Digital marketing. Engagement. Online advertorials. These aren’t just buzz words that marketers throw around to sound smart; they’re clear indicators of businesses’ growing needs in the digital age. Why am I bringing them up? Because over the past few years, I noticed a sharp increase in the demand for certain types of content. I’m getting fewer requests for physical flyers or brochures, and more pings
Many first-time authors don’t spend much time thinking about book marketing until they’ve finished writing their book, perhaps when they’re putting together a book proposal. However, you should think about your book marketing strategy well before getting to that point. “What can I do to market a book that doesn’t even exist yet?” you might ask. Good question. Here are three specific book promotional activities
Spammy guest posts have been a problem for quite a while. I’ve certainly bitched about being on the receiving end. Here’s what it comes down to folks: If you’re guest blogging for the sake of building links so you can increase your search rankings, or running massive guest post campaigns, you’re doing it wrong. And you might just get slapped by Google. Matt Cutts warned
There is a common misconception out there about author platforms. Many fiction authors seem to think that author platforms don’t apply to them. There is this notion that platforms are only relevant to nonfiction authors. But that’s far from the truth. While the fiction author’s platform might be different than their nonfiction counterpart’s, an author platform will still help a novelist sell more books, and
In my first Busy Author’s Guide, I’ll cover ways you can build your all-important author platform no matter how much, or how little, time you can invest. What is an author platform? Your author platform is essentially your presence and reach among your target audience. When you have a strong author platform, you have a built-in fan base of people who are literally waiting to buy your
I hear it all the time. Authors complain that they’re fed up with book promotion. They want to spend their time writing and not marketing their books. In many cases you can cut down on marketing time significantly. All you have to do is stop making some common book marketing mistakes, doing things to help your book sales when in fact you might be hurting
Your blog’s content strategy is about more than the type of content you plan to write. It also includes your blog post schedule — when you post, and how often you post. Should you post daily? Just on weekdays? Once per week? Monthly? There’s no right answer to cover all blogs. You have to find the right post frequency and schedule for your blog. Picking Your Blog Post
I’ve had a rough couple of days this week. It started Sunday night. Between now and then I’ve had restless nights, fluttering feelings, a bit of lightheadedness, and a variety of other symptoms. By Monday morning I was imagining the worst. My husband worked from home that day just in case I decided to go into the hospital to get checked out. Thankfully it didn’t
There are many reasons to start a blog. One popular reason is to make money. When you do that, you treat your blog as a business model in its own right. Many people try to earn money from their blogs. Some succeed. Others fail. And much of that comes down to your strategy, your niche specialty, and the plan you come up with to monetize
Are you confident that you set the right freelance writing rates? Are they really helping you reach all of your financial goals? Or did you find out through trial and error that there were some factors you forgot to consider? Alicia Rades brought this topic up recently. She wanted to know how she can figure out what she should be making to reach her goals and meet her
Have you considered taking part in a virtual book tour to promote your book or e-book? Have you put it off because you’re worried a virtual publicity tour might take too much time? It’s true. There are a lot of ways these promotional events can waste time. But the biggest waste of time is to go through one and not attract new readers. Fortunately there
Today I’d like to share some reader questions from a reader who preferred to remain anonymous. His questions revolve around getting started as a new freelance writer on a part-time basis. We’ll call him Matt for the sake of this post. Jen Grant, whom I answered in our last reader Q&A post, asked for something similar during a Twitter conversation recently: @AllIndieWriters Jenn! Thank you!