Don't Forget Word Of Mouth Advertising For Your Book By Juli Schatz

Today's guest is someone who has taken word-of-mouth book marketing and created a local group in Chicago to run with it. In her post today, Juli Schatz will discuss the importance of Word Of Mouth (WOM) to authors.



Before we get to Juli's post, I want to remind you about this week's Sunday Kindle Book Giveaways. Thin Blood By Vicki Tyley and Saving Bluestone Belle By Strawberry Shakespeare are the two books we are highlighting this week. To have a chance at winning these books, visit the posts and leave a comment. It's that simple.



Now, on to Juli's post...





Don't Forget Word Of Mouth Advertising For Your Book

By Juli Schatz



No doubt online social media is at the forefront of networking today, but it doesn't mean that good old-fashioned face-to-face networking is passé or ineffective. In fact, the opposite is true.



Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger and the hundreds of other online networking tools have contributed to the success of authors in promoting themselves and selling their books. The ability to reach tens or hundreds of thousands of prospective buyers and readers in literally an instant lets one reach a far wider potential market than was possible just a few years ago.



Think of online networking as the "yellow brick road" that leads to Oz, paving the way to greater awareness of you and your book(s) and ultimately, sales. Whatever study you read about the most effective kind of advertising, you'll invariably find "word of mouth" (WOM) at the top of the list. Social media is one kind of WOM advertising, but it lacks the overwhelming advantage of being personal.



Remember the commercial that aired several years ago, urging consumers to "tell two people; and they'll tell two people; and they'll tell two people, and so and so on..."? That's the underlying premise of social media… and also how personal networking works.



Why is face-to-face networking still a critical component of book marketing?



"Particularly with teachers," says children's historical author Kate Gingold, "there are so many resources that it's overwhelming on their side and hard for an author without a powerful publisher to stand out in the crowd. The school districts also try to control the amount of junk information teachers get which makes it even harder to get through online. But teachers certainly network amongst each other, so getting to know some of them in person helps forge real relationships within the school community."



How many of us trust online media over our friends' and family members' personal recommendations? Not many. Why? Because you know your friends and family, and you know you can rely on them to tell it to you straight.



Of course, an author will never reach the number of people in person that she will through a well-crafted, informative, and interesting Facebook page. Nonetheless, when she "tells two people, who then tell two people, and so on" such WOM advertising can quickly build a targeted, interested base of fans and followers.



Here's how quickly and simply the numbers add up: when two people tell two people twelve times over, almost 4,10 people learn about your book... personal networking can also "go viral!"



Would you rather 4,100 people know about your book through personal recommendations --or hope that several thousand happen to stumble over your Facebook page only to stay on it for approximately 1.3 seconds?



"With the barrage of information we get on phones and computers," adds Kate Gingold, "we have to filter most of it out, so we handle our electronic 'relationships' with less consideration than we would in our face-to-face relationships.



"Still, you can learn a lot about people online so that when you do have an opportunity to meet them in person, you can speed up the relationship process by getting to shared interests more quickly."



To sell books in today's marketplace, there's no arguing that you must have an online presence. Its strength is in the capacity to build awareness. Use social media to generate buzz about your book, especially if it's a controversial subject; use it to reach all the book clubs you can find; use it let potential readers know where you stand on issues of the day, or where your heart lies; use it to give people something to think about, and something to talk about.



Bottom line: Devote at least as much time to face-to-face networking as you do to online networking to help more people get to know you, the person behind the byline.



NETWORKING: BEYOND THE NUMBERS



As important as it is for authors to sell their books, to get them into the hands of interested readers, there's more to networking than sales figures.



I started Author! Author!, an author and book marketing group, two years ago to help authors market themselves and their books – bringing them together to exchange ideas, to share with fellow authors what worked and what didn't. We meet monthly, and following each meeting are such comments as, "I'm always inspired after our meetings" and "After spending hours each day alone at a computer, writing, researching, etc., I need to get out amongst other people, especially my writing peers."



Kate Gingold says she "follows what the people in our {Author! Author!} group are doing, their blogs, emails, press releases, etc... I feel we're friends through the group so it's okay for me to ask them questions about how a marketing idea is working for them, how they got certain opportunities, or for introductions to people they know."



What has been interesting is the amount of information and number of connections exchanged among members, even though they're all essentially in the same "industry." Members feel free to throw out the names of individuals or publishers they are trying to reach. More often than not, someone knows someone who knows that person... and a connection is made.



And that's networking the old-fashioned way. Says Luisa Buehler, author of the seven-book Grace Marsden murder mystery series: "Nothing will ever (nor should) replace face-to-face marketing. We are social creatures and have a need to sit together and exchange ideas, plans, and experiences. Expressions are priceless; they drive productive conversation."







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Juli Schatz is a commercial copywriter who shares her writing and PR expertise with authors and small businesses, and promotes the annual Love is Murder Conference held every February in Chicago. In 2008 she founded the Author! Author! Book & Author Marketing Network to help authors effectively promote themselves and their books. Based in Chicago's western suburbs, she plans to soon establish Author! Author! groups in other regions.









  



























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Tony Eldridge is the author of The Samson Effect , an action/adventure novel that Clive Cussler calls a "first rate thriller brimming with intrigue and adventure." He is also the author of the Twitter marketing book, Conducting Effective Twitter Contests . His new novel, The Lottery Ticket , was just recently released on Kindle.