If you’re an author who is self-publishing your own work, marketing is a skill you’ll need to learn, in order to help sell your books and ebooks. There is one type of marketing that is essential, however. It is online content marketing and when used correctly, it really can be an author’s best friend. Read on to learn why.
You can use it to craft and convey what you and your book stand for
As an author you want to stand for something. If you’re a paranormal romance writer then you want to be known for this, and when you release a new book you want to convey the key themes in it, in an entertaining way. If you’re an author who is a corporate coach, then you want to be recognized as a specialist in this area.
Whatever you write about and from whatever standpoint, and whomever you write for, you want to get your messages clear as crystal, so that there’s no doubt in the eyes of others, as to what you’re about and what your book is about. And you do this through your content, whether it’s an article, infographic, or book trailer.
You can build upon what you do anyway
As an author you’re already an expert in content creation through your books, which readers use for entertainment, educational and informational purposes. Or it may be is a combination of all of these. Therefore, marketing yourself and your work through content doesn’t have to be scary. It’s just a matter of taking what you know one step further and persuading people to buy your books, through appropriate content such as blogs, videos, webinars and reports.
Content is spreadable
You have a powerful feature of content at your disposal – the ability for it to spread. For instance, you can take a blog post you’ve just written on helping writers create characters in their stories and spread it through your social media accounts, so that it can reach more people. Other people can take your content and spread it to their followers to increase the reach of your message even further.
No need to re-invent the wheel
Let’s say you created a piece of content to help market your book in the form of a blog post. In order to do so, you used written words (your copy) and images. You then publish the content onto your blog. Job done. However, this same piece of content can be used again in the future. You may release another book later on down the line, and the structure you used for the previous blog post could be used again. Even the images you used might be relevant for the new material you’re working on. The beauty of digital content in particular is that it is reusable.
So many places to publish your content
There are so many places online where you can publish your content. Your own website and blog are the obvious, initial places of course. But you can leverage other people’s blogs and guest post there, or republish content you’ve already created on platforms such as Tumblr and Medium.com. Tumblr of course has millions of users, and Medium.com in general, is a good place for writers to publish their writings and attract new readers of their work.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published on e-Books India in December 2014.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]