Potential readers must be engaged with different promotional strategies, so that they get excited about the new book that is about to be self-published by the author. A few simple techniques mentioned below, when used wisely and consistently, can transform a book into a most-desired bestseller.
1. Make Smart Video Pitches:
- Multiple video pitches ranging from 5-second teaser to a 90-second brief introduction about the book must be created. This could be formal or informally intriguing to kindle interest in audiences.
- The contents of the videos must be well planned and be pertinent to the book, which could be about research and writing experiences of authors, the reasons for taking up such a subject, etc, which would appeal to the audiences instantly.
- Videos with longer running time come in larger file size and they take longer time to buffer and play in slower internet connections. Keeping the user’s comfort in mind, the duration and buffer time must be optimized. Moreover, shorter videos are known to make the best impact instantaneously. An ideal video pitch must function like a mini-skirt – short enough to kindle interest in minds of audiences and long enough to cover the intended subject matter.
2. Post Them Online:
YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Ourmedia, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Jumpcut, Metaface, vSocial, Break, etc are a few video sharing websites in which authors can host their videos online. While accepting all kinds of popular video formats, a few have restrictions on duration and size of video.
3. Tag Them Precisely:
- Inclusion of pertinent tags or keywords in the videos gains lots of hits and views. The tags must be short, unique and catchy to enable search engines to lead their users to websites of authors and their books.
- Authors must use a bit of creativity to include even the weirdest of tags to their posts and hosted videos to maximize viewership. These will catch the eyes of search engines and eventually their audiences.
4. Share With Social Media:
There are so many social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google-Plus, Digg, StumbleUpon, Triond, Delicious, Orkut, blogging, Vine, etc that enable authors to connect up with interested readers.
Interesting posts, snippets and videos shared in these forums empowers authors to transform even the casual users into potential book buyers. While using them to promote author-website and videos, these portals also accept videos to be uploaded into them and encourage audiences to post their comments.
5. Plan the Hosting:
- Many statistical reports state that more than a quarter of views that a video receives in a lifetime would be achieved in the first three days of launching. Therefore, authors must plan to release one or two videos at a time, share it in social media websites and promote them diligently.
- Once they feel that the bubble of the video is burst and views are coming down, it is time for them to launch the new video. The same holds good for blogs and other tools of promotion as well.
6. Include Social Media Tools:
Many social media tools can be included in the author’s website and below the videos to showcase the amount of reach:
- Inclusion of an intriguing question to audiences followed by “Retweet” button in sample chapter enables readers to share what they felt.
- Facebook enables adding its commenting system to any external web page. Authors can include this facility to their websites to increase views. Moreover, comments also act as reviews of their tools.
- There are social sharing analytics that can be included in the bottom of the sample book chapter and at appropriate locations in book’s website. These show how many people have liked, commented, retweeted and shared the information.
7. Broadcast Expert Review Videos
- There are certain professionals who are considered to be experts in their respective fields. The authors must approach them, gift them copies and get their reviews, preferably in videos along with textual copies with their signatures.
- Authors must also conduct social events where books would be released and common people get to rub shoulders with the experts.
8. Organize for Review Contest:
People love gifts and authors need their viewpoints on their books. Therefore, synergy can be formed by announcing book review contest in social media. Authors can invite applications and select a few best applicants (about 30 or 50) and send a few copies of their books for reading and reviewing. These will become authentic testimonials that can be used for marketing and promotional campaigns. Amazon is one of the best places where the reviews can be posted.
9. Use Signature Space Effectively in Forum Contributions:
- While an author expects comments and shares from others, they must also be actively helping out their online community by reviewing others’ work, commenting and sharing to enable reaping mutual success through synergistic abilities.
- Moreover, while commenting or writing expert reviews, authors can make use of their signature space to include links to their videos and websites, since this is a huge marketing real estate that comes for free.
10. Enlightening with Google Analytics:
Authors must know about their audiences and success rate of each video and Google Analytics provides them with highly useful information in easily decipherable tables and charts.
- Google keeps track of number of hits and conversion rate for each URL and interactions within Android and iOS Apps too, so as to manage the right sequence of URLs in Search Engine Results Page (SERP), wherein most popular will be listed higher.
- By signing up with Google Analytics, the authors can keep a track of their videos and website traffic and know which ones click and identify those that do not generate enough returns.
- Based on the data, authors can make informed decisions on creating furthermore efficient videos to be hosted online and gain higher readership for their self-published book.
Since these strategies have a short shelf-life in the highly dynamic online space, authors must rehash their success by using right combination of these repeatedly from different perspectives.
