My Results with Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads, Goodreads Ads, Guest Posting, Readings, and Organic Social Media
I didn’t do a $120,000 ad buy like recent articles suggest is required to be effective on Twitter. If I had $120,000 to blow I’d move to a cabin in an undisclosed location to hunt bear, read Ernest Hemingway, and grow a beard.
I did, however, blow a limited budget testing a few ideas. First, the caveats: I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not a trained marketer, though I’ve been in sales all of my adult life. My social media awareness was zero a year ago. It’s only a notch or two higher today.
What was my thinking before venturing into paid advertising?
When I published Cold Quiet Country a year ago, it kind of caught me by surprise. The first imprint that bought the novel disintegrated before paying the advance. Meantime, my employment situation changed, and changed again, and my real focus was on paying bills, not promoting my fiction. MP Publishing acquired and published Cold Quiet Country, but because the editing was minimal and my feedback on the publishing process largely unheeded, the run-up to getting my first book in print was background noise.
But when I held the book in my hands something clicked. I’d started writing stories in second grade. By seventh I read a book a day. Won a fiction contest in college with a terrible story called Old Fart. Through my Army enlistment and work life I always thought I’d return to writing… once I had something to say. Well, I finally had something to say, pure rage at learning my grandfather was a pedophile, and learning too late—two weeks after he died of natural causes—to influence the manner of his exit.
So I wrote with fury and produced a novel a handful of reviewers regarded highly. A month after Cold Quiet Country’s release, I realized that my dream had come and gone without me paying attention.
I hit the brakes, invested a couple bucks in a WordPress website through Bluehost, (thumbs up, big recommend there) started building a fledgling Twitter audience, irritated the hell out my Facebook friends, and sold a few books.
In the year following the release of Cold Quiet Country, it has been as high as #5 on the St. Louis bestseller list, #32,996 of all books in the Amazon universe, and the Kindle version has been as high as #753 on the thriller list. (It’s also been as low as #6907). Cold Quiet Country had a couple advantages—a great Publishers Weekly starred review, being selected as a best book of the week by Publishers Weekly, and being selected on the Indie Next List the month after release.
The book also had a few disadvantages: a crappy cover, a publisher with small reach, and an author with absolutely no platform.
Before I share what I learned about spending a limited budget on social media advertising, here’s what I learned before spending a limited budget on advertising:
As a relationship platform, Facebook fetches results. Taking the time to post well-considered, intelligent, funny updates frequently sends traffic to my website and I’ve seen a good Facebook post nudge my Amazon Author Central line north. After the initial flurry of people who like you enough to buy your book, whether they think they’ll like the book or not, success hinges on getting other people to send your message to their network. My wife drove more sales by making two posts (six months apart) than I did with everything I’ve done on Facebook. The lesson is that Facebook is a great tool if you spend the time on building relationships, but for a drive-by poster like me, not so much. Facebook didn’t fail me; I just didn’t utilize it very well.
I’ve read a considerable amount on the do’s and don’ts of Twitter, and try to limit self-promotion to about 25% or less of my posts. I’ve found that Twitter easily drives clicks to my website, my Amazon page, and dozens of other sites I promote to build awareness of my friends’ writing efforts. Because of my early success with Twitter, I’ve developed a morning routine around a couple of third party tools I use to gain efficiency.
First, I use the paid version of ManageFlitter ($12 a month) to follow people based on their use of keywords that make them likely to find value in what I post. I largely look for readers and writers. I also use ManageFlitter to unfollow folks I’ve inadvertently followed who don’t post in English, haven’t posted recently, or who haven’t followed me back after a month.
Second, I use the free version of Hootsuite to tweet, monitor the tweets of my readers (who I’ve grouped) so I can retweet them or respond to them, save tweets, and schedule tweets. Hootsuite makes it very easy to building relationships with other users of Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, and probably others. You can schedule tweets in advance, view analytics, and more. I can’t imagine using Twitter without the tools Hootsuite provides free of charge.
Third, I use the RSS feeder Inoreader (free) to follow all of the authors and bloggers I’ve found who I’ve chosen to promote (basically, awesome authors or educators) so I can quickly scan everything any of them have blogged in the last day. From this material I construct tweets (on Hootsuite) referencing the great blog posts and articles I’ve found, and schedule them for various times, once a day, for the following week. One of the studies (DanZarralla.com) I read suggested that retweets and clicks fall when you post more than one link per hour, so my default is to find three new terrific posts per day, which I schedule for up to seven days at varying times.
My morning Twitter routine is usually about a half an hour.
On Twitter, the keys seem to be:
Post during the afternoon and early evening
Tweet more on Thursday through Sunday
Limit posts to 120 characters so they can more easily be retweeted
Retweet others frequently
Try to be of service to other people: meaning, talk more about the great stuff you find out there than your own great stuff.
You can find a lot of research on how to use Twitter and other social media effectively here: http://danzarrella.com/
Reading Events
Reading events didn’t work for me. (Outside of a Noir at the Bar reading that worked because it wasn’t all about me…) My publisher managed to schedule one event, which I did not realize I was exclusively responsible for promoting. Three people showed: my wife, the gay guy who worked the bookstore cash register (this guy was so gay he’d be offended if I didn’t call him gay) and one older businessman shopper the gay guy corralled to my reading when it became apparent that no one was going to arrive.
If you’re going to do a book reading, be sure to take responsibility on yourself to drive enough attendance that you won’t humiliate yourself.
Blogging
I read John Locke’s book on how he sold a million eBooks and tried part of his method. I wrote a few blog entries, Tweeted about them, drove some traffic, made some sales. Building a blog audience is an art unto itself, though, so I modified the strategy. I started posting reviews of books I read to stay abreast of other authors. It blended well with my Twitter strategy of being of service to others and providing value. There are a lot of amazingly talented authors out there with voices worthy of amplification. Being able to say nice things publicly about their work wins in every dimension.
Guest Posting
I’ve guest posted one time so far. I stumbled across Writeitsideways.com and thought the site was great. I connected with the site’s owner on Twitter, started promoting the site’s coolest articles, and submitted (per the website’s instructions) a blog entry I’d composed that seemed a good match for Writeitsideways.com’s audience.
A month later my guest post Use a Nonlinear Format to Grab Your Reader by the Eyeballs was up.
J Coincidentally J that day my Amazon Author Central numbers shot up as well—close to their all-time highs. Although writeitsideways.com doesn’t have the reach of some other blogs for authors and readers, my guest post was the single most powerful marketing action I’ve taken to date. I’d like to send a heartfelt thank you to Suzannah W Freeman, the proprietor of Writeitsideways.com, for letting me guest blog. Follow her on twitter here.
Happily, I’ve had a guest blog post accepted by WriterUnboxed that will post in January.
Incidentally, when I saw the stunning result of my guest blog post, I tweeted a heartfelt thanks—which was retweeted more than any of my other tweets, and which sent the following day’s Author Central line even higher.
I Spent Money On:
Goodreads Book Giveaway
I gave away five copies of Cold Quiet Country through the Goodreads giveaway program. Three people posted reviews that averaged lukewarm. I theorize that people enter to receive books for free that they would never spend a dime to buy, and because of this, when they actually win, they are less likely to be a member of an author’s ideal audience.
Think of it this way: my book cover is gray, showing a foggy forest. I don’t like my book cover, and the concern I raised at the beginning went unheeded: even if the book cover is evocative and leads to someone buying the book, he or she is less likely to become a raving fan because the book cover created a false impression of what the book was about. No one gets chased through a foggy evening forest in Cold Quiet Country. It takes place during a “blizzard of the century” in Wyoming.
I think the real endgame for authors is building an audience of true raving fans, whereas advertisers and book publishers seem to think (sometimes) that it’s about duping people into buying books. This ties in with the book giveaway on Goodreads because the alignment isn’t perfect. We don’t necessarily match the right book with the right reader, and the reader is less satisfied for it.
The good thing about the Goodreads book giveaway was that it resulted in 747 people entering to win. 742 didn’t win, and about 400 added Cold Quiet Country to their want to read lists. I’m sure many of them bought the book, and in that way, the giveaway helped create awareness that led to people who would probably like the book actually buying it. For the cost of mailing five books, the giveaway was worthwhile.
Goodreads Ads
I’ve had an ad up on Goodreads for two months. It isn’t working. I won’t bid high. I know the concept of a loss leader, and that creating a buzz is great, and if you can get a whole bunch of people to buy at the same time, your Amazon ranking will go up, and if it breaks into the top 100, other synergies kick in that reward you for all the money you spent getting there. I get it.
My Goodreads ad approach was a simple proof of concept that didn’t prove out for me. Three clicks, three dollars, over two months. The ad was “seen” by 12,283 people and generated three clicks.
I think part of the problem is the book cover. It doesn’t draw the eye at all, and when placed as a thumbnail against a zillion other books with colorful covers, it looks like background. Another part of the problem is the format of the Goodreads page where the ad shows up… lost among a hundred other books. I tinkered with the ad language a couple of times to no avail.
A true test of the Goodreads ad would be to pump some serious money into it, hoping the sum of the concerted energies of a wide and costly campaign would lead to results beyond the campaign.
For a limited budget with a gray book, it’s an epic fail.
Facebook sidebar ads
This seemed to be a good idea. Facebook posts a small ad with my book cover and about a hundred characters of ad text (a guess) on the right side of targeted users’ pages. My ads were shown 4,142 times, generated 19 “engagements,” and no sales. An engagement is when someone clicks on the ad and either goes to my Facebook page or the link in the ad, which led to Amazon. Granted, the cost was $8 and I didn’t tweak the ad language.
The weakness seems to be that unless your Facebook page is highly effective at converting folks who browse by into a sale, the effort will be lost. I can generate the same clicks in a few minutes without spending $8, so as with Goodreads, unless a Facebook ad is part of a big-dollar awareness effort, I don’t see the value.
Facebook promoted posts
I thought the Facebook promoted posts idea was sound. Write something clever, substantially longer than you can get onto one of their tiny ads, (with a greater opportunity to hook a reader) and pay Facebook to insert the post into the timelines of people who have given evidence they are in your potential market. (They do this by scribing some of your keywords.)
I spent fifteen dollars to get a post that read like the inside flap of a book cover in front of 8,500 people. That generated nine clicks and three likes. The clicks, though were not necessarily to my Amazon link. They could also have been to my Facebook page—which I think is a flaw. I’m not paying to promote Facebook; I’m paying to drive traffic to the exact location my prospect can click a button and buy my book.
Again, I can drive those clicks through organic social media fairly easily, so why spend the fifteen dollars? The answer time and again is, it might work for a big budget, but not a small one.
Admittedly, I didn’t run multiple tests, varying language, post times, key words, and the like. As a proof of concept, though, it doesn’t work. The margin on a book sale varies, but the only way I can imagine it would ever work to promote a book this way is if it results in momentum that eventually fuels itself through word of mouth. Buying book sales one by one is an inherently flawed concept.
Twitter promoted tweets
Given the insight above, that buying clicks and selling books one by one is fatally flawed thinking, the next logical inquiry would be: what’s the cheapest way to start the avalanche? If I’m going to put some money into it hoping for a magnified effect that results in word of mouth taking over, what’s the best value for my dollar?
So far it seems to be Twitter’s promoted tweets.
The concept is like the others above. Choose your keywords, review your tweets for something that seems to work, in terms of clicks and retweets, and pay Twitter to promote the tweet. They do this by inserting it one time into the timelines and search results of people who use your keywords. Twitter seems to be hugely mindful of user experience, so they don’t hit people with tons of ads, or repeat ads. (Facebook, on the other hand, repeats ads to the same viewers).
Hootsuite allowed me to research the stats for links I’ve tweeted. I selected two that worked well and paid Twitter ten bucks to promote them. One of the tweets did okay. It was approved first, consumed 80% of my budget, and produced seventeen engagements. The other did much better, consuming 20% of the budget, producing 11 engagements, for about half the average cost per engagement.
The Results
My Twitter promoted tweets cost $.25 per engagement.
My Facebook ads cost $.26 per engagement.
My Facebook promoted posts cost $1.25 per engagement.
My Goodreads clicks cost $1.00 each.
What did all of that engagement create, in terms of sales?
Zero.
Or probably zero—while running a special 99 Cent Kindle version promotion, to make it super easy to make the decision to buy Cold Quiet Country. (As of this post you can still snap up that bargain. And frankly, you’d be a fool not to.)(I say that as a concerned friend.)
The only retailer I linked to was Amazon. I kept a close watch on my author rank, both kindle and print, while testing the aforementioned ads.
I also kept a tally of the number of books available on Amazon. For example, during the duration of my last test ad, Amazon had available four new copies, plus thirty two new copies through other vendors, and twenty four available used. None sold as a result of all those paid engagements.
Sure, someone could have been so stoked that he ran to his local Barnes and Noble to pay full price. And someone could have searched my title on another website he prefers.
But the conclusion is inescapable. During the weeks I engaged people with money instead of relationship, my book sales declined.
For me, people respond to tweets and Facebook posts largely because they know me or are familiar with me over time. A post that gets results with my own tribe falters when inserted into the timelines of the masses—even when those masses frequently use the keywords I think make them a potential reader.
There are a million reasons you might have different results. You might have a kickass book cover that attracts the eye. You might have better ad copy skills. You might have a better website. I’m sure all of those are factors and a small improvement in each could have netted a gigantic difference in total performance.
The lesson for me, though, boils down to this: an author with a small budget will likely get more return from spending time bringing value than spending money creating awareness.
Tell me your thoughts in the comments section below, and if you think others might find some value in this long, long blog entry, please use some of the share links to the left.
