I wish I could say that being an author is this glamourous life where I solely focus on writing, editing, and publishing my best work. That’s less than a fourth of what I actually do. Marketing takes up the largest chunk of each day more so since I have no idea what I’m doing with it or even if the little I know how to do is correct.
My biggest challenge with marketing is social media. What do I post? How often? How much should I post about my books…my writing process? Should I share things about my personal life? How much of that should I share? What types of postings should I have? In-feed, stories, reels, etc. If I take the advice from social media experrts I should be on more than one format. Who has the time or the energy for that? I barely know how to use Instagram let alone TikTok. I do spend way too much time watching TikTok videos. I can see the merit in learning how to manipulate that format especially with book sales. It’s scary and intimidating as all get up.
I started developing a plan on how to tackle all of this starting with listening to a marketing podcast. I will admit that I’m only a few episodes in. The first three things the podcast recommends is create a simple goal. Nothing big like be a best selling author or make the New York Times best seller list. Those are too broad and might be unlikely especially for me at this point in my writing career. My original goal was to sell 25 copies of my book. Looking at my sales, it didn’t appear that I’ve sold that many, but when I pulled all my sales reports together I realized I’ve almost accomplished this goal–by two books! I patted myself on the back and asked myself–what would happen if I actually put effort into my marketing. I sold 23 books with only posting on my own social media and three of my author friends’ facebook groups.
I revised my goal to 35 books. It’s not much, but I want to start small. I’m going to start with small changes too. First revamp this website. I’m still working on that. I haven’t found a theme that fits quite yet. That’s still a work in progress and won’t be a small change. I’m struggling with the web design because I think a complete overhaul might be in order and that will take some time.
Next, is focusing on one social media format. I’m going to be honest, I don’t have very many social media followers. But I’m not complaining about that, I appreciate the number of followers I do have. It has been brought to my attention that I don’t consistently post, if I’m not consistent, I could lose followers.
I’m starting with Instagram. I think more of my readership will be there. I’m also going to post once a week to TikTok. In order to pull this off, I’m going to need a schedule. I have a few ideas and themes I’m thinking about.
Another upcoming change is the return of cover reveals and book reviews. I dropped out of doing those in favor of my own writing, but those offer me a break and those authors get more exposure.
Let me know what you think of the changes. You can follow me on Instagram at: https://instagram.com/randaknight.
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