Marketing Engagement & Optimization: Balancing Your Process

 

by Deborah Lyn Stanley

Because Promotion and Marketing is about the reader, you’ve created a quick way to find your writing online. You have optimized your metadata, keywords, and search engine data for prompt findability. You have outlined a plan to deliver consistent content of value to your readership.

Today, let’s talk about balancing the work of delivering worthy content and marketing—getting the word out to more readers. You deliver through articles and books: by blogging, podcasting and videos. That’s the work of writing. Without writing, sharing with your readers becomes seriously lacking or old. Further, your readers will move on to follow other authors. So, how do we handle this juggling act?

Scheduling Tips—first creativity, then the business of writing:
•    When are you daily the most creative? That’s when you write. Creative time takes a great deal of energy, plan for it.
•    Do you write every weekday? Good, kept it and guard the time.

•    How do you handle the business end of writing; sending out queries, outlining your next book or article, or meeting with your writer’s circle? Can you move these to a few hours, a couple times a week?
•    Social media posting, promoting and marketing: these business tasks need less energy.
•    Write book reviews and promote them on your social media pages. Also seek outlets for promoting reviews you’ve received for your books (such as The New Book Review https://thenewbookreview.blogspot.com )
•    As Carolyn Howard-Johnson says in The Frugal Book Promoter: “Stay in the Promotion Habit” the longer you stay with it, productivity grows.
•    Take 1/2 or one day away from the computer each week to refresh.

Notes from prior discussions:
•    Metadata is info about your book, the title, sub-title, sales description, categories & author bio.
•    Keywords refer to a word or phrase that is associated with your book or your blog post.
•    Start and keep up your author’s website, include a blog. Consider guest posting.
•    Get involved with Social Media platforms that suit you and your themes and always link back to your website URL
•    Write a newsletter monthly. Create an audiobook. Start a podcast.

You’ve Got This!
You are a "Can Do" Writer!

Book Links:
* How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/

*The Frugal Book Promoter by Carolyn Howard-Johnson https://www.amazon.com/Frugal-Book-Promoter  

Deborah Lyn Stanley is an author of Creative Non-Fiction. She writes articles, essays and stories. She is passionate about caring for the mentally impaired through creative arts.
Visit her My Writer’s Life website at: https://deborahlynwriter.com/   
Visit her caregiver’s website: https://deborahlyncaregiver.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Deborah-Lyn-Stanley/

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Marketing Is Engaging With Readers, Be Findable

 

Promotion and Marketing is about the reader; it’s engagement. We aim to draw readers’ attention to our books and articles. How do we reach each other? It starts with a commitment to be findable. Writers must have a web presence. We must be searchable.

Further, when found, we must deliver consistent content.

Readers have little time for complicated searches, so stay findable with content value. Make good use of Keywords in your post and book titles. Be bookmarked, making it easy for readers to keep coming back.

Tips for search-ability:
1.    Optimize your use of Metadata, Keywords, & Descriptions for Search Engines
    a.    Metadata is information about your book, the title, sub-title, sales description, categories & author bio.
    b.    Keywords refer to a word or phrase that is associated with your book or your blog post. To develop a list of keywords, write a list of all the words and phrases that you consider associated with your post or book. Be as specific as possible. Your reader will appreciate this as they search the internet. (For social media, we can use hashtags # for more group visibility.)
    c.    Develop your keyword or phrase list by searching Amazon with your keyword ideas and note the results. This will help you target your best keywords.
    d.    Use your keywords in titles, too
    e.    Once you have selected your keywords, incorporate them into your Metadata information.

Tips to stay connected with your readership:
1.    Develop and maintain an author’s website
2.    Include a Blog on your website, post often—at least every 2 weeks
    a.    For additional traffic, would guest posting work for you? Maybe you could trade guest posts with a writing friend. Your byline will appear with a short bio and a link to your website/blog when you guest write for another’s blog.
    b.    Things to consider: Do the themes of the blogs enhance each other? Would your readership find value in both your blog and the guest’s? Don’t send your reader away: rather build-up both sites.
    c.    Start by noting the blogs you follow.
3.    Get involved with Social Media platforms that suit you and your themes and link back to your website URL each time you post
4.    Create a newsletter, send it to your email list and post a link on your social media pages
5.    Expand your book’s availability by including an audiobook
6.    Consider creating a Podcast series, start with the theme most meaningful to you
7.    Consider Books2Read https://books2read.com/  and Universal Book Links https://books2read.com/guide/ubl/  as a vehicle for readers to find your books. Universal Book Link (UBL) is a single URL that you can use to promote your books/eBooks.

Marketing is Engagement with Your Readers
Deliver Content

Book List:
* How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/

Deborah Lyn Stanley is an author of Creative Non-Fiction. She writes articles, essays and stories. She is passionate about caring for the mentally impaired through creative arts.
Visit her My Writer’s Life website at: https://deborahlynwriter.com/   
Visit her caregiver’s website: https://deborahlyncaregiver.com/
    Mom & Me: A Story of Dementia and the Power of God’s Love
https://www.amazon.com/Deborah-Lyn-Stanley/

Facebook: Deborah Lyn Stanley, Writer    https://www.facebook.com/deborahlynwriter/

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Engagement & Connection

What you offer on your website consistently will draw readers to your site.  Develop authoritative content that readers can use and you will connect with them.  Research takes time, but is of vital importance to your writing, your message.  Make it real and it will engage your audience.

With One Billion active websites, we have a lot of competition and noise to challenge us.  To offer free, usable information is fundamental to the survival and success of our websites.

I suggest the following Tips for readership engagement:
• Offer information with longevity on separate static pages.  Offer info that is current and fluid within your post line-up.

• Link to resources external to your site you find of value and keep track of the dynamic nature of active or inactive status for each.

• To persuade readers to spend more time on your site, provide links to your archived posts or static pages within your Blog.

• Consider adding downloadable free offers.

• Do you have an eBook published or ready to publish?
• Can you offer a revised piece as a free article or eBook to download?
• Only readers registered to follow your site by auto-emails should be eligible for the free download offer.

• Add visuals: many sites such as Pinterest are photograph-driven.

• Add links to your site with a brief post intro to your Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., pages.

• Always include tags for posts and your motto.

Blogging is an important part of book marketing.  E-Newsletters and regular posts are an excellent way to promote your work and to recommend the work of others.
 
November is National Novel Writing Month check it out at http://nanowrimo.org/.  I am participating and hope you will too.  For Non-Fiction check out Nina Amir’s November event at http://writenonfictionnow.com/4-ways-prepare-30-day-writing-challenge/ 
I appreciate your feedback.  Please comment below.  Thank you much!  deborah

Deborah Lyn Stanley is a writer, editor and artist.  She is a retired project manager who now devotes her time to writing, art and caregiving mentally impaired seniors. 
She has independently published a collection of 24 artists’ interviews entitled the Artists Interview Series.  The series was also published as articles for an online news network and on her website: Deborah Lyn Stanley - WritersBlog.  Deborah is published in magazines.  She is a blogger who has managed several group sites including ones she founded.

“Write your best, in your voice, your way!”

Creating Ultra-Engagement: Interview with Danny Iny

Danny Iny is one of those marketing mavens that shares his information so generously, and gets around so prolifically, that audience engagement looks natural when he does it. However it ain't necessarily so.  Danny has worked very hard over the past two years to build up his business Firepole Marketing and he remains distinctively accessible, sharing information through a free e-book  Engagement from Scratch (which I've reviewed here), and above all, and you'll hear about it in our interview below, by answering every email (and he gets a lot of them!).  We also talk about something that's quite relevant to writers (and something I'm always grappling with), which is how you mantain the balance between creativity (writing...) and promotion. Listen in, grab a copy of the book, and let me know what you think in the comments below.  I'd also love to hear your own audience engagement tips, especially as it applies to writers. 

 

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of a number of poetry books and novels, including, most recently, Black Cow, an "engrossing, poignant" novel about a family who leave behind the materialism and wealth of their high stress lives to attempt self-sufficiency on a small holding in rural Tasmania.