Share Your Story: Video Blog, Why Book Marketing doesn't work

Share Your Story:How do I know if I should Self Publish?

My Brother Tom by Michelle Worthington at Mater Little Miracles Day in the Park

Please join us on Sunday February 26th, 2017, 9am - 4pm at Pelican Park, Clontarf in order to help raise money for Mater little Miracles in support of premature babies.

This event is open to the public. Please feel free to invite whomever you think might be interested :)

If you can't make it to the event and would still like to help out by donating, please check out our online donations page, which is set up through Mater:

https://give.everydayhero.com/au/candice-cassie-s-mater-little-miracles-day-in-the-park

We are planning a fun family day. There will be free entry and some free live entertainment.

I will be reading and signing copies of My Brother Tom, a book for older siblings of premature babies to help them understand and cope with a stressful time. I will also have my other books for sale with a portion of proceeds going to the event.

In fact, we have just confirmed we will have famous YouTube children's entertainer Debbie Doo flying up ...from Melbourne to perform throughout the day. What an incredible woman! The kids are going to go nuts :)

We will also have characters from your kids' favourite tv shows and movies making appearances, such as Marshall from Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig, Goku from Dragon Ball Z, and Superman.

There will be face painting, jumping castles, a petting zoo, crazy hair stand, disco tent, and a few other fun things for the kids, all for a $2-$5 donation each towards the charity.

We'll have a couple of professional photographers doing themed photoshoots for a great price. So bring your little ones down to capture some great pics, and donate to an amazing cause :)
We will have superheros, princesses, and pop stars themed shoots.

These shoots will need to be booked in, so please contact us for more details.

There will be food and market vendors there on the day so don't forget to bring some extra cash if you would like to do some shopping and eating. These vendors have made generous donations towards the charity in order to be at our event so we'd love to give them lots of business as thanks :)

Please invite your friends and join us for what will not only be a fun-filled day for the kids, but also helping towards an extremely worthy cause :)

Social Media Marketing and Purpose

This resonates with me on so many levels. First of all, as an author, you have to work. Nothing comes easy in this life and your passion must be proportionate to the size of your goal. I am not afraid of hard work. Secondly, keep working until you make it happen. It might be a long hard slog and there will be times you want to give up, but your tenacity must be stronger than your self-doubt.


Social media helps me reach people who I can't personally share my stories with. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to reach people all over the world and inspire  kids of all abilities with my passion for books and the power of words. Social media is very much like all other types of technological advancements. Used the right way, it can bring great benefit and happiness to people but when taken advantage of for self serving purposes, it can be damaging on so many levels. Users need to take personal responsibility for how they use social media. Authors need to be aware of the ways to use it correctly to send their message globally.


Finally, to be known as an expert in your field. Some people may mistake my goal of brand recognition as vanity or showmanship but I can't help people if they don't know who I am. I can't share my story with them, inspire them or make a difference in this world. I can promise you that as long as I see a need, I will try and fill it. It is my duty, not only to myself, but to my children and my community to increase the greater good. This year, I will work hard so that when people hear my name, they will smile

Goal Setting for Authors

Where are you now in your career as an author?

 

Outline your top 3 strengths and areas to determine where you are now.   Top 3 strengths:   1.     2.     3.

Top 3 areas for development:   1.     2.     3.

 

 

 

What drives you? What are you passionate about? What gives you that ‘whoo hoo’ moment during the day?

On the flip side, what do you want to avoid? What’s the part about what you do that makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning?

 

Focus on ensuring:

• Development goals are aligned to organisational strategy and needs; whilst supporting career aspirations; that they are clear and measurable.
• Development goals should build skills that directly impact your capability to enable increased performance.
•  Learning experiences and formal learning activities (if appropriate) are explored to support the achievement of goals.
• A timetable for completion of activities and milestones during the development year

 

 

 

 

A good author development plan:

 

• Focuses on the development of a few skills, balances the need to develop both strengths and development areas that are tied to performance goals
• Has concrete action steps
• Sets gradual, realistic, and achievable success measures.

Join us for the Share your Story Goal Setting for Authors workshop in March 2017. Join our MeetUp Group to be notified of the next workshop in your area.

http://www.meetup.com/en-AU/Share-Your-Story-Australia/

Making the Most of an Author Facebook Fan Page

Creating a Facebook fan page is an amazing way to promote your book, build awareness for your message, gather support for your book launch, or to advertise in a number of other ways. Creating a Facebook Fan page helps in building a following in no time at all. 

1. Ask fans to post their reviews of your book on your Facebook page

When fans post on a Facebook fan page, they do it in the same way they would post on your personal profile, commenting by typing in the text boxes and pressing "Enter" to display their comment. You can then engage with fans by commenting on their posts, so they are seen by more than the people within your own following.

2. Target who sees your posts

The truly amazing thing about Facebook advertising is that you can target your demographic. This will impact the number of people who will see the advert and also how much it will cost you. You need to decide on country, city, gender, age range, likes and dislikes and you can go down into further splits. As you change the demographics, you’ll see how many people the advert could be shown too. The more specific you can be, the better your chances an ad will have an impact.

3. Engage with your fans

The key to a successful Facebook page is to consistently update your page. You can decide on the frequency – at a minimum you want to post something new once a week. Your posts can be simple: something that inspired you (a picture, a quote, an interaction); an upcoming event you are holding; an update on the new book you are writing; a news article that you found interesting. Being consistent is more important than posting for the sake of posting. Think about what you are trying to achieve with each post.

Blogging for Authors

 

Marketing your own book, whether traditionally or self-published is a necessary evil of being an author in the 21st century. For those of us who are most at home behind a computer, in our PJs, drinking coffee by the bucket load, this can be a mile outside our comfort zone, but if you look at your writing career as a business, and tackle the marketing of your books in small, bite size pieces, it doesn't have to be something that takes the fun out of publishing your story. Blogging is a great way to achieve the goal of getting your message out to people you can't personally share your story with.

Tip 1: Book Appeal

Unfortunately, some genres of books seem to be better received than others. Commercial fiction is always easier to market. If you are writing non-fiction, make sure you develop a strong reputation in the field you are writing in so that you can vouch for the integrity of the information, as well as using your credentials as a marketing tool in its own right. When blogging about your books, it must reflect current learning and development and be relevant to your target audience. For example, with books for children, your audience are the readers but your target market is the people who buy the books for them. You must appeal to both.

Tip 2: Networking via Blogging

No modern marketing tool can compete with collaborating with your fellow authors to help each other break through the white noise and give your book a personal recommendation. Constantly connect with your peers to keep you grounded in the current climate of the publishing industry, learn from their experiences and share your own knowledge for the greater good. This can be online or face to face, but never underestimate the marketing power of networking.

Tip 3: Attend Blogging Events

Whether you attend as a guest speaker or an audience member, attending book events is a great way to engage readers, expand your network and learn, learn, learn from those in the know. Although they can be quite expensive, they are a tax deduction and in most cases, if you volunteer, you can attend at a reduced price or for free. Work the ones that have the most intrinsic value to what you write and what level you are at with your writing into your business budget and plan ahead  with babysitters/catching up with friends/ transport to make the experience as rewarding as possible.

 

 

Tip 4: Embrace Technology

We are the first generation of authors who have unlimited worldwide access to our readers via social media and blogging. Like it or not, you must have a website and an online presence. Get comfortable using the types of technology your readers and target market use, not only to be confident sharing your work to build your online platform, but also to make use of the tools that give an insight into analytics that will let you know which ways are connecting more efficiently than others, in order to cut down on spamming and focus on what works.

Tip 5: Find a balance

Not only do you need to find a balance between spending time blogging and spending time writing, you need to find a balance with what you are putting on your social platforms that gives your audience an opportunity to hear about your work without them getting sick to death of seeing your posts constantly plugging your books. There is a 30/70 rule that states 30% of the content should be marketing your book, 70% should be general content letting them know a little more about you, your likes and dislikes and giving them the opportunity to connect with you as a person. It's not called "social" media for nothing. Don't shout about your books, build a community of people who will support your success and shout about it for you.


As authors, we need to continually adapt our online marketing strategies to a dynamic publishing industry, not only if we want to stay viable as authors that large publishing companies would like to invest in, but so we can stay on our readers radars. Break it down into small steps and don't let it overwhelm you. 

www.michelleworthington.com