Tag: author marketing

How to Get Visible on Facebook

shaun inmonGuest Post
by Shawn Inmon

Do you have a Facebook page? Of course you do. Here’s the more relevant question: is your message getting out to your fans, or do you sometimes feel like you’re shouting down a well?

Life was easier in the early days of Facebook. You posted content and it was delivered to the walls of your fans. Then FB went public and monetized their platform, confirming the adage If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Suddenly, you needed to pay money to reach your fans.

There is a better way, of course—beating the Facebook algorithms. Every professional page tells you what your “Talking About This” number is. What does that number measure? My understanding is that it measures the number of unique users who Like, Comment, or Share a post on your page over a rolling seven day period. The higher that number is, the more of your posts will be seen by your fans. My understanding is that the average TAT is between 5-7%. So, if you have a thousand fans on your page, the average TAT number is 50-70. Continue reading “How to Get Visible on Facebook”

The Name on Everyone’s Lips: Effective Frequency

lucky 7I can’t count the number of times I have heard indies talk about getting a return on their investment when it comes to advertising. Most people consider an ad successful only if they make more money from sales of their books than the ad cost them.

It’s undeniably great when that happens. But that’s not what marketing is for. Marketing is not for selling stuff – at least, not directly. It’s for making your brand so familiar to consumers that they will decide they need whatever it is you’re selling.

A single ad does not familiarity make. There’s an old chestnut in the marketing business that it takes seven contacts with a prospective customer before you will see any results. In general, someone needs to see your novel seven times before they’ll decide to buy. The technical term for this is “effective frequency” (also known as the Marketing Rule of Seven). Continue reading “The Name on Everyone’s Lips: Effective Frequency”

Attention-getting Tactics for Authors

opera singerA while back, I attended a festival of romance. It was one of those events where authors get together, mingle with publishers, sell some books, make connections and so on. There were workshops and other events where we got to meet and greet.

One of these events was a readathon. It was staged in a shopping centre. The idea was for a steady line of writers to keep an audience entertained with excerpts from our books. In reality, most of the public was more interested in shopping and ignored us. One writer, however, grabbed their attention. She belted out Jon Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer ahead of her reading. People came to a rapid halt and listened. It was a crowd stopper. Continue reading “Attention-getting Tactics for Authors”

Tuesday Tutorial: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon LogoI’ve been a member of StumbleUpon (SU) for years now. I can’t remember how I found it, but it seemed to me a good place to spread the word about my blog posts. SU (no, no relation to IU) now has over 25 MILLION members, or Stumblers, as they call them, making it a platform worth exploring. Continue reading “Tuesday Tutorial: StumbleUpon”