Frances Caballo's Blog: 10 Twitter Tips Writers Need to Know, page 38

Secrets of Successful Book Launches with Howard VanEs

In this webinar, as part of my Conversations with Frances series, I interviewed Howard VanEs about successful book launches. A master at selling books, Howard shared some of his best strategies.

Here are some notes from our conversation:

Launch Your Book into the World

A book launch is a series of several events in a limited time period.

Focusing on a book launch is important because it’s a time to celebrate. Writing a book is a long  process. Now it’s time to recognize your achievement in the real world. As writers we work with intangible products. A launch births those projects into the real world.

A launch births your book into the real world Click To Tweet

At that time you’re probably never going to be more excited and because you’re so excited, you’re going to want to market your book.

Media and online sources prefer news. The preference is for new information. Your book will only be new once.

Marketing works best when you’re focused, especially on Amazon. The first 30 days are important on Amazon. It’s a great period to get your reviews. You’re going to need at least 10 reviews during those first 30 days. Amazon wants to see activity on their sales pages. You also want social proof to encourage sales. Over time, you want to get 2 reviews a month.

For your book launch, focus on Amazon, the number one online book retailer.

Successful Book Launches

It’s important to focus on a time frame for your launch. Howard likes a 30-day launch.

Here are some components:

You want reviews on Amazon.
Start your social media marketing well before your launch.
Send press releases to local and regional newspapers and online media.
Send a message to your email list. He recommends MailChimp.
Conduct free giveaways through the KDP Select giveaway program. Use all five days of the giveaway period. You’ll drive your rankings high if you do it right and you’ll get your book in the hands of a lot of readers. You need to give away 15,000 books for the giveaway to be effective. Market your book for a few weeks, then do the giveaway, then do another week of strong marketing.
Line up speaking engagements.
Create webinars and teleseminars.
Invest in pay-per-click advertising such as Google or Facebook.



Focus on getting 10 reviews within the first 30 days of your book launch Click To Tweet
Book Launch Goals

Plan your launch early.
Sell as many books as possible within the first 30 to 90 days.
Have a marketing plan and then work it. Get help with your marketing plan if you need to.

Common Book Launch Mistakes

When you don’t have a plan.
When you don’t do anything or little to market your book.
When you don’t ask for help.

Next up for my webinar series in June will be Nina Amir, who will show you how to turn your blog into a book production machine, and then Helen Sedwick, who will speak about protecting your rights and your wallet and provide an overview of copyright laws.

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

 

 

 

The post Secrets of Successful Book Launches with Howard VanEs appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

Indie Author Weekly Update – May 12, 2017

Enjoy this week’s Indie Author Weekly Update with posts from Brooke Warner, Joanna Penn, BookWorks, Rebekah Radice, and Adam Connell. You’ll find information on Amazon’s new strategy, a new app for authors, image editing tools, and more!

Summer is almost here and after the rain we’ve experienced in Northern California, I can hardly wait for the warm, dry days ahead. What about you?

Indie Author Update

BuzzTrace: New Social Media Software Review from BookWorks: “BuzzTrace is a new software program to help authors and independent publishers manage and grow their platform. BuzzTrace accomplishes this by giving suggestions about what to post online and sending alerts when someone is talking about your book online.”

How Amazon, once again, is driving down the value of books and undermining authors by Brooke Warner: “On March 1, while the only people paying real attention were hypervigilant third-party sellers and book geeks on Reddit, Amazon enacted a policy change that allows third-party sellers to compete for the Buy Box for books in ‘new condition.'”

6 Great Image Editing Tools For Bloggers (Hint: Most Are Free) by Adam Connell: “There it goes again. Blogger envy. It happens to all of us. You’re reading a post on someone’s blog – the content is good, but the images are what first grabbed your attention. You love the blogger’s sense of design and you can’t figure out why your images don’t look anything like that.”

2017 Social Media Checklist to Boost Engagement by Rebekah Radice: “We all know that social media success doesn’t happen by accident. It’s planned for. But without a roadmap, it’s tough to know what you’re working towards. That’s where a social media checklist comes in. Rather than hopping online without focus, you act on purpose. It becomes your guide and directs everything you post. If you’re ready to better manage your daily social media to-do list, this checklist is what you need. Simple steps that create a process. That process when followed will help blow the lid off your engagement!”

How To Make  A Million With Your Books With @DCrawfordBooks by Joanna Penn with Dean Crawford: [Podcast] “Dean is the international bestselling author of the “Warner and Lopez” action adventure thriller series as well as the sci-fi “Atlantia” series and other standalone novels. Dean has been on the show before, back in October 2015, when he talked about his move from traditional publishing to indie. Today we’re talking about his new nonfiction book called “Blockbuster: How to write $1Million, by an author who’s actually done it!” which I think is awesome. So I just had to talk to you about this, Dean.”

How to Use Facebook Live: A Step-by-Step Guide from HubSpot: “Since its launch, live streaming video has grown in popularity, with 16% of marketers broadcasting it in 2016. Facebook Live is particularly popular — videos see 3X the engagement of traditional videos shared on the platforms, and millions of users live stream on Facebook around the world.”

How to Make Quotes for Instagram: 7 Apps to Try from HubSpot: “When you come across a beautiful sight — be it a beach, a mountain, or your pet’s face — sometimes, it inspires you to think bigger about what certain sights and experiences mean. For those moments, you might consider posting a photo on Instagram with an equally inspiring quote as the caption. But you could take it even further — and save characters — by posting the photo with the quote.”

Quote of the Week

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

 

The post Indie Author Weekly Update – May 12, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

12 Ways to Uncover Google Analytics Data

Some people hold the mistaken belief that I’m a techie because I understand and know how to use social media. It’s not true.

I’m just persistent.

Persistence served me well back in the days when I was a reporter. I remember one story when I was trying to figure out which developer was sending propaganda out about a particular Adevelopment. Know how I figured that out? Every postage machine has a code, and by calling the receptionist and asking for the code, I cracked the story.

So the fact that I’m writing about Google Analytics today doesn’t mean that I’m a geek. Again, I’m just tenacious in trying to figure out how to ferret out some of the statistics that help me determine how my website is performing, who’s visiting my website, and what their interests are.

So let’s get started, shall we?

First, you’ll need a Google Analytics (GA) account. If you have a Gmail or YouTube account, you can use that login to set up your Google Analytics. Just go to Google Analytics and click the sign into Google Analytics button to get started. Simpler yet, ask your webmaster to set it up for you because you’ll need her to set up the tracking code on your website so that GA can pull the information from your site.

Who’s Visiting Your Website?

Once you’ve established a Google Analytics account, you’ll want to know who’s visiting your website. This will give you insights into whom your visitors (readers) are. To start finding that information, open Google Analytics and go to Audience > Demographics > Overview.

In my case, most visitors are between the ages of 45 and 64 and are male.

You can further break down the age by following Audience > Demographics > Overview > Age. Look at the specific information in these graphs. (By the way, the data you glean from Google Analytics will also help you when you set up your Facebook advertising.)

You can also break down the data by gender. When I look at the data by the week, I see that I have more female visitors:

What Interests Do You Website Visitors Have?

Then you can break down the data by interests (Audience > Interests > Overview) your visitors have:

What Interests Do You Website Visitors Have? Click To Tweet

Affinity categories describe your visitors’ interests (Audience > Interests > Affinity Categories):

Books and literature are included under Other Categories (Audience > Interests > Other Categories):

Where Do Your Website Visitors Live?

You can also determine where your visitors live by going to Audience > Geo > Location. In my case, my website visitors are from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Indie, the Philippines, Norway, Belize, and Switzerland.

If you wanted to, you could further break down that information by specific cities.

Where do your website visitors live? Click To Tweet
Navigation Behavior of Your Website Visitors

If you want to know whether your visitors return often or if you attract a lot of new visitors, go to Audience > Behavior > New vs. Returning.

You can also determine how engaged visitors are by how long they remain on the page. Go to Audience > Behavior > Engagement.

Under Behavior > Behavior Flow you’ll see the navigation from one page of your website to another.

If you want to see which posts are most popular on your website, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages:

You can find your most popular landing pages by navigating to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages:

So you see, Google Analytics needn’t be daunting at all. I suggest that you just play with this tool. Click different categories, see what data surfaces, and soon you’ll be calling yourself a GA techie.

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

 

 

 

 

The post 12 Ways to Uncover Google Analytics Data appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

Indie Author Weekly Update – May 5, 2017

This week’s Indie Author Update is chock-full of posts ranging from blogging to Twitter to Amazon ads. I hope you enjoy the diversity of posts.

On a personal note, I’m pleased to see the cold of winter fade as spring bounces back. Where I live, the temperature has risen to the low 90s and I’ve enjoyed the sun. How’s the weather where you live?

Indie Author Updates

Self-Publishing Secrets Revealed – Five Free Ways to Expose Your self  Books to Readers from Martin Crosbie: “Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of speaking at writing events all over my little corner of the world. I’ve given a weekend workshop at a writers retreat in Smithers, in Northern British Columbia, I opened the prestigious Whistler Writers Festival, and I’ve made multiple stops in between. By the end of the year I’ll have spent time at fourteen different events. It’s been a phenomenal experience and I’ll share a number of my findings with you over the coming weeks. The major takeaway from all these events is that there are some phenomenal writers out there working on some extremely interesting projects.”

Content Creation for Bloggers: 14 Kinds of Shareable Content by Joel Friedlander: “In this increasingly social world, where the effectiveness of your book marketing can seem to be a matter of metrics—hits, shares, likes, re-tweets, re-pins—shareable content is, or should be, the goal for all author bloggers. All these ways social media gives us to comment and pass on each others’ work depend on one thing: great content to share.”

Exactly how I self-published my book, sold 180,000 copies, and nearly doubled my revenue by Michael Bungay Stanier: “The Coaching Habit was published on February 29, 2016. (Leap Day! Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?) In the year since, it’s sold nearly 200,000 copies, including 8,000 ebooks in one week in May. It made the Wall Street Journal bestseller list “organically” (which is to say, accidentally). It received more than 500 reviews on Amazon, 450 of which are five-star. And it’s been the number one book in the business/coaching category for about 95 percent of the year.”

Four basic Twitter tips for authors Click To Tweet

Four Basic Twitter Tips for Writers by Margaret Mizushima: “When my agent suggested that I develop an author platform on Twitter, my first reaction was to go running into the dark night screaming, “Noooooo!” Previously, the only exposure I’d had to Twitter had been tales about my friend’s ex who spent hours glued to his phone tweeting out updates involving the minutia in his life. Who has time for that?”

Why Authors Need To Get Physical With Their Marketing from the Book Marketing Buzz Blog: “One thing I’m noticing with the way some authors are marketing their books is that they are taking a less physical approach, mainly due to technology.  But that’s not necessarily a good thing. Okay, so what do I mean about being physical? We’ve become a click-and-push-button society and our marketing strategies have become lazy.  Some authors think they can blog, Facebook, Tweet, or e-mail their way to glory.  Sure digital media and social media are key ingredients to a comprehensive, holistic approach to book promotion but we can’t leave out what I call the physical work.”

Need to Ask an Author for a Blurb? Here’s the Secret Formula to YES from Writer Unboxed: “Ask any author, even a very successful one, how they feel about hunting for endorsements for their books and “ugh,” will be a common response. Why? Well, asking for a favor can be awkward and this favor is rather large and rather important. A great blurb is like a gold star for your book.”

A primer for Indie authors on how to use Amazon ads Click To Tweet

Amazon Ads for Indie Authors by Frances Caballo for TheBookDesigner.com: “One of the benefits of belonging to a local chapter of the Independent Publishers Associations (IBPA) is the information you glean from your colleagues’ experience. That’s what happened to me two months ago when I attended the Bay Area chapter of IBPA and heard two members share their thoughts on Amazon ads and their experience. Then a month later, a speaker shed additional light on the subject. So I decided to try a few ads. Let me share with you what I’ve learned so far.”

Quote of the Week

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

The post Indie Author Weekly Update – May 5, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

The Way We Think About Social Media Is Broken

When you first write a book and brave the waters of social media, what are you thinking about?

Be honest.

I know what I was thinking. Sales. Readers. Clients.

It’s a mistake that we all make. We’re enthusiastic. We believe we just wrote the best book ever and we’re eager to turn all those hours we labored over every sentence into something tangible: green dollars. Or euros.

Or maybe we’re more altruistic. What we want is for people to enjoy our book, appreciate our craft.

Regardless of our goals, what we don’t want to see is our books fail to reach people, right?

So perhaps we enter social media with too much naiveté and enthusiasm. We make mistakes. A few trolls get upset with us.

Social Media Learning Curve

Oh, well. We all must travel a learning curve.

The problem is that when we first start out, the way we think about social media is broken. In the beginning, we concern ourselves with two goals: sales and numbers.

We want lots of book sales, and we want high numbers. We want thousands if not millions of Twitter followers, and thousands of Facebook likes. And because we’re new to this work of marketing, it all seems possible, until …

Until a few weeks or a few months pass and we realize that something isn’t working. Our book isn’t selling well and ratcheting up followers isn’t easy.

This is a great moment in our development. Why? Because this is the time when we can start to learn a better way, a truer way, a way that will bring friends and colleagues into our world.

Never over-promote your content Click To Tweet

Notice that I didn’t use the word sales. Why? Because if we use social media correctly, the way it was meant to be used, the sales will happen. But first, we must network. We must make friends with our readers, and we must become friendly with other authors who write in our genre.

Listen to Your Readers and Your Niche Influencers

When you first join a new social media network, it’s always a good idea to listen before you jump in with your tweets and status updates. Follow these steps:

Lurk nicely. Check out how people write their tweets and status updates. Find your influencers. Look for readers, book bloggers, authors in your niche, and book reviewers.
Retweet information that your readers will enjoy.
Then get your game on. Write blog posts, and tweet and post them.
Create your own images using Canva, a free application, or PicMonkey that you can use to add text to copyright-free images you find on the web or those you take yourself.
Find meaningful quotes to share, and create text-based images using your finest lines of writing. Also, share humorous memes and anything and everything related to reading, books, and libraries.
Don’t over-promote any of your content. Instead, follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of the time promote other users, other writers, influencers, and your readers; 20% of the time post about your books, blog posts, website, and other offerings you might have.
Never say, “Buy my book” or “Read my blog post.” Instead, attract readers to your website, your blog, and Amazon by sharing the best content you can find in your niche.



Minimize self-promotion on social mediaClick To Tweet
Engage with Your Readers and Always Be Authentic

The beauty of social media is that it’s social. So allow plenty of time—say 15 minutes a day—to have fun and socialize virtually online.

Follow these suggestions:

Listen to what others say more often than you post.
Reply to your readers’ social media posts—and those of influencers in your niche —and share their content.
Win hearts by being authentic, gracious, and thankful.
Be cool. In other words, never write a nasty comment, use profanity, ridicule someone, or denigrate another author or business.
Minimize self-promotion. It’s okay to mention your book is for sale or to share a great review. But keep these posts to a minimum.
Be open to learning from others.
Thank your readers for their shares, pins, and retweets.

Through social media, you’ll have opportunities to meet readers from around the world, influencers within your niche, literary agents, publishers, book coaches, and new friends. You can’t possibly imagine now what social media can do for your career. These experiences will occur as you meet and engage with readers and discover new friends. Enjoy yourself and don’t worry about the numbers game.

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

 

 

 

 

 

The post The Way We Think About Social Media Is Broken appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

Indie Author Weekly Update – April 28, 2017

This week’s Indie Author Update includes posts on blogging, social media, the importance of author bios, Amazon Central Author pages, and more. I hope you enjoy the list of books Joanna Penn recommends and the blogging post by Jeff Bullas, one of my favorite social media bloggers.

Indie Author Updates

How to Create a WordPress Blog in 5 Minutes by Jeff Bullas: “I started my blog using the WordPress platform and I have found it a great technology to publish your content online. A WordPress theme provides flexibility and customisation features that Facebook could never provide.”

Your No-Nonsense Guide to Getting Started with Social Media Ads from CopyBlogger: “Yes, it was a bit crummy of Facebook to give brands amazing organic reach and then take it away. But they have a business to run, just like you. I, for one, welcome our benevolent-ish (read: self-interested) paid social overlords. In fact, I would still recommend you use social media ads, even if the reach of “organic posts” never changed. Why?”

Should You Have More Than One Bio? YES. Here’s Why from Writer Unboxed: “Sometimes the shortest things can unexpectedly be the hardest to write. And that’s the case with author biographies, or bios for short. Bios aren’t like CVs. They’re not as formal. They are more like mini-stories. They give a flavour of the person behind them. And like query letters and blurbs, they function as ‘hooks.’”

Generate More Book Sales With a Keyword-Powered Blurb  Digital Book World: “The description of your book in an online store is a vital element of your digital book’s sales strategy. The description (commonly called a blurb) acts like a shop clerk in a digital bookstore. You want that clerk’s pitch to be as convincing as possible.”

30 Recommended Books for Writers writing from Joanna Penn: “These are some of the books I love and recommend for writers. These have been the most useful to me on my own writing journey.”

Sell More Books on Amazon’s International Author Central Pages from BookWorks and by Penny Sansevieri: “If you’ve ever wanted to sell more books in other countries, then you need to start exploiting Amazon’s international Author Central pages! We have a client who reviewed her Amazon KDP Sales Dashboard and noticed she’s selling a bunch of books in Japan. Naturally, she wondered if there’s a way she can rack up more sales there, so we began exploring the options together.”

Instagram’s growth speeds up as it hits 700 million users from Tech Crunch: “Instagram has doubled its user base to 700 million monthly actives in two years, fueled by Stories, web signup, and better onboarding on low-end Android phones. Instagram’s growth rate is actually speeding up. It took just four month to add the last 100 million users since hitting 600 million in December, while it took 6 months to go from 500 million to 600 million.”

Quote of the Week

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

The post Indie Author Weekly Update – April 28, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

8 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Author Page

Facebook Tips

There are times when I grow impatient with certain aspects of Facebook, such as the negative political discussions that have become familiar since the recent presidential election.

Who likes to open their newsfeed to find friends arguing with each other? Not me.

Yet I can’t deny that Facebook is the most used social media network on the internet and that’s what keeps me actively there.

Whenever I think about slacking off, I think about these numbers, which come directly from the Facebook newsroom. There are:

1.23 billion daily active users
1.15 billion mobile daily active users
1.86 billion monthly active users
1.74 billion mobile monthly active users

Any way you look at it, no one can compete or even get close to Facebook’s user base. This in and of itself is one reason why every author needs to be on Facebook.

Facebook has 1.23 billion daily active users Click To Tweet
How to Grow Your Facebook Page

The decision to maintain a presence on Facebook is a relatively easy decision. But how easy is it to build your Facebook page? Just follow these suggestions.

The first step to growing your Facebook page is the easiest: invite your friends to Like your page. How? It can be as simple as writing a status update in which you ask your friends to like your page. Another method is to share a Facebook page update with your friends and with your groups.
Focus on your best content. Re-share you top blog posts on Facebook, and always include images with all of your status updates.
Add your Facebook page URL at the bottom of your email signature using an application, such as WiseStamp, or by using Gmail. You can include a link to your Facebook page when you leave blog comments, in your newsletter, and at the bottom of your blog posts.
Add a Facebook page plugin to your website. Go to the developer’s page on Facebook to get started. You’ll need to add your page name, adjust the width and height, select a code, and paste the code into a text widget.
If your page is new, invest in some advertising.
Link your profile to your page.
Activate suggested related page suggestions so that when Facebook users visit similar pages, yours will pop up as one they might consider Liking. To activate this option, go to your page’s Settings and select General.

 

Connect with the communities of other pages. First, connect with non-competitor pages that have synergy with yours. Start by liking other targeted pages. When you visit the page, click More or the three dogs next to Send Message and then make sure that you like the new page as your page’s owner.

On your page, click See Page’s feed to see your page’s news feed. Then look for pages with an active community.

Want more page Likes? Ask your friends to Like your Facebook page Click To Tweet

How to Create Successful Content for Facebook

Now that you’ve created and promoted your page as best you can, here are some suggestions on how to create content for your page that will be successful.

Use images and videos with all of your status update posts. Don’t use videos uploaded to YouTube since Facebook downgrades YouTube videos in the newsfeed.
Brand all of your images with your website address.
Post quotes that are inspirational.
If you write nonfiction, perhaps you can include screenshots for tip posts.
Use an application to create your custom images. Applications you can use include Canva, PicMonkey, SnagIt, or Paint.



Brand your images with your website address Click To Tweet

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

The post 8 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Author Page appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

Indie Author Weekly Update – April 21, 2017

This week’s Indie Author Weekly Update focuses on social media news including what’s new with Instagram and how best to use Pinterest.

Indie Author Updates

Instagram Just Revamped Instagram Direct, Which Now Has 375 Million Monthly Users from AdWeek: “Instagram revamped its Instagram Direct messaging feature—which now includes disappearing photos and videos, along with texts and reshares—and the Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing network announced that Instagram Direct now has 375 million monthly active users, up from 300 million last November.”

How to Create Pinterest Images That Drive Massive Results from Rebekah Radice: “Wonder how to use images on Pinterest? Or why you’d create Pinterest images to pin content from your blog? If so, you’re like many businesses still trying to make sense of Pinterest. But what if I were to tell you that it can become your biggest traffic driver? And more than that, you can use it to convert higher-quality leads in a shorter amount of time? It’s all possible when you position your content properly. That means creating super compelling images. How do you do that? Below I list seven easy tips to help you create Pinterest images that drive massive results.”

Pinterest can become your biggest traffic driver Click To Tweet

Content Creation for Bloggers: 3 Questions from Joel Friedlander: “A lot of the authors I talk to who want to use blogging as a tool in their overall book marketing strategy get stalled with content creation. Since they are authors, they already know how to write, that’s not the problem. But there are specific questions that come up over and over again that stymie writers trying to visualize how blogging will work for them.”

How to Build a Facebook Marketing Funnel from Andrea Vahl: ” Do you need to know how Facebook can work for your business? Do you need to bring more people into your community? Facebook can be a great marketing tool but you need to make sure you are reaching the right people, at the right time, with the right message. In this article I’m going to share how you can plan your Facebook content and your Facebook advertising so that you are maximizing your efforts and your budget.”

A Bad Book Description Can Kill Your Book Sales from Chris Syme: “Your final book draft is ready to upload and start selling. But you forgot about that book description. No problem. You jot down a few high points from the plot, stick a tidbit in there about your main character’s dilemma and slap it up on KDP. Now you can just sit back and watch the sales roll in.”

Social Media 101: Let’s Talk About Personalities from Writers in the Storm: “Last month I did a post on how to build a strong online brand and the two most popular questions surprised me. The most common was: “What do I talk about?” Remember, that’s what your 100 word cloud is for. (Click that link in the first line if you don’t know what I’m talking about. We’ll wait.) And the other big question was ‘Which platform do I use?'”

Is Amazon Changing How We Write Books, As Well As How We Buy Them? from Tara Sparling: “The other day, I tried a little experiment, and attempted to browse Amazon as though it were a good old-fashioned, bricks-and-mortar bookshop. It didn’t end well. It’s a miracle that my laptop survived the experiment, given my frustration.”

Quote of the Week

 

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Tune in on April 27 at 4 pm PT/7 pm ET to hear Howard VanEs share his best book-selling strategies so you can maximize readership. Sign up now for the next episode of Conversations with Frances.

 

The post Indie Author Weekly Update – April 21, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

How to Get Attention for Your Book on Amazon

search

Amy Collins is the President of New Shelves Books, one of the largest book sales and marketing content providers in the US. As a guest on my webinar series, Conversations with Frances, she wowed the audience with her knowledge of Amazon and how to get your books more visible.

She started her talk with a revolutionary thought: “No one should care about rankings on Amazon,” she said. “Concern yourself with searchability instead.”

Amy Collins

Amy continued to make numerous points, including these:

For print books, you can  use https://sellercentral.amazon.com to start selling online. That’s assuming you purchased 1,000 copies of your book and need to be a reseller on Amazon. Amazon will charge you between $40 to $100/month.

Amazon Advantage: https://www.advantage.amazon.com is similar to Seller Central. Under this program, you can sign up as an author or publisher. You sell your back stock to  Amazon and Amazon will sell your books.

Most people are on Amazon through CreateSpace, which has hundreds and hundreds of digital print facilities. Print on Demand is the business model that allows CreateSpace to print books one or 20 or 100 at a time. They print to the order. CreateSpace is ideal for first-time publishers. www.CreateSpace.com

Audio and eBooks – More than 19% of the books sold in the U.S. alone are sold as ebooks; 95% of those ebooks are sold through Kindle. Audiobooks comprises 15% of the books sold. Source: Book Industry Study Group 

Easiest way to get your books on Amazon is through https://KDP.amazon.com. It’s free to sign up. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) only keeps 35% of the cost of your ebook if your book is $2.99 or more. There are exceptions for some countries.

KDP allows you a direct relationship with Amazon. It’s a good idea to take your Mobi file directly to KDP versus letting a third party application upload your book to KDP for you.

KDP Select is the program you sign up for to offer your ebook exclusively through Amazon. Amy isn’t a fan of KDP Select because she wants her books available everywhere and not restricted to Amazon. KDP Select isn’t ideal to her.

How your Amazon page looks is importantClick To Tweet

Audio books = www.acx.com she recommends. Owned by Amazon. Can upload your book and producers and actor bid to record your audiobook. (You can record it yourself.) ACX.com is a terrific start to start if you’re considering an audiobook.

How your Amazon page looks is important. Consider these factors:

Cover: Was it professionally created?
Search Inside feature – It’s important for people to be able to browse through your books.
Did you write a description with lots of white space and bullet points?
Include an author bio.
Make sure that the price of your book is competitive with the page count.
Does your book have reviews?

If you upload your book to CreateSpace, it will automatically be eligible for Amazon Prime status.

Regarding reviews, there’s nothing wrong with a three- or four-star review.

Your Amazon page needs to include your biography. Lead with the information that will most impress people with your credentials.

www.AuthorCentral.Amazon.com – Make sure you claim your name as an author. Every book that you’ve written and contributed to should be on your Author Central account. Include videos, all your books, and your blog and twitter account. This is a great place for keywords.

Ranking doesn’t matter as much as searchability. Searchability and findability are far more important than ranking.

Make your book more discoverable with keywords.

You can use up to seven keywords. Don’t use the same keywords that you use on KDP on CreateSpace also. Use 14 different keywords. Use these keyword types:

Setting (Colonial America)
Character types (single dad, veteran)
Character roles (strong female lead)
Plot themes (coming of age, forgiveness)
Story tone (dystopian, feel-good)

Use phrases that people will type in to Amazon’s search bar find books like yours.

Search for books in your genre/topic and determine to determine which keywords they use. Then emulate the keywords you found for other books in your genre and use them.

Create a wish list and shopping cart with other bestselling books books in your genre and include your book.  Get other people to buy the same books grouped with yours. Within a few days, your book will be linked with other bestselling books in your genre.

Right now, when you have 85 reviews or more, all of a sudden Amazon bots notice and recommend your books.

You need to spend time every day asking people to review your book Click To Tweet

Editorial reviews – Vine reviews – Verified reviews = these can go in the body of description about your book. Verified reviews show up at the top of the list.

Vine is a select group of reviewers. They’ve written a lot of reviews and Amazon invited these select reviews into the Vine program.

You need to spend time every day asking people to review your book.

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

The post How to Get Attention for Your Book on Amazon appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.

Indie Author Weekly Update – April 14, 2017

This week’s Social Media Update covers everything from ebook production to making more money with your books to book why the news feed may be outdated.

Are you enjoying spring yet? We got a taste of it one weekend, followed by days of rain again. I hear that hiking the local trails — one of my passions — will be less fun due to the abundance of ticks and poison  oak. However you spend your time on weekends, I hope you stay safe and have fun.

Indie Author Updates

4 eBook Platforms Offering Cool Data, Distribution & Marketing Tools from BookWorks and by Carla King: “There are a lot of eBook platforms out there—how many do you know? I bet you haven’t heard of Kbuuk, PublishDrive, Scribl, or StreetLib but I’ll also bet you’ll want to try at least one of them by the end of this post. Don’t worry, you don’t have to give up your existing service (IngramSpark, Smashwords, Amazon KDP), but add one or more of these to the mix.”

Social Media Misconceptions Debunked for Indie Authors from BookWorks: “As I meet writers online and at writer’s conferences, I hear common social media misconceptions that authors tend to share. I decided to debunk these myths for you one-by-one.”

How To Make More Money With Your Books from Joanna Penn: “It is possible to make a very good income as an author these days, but you need to think further than one book, one format or one platform.”

6 Steps To Writing Captivating Blog Post Intros Every Time from Adam Connell: “What do you do when your million-dollar blog post idea strikes? You scramble to your computer, giddy with excitement, and type as fast as your little fingers are capable. If there were competitions for typing, you’d be taking home the gold.”

The News Feed is Outdated: How Stories Changed the Way I Think About Social Media from Buffer: “Right now, the standards we expect on the web are being re-written for mobile. The rise of stories across Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger and Facebook is the perfect example of this. The News Feed is outdated and stories are becoming the default for content consumption.”

Book Promotion: Do This, Not That from Joel Friedlander and by Amy Collins: “This month, three separate authors who launched books recently gathered together and shared some great stories. Use their tales and learn from their experiences!”

A Goodreads Primer for Nonfiction Authors from Nina Amir: “Goodreads was started primarily to create an online venue where friends could chat about and recommend books in the same way they might if they were dining together or meeting at a café. The secondary goal for the site was to serve as a social media network. Users can even link their accounts to Facebook and Twitter to further spread the word about books they like and review.”

Quote of the Week

Of note

Fiction Writing Contests Worth Your Time (April, May, June Edition) from Writer Unboxed

 

The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads, and Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.

Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web

Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!

 

 

The post Indie Author Weekly Update – April 14, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.