By Books Author Denise Turney
Eager to save time as a book promoter? Repurpose the marketing content at your website. In addition to saving time, when you repurpose marketing content, you attract readers using at least two data forms. Learn how to turn blog articles and other content into videos, posters, postcards, interviews, quizzes and press releases to sell more books.
Mapping Out Your Online Book Marketing Plan to Sell More Books
Let’s look at what makes an online book marketing plan, particularly the process of scheduling marketing content development and distribution. During this review, keep your goal top of mind. Your aim is to sell more books.
The below schedule is a general scheduling example. As you focus on selling more books, you’ll add specific actions to your content schedule. Pay attention to how many of the below steps use content you’ve already created.
- Monday – Rewrite five existing blog posts, adding SEO phrases into the posts. As a tip, type phrases related to your book’s focal areas into Google. Examples include science fiction games, romantic mystery for retirees and novels with the best travel destinations. See how many search results come up for the phrases. Scroll down the search results and check the “People also ask” section in Google. These could become new blog article titles or article headings for repurposed content.
- Tuesday – Develop scripts for social media videos that cover a month of video production. Use re-written book descriptions to fill-out the video content. After you write the social media video scripts, write a description for each video. Plug two to three SEO phrases that surfaced during your Monday work.
- Wednesday – Shoot a month of social media video content. You’ll be working with lighting, sound and background branding materials. For example, you might shoot videos in front of your company logo. Depending on how long the videos are, this could take four or more hours.
More Ways to Sell More Books
- Thursday – Start writing content for your next four weekly literary newsletters. Include a video in each newsletter. Also, add a feature interview in each newsletter. And incorporate coupons and product/service discounts into the literary newsletter. To make your newsletter robust, fill it with data, price discounts, part of a rewritten blog article, etc. that book lovers appreciate. Use crisp subject lines, the type of subject lines that stir emotion, to encourage newsletter opens and reads, a step that can help you sell more books.
- Friday – Schedule social media marketing feeds. To save time, use an automated social media posts scheduler like Hootsuite, Vistaprint, Buffer, etc. While scheduling social media posts, add a mix of videos, quotes, information on upcoming events, feature interviews, newsletter releases, etc. To bring social media marketing posts alive, embed not-to-be-ignored pictures into the posts. Images and videos attract book lovers, helping you to sell more books.
That’s just a start. Keep reading to discover ways to maximize your online and offline marketing efforts without spending a lot of time.
How to Repurpose Existing Marketing Content
This is where repurposing your existing marketing content really comes into play. To sell more books without investing an hour or more a day into your marketing efforts:
- Add quotes to images on your author website and distribute as flyers on social media. You’ve seen those posts on social media, the ones with flowers, a sunrise, a woman climbing a mountain, etc. that are topped with a motivational quote. This time, let the quote come from a blog post, press release or interview that already exist at your website.
- Place existing book covers on drinking mugs and t-shirts and sell those at your author website. Another thing you could do to sell more books is to use this swag as giveaways.
- Upload products designed with your book covers to Etsy, Pinterest, etc. to attract readers and sell more books. Make sure your author website URL is on each product.
- Edit book marketing videos into short snippets. Upload the snippets to TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
- Distribute existing marketing videos across a range of video platforms. For example, you could distribute your marketing videos to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook Live, iHeart Radio, Google, Apple, Spotify, etc.
Organic Ways to Repurpose Marketing Content and Sell More Books
- Build marketing videos into mobile holiday catalogs, sharing the videos on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. As with other ways to repurpose material to sell more books, the most you’ll generally do is edit, cut and paste existing marketing material.
- Use published blog articles to create free e-books. Add your author website URL to the bottom of each page of the e-book. Also, add a page that list all of your titles to the back of the e-book. You could sell more books by simply showcasing your titles to more readers.
- Create bookmarks and branded calendars that include snippets from your published blog articles.
- Develop speaking presentations and trade show brochures using material from your literary newsletters, press releases and book descriptions.
To keep content at your author website fresh, re-write 10 blog articles a month, starting with older blog posts. As with your other marketing efforts, be consistent. In addition to repurposing marketing content, create new videos and blog articles. It’s an effective way to attract new readers and build relationships with these readers which, in turn, helps to sell more books.
Implementing Your Book Marketing Content Plan
Building out your online book marketing plan takes time. If you’re pressed for time, you could hire an experienced marketing writer to create content for you. And, of course, you can repurpose your existing content.
Stay on track with a marketing calendar. For instance, you could start with the daily schedule presented earlier in this blog post. Then, plug in article titles, SEO phrases, image quotes and video script topics. Also, add due dates, getting clear about when you’ll complete action items.
Keep going. And stay open. Be flexible. Take free online book marketing courses from people who actually sell hundreds of books a year. Over the course of a year, you’ll find areas in your marketing plan that you need to tweak. Take advantage of new technologies, saving time and making it easier for you to attract readers and sell more books.