My attempt at being social on social media
I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated in the book marketing arena this week, but trying to work through it. I’ve completed my facebook ads course and I’m trying to logically, objectively tweak my facebook ads and strategies. I’ve also had a talk with a friend regarding SEO for authors and it turned into a conversation about how I have to start being more, well, social on social media. This does not come naturally to me, but I am trying to find some regular activity that feels inclusive but not intrusive to share with people out there, so I can be a bit more personal. Any advice here would be great. I may have used up my allotment of dog photos! Get another dog?!
Target International Audiences.
Everyone’s talking about Amazon India right now, and why has it taken us so long to think this way? When I checked out the audience insights on my facebook page, it turned out a lot of activity came from The Philippines. I get a lot of my mailing list subscribers, and page likes, from targeting this group of readers for facebook ads.
Also, I began running facebook ads to a UK and Ireland audience. I’m getting a much lower cost per click (30 cents), though the result rate seems a bit too high (these are the number of times the same person is being served my ad).
Change which books you’re advertising.
Finding your sales are going flat? Why not change up which books you’re promoting? They’re all evergreen now. On FB you can change the ad status to “inactive” and then pick up whenever you want to. I’ve found my boxed set sales going flat from FB ads, so I’ve been spending time tinkering with ads for other titles.
Tinker with pricing.
I’ve been hearing $1.99 is the new $0.99; the only way to see if that works for you is to try it. My launch strategy for the last couple of titles has been to soft-launch a book at 99 cents, without entering KDP Select at first, and then to let everyone know it’s out via email campaigns and social media, and then to let everyone know I’m about to raise the price, and then to go in at $5.99 to Select. Bookbub seem to like a big discount, in my experience, so this price point seems to work.
Start looking at SEO.
Newsflash: your website probably isn’t optimized. Here’s what you need to do to get Google to start pulling you up in its natural search results: Go into your wordpress backend, select a page, then add some “focus keywords” (you’ll find these fields down the bottom of the page, below your post text). Who knew these were not autopopulated????? Not me!!! But, apparently, without entering these keywords, you won’t come up in organic searches for these, so it’s worth doing.
You can also amend your snippet, which people see when the page is pulled up in a Google search. This has been an underserved area of book marketing for me, and I assume it is for lots of you, too. Here’s a link to whet your appetite. More on SEO here…
Ask around.
Try listening to what your peers are focusing on when it comes to book marketing. Some places to try: kboards, self-publishing formula facebook ads group. Was out of ideas on refining my facebook ad for my boxed set and took advantage of a Q&A with Mark Dawson to get some feedback. He pointed out that this amazon page has no reviews (though the individual titles do), and said he didn’t love the image. I have put together some resources for getting more reviews, which you can read about here.
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