Are Social Media Strategies for Book Marketing Worth It?

Is it worth our time, money, and energy to market our books with social media strategies and why?

Before social media, it took a lot of effort, money, and time to reach our book’s best audience. We scheduled talks, press releases, and networked in person to get visibility and even credibility for the information our book shared. A lot of work, with a relatively low return on investment (ROI).

In exposure numbers alone, it’s so worth participating in twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

For me, LinkedIn is my favorite social media marketing strategy. It serves my books and my book coaching business the best because, I am able to join groups who have my primary audience in them that wants engaging writing tips along with social media expertise to get books & business marketed.

That’s huge visibility and credibility as one “go to” person, because each time I comment or give good tips in the groups with my blog URL in the discussion box, my LinkedIn profile visits increase exponentially as well as my web traffic surges.

Trust and likeability follow after my audience tastes samples of my expertise. Outcomes include more book writing and social media marketing coaching clients, as well as a increased sales in my popular book, “LinkedIn Marketing.” It takes some time for these outcomes to manifest, so you need to participate in the game for the long term.

How do you find out what marketing works best, and where your “buyers” come from? Like me, you’ll want to test with Google Analytics to see where your best traffic comes from. Also, keep track of your Alexa.com score that shows your growth compared to other websites. Years ago, I my score was near 1 million. Over time and with solid, continuous marketing, my score came down. Since LinkedIn participation, my Alexa score has come down to 240,000. Lower is better. My goal this year is under 100,000.

How much time do I spend on LinkedIn? I divide my time on interacting in LinkedIn groups, especially my own book group and writing blog copy like this to share among my 50 groups I belong to. Both of these activities pay off handsomely.

I only participate, giving useful tips in active groups with around 1500+ members. This is exponential, viral visibility and the increase of payoffs is exponential also. Together, this engaging writing takes me about an hour a day total for the week.

When I post a blog article in the “discussion” box in each group, it’s almost instant with LinkedIn’s magic. That’s a possible 75,000 eyes seeing my expertise each week. With two how to blogs a week, that’s a possible 150,000 reading my posts each week. These business people visit my site to read the entire article, then comment and ask questions. It’s all interactive and powerful. Of course, you must write engaging blog titles too. These results can be yours with only 30 minutes-1hour a day time investment!

It’s really not time; it’s outcomes you want! What outcomes in $ do you want from your book or business? My end outcome: I want 10 or so clients per month and ongoing “LinkedIn Marketing” book sales. The in-between outcomes? Meeting with influential people who like what I offer. Meeting with my audience on a regular basis to establish trust, so that when they need my kind of services, they will connect back with me. This leads to profitable joint ventures of teleseminars, Twitter tweet exchanges and much more.

You get the picture. It’s worth your time and money investments and if you want to invest no money, a little money, a medium amount, or one on one social media coaching, see these opportunities at bookcoaching.com.

By Judy Cullins, 5th September 2011

http://www.publishingbasics.com/2011/09/05/are-social-media-strategies-for-book-marketing-worth-it/

Book Interior: Typefaces and Readability of your Books’ Interior

The interior of your book is just as important as the cover.  In fact, it just might be more important.

For me, the design of the books’ interior is liken to…

“Getting the book to speak to the reader, while being a soundless physical page.”

Once your book is purchased you’ll need to hold the reader’s attention. Certainly good content has a lot to do with it. Good editing and proofing as well. But the real reading is done from the typography that is set… designed, formatted, sized and styled to hold the reader’s attention and make them feel comfortable, safe and secure and not want to put your book down before they turn yet one more page. Compelling!

The typeface being used is of great importance for it is what the designer has to work with for presenting the compelling atmosphere of the interior. Some designers believe that each book needs a different typeface to represent the ‘feeling’ of the book, while others feel that if an author finds a face they like how it represents their voice, the words they write… they stick with it. I believe the Harry Potter books did just that.

We have been “taught” through exposure, to feel comfortable with reading a typeface with “little feet” otherwise known as serifs. Typefaces such as Times Roman and Garamond are known as serif faces and when used for your interior text will give your reader an easy read. Typefaces such as Ariel and Futura are known as sans-serif, “without little feet,” and are best used for chapter titles, heads, subheads or charts and graphs. Although I’ve seen several books using a sans-serif for the body text, which is to be considered a matter of preference. When you are presented with your proof, take the time to print out a page or two to be sure you feel the words talking to you as they and you move sentence by sentence into paragraphs and pages pass like time does when you’re having fun.

AND

I recommend requesting a sample proof of the first few pages of your book interior for your approval before your book is totally formatted. Be sure to look at it carefully.

http://www.publishingbasics.com/2011/09/05/book-interior-typefaces-and-readability-of-your-books-interior/