Monday Marketing. #3QuickTips

Monday Marketing. 3 Quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 16 Comments

Hello everyone. I hope you had an amazing weekend. On Friday, and over the weekend, my publisher did a free book sale with lots of their authors. I was lucky enough for the two books I had in the sale, Ninja School Mum and If you love me, I’m yours, to both rise to #1 on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com in multiple categories on the first day of the sale. Ninja School Mum is now #11 on the bestsellers lists in paid sales and IYLMIY is in the top #42. I decided to go all out and try some new ideas for the sale, so here’s what I did for the sale:

  1. I redesigned all of my social media headers. This was time consuming, but across all of my platforms the theme matched. As it’s nearly Christmas, I made them festive. Whichever page you looked at for my social media, you would have seen a complimentary design. I offer a design service for anyone who doesn’t know how to make social media headers or graphics and ads, but you can make free designs on places like Visme or Canva
  2. I made myself a slogan. I chose, ‘A gift for you!‘ This told my readers that I had something for them, to say thanks for being such wonderful readers. It also fit perfectly with my Christmas theme.
  3. I made Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, blog posts. These all matched my social media headers. I made several, so that I didn’t spam my timeline with the same content over the three day sale.

 

Twitter header:

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Facebook header:

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Facebook and Twitter timeline graphics:

Instagram post:

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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.

Sharing is caring.

/ lizziechantree / 5 Comments

Lizzie Chantree blog

 

Hello everyone. I hope you had an amazing weekend. Today’s Monday Marketing is about how shareable your blog posts are. I find it really frustrating when I find a great blog to read and want to share it with my 60.4k real twitter followers. I love tweeting about topics that interest me and hope my Twitter followers enjoy them to. I read a lot of articles and often add them to my social media timelines. If there is no way to share an article, I leave it and sometimes don’t return to that site.

Tip 1.

Add social media sharing buttons to each article. Most websites and blogs have plugins you can add to easily share to Twitter Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more. It might be worth taking the time to call to whoever is hosting you site to ask how to add these buttons, but with WordPress, you simply click the plugin tab, find the ones for social sharing and then click install. They then appear at the end of every post you add to your site.

Tip 2.

Visuals. Always add visuals or photographs to your blog posts, Tweets and Facebook pages. Tweet images get on average 150% more RT’s than tweets without an image and on Facebook, posts with photos or images get approx. 87% more interaction. The images often catch the eye and engage the reader of the tweet or post.

Tip 3.

It’s often a good idea to add your Twitter timeline and Facebook details to your blog page or website at the side of the front page. This updates as often as you send out a new post, so your site has fresh content and it encourages readers to visit your other social media sites. You can do this by adding a widget to the sidebar on your blog post. Once again, a quick telephone call to your site provider will be the quickest way to understand how to do this. Most blogs and websites have a social sharing section in the plugins or widget sidebar in the menu, where you just have to say where you want it to go on your site and then click install.

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Don’t forget to join me for #CreativeBizHour on Twitter tonight @Lizzie_Chantree for an hour of creative chat and networking. Just add the hashtag to tweets and replies to chat to join in.

Monday Marketing. 3 Quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 1 Comment

Lizzie Chantree book quote 7

Hello everyone. I’ve been travelling in Spain and around the U.K. for the last few weeks and have been writing a new book. When I write I am inspired by views and the hustle and bustle of people around me, but I also like quiet writing time in my own studio, where I don’t have any noise other than the tapping of the computer keys while I type.

I have been working on social media and branding too and am trying a new app, Visme. I was offered a professional account to try and see what I thought of the software and so far so good. The basic software is ok, but once you log into the premium settings, there is so much to explore. I will write a blog post about it when I have found out exactly what the best features are. For now, check out https://www.visme.co to decide for yourself.

Some tips on discovering your own author brand:

  1. Define your brand. What is your purpose? How do you communicate your message and make an impact? For me this is letting my readers know what my ethos is, my writing style and why they might like my books. Take a look through my blog page and social media sites. They all have the same branding and hopefully tell my readers that I write romance novels.
  2. Do you have a professional headshot that you use across all social media platforms. It’s worth getting a proper photos taken or asking a friend to take one for you.
  3. Do you have a digital media kit? This is a marketing package that states what genre your books are, prices, page length, release dates etc.  This makes it easy for journalists to upload relevant information without hours of research. Check out my media kit page here for some tips.

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Monday Marketing. 3 quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 4 Comments

Happy new week everyone. Its been a hectic couple of weeks here, with a paperback and ebook launch, but it has been very exciting too. We all lead such busy lives, so how do we keep up with current social media trends and changes and not miss anything that might have an effect on our writing or business? There are places to go to find out about any major changes.

girl with books meme by Lizzie Chantree

  1. Facebook Newsroom: Facebook Newsroom  This page will give you details on how to control your newsfeed, platform updates, ad transparencies, Facebook community news and much more.
  2. Twitter’s Blog: Twitter’s Blog This page will tell you what if happening with your follower count, give tips and share latest news. Some people will see their Twitter follower count changing due to Twitter’s current policy on removing locked or inactive accounts.
  3. Instagram’s news page: Instagram Business News This page will tell you of trending topics, latest businesses that are popular and styles to follow.

Monday marketing. 3 Quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 2 Comments

I hope you’ve all had a relaxing weekend? Today’s tips are about generating marketing for yourself without having to pay out to a marketing budget. I’ve been running networking hours for years and have taught myself quite a few ways to market my work, but when I started out, I literally had no clue where to start. Today, there are many ways for you to simply promote your product, book or social media page, with images and text.

  1. Check out the Canva app. You can get this for free on your computer or phone. It is a graphics editing site. It has pre-made templates for all of the social media sites, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more. Simply select the template you want to use, then upload your own photos from the tab on the left hand side and drag the photo you want to use into the template. You can then click and highlight the text and change it’s colour, font, size and the actual text. It takes a while to play around with and familiarise yourself with it’s function, but it’s a great app to use for free marketing. You can purchase photos for around $1 if you want different picture, but sites like Pixabay have free photos that you can download to your computer and then upload onto Canva for free.
  2. IMGFlip.com is another meme or image and text generator. Simply type in the theme you are looking for, for example, travel, and then choose a picture from the selection shown. Change the text in the two text boxes on the right hand side and then save your image.
  3. The third way, which is more time consuming and will only work if you have the correct programmes on your computer, is to Google the correct image sizes for the social media site you want to use and then set up an image on Photoshop. You can then easily add text and swap the images around once you have set up your own template. Once you have your own template, the possibilities are endless.

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This is a Canva design template I added my book cover and text to.

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This is an IMGFlip template with my words on it.

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This is a Photoshop template that I made myself.

 

Monday marketing. 3 quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 9 Comments

Happy new week everyone. Here are 3 quick tips about scheduling social media posts or tidying up your Twitter feeds. Marketing can eat into your day, so I am sharing some great tools to help you schedule in some of the posts to save time. I don’t agree with all posts being scheduled, as the idea of social media, is to be social! Interaction is the main way to keep and grow your Twitter/ Facebook accounts etc.

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  1. SocialOomph: This a is a scheduling app. It has free and paid options. You can run a free trial to see if it is the app for you. You can schedule tweets, Facebook posts and blog posts, add images and links.
  2. Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a bit clunky for me, but it is a great place to start when you are looking for content to retweet on Twitter or you have your own information to schedule. Because this app updates so often with new news items, it can be slow. The upside is that there is a wealth of information to choose from and it is very easy to use.
  3. Manageflitter: This is a good app for unfollowing anyone who doesn’t follow you back. There have been recent changes, so unless you pay for the basic service, you can only have about 30 unfollows a day. For their basic package, you can unfollow as many as you like.

 

Monday Marketing. 3 quick tips.

/ lizziechantree / 3 Comments

Happy new week everyone. Today’s 3 quick marketing tips are about pinned tweets. I have written about this before, but it’s easy to forget how important they are. It might look good for your Twitter account to have hundreds of retweets of it’s pinned tweet, but if someone has already retweeted it, they can’t do it again. This means they have to search through your Twitter feed to RT your work.

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  1. Update your pinned tweet often. Even if you do it once a week, or every few days, it gives visitors something new to RT without searching your timeline.
  2. If you are using a daily hashtag, for example, #tuesnews or #MondayMotivation pin it to your profile for that day only. Check out the daily trending hashtags and add one to your pinned tweet that day. I regularly look at trending hashtags and make a tweet with it in. It’s great for networking and helps spread the word about your business or product.
  3. Regularly check out the pinned tweets of your followers and RT them. In return, some will do the same in support of your work. Having a pinned tweet shows the most current information about you. If it is years old, it is confusing to visitors and the information might be out of date.

Check out my Twitter timeline here to see my latest pinned tweet to get some idea of how it works.

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.

Lizzie Chantree Monday Marketing2

  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

 

Happy Marketing.

/ lizziechantree / 9 Comments

 

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Happy new week everyone. Today’s Monday marketing and 3 Quick Tips is about sprinkling kindness around like confetti. I recently read a magazine article where it said that having a positive mental attitude, treating others fairly and reaching out to assist people, also helps to boost your  mood, triggers good endorphins and raises productivity during your own day. It’s not hard to share a social media post for someone else, add their product links to your emails, or to use word of mouth to recommend someone else’s products or services. It could take you a moment, but have positive effects on someone else’s day or business for days or weeks to come.

  1. Take a moment to share a post on social media that you think will help someone else’s products or business.
  2. When you are talking to friends, recommend someone. Word of mouth is a very powerful form of advertising that can be overlooked when everyone is so busy and doesn’t have a lot of time to catch up with friends or colleagues. Share a business card from someone you know, or spread the word about their websites or blogs.
  3. If you meet someone who might help a friend or colleague’s business, take a business card or jot down the details and then introduce them via social media or in person. Email them the details and spread the word about both businesses. They in turn will remember you for being kind and connecting them.