Marketing Your Book Online: How to Get Readers to Your Website
You’ve decided to write a book. But you’re not exactly sure how to go about marketing it. On one hand, you have your niche, your target audience. On the other, you have the blank page, the white keyboard, and your determination to make the whole thing worthwhile.
What you need is a strategy. One that will help you reach your target audience and convince them to buy your book. In this article, we will give you a few tips on how to market your book online. Along the way, we will discuss the important issue of building a reputation as a reliable and authoritative source of information on your topic. If you’re planning on self-publishing, these tips will help get you started.
Build A Following On Social Media
The first step to marketing your book is to build a following on social media. There are numerous platforms out there, but three you need to focus on: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
You can use these platforms to create engaging content that will attract potential customers to your site. You should probably start with a short bio about yourself and your book on LinkedIn, connect with other authors on Twitter, and explore new areas on Google+.
These are the three biggies when it comes to building a digital footprint. While you may enjoy the ease of use that comes with platforms like Facebook or Pinterest, those platforms don’t allow you to engage with your audience as much as the above three do. Take the time to learn how to use them effectively.
Find Your Niche And Research The Market
The next step is to find your niche and research the market. In case you’ve decided to write a popular book on a subject that you’re unfamiliar with, you might want to consider researching the market before you dive into writing your book. This way, you’ll know what interests your audience and you can tailor your content to be relatable and interesting.
If you decide to research the market before you write your book, there are several free tools online that can help you do just that. For example, you can use the Google Trends tool to explore interest trends in your niche, or you can use the Boomerang for Business tool to see the top 10 niches that people are searching for on Google. You can even use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find the keywords that people are using to find content online related to your topic.
Once you’ve found your niche, the next step is to identify the target audience for your book. Here, you want to narrow down everyone that might be interested in your book. This is a broad segment, so take your time and identify specific groups of people who will be interested in your content. Think of some keywords or phrases that describe this group and use them in the first few paragraphs of your book. These will become your key words.
Make The Bookmobile-friendly
Finally, when you’ve got your key words, it’s time to make your book mobile-friendly. You do this by optimizing the text on your website so that it looks good on a mobile screen. You can use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to find the right keywords for your book that are also mobile-friendly.
When someone discovers your book on a mobile device, they will have to navigate through a series of menus to get to the content. So, it’s crucial that the information they need is clearly displayed and easy to access. You want your readers to stay on your site as long as possible so that they can consume as much content as possible. This means that you must make sure that everything is mobile-friendly, not just the text on your site.
After you’ve done all of this, it’s time to test whether or not your marketing strategy was effective. Use the same tools to track the number of times your keywords are mentioned online and see how your site performs in search results. If you’re worried about your site’s performance in search results, you can always use websites like Google Analytics to learn more about the people who are visiting your site and how you can improve your online presence.
Publish A Test Chapter
Once you’ve verified that your strategy is effective, it’s time to publish a test chapter. A test chapter is a chapter of your book that you write to learn more about your topic and to see how things are laid out. Many authors will write a prologue to their books which serves as an introduction to the story. A test chapter is similar, but instead of being an introduction, it’s a chapter that you write to see how others approach your topic and how the material would look in the finalized format.
Deciding how to include a test chapter in your book can be difficult, but there are a few guidelines you should follow. First, make sure that the chapter builds on the material in the previous chapters. It should also be comprehensive enough to stand on its own two feet and convey your message clearly to your readers.
If you followed the above tips and used the right keywords in your copy, you’ve created a solid foundation for your book. Now, all you have to do is write the rest of the book, edit it, and use the proper marketing techniques to get the word out.