In this competitive world we live in, it is essential to be active on social media platforms and implement smart strategies in order to stay on top, outthinking your competitors. If you only have minimum or no activity on various social sites, then perhaps you have not yet realized the benefits of social media.
If you run your own book publishing business, regardless of its size, you need to be aware of some common things relating to social media marketing in order to attract, as well as creating a community with your prospective customers. This may include using social media in order to build, connect and communicate with your network, creating high quality and compelling content and sharing it across social media channels, and turning these strategies into increased book and e-book sales.
Planning with strategy in mind
Your social media marketing activities need a well laid-out strategy. This should begin with determining your goals and objectives for growing your book business together with a concrete plan that can measure success. This plan should incorporate factors such as frequency of content creation, your book publisher voice and brand and how it will be pushed out, as well as the response that you can expect from your potential audience. Having tools in place such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social, can be invaluable in helping you to monitor the progress of content you share, relationships you build, engagement you create and mentions you receive.
The importance of relationships and the right content
This then calls for the need to focus on creating and building professional relationships with other influencers, authors, writers and bloggers in your niche who will help you to reach wider audiences by giving you access to their followers, while you do the same for them. On the other hand, the relationships you build with your potential customers on social media platforms need to be made with care. Introducing a sales pitch instantly without waiting for your customer to trust you is not the right way. You need to provide content that will make your customers see that it is their best interests that you have at heart. When they sense that your book publishing business can be trusted, you can already be assured of their patronage.
As a part of your social media strategy, it can be well worth pushing content across channels that contain reviews and discussions about your books. Most of the time, potential customers, particularly book readers, love to hear what other people have to say about certain products before they also avail of the products themselves. Keep in mind that your potential customers are educated ones, and so they need to be pleased with the way you present your book publishing company in social media channels.
Create interest by enticing customers
In order to expect successful communication to your potential audience, it is very important to consistently check your social media accounts. Doing so will allow you to respond to any query in a timely and efficient manner. You may also add a so-called visual hook, which can appeal your readers more. This can come in the form of attractive photos or funny quotes coming from your books, with links to resources that can be useful to them.
As the person behind a social media endeavor, it is very important to know when to join in the conversation. With this in mind, social media sites such as Twitter can prove to be an effective tool due to the existence of their #hashtag feature which will allow you to trace people who are talking about a particular topic, in your case, a book. Once you have located these people, you can connect with them and lead them to your website. When more leads are generated, your book business will also start to grow.
Experiment and keep return on investment in mind
Once your social media strategy is in action and by using appropriate monitoring tools, you’ll have a far greater idea of which social media platforms are giving you the results most aligned with the goals and objectives, as set out in your plan.
A positive result for a publisher usually means increases in book sales. However, there are other factors which lead to these sales in the first place. Amongst others, these include creation of the right relationships with influencers in your niche and with readers through social media, and the appreciation and sharing of your content by your online networks to reach more people. If such things are being achieved, then continue with activities that create more of these results.
If you’re not getting the results you want, then it is time to adapt your strategy and try a different approach. Better to try out a different way, than carry on spending time on social media not getting the results of you want. Because ultimately time, is money.
Image credit: Brantley Davidson on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[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]