Book marketing tips

SEO and time saving tips for authors.

/ lizziechantree / 15 Comments

Hello everyone. I hope you had a relaxing weekend. For my Monday Marketing post today, I thought I’d offer some tips on something that can really save time for other bloggers and website owners who might be promoting your work, and hopefully improve SEO rankings on blog posts and website articles.

I found out years ago about the importance of naming your photos. I have blogged about this many times but it still happens a lot and it’s a simple thing to change. When people send me photos to appear on my blog, or social media feeds, they sometimes send them titled image001 image201 Book cover 4, picture in Spain etc! When Google search for content, they are always looking for something original, not only should you add your own content to posts to make them stand out and fly up the rankings, but the titles that you give your photos are so important. Not only do they register as the name of the photo and not another image001 or book cover 4, but they stand as an original image that you have given a name to. For example, I have called this photo, Lizzie Chantree author photo:

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This means that if I send this picture to someone to use on their website, they don’t have to spend hours trawling through photos to try and find the one I have sent them that they saved to their blog posts file, or other author files ages ago. They can simply search for photos with my name and all of the picture I have sent them will appear. If I am searching for a book cover an author has sent me earlier in the month that I have saved to an author file, I can easily spot the book’s name, but there might be over 100 book covers 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc. Simply naming your photos when you save them to your computer saves bloggers, website owners and anyone sharing your work a lot of time and energy and it also helps Google to recognise it. This means that they might be more likely to keep photos that aren’t clogging up their computers and confusing them with the same names and perhaps when they are uploading someone else’s photos to a blog post, they might think of you again as you are so easy to work with and provided professional content, that they can simply search for and find. Have an amazing week everyone!

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Monday Marketing.

/ lizziechantree / 3 Comments

Hello everyone. I’ve been reading some interesting marketing articles this week, but the one that struck a chord the most was about branding. The article I read mentioned about updating your branding/author brand every three to four months. What do you think about that? Do you follow this idea for your own writing or business?

The article didn’t mean to change your logo or pay for new author photos for your books, but to update your social media headers, ads, tweets, posts and book photos regularly. I updated mine when my latest book came out in July, and do change it with every book release, but am now thinking that I might give the headers etc an overhaul. I do however, update my social media graphics/book posts each week and interact with my followers there regularly.

Here are some of my branding concepts that follow through for book launches and author talks. You can see how it changes for each book, but stays within my theme of romance.

Ninja School Mum book launch:
If you love me, I’m yours book launch:
My Author branding:

 

It’s good if your business or writing page reflects what you do or the genre you write in, otherwise it’s confusing to customers. Whichever way you go forward, keep in mind that you are telling a story about who you are as a business/person/writer and you can do this very well with images and text. Get it right and it will help people understand what you are all about and help them to decide to visit again. Have a fabulous week everyone. From Lizzie.

Life of Writers.

/ lizziechantree / 3 Comments

Happy new week everyone. Today for my Monday post, I’d like to introduce you to a website that is really informative for writers. I’m going to be judging a writing competition for them in the new year, but I thought that you all might like to know more about the site and how helpful it could be for anyone’s writing journey, as a place to find advice and support.

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Over to Life of Writers:

Hi

I’m the founder of LifeOfWriters.com and I’m very happy to be here today on Lizzie Chantree’s blog to let you all know a little about LifeOfWriters.com and how aspiring writers – published authors can benefit from the site.

One of the main goals with the site is to meet other writers and share the journey of writing and having their work published. There are several ways to connect with others, like on the different kinds of forums, where you can help others by answering their questions or ask questions yourself. Another way to connect is to join the monthly free writing contest. According to the subject you write maximum 1500 words. One of the criteria for each contest is that you read the other submitted stories and give them constructive feedback. Every contest is judged by a published author who will select the top three. This is an exciting way where you can connect with other writers but also get your writing out there.

On the site it is also possible to write a book review, so have you read a book recently then head over to the book review part and let us know how it was. At the same time, you can catch up on the latest book reviews and be inspired for your next read.

LifeOfWriters.com also has a blog. This is one of the areas we are most proud of. On the blog, there are 2-3 times a month posts from published authors. It might be as an interview, where we get to know all about their writing life, how do they spend their day writing, what is their best writing advice and so on. It is greatly inspiring. It can also be a guest post from an author or someone related to writing where they let us know about their job and how a writer can benefit from their experience.

 

I hope this post has intrigued some of you to pop over and have a look, you might even want to join the writing contest? Just register for a free account to get started.

Most important is- Keep writing.

Kind regards

Founder of LifeOfWriters.com

Twitter for writers.

/ lizziechantree / 2 Comments

Hello everyone. Happy new week. Quite a few people have been asking me about Twitter and some ways to be social on it without it taking over your whole life. It’s not easy!

Self-confidence meme by Lizzie Chantree 7.30

I feel that as a writer, it’s important to be on social media like Twitter, as it gives my readers and followers on there a chance to find out more about my personality and writing routine. If people enjoy my Twitter timeline, it makes sense that they might also like reading my books. I do schedule some tweets, but change them up every one to two weeks. Twitter doesn’t like posts to be repeated more than once every 24hrs, so be sure to only schedule posts for longer than this time. You can change one word in a tweet and it will count as a new scheduled tweet though. Most of these sites have brief tutorials of how to use them and the scheduling is pretty say to do. You literally type the text and set the time. If you do want to add images, then you sometimes have to use the paid version.

Mostly, I pop by Twitter a few times a day, to say hello and post updates about my writing. I add funny photos that fit with my writing theme, which is humour and romance and try to lighten people’s day, as this is what my books are about too, making my readers smile.

Let me know if you have any other apps that might help other writers. Have a fun filled and creative day!

 

Apps that work well for scheduling are:

Hootsuite

SocialOomph

Buffer

 

Powerful words.

/ lizziechantree / 4 Comments

I hope you have all had a great weekend. I read an interesting article on Saturday about finding insights from inspirational quotes. It was explaining how we can look at the words used in popular quotes and to try and work out what is so powerful about them. Why do they make an impact and what do they mean to us?

Logic meme by Lizzie Chantree

We can turn this around and ask the same question of our own writing. Do our words convey the message we want them to? Are our readers going to feel an emotional attachment to our stories from what we have written? It’s a top tip when sitting back and reconsidering everything during the editing stage. Are you making the impression you want to? If not, what can you do to really make your story work?

Happy writing!

 

IYLMIY 6.15

 

Self-confidence meme by Lizzie Chantree 7.30

 

If you love me, I’m yours. A romantic comedy by Lizzie Chantree.

Monday marketing. 3 Quick Tips.

/ lizziechantree / 4 Comments

Today’s Monday Marketing and 3 quick tips is about your author website. This is often the first thing a reader, agent or publisher looks for after hearing about your work. If it looks professional and fits with your genre and writing style, then the message you are sending out is more coherent.

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  1. Pick colours, images and fonts for your website that reflect your genre.
  2.  Keep the content fresh. Google Analytics can tell if your content is cut and pasted from another site. Some site owners add code to their text to make it easier to identify. Update your site regularly for this same reason.
  3. Most websites have category and tags options in the sidebar when you are writing a post. Don’t forget to use them. Adding tags like: romance, books, reading, Lizzie Chantree, etc, makes it easier for anyone searching for your content to find you. The same works for a short seo and meta description. If these are original, they are more likely to stand out.

Have a great week everyone! From Lizzie

 

Pinterest for writers.

/ lizziechantree / 14 Comments

 

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I’ve just read an article that was so interesting that I read it twice! It was about an author who used Pinterest for marketing his books. I had never thought about Pinterest other than a fun way to connect with people who enjoy design ideas, like I do. I am now beginning to see things a bit differently.

The article stated that Twitter posts have a 24 minute viewing time lifespan, Facebook posts 90 minutes and Pinterest post, 3.5 months! This is because people often go back to their favourite pins and re-pin them, share them, or just admire them and show them to friends. The most viewed pins have some sort of useful message or meme on them. Women make up 80% of users on Pinterest. On average pins are re-pinned 11 times.

Some tips for a great pin.

  1. Design your pin to be tall and thin like a bookmark. This takes up less Pinterest real estate on each page and makes it more likely to be repined. Size 300 x 800 px.
  2. Give tips or pointers. People love to read short tips, like this list!
  3. Give the edges colour, so that they stand out.
  4. Add links to your pins, so that when they are shared so is your URL.
  5. Add descriptions to your pins. Don’t leave those spaces blank. Use the opportunity to tell people about yourself or your product.

 

Making a DreamBoard.

/ lizziechantree / 16 Comments

Happy Monday everyone. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I like to have inspiring things around me while I work. In front of my desk is a board with important information and some of my favourite things, like messages from my children, or notices of a few of my past achievements. I read once that its’ good to be able to glance up when you are feeling under pressure and realise what you have done so far. Some of the items I have pinned up are drawings from family, or inspirational quotes or notes from friends. I also have a few certificates or invitations.

Next to my desk is what I call my DreamBoard. It is a huge canvas which is hanging on my wall. On the front of the canvas are pictures of things I’d like to achieve. Gradually I add new dreams and cover old ones with pictures of my own fulfilled dreams, like pictures of my book covers, or work i’ve done to reach towards those dreams. This can be a great way to motivate yourself to keep moving forward towards your goals and a daily reminder that you are doing your best and trying hard.

Tips for creating an inspiration board that's actually inspirational| Studio McGee ||
Example of an Inspiration Board from Pinterest.
I call mine a DreamBoard as it’s ever-changing and is about fulfilling my dreams.

 

Monday Marketing #3QuickTips

/ lizziechantree / 6 Comments

Happy Monday everyone!

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My latest marketing tips are from an author marketing meeting I went to a few weeks ago. They are based around free giveaways. I have been looking in to ways to promote my new romance novel, which is out early next year and this seemed like great advice. Let me know what you think.

1.  If you are doing a free giveaway for your book, don’t give away your book! This sounds strange, but it does make sense. By doing a giveaway, you are trying to encourage readers to enjoy your work and buy your books. If you give the book away, you negate the possibility of the winners downloading/purchasing your work because they actually want to read it, not because they have been given it and might read it at a later date. A good way around this, would be to gift items related to your book genre and maybe a few chapters of your novel to tell them about the story. If they enjoy your style of writing, they might become a lifelong fan.

2.  If you are giving away your book, this can work best if it is part of a series. You gift the first book  in the series, then the reader may buy other books in the series if they love the characters and style.

3.  If you are running a giveaway, it can work to get together with other authors and make one huge giveaway. This way your promotion would be shouted out across the social media platforms of the combined authors and gain more exposure for your work.

 

 

Monday marketing. #3QuickTips

/ lizziechantree / 21 Comments

Today’s marketing tips are about finding new categories to place your books in if the current ones aren’t working for you.

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1.   Go to Amazon.com and type Kindle store into the search box.

Click on the Kindle Ebook tab under the search bar.

Click on the genre for your book (for example Romance) and look at the sub categories.

Click on a sub genre for your book (for example Contemporary).

Underneath are sections to refine by. If you choose one from the top and one from the bottom section, or two from a section, it will tell you along the top how many books are in this category. The lower the number, the less books there are in that category to compete with. For example in Contemporary Romance, with sub categories Wealthy and Beaches, there are 898 other books. If your chosen category for your book was Contemporary Romance, you could use the keywords, Wealthy and Beaches for a romantic book about an exotic wedding on a beach with gorgeous men. Alternatively, for the same book, Wealthy and Wedding as keywords would result in 1,450 competing titles.

Try lots of combinations and see which are the best selection of keywords for your work.

If you chose Cowboys and Amnesia in this genre, you would only have 38 competing titles! Remember you need a strong main category or no one will find you anyway, unless you are well promoted or well known. Don’t pick random categories, as they must fit within the context of your book.

2.  Pick your two book categories very carefully, but if they don’t work, change them!

3.  You have up to seven optional extra keywords. These keywords can be more than one word. For a book about Book marketing, you could use: Books on marketing, Marketing & Promotion, Making more sales, PR & sales, How to sell books, Books on marketing, Publishing success. These would be one keyword each. Check out possible combinations first and see how many competing titles there are. 

I’ve just changed all of the categories for my own books, so I’ll let you know how I get on in the coming months.