Yesterday, I wrote about using Blog Tours to sell books. Today we will go further to look at repurposing and gaining visibility for your content.
Evergreen
One of the first rules of thumb for repurposing content is to make it as evergreen as possible. What this simply means is that the content will be as timely today as a year from now.
Infographic
Take a portion of the content and add it to a graphic to create an engaging infographic. Lead people bac to your blog with the URL in the graphic.
Reformat
Reformatting your content for different mediums means appealing to more audiences and extending your reach such as recording the content, shooting a short video, or moving information around with a new intro paragraph and closing paragraph.
Granted, in some case, you won’t be able to repurpose without doing a major rewrite, while in other cases, the changes will be minimal.
Promotions
Something else that will get your more mileage for your efforts is to promote the blog post.
The more visibility the post receives obviously the more opportunity to sell your books.
Here are 11 ways to promote your book with a blog post:
Promote your posts
- Post the permalink on social media. It’s likely you have several social media accounts. These are ideal places for you to position your blog posts.
- Take short snippets from your blog post and turn into tweets. Within minutes you can likely get dozens of tweets from one blog post. Add in the permalink to drive traffic back to your blog post.
- Use hashtags to gain more traction. For example, if you have a book on dog training, you could use #dog #dogtraining #dogs as some of the hashtags.
- Post the full article on 3 – 6 top article directories. In the resource box, direct readers back to your blog with something like, “For more articles by _____________ go to _____________.”
- Add your post to blog communities. There are plenty of locations that allow you to promote your blog post. There are often 30-day blog challenges for getting lots of traction for your efforts.
- Stay on top of comments posted about the post and respond in a timely manner. The more interaction you have with your readers, the better.
- Keyword optimize your post and headline. This is essential for getting the most out of your efforts.
- Ask readers to take some type of action at the end of the post. This could be to leave a comment, opt in for something, buy your book or simply hit one of the social media share buttons. The more you can get readers to take an action, the better.
- Provide various ways for visitors to get on your subscriber list. Offering something that solves a specific problem will generate more opt ins than something that is too generic.
- Put portions of your blog post in an autoresponder (AR) sequence leading back to the original post by way of the permalink at the end of the AR message.
- With high-trending topics, make the media aware of your post. You never know what can happen as a result.
Bottom line is this: your job is to do all you can to get the word out about your book. Using blog posts to do so can result in lots of traction.
Keep this in mind: if you don’t do all you can to get your message out, you are doing those who would benefit from your information a huge disservice. Unless they know about who you are, what you do and how you can help them, you cannot impact them in the least.
The more visibility your content receives, the more you, as an author, can reach potential readers. One reason you want to gain the visibility is for readers to become fans. One of the first places fans go to in order to check out the works of an author is Amazon.
If they like want they see, there’s a great chance they will buy your book(s) directly from Amazon. When they buy your books, your rankings go up. So much in fact, you could even hit #1 on Amazon.
Want to find out how to increase your chances of hitting #1? Check out my FREE webinar – Insider Secrets to Hit #1. Click here.
This is such great advice! Thank you! I’m really looking forward to putting all of these steps into action. My one question is this: how do you make the media aware of your posts?
Amazing advice! Thank you Kathleen 🙂
You are most welcome! Thanks for your comment.
Awesome tips, Kathleen! I’d add one more … create images with snippet quotes from your book to post on Facebook and Pinterest.
Great tip. Thanks Kathy.
I am working on a book that kind of goes along with my blog.
Fantastic. Always great when we can connect the dots so nicely.
Thank you for this useful information, Kathleen! I am finishing to write my book myself right now!
Outstanding! What is your book about?
Again, wonderful information! I’m saving it for later use. Still working on my book and not in a hurry to promote just yet (yes, I know I should start building a base now….just not a fan of this part of the process).
What great advice. I do some of the steps but the one thing I slack on is using hashtags. I need to work on that! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I had no idea that article directories were still a good marketing strategy … thank you.
Many roads lead to success. It’s not one thing over another but many strategies combined.
Thank you, Kathleen – great advice, as always!
Thanks!
Always super great tips from you, Kathleen!
Thanks Carol. Marketing books is one of my greatest passions and helping other authors as much as possible is all part of this.
It all sounds great. I do have a question – what are article directories?
It would depend on your market and message. But my favorites (for my market and message) are EzineArticles, EvanCarmichael and SelfGrowth.
Hi Kathleen! You gave a lot of great tips. Now I just have to learn how to apply them. Autoresponders, blog communities, article directories, and permalinks are all very mysterious to me. I barely know how to tweet. I don’t get the point of tweeting. If I have something to say, by golly, I need more than 140 characters to say it! Regardless, I enjoyed reading your post and see that I have my work cut out for me. Thanks!
I used to feel the same way, but there are specific strategies that do tend to work great with tweets. One is to “entice” people with a few words and add in a link that leads to more information such as a blog post. Many things online can seem confusing at first but when we dig deep, and find out more, it’s as if a light bulb goes on. 🙂
Great info .I lived all that you mentioned. But article directories have a gray history .That’s the only one I didn’t try .#UBC day2
What I like about the article directories is that the articles can live on for quite a long time. My three choices for directories (for my market) are EzineArticles, EvanCarmichael and SelfGrowth. All have been great for me.
Great tips! I’m a firm believer that you always get back what you put into something. I wrote a book last year and fell flat but I’m looking forward to taking these tips and making the second much better! These tips can also be applied to promoting any kind of blog. Looking forward to following you through the Ultimate Blog Challenge!
Thanks Shelly. Promotions is an ongoing process. I look forward to seeing your book rise up and get in the hands of lots of people through your marketing efforts.
Hi, Kathleen.
Lots of great ideas here.
Another way you can get more traction from your blog post is to do trailers.
Some people do book trailers but you can also do blog post trailers.
Use an app like AdobeSpark to…
1. Share three – 5 points (ex. this article you can share 5/11 points)
2. Add a Read More… slide
3. Add a URL slide (use bitly to shorten the link with a customized link to (“book-promo-ideas”)
4, Add your logo/photo at the end
You can share this on social media and even add it to YouTube and Vimeo. Link to the post in the description as well.
#blogboost
Outstanding. I will check it out.
The advice is so good this is something I’m actually going to print out so I can keep it in the forefront of my information.
Awesome! Glad the information is helpful
Thanks so much!
Thanks for the concise checklist Kathleen! You’re saving me boatloads of time by compiling this into one list. Appreciate your wisdom sharing!
It is my pleasure Maggie. I love lists.