A wise man once said that every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Some more wise words to live by? Always begin with the end in mind.
If you don’t know what your ultimate destination is, how can you chart the perfect course that takes you from where you are now to where you want to be?
If long-term success is what you desire there are several essential activities that should become a regular part of your business building process as you create and promote your new self-published book offers.
Identify a Specific Target Audience
If you’re looking for long-term results from your book writing and marketing career you need to figure out exactly who you are targeting with your books and writing.
You don’t just want “readers”. You need a highly specific type of target audience member so that you can tailor your writing and marketing messages perfectly.
The more you hone in on who you are trying to reach, the easier the process becomes for crafting marketing messages, writing books and developing your entire book creation and promotion process.
Infuse Your Marketing Message with Personality
As you share your story, make sure that you truly share your story.
What makes you unique and different compared to every other self-published author out there? Believe it or not, that’s part of what your readers want to know about you and what will attract your fanbase.
As you write your blog posts, sit through interviews and even write your actual books, feel free to use a liberal dose of your unique voice throughout each piece to really give your audience a taste of who you are.
Create an Author Website that Works as Your Command Central
An important element of a solid long-term self-publishing success strategy involves having an author website that functions as a central hub for all of the marketing and communication that flows between you, your prospects, readers and fans.
The problem with marketing without a dedicated author website is that once someone comes across one of your marketing messages, what happens next?
If you can’t say “visit my website” or “join my email list”, how exactly will you be able to continue the conversation and build relationships with members of your target audience?
This is the purpose of your author blog.
It acts as a medium between you and members of your audience and gives you a way to continuously build a rapport and deepen your relationship over time.
Consistently Leverage Social Media to Give Your Marketing a Boost
As you strive to build your self-publishing empire, utilizing social media is an important part of a solid long-term success strategy.
The true value of social media is in the self-replicating effect it tends to have without having to put forth any additional effort on your part.
If you get lucky, every once in a while, you hit on a topic that resonates so much with your audience that your post ends up taking on a life of its own, going ‘viral’.
Another great thing about social media marketing is that when you do it regularly, you can always go back and see exactly what kinds of content influenced your audience the most.
Use this information to share more of what they want to see in order to start more conversations and keep them going.
Social media is perhaps one of the most promising resources for market research in your niche.
Utilize Physical Giveaways to Be Even More Memorable
The ease and low-cost of virtual marketing methods sometimes makes it very easy to ignore offline alternatives that have the potential to score you a lot of lifelong fans.
Strike up a conversation in a coffee shop? Give that person a business card. Have your latest book on display in your local library? Leave a stack of free branded bookmarks beside them.
When you’re in the business of selling content online, it’s important to not overlook potentially valuable marketing strategies such as using physical giveaways to connect with members of your target audience.
Always Focus on Optimizing for Search
As a self-published author, most of your marketing will likely be done online. Because of this, it suits you well to become familiar with the action known as search engine optimization.
In recent times, search engine algorithms have become so smart and accurate that very specific optimization has become less and less important.
However, it’s still essential to craft your blog posts, sales pages and other marketing messages in such a way that it helps you to get found for specific target phrases and ideas online.
Done regularly and in the right way, it can only help.
Blog on a Regular Basis
Once you’ve made the very wise decision to establish a blog of your own, it’s not enough to simply throw up a post every now and again when you feel like it.
The key to making a long-term blogging strategy work for promoting your book and brand is posting consistently on your blog for at least 12 months so you can really start to get some traction in the search engines.
Of course, you could get lucky and see a good response in less time, but once you get started, it’s important to make up your mind to stick with it long enough to really see results.
If you’re new to blogging or don’t think that your strategy so far has been very effective, there are resources available that can help to guide you in creating a solid blogging strategy that positions your brand for success.
Reach Out to Established Audiences
While there’s nothing wrong with striving to build your audience up one member at a time the slow and steady way, there are techniques you can use to tap into an already existing audience and expose them to your marketing message.
You can think of it as syphoning.
The key to getting this technique right is making sure that you target the right audience.
The more closely that the needs of the new audience you want to target lines up with the marketing message you have to deliver, the more likely they are to respond well to it and follow you over to your own author website and blog to learn more about your offers.
Diversify the Delivery of Your Marketing Messages
Ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it”?
It can easily be applied to how you craft marketing messages that you plan to deliver to your target audience.
People tend to prefer to consume their content and marketing messages in a specific way. Think about the way that you consume marketing messages every day. You have the choice to read magazines, watch ads on television or look at pictures on billboards.
That’s why it’s important to diversify the way you deliver each marketing message to your audience in as many ways as you can.
So, for example, if you take the time to create an in-depth blog post about a topic that surrounds a book you’ve written, how about creating a short video to go along with it or a high impact infographic that communicates the main idea from the post in just a few seconds.
These activities help to keep you moving towards your ultimate goal of becoming an author that connects deeply with your audience, sells more books and earns a significant living from the production of your work.
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