The following is a guest post from speculative author, P. H. Solomon. His most recent works include The Black Bag and the upcoming novel, The Bow of Destiny.
So you need readers for the work you are publishing whether you are an indie or traditional author. An email list is perfect to reader discovery since you can grow the list before publication. Why grow the list before publishing your book? To grow followers who have a greater interest in your work and to whom you can communicate your release date and, therefore, gain exposure, or chatter, about your book. Also, an email list converts to sales much more easily than most other social media marketing does.
I attended a free webinar from Michael Hyatt last spring that explained this topic well and gave a good template to develop a list. I must admit that I’ve been slow to grow my list but I’m focusing on it now with some success. However, with little to share in the way of information, sales and products it can be challenging to build such a list. Here are some tips, gleaned from both Hyatt’s webinar and recent experience, to gain traction with this type of project:
- Sign-up for MailChimp to handle emailing your product information. MailChimp is free to use up to a limit and it’s easy to create a campaign template for a newsletter.
- If you use MailChimp try the beta sign-up tab for Facebook. You can add a tab to your Facebook page with a custom title. You will need to manage the tabs to move it to a visible location.
- Make sure the correct mail form is in use on your site (I’m currently using free-hosted services on WordPress). In my case, I wasn’t using the correct coding in my blogs but now I am.
- Write good content from your blog to attract readers. If they like your content they are more likely to follow the site by email and become a fan of your book(s).
- Blog regularly to attract visitors and tweet about your posts several times a day – identify your best times of day by using Tweriod (for more great Twitter tools see this post).
- When tweeting your posts, try to put in the most active hashtags you can use (check hashtags.org and my recent blog regarding this). Don’t forget to use accounts that are related to your subject since one that is may re-tweet your post(s). If it’s a larger account you may gain more traffic to your site and translate that into a growing email list.
- Offer some sort of added-value content for your followers whether it’s a newsletter, digest, short story or short book. Added value will help you translate visits to fans and email followers.
- Work on your social media growth regularly, even aggressively. Why? In growing your social media following, your online tribe grows and is – hopefully – funneled to your website where you can try to convert them to fans. Remember it’s all interconnected such that you hope to convert followers to visitors and the latter to readers/fans who are your best advertising.
Have you started and email list for your books? What ideas to you have to discover readers? I’d also love to connect with you over social media so check my contact page for that information. See the News page for announcements and remember to sign-up to receive news and posts by email. I’ve added a new sign-up tab on my FaceBook page to simplify the process. New followers can download The Black Bag via free coupon today!
Thanks for reading and a BIG THANKS to Daniel for hosting me today!
PHS
P. H. Solomon lives in the greater Birmingham, AL area where he strongly dislikes yard work and sanding the deck rail. However, he performs these duties to maintain a nice home for his loved ones as well as the family’s German Shepherds. In his spare time, P. H. rides herd as a Computer Whisperer on large computers called servers (harmonica not required). Additionally, he enjoys reading, running, most sports and fantasy football. Having a degree in Anthropology, he also has a wide array of more “serious” interests in addition to working regularly to hone his writing. He is currently finishing the first book of a fantasy series and hopes to see it in print soon. He has also been chosen as a VIP member of Nonnie Jules’ Rave Reviews Book Club
Daniel, thank you for hosting this post this week. You have been most gracious!