Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Top 5 Favorite Marketing Tools for Writers by Kelly Wilson @LiveCheap #SelfPub #AmWriting #WriteTip

Top 5 Favorite Marketing Tools for Writers

Book marketing is an essential part of the life of every writer. While we’d like to spend hours hunched over a notebook or laptop writing to our hearts’ content, the truth is that marketing our work requires time and attention in order to build a writing career.

In my several years of online marketing experience, I have come up with a set of book marketing tools that I absolutely cannot live without. They might take some time to master, but the benefits of making these part of your daily book marketing tool belt will consistently pay off over time.

Wordpress
If you’re wondering whether or not you should have a website, the answer is, “A thousand times, YES.” A website is the foundation of your book marketing efforts. You own that digital space, which means that nobody can take it from you; contrast this with social media - you don’t own any of that space, so they can take down anything of yours at any time.

There are many ways to build a website, but Wordpress is my favorite. It’s easy to use and fairly intuitive, especially if the idea of building or maintaining a website is particularly scary. Choose a domain name that fits your business – mine, for example, is “Wilson Writes” – and follow the directions for set up. Choose a theme that you can customize and tinker around. It’s worth the time!

Photoshop
Besides content, the most essential element of a website is a wide range of photos. Photoshop, while it takes some time to learn, offers a ton of options to manipulate photos and work on website design. Complete basic photo editing or create something unique using the limitless tools contained in the software. I like to use it to make funny memes and then post them on my website, because sometimes life is too funny NOT to take a photo of it and then make a meme.

Mailchimp and/or Feedburner
When your website is finished, don’t wait for people to visit you. Make sure to put an email capture program on the site to get the addresses of those who visit your site, and then post regular blog articles to keep readers engaged. I like to use both Feedburner and Mailchimp.

Feedburner sends out a daily digest of articles posted to your blog, while Mailchimp allows you to send customized newsletters out to readers. Both are useful, and the list captured via Feedburner can be downloaded into Mailchimp for easy use.

Bookbuzzr
BookBuzzr is a valuable book marketing site that allows authors to set up profile pages that highlights their books. These pages are easy to set up and create more of an online presence for you and your books. There’s a lot more to what BookBuzzr offers based on what you are able to pay, but two of my favorite free options are the BookBuzzr book widgets and the Book Tweeter function.

Hootsuite
Social media can feel overwhelming. You may start with updating Twitter, end up on Facebook via Instagram and pretty soon, an hour of your writing time has gone by. Hootsuite makes it possible to save time and effort by consolidating your social media profiles all on one platform.

Use Hootsuite to keep track of your mentions and retweets so that you can connect with those readers. Schedule out Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn status updates throughout the day, spending 20 minutes at the beginning of the day so your writing time is still all about writing…and not social media.

There are, of course, additional valuable tools for book marketing, but these are my favorites on my professional tool belt. What book marketing tools would you add that you can’t live without?

Bio: Kelly Wilson is a Portland, Oregon author and comedian who loves a bargain and likes to do as much online book marketing as possible for free. She is the author of Live Cheap & Free, Don’t Punch People in the Junk, and Caskets From Costco, along with numerous articles and short stories for children and adults. Kelly Wilson currently writes for a living and lives with her Magically Delicious husband, junk-punching children, dog, and cat, with a stereotypical minivan in the garage. Read more about her at www.wilsonwrites.com.

Caskets From Costco
For twenty years, Kelly Wilson thought that she had been marching through the stages of grief in a straight line. She had been following the formula, crossing each processed grief experience off her list.

Except that Kelly was totally deluded. And she didn’t discover that until Jim, her beloved father-in-law, died. She found herself drying off from her shower the morning after his death, really hoping that he couldn’t see her naked. Or, if he could, that he was averting his eyes.

From that moment, Kelly's path through grief resembled a roller coaster, spiraling and twisting and turning, circling back around. Echoes of past trauma, including childhood abuse and cheating death, would no longer be ignored. She somehow needed to get from the beginning to the end of this grief adventure, and she doesn't have a good sense of direction.

But what is always present during a journey through grief, regardless of the path chosen?

Hope.

Caskets From Costco is a funny book about grief that demonstrates the certainty of hope and healing in an uncertain and painful world.

Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - Memoir, Humor
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Connect with Kelly Wilson on Facebook & Twitter

0 comments:

Post a Comment