They have an audience to market to”.
Let’s lay that one to rest straight away. I would go as far as saying that without exception the most successful authors put the time and effort into their marketing well before they were well-known.
Even if you are starting with an audience of one, it’s better than not starting at all. The sooner you can get a headstart on your marketing the better.
Across the board, successful authors took steps to connect with and give to their audience or ‘community’ early on.
Here are some other key marketing lessons we can learn from famous authors.
J.K. Rowling – Leverage Your World-Building
Let’s be honest, I could spend all day unpacking the genius that is J.K. Rowling but in this post, I’m going to focus on just one element of her marketing strategy.
The Harry Potter series came with in-built marketing opportunities, thanks to Rowling’s detailed world-building and fully fleshed-out characters.
Rowling continues to share character insights and tidbits about the series today through the Pottermore site. Fans can join the Pottermore community for free and complete quizzes that will uncover your wizarding identity, Hogwarts House, Patronus and more.
Content from this site is also shared across social media platforms to continue to feed fans and enthusiasm for the Potter brand.
If you have gone to the trouble of creating rich characters and places, you should look for ways to leverage this knowledge.
This is particularly the case for fantasy writers who often go to extreme lengths for world-building, in terms of language, locations, magic and more.
Look for ways to share little snippets from your books and world on social media and your website that may not even appear in your written work. The more you share, the more real your world becomes and the more likely fans are to engage in it and invest in your work.
Know and Appreciate Your Fan-base
E.L. James – Fan Fiction
Fifty Shades of Grey is one of those books that when mentioned at a writer event is likely to spark a fierce debate about its artistic merit. I tried to read it and 80 pages in decided it wasn’t for me. However, no one can deny that there is obviously a market for this kind of fiction and I’m of the belief that those who don’t like it don’t need to stick their nose up at it.
I for one celebrate the fact that E.L. James wrote a book series that was highly successful (at one point it was said to be selling paperback copies faster than the Harry Potter series) and her fans LOVE it.
This brings me to the marketing lesson of knowing and appreciating your fan base, and E.L. James absolutely nailed that.
James promoted Fifty Shades of Grey in several ways before it went from relative self-published obscurity to a worldwide phenomenon.
It was originally fan fiction for the Twilight series where her episodic pieces soon gained a fan-base.
She nurtured and continually fed this community with regular content she knew her fans would love, until changing the names of the characters, and putting the book on her website.
James also gained grass-roots support by reaching out to relevant book bloggers.
A major part of her success was making her content accessible (and initially free via fan fiction) and nurturing her following.
Elizabeth Gilbert – Facebook Community
If you’re looking for an example of an author who understands her fanbase and how to create a Facebook community, go no further than Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic.
Of all of her communication and social platforms, Gilbert appears to engage most on her Facebook page. She tends to use Facebook as a mini-blogging platform with lengthy posts addressed to her community. Many of the posts start with the phrase, ‘Dear Ones’, where she speaks directly to each member of her community with honest, insightful and heartfelt posts that are a signature of her brand.
The lesson here is, it doesn’t matter how or where you choose to develop your community, as long as you do make the effort to do so.
Understand your fans and speak directly to them, giving them the content they want.
Joanna Penn – The Self-publishing and Author Marketing Guru
In the self-publishing world, Joanna Penn provides an authoritative and highly engaging voice for authors wanting to market themselves.
Author of Successful Self-Publishing: How to self-publish and market your book, Penn has the highly successful Creative Penn podcast and at her site, provides extensive resources and tips on how to market yourself.
Penn is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, so knows her stuff and is generous with her knowledge.
There is not enough room here to cover all of her marketing lessons but two quotes from Successful Self-Publishing encapsulates the core of her philosophy and what we all can learn from.
“Writing is about you. Publishing is about the book. Marketing is about the reader.”
“Branding is your promise to the reader. It’s the words, images, and emotions that surround your work and the way readers think of you.”
Scott Pape ‘The Barefoot Investor’ – Give Freely
When it comes to non-fiction in Australia, no one has reached the same heights of success in recent times as Scott Pape with The Barefoot Investor.
Pape’s book sold 250,000 copies in the first six months of its release and has topped Australia’s best-selling book lists month-on-end, ahead of non-fiction and fiction titles.
A lot of Pape’s success comes down to his branding nous and giving freely to the audience.
At his website, you can access loads of free resources and content. Visitors to his site then have the option of purchasing his book or joining his membership program.
The idea of giving free stuff to visitors to your site (or via other channels) is that you are giving them a taster and reward for connecting with you. It provides a gateway and conversation starter to encourage them to buy your book, product or services.
The lesson here is to offer something for free such as blog articles or downloadable resources.
You should also include a call to action to sign-up for regular content such as a newsletter where you can promote your paid assets, and potentially convert prospects to sales.
You may also like to have a higher value item such as the first few pages of your book, a short story, or exclusive resources, on your site that can only be accessed by providing an email first.
Finally, make your paid products for sale and very visible on your site, preferably only one click away from your free content.
These are just a few lessons from famous authors and tips to get started with your marketing. What are you waiting for? Get started today!
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I love being a writer. It is all I have ever wanted to do, but doing it for a living and balancing it among other work and life priorities can be downright hard. Whenever I do need a boost, inspiration, motivation or writing tips I turn to a few key books – here are what I think are the top books every writer needs to read.
I’m a scaredy-cat by nature. Many writers I have come across are. For me, fear goes along with my overly active imagination that always asks ‘what if?’.
It’s great for fiction writing but not so good for getting over those fears of ‘am I really any good at this?’, ‘should I just give up?’, and any version of the ‘I’m a fraud’ factor many of us are regularly afflicted by.
What I love about Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear” is that it deals with all of these fears and more. Gilbert encourages the writer to accept fear and invite it along on your journey, but never to let it in the “driving seat”. Beautifully written and packed with useful heart-felt advice on how to live a creative life.
One of the most quoted lines from this book is ‘Beauty is good, but coin is better. You can’t eat artistic integrity. It tastes like sawdust.’ It is the perfect summary of the theme of Birmingham’s book.
If you’ve ever wanted to make money from writing, be it as a freelancer, a features writer or author, then this is the book for you.
Notice though I didn’t say it was for poets…Birmingham doesn’t have any useful advice for poets, but he does have a wicked sense of humour – he really knows his sh…stuff.
There’s plenty of expert tips and laughs along the way starting with the tongue in cheek full title: How to Be a Writer: Who Smashes Deadlines, Crushes Editors and Lives in a Solid Gold Hovercraft.
Topics covered include ‘How to slay writer’s block’, ‘What the hell is workflow?’, ‘How to write 10,000 words in a day’ and ‘The best apps for writers’. Hard-core, real-world practical advice. Read it if you dare!
Helpful advice, tips and instruction on using language is threaded among personal anecdotes and memoir.
King uses his life and writing experience, as well as examples from his own novels, to illustrate technical writing points. He shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work. If you’re a Stephen King fan you will get a serious kick out of this. Even if you’re not – and I don’t read much of his stuff (I told you I’m a scaredy cat) – you will still find it incredibly helpful.
For one, I share King’s hate for passive voice. If you catch me doing it feel free to tag me with a narky tweet. Scratch that. For all I know I’ve dropped a few clangers in this post.
He also declares war on adverbs, which has led me to revisit my own work and weed out the little buggers but also live in perpetual fear of them. So I’d say King’s ‘On Writing’ mission is accomplished in terms of improving my writing.
He goes further, saying we owe it to the world to share our craft, whether the world likes it or not. It’s not the world’s job to love us, it’s our job to just put ourselves and our art out there – embracing all the challenges along the way.
I love how Godin simultaneously inspires and gives the reader the kick up the butt they need while also delivering necessary reality checks.
I’m a writer. I’ve been writing for a living for more years than I care to remember.
At risk of sounding up myself, I aint too shabby when it comes to putting a few words together.
I can be pretty damn persuasive as well, when I want to be.
There’s one caveat though.
I may be the cat’s meow (at least that’s what I like to think on a good day) when it comes to putting together compelling messages, pitches, stories, articles, ads…pretty much anything really, as long as it’s in the written form.
But when it comes to delivering the same type of content verbally, it quickly goes pear-shaped.
Anyone who knows me, will say I have no problem talking. They’ll probably say I can talk the leg off a chair. I reckon they’ll say I’ll go up and talk to anyone – that I’m the classic extrovert.
There is definitely some truth in that. Once I’m in my comfort zone, I can, and will, chat to anybody, but initially approaching and speaking to a stranger doesn’t come so easily.
I’ll happily speak to the person next to me at the bus stop, the usher at the theatre, other clients at the hairdresser, on one condition – that I’m speaking about things I’m extremely confident about, strongly believe in, or if it’s just classic small talk.
Ask me though to pitch something important to someone verbally, whether it’s a novel or a business idea, I become crippled with verbal diarrhoea, or say nothing at all.
For me, it all comes down to having confidence in what I’m speaking about.
Believing in your writing or idea is one thing – something we’ll talk about another day – but until you can have that confidence, there’s an easy tool that will help you ‘fake it until you make it’, as they say.
Creating A Killer Pitch
I was a mess, the first time I pitched my novel to a publisher.
I’d gone to extreme effort to polish a few paragraphs with an awesome hook, and it sounded pretty darn good…on paper.
I realised too late that the pitch didn’t sound so great when read aloud. It sounded like I was reading from a script, and that’s exactly what I did. I read from the piece of paper because I was comfortable with what I’d written.
It was a brilliant lesson and reminder that I needed to work on my elevator pitch, specifically to be delivered verbally.
But where would I start?
The answer lay in all of the years of media training I had delivered to businesses and executives over the years.
I didn’t need a ‘pitch’. I needed key messages.
The Power of Key Messages
The problem with writing a pitch and then memorising it word-for-word, is that when you go to say it, it is likely to sound like a script.
In real life we don’t speak the same way that sentences are put together on paper.
And when we do try to do that, we tend to sound unnatural or robotic.
We concentrate so much on delivering the exact words, that we lose all of the intonation and natural expression we normally use when we speak – all of the things that help to engage and keep other people interested.
The way to get around this, and take it a heck of a lot easier on yourself, is to develop key messages that you can use a guide – not a script.
Key messages are the takeaways you want your target audience to hear and remember – whether that audience is an agent, publisher, potential client, or a stranger at the shops.
Key messages – How To
You want to develop three key messages based on the core themes or ideas you want to put across when pitching.
Why three? Three is an easy number to remember and will help keep you focused, and on point.
To develop your key messages, ask yourself what are the three most important things you need to get across about the topic, novel or idea you are pitching.
Write down these things and package them up into sentences.
Each key message should consist of 1-2 sentences – the shorter the better – and should capture the things you think will appeal to the audience the most.
Once you have written out your key messages, go through and highlight or underline keywords or phrases that represent the most critical themes or ideas you want to convey.
How To Use Your Key Messages to Pitch
The thing that stands key messages apart from a written pitch, is that they give you the freedom to adapt them as needed, at the time of use.
Key messages don’t need to be used word-for-word or remembered off-by-heart – you just want to focus on remembering the general gist of each message and the keywords or phrases you identified as most important.
Initially commit the key messages to memory, but then practise saying them out loud a few times and you will notice that you may start changing up your words, or tweaking them each time. Keep doing this until you have something that feels natural to say, and then remember it and practise it more.
But it doesn’t end there.
The beauty of key messages is that they can be tweaked depending on your audience, or even how you’re feeling on the day. They may also evolve over time.
You will most likely use slightly different language when speaking to someone at a BBQ than you would speaking to a senior executive.
Key messages enables you to ‘go off script’ without losing track of what you were trying to say and ensures you still convey the most important parts.
You’re also likely to sound more authentic, relaxed and engaging.
Trust me, I’ve done it myself and it really works.
Remember you’re not delivering a speech, your starting a conversation.
Bonus tip!
Once you nail your key messages, here’s your next challenge. Why not try and distil the three messages into one concise statement – you can call it your tagline or slogan if you like – that captures the core essence of what you’re trying to say.
And then, edit it until it is 140 characters or less – now you have an awesome little sound bite that’s made for Twitter!!
So what are you waiting for? Start working on your key messages and you’ll be pitching like a pro before you know it.
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If you think that creating a beautifully written book is enough to guarantee a best-seller, I have bad news for you.
A well-written book is a great start, and if you’ve got one ready to go, I congratulate you on the herculean effort I know that went into it.
Unfortunately though, if you want to make money out of book sales, you need to wrap your head around something that may seem like the complete antithesis of creative writing.
You need to start thinking of yourself as a brand.
If you write strictly for a hobby, that is, you don’t want, or need, to make money from selling your books, at ease. You can go back to trawling through social media/watching reality TV/reading a book, doing whatever you were doing before.
The rest of you though, don’t go anywhere. Trust me, I’ll know if you stop reading now. : )
Run It Like a Business
A very wise publishing friend of mine recently told me that the most difficult part of working with his clients is convincing them why they should act like they are running a business.
The leap from writing books to running a business, isn’t as big as you may think.
Businesses sell products – you (I assume) want to sell books (products).
Running a business requires financial and time management – so does writing. Whether you’re squeezing it in between your day job or family commitments, you will need to juggle your time and resources to pursue a career as an author.
Importantly, successful businesses need to invest time and effort into marketing.
For authors, aspiring or otherwise, your marketing (or lack of it) has the potential to make or break your writing career.
This is why, you hear so much about why you should build your author brand or platform.
Start Thinking Like a Brand
Authors are brands, whether they like to think of themselves that way or not.
***Brand is the only thing that matters when the market is saturated***
Okay, brand may not be the only thing, but I don’t need to tell you that the book marketplace is super competitive, and brand is often the difference between an author gaining cut through or not.
While it pains me to say this, many brilliantly written books may never make it to a book store, or generate the sales they deserve, without brand recognition.
When Should I Start Developing My Brand?
If you’re an aspiring author, you may believe you don’t have to worry about this ‘marketing stuff’ yet.
Sorry to rain on your parade.
The best time to start marketing yourself as an author is ASAP!
The more time you have to build your platform and generate interest, as well as followers, the easier it will be when you do publish your book. This applies whether you self-publish or have a traditional publisher.
First-up, you want to create a brand that agents, publishers, influencers and other book industry types want to support and invest in.
Start creating a brand now that your target audience, and readers, can really connect to, so when you do launch your book, you have a ready-made fan club buying it, and telling all of their friends to buy it too.
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There’s one big mistake many content marketers are making, and it’s potentially costing brands dearly.
It turns out marketers and writers everywhere are doing themselves, and their content, a disservice by letting good content go to waste.
The number one culprit is creating content with a short shelf life, or content that becomes out-of-date quickly.
There is a simple solution though. It’s making your content evergreen.
Creating evergreen, or timeless content, means content remains relevant and valuable to your target audience indefinitely.
It also can save you time, because it gives you a depository or content you can promote more than once and repeat on social media.
The Content Marketing Gift that Keeps Giving
Evergreen content can bring you lots of long-term marketing love.
When done well, evergreen content can generate engagement, traffic and leads for days, weeks, months, and even years to come – especially if it’s promoted on more than one occasion.
In fact, Hubspot research showed 76% of its blog views, and a whopping 92% of leads, came from “old” or evergreen posts.
A slight tweak to your content can easily transform it from being a one-hit wonder to forever young, and help you reap similar long-term benefits.
What is Evergreen Content?
An evergreen article is content that isn’t likely to date. It will stand the test of time.
For example, ‘How to Choose the Best Haircut for You’ would be more evergreen than ‘The Top Hair Trends This Season’.
While it’s important for some industries or businesses to demonstrate you understand and can comment on the latest trends, you should aim to mix up your content with evergreen articles as well.
Where possible try not to reference specific dates or years in your content, or facts or statistics that are likely to date quickly.
What Next?
You should go through your existing content and identify what is evergreen or could easily be tweaked to become evergreen.
Then create a repeating schedule for promoting the content on social media and other marketing channels such as e-newsletters.
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Enough of thinking like asmallBUSINESS, think like BIG BUSINESS. Better still aim forWORLD DOMINATIONwith these tips.
Know what you want
What is your goal? World domination is great, but specifically why do you want to be wildly successful? What will it bring you and what kind of business will help you achieve your goal? What will make you happy?
Have a plan
Set out the steps to achieve your goal and then break them down into bitesize more achievable chunks. Monitor and evaluate your plan as you go, and tweak it as needed. Plans change over time and you may have to as well.
What are they doing over there?
Keep your eyes focused on your chosen industry and environment. Check out competitors and businesses you admire that may not even be in your field. What do they do badly that you want to avoid? What do they do well that you could adapt and use yourself (with your own spin on it).
Don’t give up
Entrepreneur Justin Kan explains why you should never give up in this Forbes article:
“Startups don’t die, they commit suicide. In other words, 90 percent of startups fail because the founders get bored, discouraged, or something else, and they move on to other things, not because of some catastrophe. No matter how dark it is today, things will always be better tomorrow.”
Know your brand and be authentic
Know your story and what makes you unique. Don’t ever try to be someone or something else. Be the most awesome version of yourself and remain authentic. Surround yourself with awesome people that understand and live your brand.
World domination can mean anything
Being wildly successful doesn’t necessarily mean rapid expansion for everyone. Remember your goal and brand and plan only for that. Don’t feel like you have to expand your business in ways that won’t meet your goals. Your world, doesn’t have to be the WHOLE world.
And finally, Just Do It! What are you waiting for, go forth and conquer.
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