Miscellaneous Tips

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.

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.

The book was packed with a bunch of information about online marketing that I'd never heard before. (It also went over some ideas that I was quite familiar with.) I've only managed to share a small portion of the ideas this week, so if this has whetted your appetite for more information on online marketing, be sure to look for other resources.

There were a few other ideas that don't merit their own post but were things that I found to be useful.

• When choosing a link for your profile page on a social network, link to your blog or other website. If you just link to your book, people are more likely to click away. On your own blog, people are more likely to stick around for a bit.
• Set realistic goals as to how much time you have to devote to networking. If you only have an hour every couple days, make that time work for you.
• Find the "influencers" and engage with them. Influencers have highly engaged followers who can be useful in getting the word out about your book. 
• "If it feels spammy, it probably is."
• It's a good idea to schedule posts for different times of the day. Once you figure out when your ideal readers are online, you can make sure to have new posts for them.

Whether you have a book out right now or not, you can start networking and building your platform. These are a few ways you can begin.

What have I missed? What other tips do you have to share?