Public Service Announcement: MAKE IT EASY ON READERS

We are a society that loves instant gratification. The easier you make something, the more likely someone is to do it.  Which is why it is so, so important for you to make things as easy on potential readers as you possibly can.

Some of you heard me lament on this several months ago in my post about building a call to action into your marketing and social media efforts.  I'm not one for beating people over the head with an idea, but I've seen quite a few posts of late that make me feel the message is worth another visit.

Specifically, I wanted to focus on why every book promotion needs to have a link to buy your book and/or add it to Goodreads.

This one feels obvious, but you would be surprised at the number of book promotions I've seen as of late that did not include a single link to buy the author's book or add the author's book to Goodreads.

Make sure that every cover reveal, every interview, and every mention of your book includes links to  Amazon, B&N, and any other places your book is sold. If it's not yet available for sale, then include a link to add it to Goodreads and/or easy ways for the potential readers to learn when the book is available. In fact you should include a Goodreads link regardless - readers might want to add it to their queue before committing.

If someone else has done the write up, help them help you by reaching out and asking them to add the links. I promise they won't mind, because someday they may need to send a similar email.

If you regularly host book promotions on your blog for new releases and cover reveals, do the writer a solid and ask for the info if they don't provide it. It will make a huge difference in their promotional success.

Any post/blurb/write up about your book is a critical moment for gaining potential readers - if you've been lucky enough to get there attention, then you need to do everything in your power to close the sale.  Don't assume that they will remember the title, your name, or that they will even take in upon themselves to type the info into their preferred book vendor after they've read about it.  Make it easy for them.

Happy writing!

Marketing lesson: building a "call to action" into your marketing and social media efforts

Rule #1: You Must Have a Call To Action

As a writer, whether you recognize it or not, you have certain actions you want your potential readers to take when they engage with you on social media. For example: follow your blog, follow you on twitter, friend you on Facebook, add your book to Goodreads, buy your book, enter a contest, leave a comment, etc.  In the marketing world, asking a consumer to take a certain action via digital media is called a Call To Action, or CTA.

When you get to the stage in your career where you are marketing your book, every digital engagement opportunity you have with potential readers should have an easy to follow call to action.

I don't mean that everything you do in the social media space should have a "buy my book" message. I just mean that you need to make it as easy as possible for potential readers to engage with you further should they have that desire. That can be as simple as including a link to follow you on twitter or join your blog, or adding a link so they can add your book to their Goodreads "to-read" shelf.  Never assume that potential readers will take the next step on their own.

This is true even if you aren't yet selling a book. If you want people to engage with you, you have to give them a clear and compelling way to do so.

Here's an example. Have you ever been on a blog and decided you wanted to receive future posts (either via email or by following the blog), only to find that there was no visible sign-up button?  This has happened to me on multiple occasions, and I'm sorry to say that I ultimately left the blog and didn't come back. Not only did the blogger miss getting a new follower, but they missed having repeat opportunities to engage with me via future posts. This can easily be remedied by having a clear and easy to find CTA button on the page.

Rule #2: Make It Easy

This gets me to the second part of the CTA equation: it has to be as easy for the potential reader to engage with you as possible. The more clicks or steps you add to a desired action, the more likely you are to lose that person's interest.

To use the blog example, I could have written down the URL for the blog I wanted to follow, or even emailed the blogger to ask how I could receive regular blog posts.  But that's difficult and time consuming. I wanted a one-step button to click so the blog would be added to my regular Blogger listing, because that's how I read blogs.  Sure, there are some people who will take that extra step.  But most people won't.

Let's use the query forums from last month's WriteOnCon as another example. As you hopefully all know, the best way to get people to comment on your query is to comment on their queries, so that they in turn will pay it forward.

Some forum posters make it super easy for you to find their query by adding a link in the signature of their comment. After you've read their comment, all you have to do to pay it forward is click the link and poof - you're reading their query.

Here's an example of the signature I used during WriteOn to get people to comment on my first 250 words (the "First 250 ~ First 5 Pages" lines are active hyperlinks that jump to my post):

I received return comments from ~80% of the posts I commented on, and the high return rate has everything to do with the fact that I made it super easy for them to find my info.  Otherwise, they would have had to search through the hundreds of other forum posts to find my post.  Who has time for that?

Rule #3:  Apply Rules #1 & #2 Everywhere You Can

This post was inspired by several recent cover release blog posts I read that did not include a single way to engage with the author. Had they included a link to their Goodreads page, or even twitter, I probably would have engaged further.  But they didn't, and I'm sad to say that I didn't take that next step.

Take a look at the places you are posting and marketing yourself.  Have you made it easy for potential readers to engage with you? Contact you? Buy your book?

In a perfect world, every potential reader would remember your posts, tweets, pictures, messages, book blurbs, book name, and cover reveal you put out into the world.  But the reality is we're busy people with a lot on our plates.  Make it easy.  Make it simple. You'll have a higher level of engagement with potential readers as a result.

Why Being a Jerk is Bad For Business

I've read some disturbing posts recently about people who aren't playing nice during writing contests. Everything from agented writers entering contests designed for unagented writers, to general snarkiness when providing feedback to fellow contest entrants.

I don't want to turn this post into a rant, but clearly the don't be a jerk for the sake of not being a jerk argument doesn't always resonate, otherwise the interwebs would not be a buzzin' with stories of writers behaving badly. So I thought I'd make a different argument.

Being a jerk is bad for business.

If you've read any of my previous marketing posts, then you know that in the writing world your name is your brand.  And like any brand, if it's tarnished with negative feedback it will negatively impact sales. Said another way, regardless of how awesome you are at your craft, behaving badly can lead to negative feedback that will have an adverse affect on your brand and your future sales. Period.

Let's use the Oscars as an example.

If you lightly follow celebrity news, then you know that Anne Hathaway was slammed in the press throughout this year's award season for seeming disingenuous and annoying during interviews and acceptance speeches.  Then after she won the Oscar, word got out that she threw a hissy fit because Amanda Seyfried planned to wear a similar dress as hers to the Oscars, resulting in Hathaway swapping dresses at the last minute for the now infamous white nipple-dress.  See the nipples...er, dress, on the right.

Winning an Oscar should catapult Hathaway's brand into the celebrity stratosphere, but instead her award winning performance was overshadowed by bad press, even garnering the new nickname Anne Hathahate. Will people still go see her movies? Sure. She's a good actress. But the negative press has damaged her brand enough that there are former fans who won't be willing to see her next movie simply because they don't like her. That means less ticket sales, less revenue for production houses, and over time that can snowball into less movie deals for the Oscar-winning actress.

Here's the deal - in a world dominated by social media, your online behavior is public. As an unpublished author you might not think that matters, but if you use social media then you have a social media persona, and regardless of your publishing status, you are already beginning to build your brand.  And that pre-publishing reputation can follow you into publication.

The thing every writer needs to remember is that writers are readers too.  In fact, they're probably some of the most engaged readers because they're actively involved with social media, and likely read a lot of books and review a lot of the books they read. That means that the person you just p*ssed off during a writing contest is your future target market. Do you really want to p*ss off your future target market? I really hope the answer to that question is no.

And like it or not, some day you might need your fellow writers to help you promote your book - whether it's through blog tours, positive reviews or positive word-of-mouth. People like to help people they like, and if your fellow writers remember your bad behavior, the simple fact is they aren't going to want to help you. And they probably aren't going to want to buy your book either.

Don't be a jerk. It's bad for business. Instead, be like Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars. Be humble. Smile after you trip on the stairs. Say please and thank you. And always, always remember that social media platforms - blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, tumblr - are public forums, and what you do and say on those forums will directly impact your brand.

*steps off soap box*