Gratitude for 160,000 Readers – and Apology

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Today’s post is a big THANK YOU to all my readers of the last 22 months. 

Thanks for signing up, coming here day for day, and for recommending this blog to your friends and

fellow writers. And thanks for writing comments – of which 99% are praise and encouragement.
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I really enjoy writing these tips for authors and if I would have the time, I would write even more.

Well, time constrains … working on my computer, often for 16 hours a day, including weekends, I still

cannot follow up with everything. I am giving lectures in publishing and book marketing and have to

travel extensively and when I am back in the office, I struggle to make up for the time lost. My clients

who signed up for book marketing need help and advice, new books have to be created, articles to be

written, meetings with our computer whiz, social media tasks to be full-filled… the chores are never

ending. But I am sure, most of you have the same struggles.

Last night I was  shocked when I discovered that I had not yet answered 492 comments during the

last months. It’s not that I haven’t seen them from time to time, but always in a hurry to finish my blog

posts, I thought I will answer them later, and did not realize how many have finally accumulated, who

needs approval or answer. I immediately stopped and started to work on these, but certainly could not

finish them all and will work on more these days.
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Sorry to all of you who did not (yet) get a reply:  I really appreciate your comments a lot!  And I am

extremely thankful for such a loyal following.  Please bear with me :  )  even when I am not answering

immediately.  Please also know that English is not my mother language and I am writing

constantly with a dictionary and a Thesaurus on my screen, which sometimes slows me down a bit.

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Again, thanks for all you comments and your loyalty and I hope, you will get lots of encouragement,

from reading these tips  and implementing it into your publishing and book marketing career.

All the very best and have a great Easter week.

Doris

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How to Communicate With Your (Future) Readers

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Even if most of your readers purchase books or e-books at Amazon or in bookstores – who don’t reveal book buyers names or email addresses – you can still communicate with them through social media and later often directly.
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First listen to your readers / customers
Why listen to what your customers have to say? It’s free feedback from the people who matter most to your book business. If you go shopping and a sales associate doesn’t listen to you, rather bombards you with sales pitches, you get annoyed. Same in online book marketing. Listening and asking questions is an important part.  What do your readers want? What are they interest in? Ask them to provide feedback. Are you able to ask or to read between the lines? Google+ FB, Twitter and your blog’s commenters will reveal a wealth of information, keeping an eye on social media channels is a great way for any business to watch for trends.

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Monitor Social Media for your ideal readers
You don’t need any expensive software or services to do so. Twitter and also Google+ offer their own search tools, which allows you to search for any keyword, phrase, handle or hashtag. Facebook will show you anyone who “likes” or mentions your books page or profile in a status update. Same with Goodreads.

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Meet your readers online
After listening to your readers you then are ready to start communicating in real time with messaging systems that they are comfortable with, whether that be Twitter, Facebook or email. If you want to continue to have a relationship, you need to provide from time to time something of value to them. In order to get feedback readers must be able to communicate easily with you. Provide them with several ways to reach you – and also with your name. K.L or V.G. instead of your real (or pen) first name are very odd. How can a reader choose a salutation?  Dear K.L. ?

Scan any Twitter or FB streams, and you will see it over and over again: writers asking people to support their book, to share and promote it. Some will even write simply “Buy my book,” over and over again and wonder why nobody does. They are forgetting to add any kind of value for their readers.

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Send valuable content for free
Apart from useful tips and responding to your readers, give them some free content, such as certain chapters of your book or a short, free story. It gets shared, however, it does not mean that you give everything away – but enough to build trust and spread your content to the global online book readers community. When you then publish a new book they will buy it because they know you and love your writing. Write original articles or short stories, repurpose blog posts, send links to helpful articles written by others. Encourage your readers to subscribe to your mailing list and send out an update several times per year.

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Make it interesting
Provide content in a variety of media, not just in plain text. Find out what type of media your audience wants. Your readers are used to images, videos, podcasts, webinars, book trailers, pdf… not only to reading e-books or receiving plain email text.
Website and social media updates: let your customers know when you have improved your website or are launching on social media such as a FB Fan Page, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube or Twitter profile.
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Offer to write guest posts on blogs of your readers.
Don’t forget: It is cheaper to keep a customer (who spreads the word about your book) than it is to find a new one, and the best way to keep them is through regular, quality communication.
Follow and re-tweet other writers in your niche so that when you tweet, they will re-tweet your content to their followers who will have similar interests. FB-marketing can target interests and geography. Remember that social marketing involves passion and if you are passionate and motivated about your book, it will show, and will be shared.
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Find some inspiration at Publetariat’s article about “Reader Centered Book Marketing” too:
It starts with: “Some authors think that readers will appear out of thin air, throwing dollars at them mere seconds after their book is published. Others see book marketing as some sort of unnecessary burden. And yet others appear to have given up altogether, sadly begging for book purchases on Facebook or Twitter. Don’t let that be you!”

If you’re enthusiastic, confident and passionate about your work, you can expect to jazz up readers. Give more than you take – it will come back.

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 600 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

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Hyper Smash

Pingates

 

3 Surefire Ways to Get More Traffic at No Cost

 

Like to sell more books?  Get more people to know you and your writing! Your first step is to get more traffic on your website and your blog.  How can you achieve this?  In “seeding” links to your sites that will grow in months and years to come and ultimately result in more book sales. 
All good things come in threes:

Blog Commenting and Comments in Forums

Your time investment each week on blog commenting? About 5 – 10 minutes per post, per day. Comment on writing-related web sites, that receive excellent traffic.  What’s also attractive about this is, that as long as the posts are online, readers who see your comments will always have the option to link back to your site. 

Make sure when commenting that you always have something specific to say about the post. NEVER just spam a blog’s comment area with “Great post!” Or “Right on!” That’ll lead others to think you’re a spammer. Also, make sure that after you write your comment, re-read it and ensure there are no typos. After all, you’re a highly-respected writer now. 

Article Marketing

When writers submit articles to a directory or eZines that are visited by webmasters in order to find free content for their sites, it will account for roughly 20% of new traffic on your blog or website.  When webmasters like your articles and publish one or more on their websites, your byline, a blurb about you, your company and a link to your website is always included. This is called a back link and it will then appear on these sites indefinitely.  Most times, for several years. So years from now, that article that took you two hours to write will still bring you new traffic!

Guest Blogging

Find highly trafficked sites in your niche that you respect and would like to write for.  If they take guest bloggers, read their guidelines and study the type of content that they publish.  Be aware that these sites only accept original content.  As these sites have such large followings, it’s going to be well worth your time.  Find out:

• What articles do they prefer?
• What writing style?
• What is the typical length of their posts?
• Which types of posts seem to get the most comments?
• Which ones are shared via social media

As with article marketing, your guest posts are including a back link to your site and will be available for years to come.  Some blogs receive 1,000,000 page views per month. Let’s pretend, only 5% of this audience reads your post and clicks through to your web page or blog. That’s 50,000 targeted visitors who find your book!

 

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Hyper Smash

 

How Darren Rowse gets millions of blog visitors

 

DigitalPhotographySchool.com is seen by over 3 million people each month.  In April 2006 when Darren Rowse started the site, it was just a simple blog that saw 3-4 new posts a week. The growth of a blog can be attributed to many different factors: quality content, generating a subscriber’s list, and excellent Search Engine Optimization. Rowse says that “leveraging” had a big part in his blog’s success. What he did was:

• directing readers from a previous photography blog to his new site
• using his connections in the photography blogging world to get some promotion from other sites
• asking his Flickr followers to promote his site

Among other good practices, he used resources that he already had on-hand to help him to boost his new site.

What can YOU do with your blog content?

Create an Ebook
Find a series of articles that have a similar topic and compile them into a marketable format.

Create a Video Series 
Say you’ve got a bunch of articles that describe, step by step, how to create (…fill in…)

Post on Social Media
Recycle some of your most interesting content and post it on Chime.in, Facebook, eZines – always with a link to your blog.

Refer-a-friend Promotion
Provide a reward for your users that gets another person to become a visitor, member or sign up for the email list.

Guest Posting 
Guest posting allows you to attract targeted traffic that is already interested in your niche.

Blog Comments
Participate in the comments section of other blogger’s posts and on social sites.

There’s no need to constantly create new things – instead form new relationships, or attract new readers to your blog. You can even use this post to start leveraging right away – can you leave a comment that will get me to visit your site?

 

 

 

How to Friend Popular Bloggers

- and get them to link to your best posts?

Everyone says you should link to their posts, hoping they’ll notice you and start reading your blog. This works sometimes, but you need to be even a little more creative:

■Leave lots of truly memorable comments on their posts
■Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion
■Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments
■Attend conferences that all of the “Who’s Who” of your niche go to and network your bud off
■Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions

The secret of building a popular blog isn’t just writing lots of brilliant content. Having many well-connected friends. The old saying: it is not important what you know, but who you know… is always true.

Want to know more about guest-blogging, go to:
http://menwithpens.ca/category/best-of-mwp/guest-posting