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Thursday, December 17, 2015

Marketing Goals

In my non-writer life, I have a small handknit business. (Shameless plug. Here's the link to it.) Recently, I got new book on social media marketing.

 Online Marketing for your Craft Business

As I read, I realized that many of the outlined strategies would work for marketing an author and/or a book. The basic ideas are the same, really. Anyone can go on Twitter and constantly tweet, "Buy my book." But that's not going to get us anywhere.

How do you know if your efforts are paying off? You need to set specific goals for your social networking and then track them.

Google Analytics is a good place to start.

What are your social networking goals? Of course you want people to buy your book, but you also want to keep them engaged with you so that they're around to buy your next book and the book after that. Engaging with people on Facebook, Twitter, or any other site is good. Getting them to follow your blog is good too.

But one thing the book was big on was newsletters. And newsletters make more sense for writers, really. You can send out snippets, scenes, deleted scenes, and short stories. You can let your followers know when you're having a sale on your book and when you have a new book coming out.

How many people sign up for your newsletter is something you can track.

By tracking your efforts, you can see what things work for you and what things don't. You'll have hard data. 

4 comments:

Paula said...

I like to follow the Google analytics on my blog. Just out of curiosity. I am not marketing anything. Yet!

Janie Junebug said...

The items in your shop are quite clever.

Love,
Janie

Liz A. said...

@Paula--It's one way of staying on top of things. You might find yourself marketing something someday.

@Janie--Thanks.

Yvonne Ventresca said...

I've enjoyed this series of posts, Liz.

I started an author newsletter this year and think it's a worthwhile concept. One deciding point for me is that you own/keep/manage your newsletter subscriber list. That data is yours. Any social media site could change their rules, the algorithm for who sees your posts, or (even mistakenly) block your account. I do enjoy social media but feel like a newsletter subscriber is a different kind of connection.

Yvonne