Now more than ever authors are wearing two hats; writing and marketing. It’s not enough anymore to write the great American novel and send it off to the publisher for them to put the word out about it, we have to do it ourselves. At first this can seem daunting. If you’d like to know more about marketing on social media for authors you can check out my previous blog post HERE. But the bread and butter of an author’s marketing is their blog. This is a great opportunity for an author to not only show off their writing skills but to also relate to an audience in a new way. I’ll tell you a little about my process in setting up my author blog and hopefully it helps you to set up your own someday!
Attach Blog to Author Website
A lot of websites are set up with blogs already. There are some to choose from. I was most familiar with WordPress and so I used that site to build my website and blog on my own. It’s a very simple and user friendly site that has 24/7 assistance if you have questions on how to do something. They are extremely helpful every time I have to contact them. I have yet to find a problem they couldn’t fix for me. I do pay for the premium business site. In doing this I have access to premium templates, I can advertise on my site, and more. To have a specialized domain it costs me $18 a year. This is important because it gives your site professionalism as opposed to having wordpress.com attached to the end of your domain. On top of that I pay $96/yr for the premium account. I promise you if you put the work and effort into your site that it pays for itself.
Theme of your Blog
Once you have your blog all set up through your site it’s time to choose the theme of your blog. For me, I always knew I wanted to give back to the authorship community. The theme of my blog is helping other authors. I write articles on marketing, writing, reading, and more. The main point that makes a blog successful is that you are giving your audience something they deem valuable information. A lot of independent authors are constantly searching for marketing tips, writing tips, and advice on how to create a successful authorship business. That is what I am building my blog around. If you choose to take your blog in another direction your theme could be to connect with the readership community instead. You could write book reviews, do author interviews, write about common themes, and more. It’s important to keep an eye on what’s important to your audience and try to tell weigh in on it in your own unique style.
Blog Style
Your blog is a representation of your brand so you want to make sure the style is consistent with your newsletters, your website, you social media. It should all have a cohesive look. You can achieve this by using the same colors, the same author photo, and the same tag lines. For mine, I have made turquoise the theme color and I use it for all my banners and menus. I use the same photo for my website and blog as I do for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more so that no matter what platform anyone goes to they know it’s me, the same Alex Apostol who is an author.
Schedule
We’re all busy! And blogs take time and effort. It’s a good idea to have a group of ideas for blog articles from the get go and write them out ahead of time. WordPress lets you schedule blog posts in advance and it even automatically posts to your blog, Facebook, Twitter, and more! The more automated you can make things the better. I am still working at streamlining my blog. I have decided I will write an original article to help authors that posts every Monday and I will have a new Author Spotlight where I feature a new author every Thursday. What I would like to do if I can ever find the time is to write all my blog articles and Author Spotlights for the month and have them scheduled so the rest of the month I can just focus on writing. I think if I buckled down and spent a few days writing these I could make it happen and so could you!
Do you have any other tips for authors on how to build their blog? We’d love to hear about it in the comments! Happy Writing and Happy Reading!
I’m not going to lie, social media platforms can be scary and intimidating. As an author it took a lot of research, trial, and error. It’s taken me years to figure out what works best for me in marketing and gaining new followers who actually love to read and write like me. And I want to share it all with you in the hopes that my method might help you as well.
Instagram
This is the number one platform for authors right now. It is full of millions upon millions of readers and writers all across the world! Of course you’ll get your paid promoters and scammers but it’s actually pretty easy to find the real bibliophiles out there too. I would suggest you post every day, whatever time works best for you. Once a day is good enough. Everyone once in a while if you get something special and want to post twice that’s good too. Your content should be book-centered and of course, being the photocentric site it is, you should have a good pictures. When it comes to this I do a mixture. I post some photos of my private life; me reading, me writing, my reading and writing spaces, my pets (usually with books), personal bookstacks and photos of my bookshelves. I also like to create marketing photos for my books through PicMonkey. I’ll choose a background that goes with my theme for the month, like right now it’s autumn. Then I will add in my book cover or covers for a series and build my post around that to present my titles to my audience and try to make a new reader friend. I also try not to always make my Instagram all about me. That’s why I started up my weekly author spotlight blog posts so I can share other indie author’s works with my following. It feels good to give back to the community.
Example of one of my marketing photos for Instagram
To get started, be sure you create a separate author Instagram from your private one and make it a business account. That way you can gain access to your insights to see what works and what doesn’t.
Gaining followers for your author Instagram is not as hard as it sounds. I’ve gotten into a pretty good rhythm and it’s great because so many of my followers are either authors and writers like me or they love to read and end up checking out my books. We talk about books and interact with each other. I always told myself I didn’t want to build a fan page with my social media; I’m building a community. I can’t expect everyone to follow me when I don’t bother to follow them. Here is the strategy I use to gain interactive followers;
I don’t know if you know this or not but there is a thing on Instagram called Bookstagram. It’s a great hashtag if you’re looking for one. Everyone uses it in the bookish community! When you start following enough reader people you’ll start to see posts that say “Book Follow Train”. Take part in them! It’s a great way to meet other authors and readers and gain new followers. My little secret is I not only participate but I also like all the people who liked that post. Sometimes readers don’t want to go through all the rules of following a book follow train but they’ll like the post. I’ll do this all week long, Monday through Friday, several times a day. In that time I probably end up following about a thousand people. In turn a few hundred will follow me back and I call that a win!
Another great way to gain followers for your brand is to look into the followers of authors who write books like yours. Those people already show an interest in that genre and will probably like yours too. Follow their followers. The ones that show interest in you and follow you back will be great additions to your community and sales. Since I’m building a community, I believe in two way communication. I give everyone until Sunday to follow me back if they’re going to. If they don’t, then I unfollow, or remove them from my community. Nothing harsh or against them. It’s just hard to interact with someone who doesn’t interact with you. There are many apps out there to help you keep track of who follows you and who doesn’t so you can do this successfully.
Another great method is to follow hashtags for your genre and follow people who post in it. I don’t use this one often enough but I should. These are all quick and steady ways to grow your Instagram with real readers. Nothing is better than gaining organic followers. Don’t ever pay for followers! Readers and writers don’t care about your numbers, they care about your content and interaction. I will say that Instagram takes up the majority of my time though. I am on there every other hour following more people and I have my comments turned on so every time someone leaves a comment on my post I can respond back to it almost immediately. That way we can get a dialogue going and I can make a new reader friend. That’s what it’s all about.
Facebook
This is the second best author community for getting the word out about you and your books in my opinion. To get started you’ll want to create a page because you don’t want to use your private Facebook for your brand.
I like to make things easy so I streamline my Instagram posts to post directly to my Facebook page as well. I then share that post with all the author, writer, reader communities that I have joined. I will usually post it with a question to get everyone engaged that has something to do with what I posted. This is great for the private life photos, the #amreading photos, the bookstacks, the author spotlights. The only place you might get rejected is when you try to repost your marketing photos. A lot of groups have specific days they allow authors to promote their own books or they don’t allow it at all. With this I just suggest you read the guidelines to the groups and just try it out. If they say no they say no. And be sure to participate in these groups as well! You’ll make some great friends and possibly some new readers and fans.
Facebook is a slow and steady grow. There’s no secrets to gaining followers fast without spending a lot of money on advertisements, which I have given up on for now. I only gain a handful of people a week but they all interact with me and I have made some great friendships through it.
Twitter
This may be a good platform for authors and readers. I can honestly say I don’t know except I never had much success with it. It seems like a good place for discussions. People on Twitter tend to be “keyboard warriors” though. They can be a little judgmental and mean if you disagree with them and they’ll try to ruin you or your brand because of it. If you do pursue Twitter as one of your main outlets I would warn you to proceed with caution. I tend to only use as an automated repost of my Instagram posts, to offer up the links for my Bookfunnel promotions, and share my blog posts. I never actually go onto the Twitter app to do anything really. I don’t interact on there or check my comments or messages. I’ve turned off all notifications. I do get some traffic on my website from Twitter so I wouldn’t say don’t share to it. I just want to warn that readers aren’t buying books because they saw them on Twitter. They’re buying because they saw it on Instagram or Facebook.
Pinterest
I do recommend you have a Pinterest, but I find it more helpful for gathering inspiration for my stories. This can, in turn, become marketing for other pinners to become interested in your work, but that’s not my main motive for using it. I create a board for each story and add pins to it as I find them that go along with the story or inspire me for my next writing project. I divide them up by series. I also have a board to repost my website blogs as well. I don’t really follow how many people are following me or repinning my pins. It’s nothing impressive I would say. But it’s still a fun creative outlet for authors.
TikTok
I have a TikTok but it’s for my horse blog and not my writing or authorship. I don’t think I will start one for that because I never got into making the bookish videos like some people do on Instagram and TikTok. I am not charismatic in person, only in writing so I don’t feel comfy putting my face out there in videos doing goofy stuff all the time. If you are, then I say go for it because it seems to be a big draw and a trend right now. There are hashtags for readers and authors on TikTok just like on Instagram. I would say you could make a video with TikTok and repost it to Instagram even, like I do with my horse blog. Cross posting saves you so much time and energy. But when it comes to growing your presence on TikTok I can speak into that. It’s much the same as Instagram. Follow and some of the people will follow you back. You can look at followers of people who post in your genre and content style to gain followers you know already like to read your type of books. Once a week go into your following list and clear out the ones who don’t say friends but following. That’s how you know they never followed you back and don’t care to interact with you.
Website Blog
I will touch on this lightly since I plan to do an entire post about the author blog later, but just know it IS super important. This is a great way to drive readers and authors to your website which means they are that much closer to checking out and possibly buying one of your books! Yay! I have found that what works best for me is to post twice a week. I post one blog article that is helpful to other authors, like this one, and then one blog post featuring my Author Spotlight to help other authors and readers connect. It’s my way of giving back and it’s fun making new friends in this way. I created my two day schedule, I post on those two days every week. I write my blogs the week before and schedule them so they automatically post and share to my social media. The more you can automate everything the better!
Automating Posts
I have discovered an app I really love where you can plan out your posts in advance and schedule them so they post automatically to Instagram and Facebook called Tailwind. I have paid the $100 for a year’s worth of service and it’s so worth it in my opinion because I can schedule an entire week’s worth of posts and then forget about it. All I do is answer comments from there. You can create an Instagram post, have it cross post automatically to Facebook and you’re done. They even suggest hashtags that go along with your description and color codes them for very popular, popular, and not popular so you can use hashtags to your advantage.
I hope some of this information will be useful to you in growing your social media community for your authorship brand! It really works for growing it for any purpose really. Try it out and see what works for you. Social media really is all trial and error. Happy Writing!
I’ve been an independent author since 2012. I have a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Marketing. Somehow in all my research on how to market my books as an indie author I never came across any mention of Bookfunnel until last year! I signed up for a webinar series and offhandedly one of the videos said “And there’s Bookfunnel but you probably already know all about that so I wont’ even get into it.” I knew nothing about it! So of course I checked it out and it has been a marketing breakthrough for me every since.
What is Bookfunnel?
Bookfunnel is an app and a site for both readers and writers. As a writer, you sign up for it and pay for it because to get the full benefits you have to pay for a yearly subscription. Once you have created your account you can add your books, create landing pages for free newsletter giveaways or sales pages, join promotions, and watch your mailing list and sales soar. The way this happens is that all the authors who join a promotion are obligated to share that promotion through their mailing lists and on their social media. In the end, it opens hundreds of thousands of doors for you that you might otherwise never have found.
First you need to create your account. I recommend paying right off the bat because I’m telling you now the service is well worth it. It’s $100 for a year which can sound like a lot, especially to us starving artists, but it will more than pay for itself in the end if you use it right. Once you’ve signed up and pay you can get started! I would recommend adding all your books first. All you do is click on the menu tab that says “Books” and start adding them. Here you will add your cover, a note to the readers, your book description, and your different formats of your eBook; PDF, Mobi, and ePub. You can easily convert your pdfs into mobis and epubs through free services online for this. Here is the one I like to use.
I recommend you take advantage and supply your potential readers with all formats so they can choose the one most convenient for them in the end. Be sure to take advantage of the notes to the reader and description portion of your book’s page. This is where you can really sell yourself and your work.
Creating Landing Pages
You have two landing page options for Bookfunnel; the sales landing page and the newsletter landing page. If you choose the sales landing page you can join all sales promotions with it and it will redirect those interested in your book to its sale pages, as many as you have so the reader can choose where they would like to purchase your book. If you choose the newsletter landing page then you are going to be giving your eBook away for free in exchange for an email address to add to your author mailing list. I don’t know about you, but growing my mailing list was always a struggle for me. I stayed at a consistent 100-125 subscribers for years. They would trickle in a handful a year at a time from the sign up on my website and social media and that was it. Once I started using Bookfunnel they, well, funneled in quickly. I have not even been using it for a year and I’m over 3500 subscribers now and growing every single day. I try to do an even number of sales and newsletter giveaways and I would recommend you do that too, but you need to create both types of landing pages for each book you have before you enter promotions. When you are creating your landing pages be careful not to put a date in if you don’t want it to ever expire. I find creating landing pages that don’t expire is most convenient. I can always go back and update it so there’s no real need to make one that disappears after a month unless you are planning a special one-time giveaway or promo. Be sure to add all links, including audiobook links when applicable. It’s always best to give your future readers the most options on what format they want to read your book. Take a look at your landing page’s preview first and if everything looks good then publish it and you’re ready to go.
Joining Promotions
Now for the whole reason you signed up for Bookfunnel in the first place, the promos! There are so many to choose from every single month. I like to go all out and enter a book or two of mine into every promo that has to do with my genre of books. The great thing about the promotions are they are separated into genres and the descriptions the promo organizer gives usually lays out pretty clear the types of books they’re looking for. Some can get pretty specific, like only books with dragons in them, while others are all-genre holiday giveaways. In any given month I am involved in at least 20-30 different promotions. I have even started my free and on sale eBook newsletter I do once a month where I share all the promotion links and my subscribers really like these. They look forward to them because they are all readers looking for something new to read. That’s the great thing about Bookfunnel! You know everyone signing up for your newsletter is someone who loves to read. To join a promotion you simply scroll through them all and pick one. Click on it and then read through the description to make sure your book will be a good fit. Next, you simply hit “Join Promotion” and pick the book you want to add. You don’t have to worry about accidentally adding a newsletter landing page to a sales promotion and vice versa because Bookfunnel will only display the landing pages for that type of promotion. Sometimes the creator of the promotion will have a link for you to click where they want you to fill out a survey to answer some questions. I’ve found these are usually very simple and are for the more serious promotion creators who are trying to collect some data about the people who sign up for their promos so they can better create in the future. If you want to see the list of promotions you’ve joined just click on Group Promos and then click Your Promos. It will then display in order your joined promos. Blue means its a newsletter giveaway promo and green means its a sales promo. It shows you todays date and then how long the promo runs and even puts a little star on the date you chose to share the promo with your newsletter, as it is always required every share a promo with their newsletter subscribers at least once.
Creating Your Own Promotion
Another option you have is to create your own promotion and invite other Bookfunnel authors to join in with you. I’ve found this works well for me if I create my own promotion about once a month, that runs for the whole month, calling for books very similar to mine. I write in YA Fantasy, Zombie Apcoalypse Horror, and Women’s Fiction so these are the three types I typically create and I end up getting quite a few authors joining in with me. To create your own promotion you click on the Group Promos tab and then go up to the righthand corner of the screen where it has a big orange button that says “Action”. This brings up a dropdown menu for you when you click on it. Choose “Post a New Promo” and get started putting it together. Pick what kind of promo and the dates you want it to run. You’ll need a banner photo, a description, and to add your own books to it. You also can restrict the number of books a single author can add so they don’t dominate the promo. Typically 2 is the magic number. Most authors will see the promo is up when they search group promos and that’s how they will join, but there are also Facebook groups dedicated to posting Bookfunnel promos so authors can join too.
Creating an eBook Gift
Bookfunnel is not only for promotions but you can also use it to gift eBooks to individual people as well. They make this super easy with the “Gift a Book Tab”. It’s very self-explanatory. When you do this you can see who from your giftees actually downloaded the book and who didn’t. This is a great use for ARC reviews and sneak peeks in my opinion. So often I get people who say they want a free copy in exchange for writing a review but then only half of them will actually download it and only half of them will actually remember to review it or put the effort in. It’s frustrating but hey, everyone’s busy and people forget. But Bookfunnel is great for tracking these things so you know who follows through and who doesn’t.
Adding Subscribers to Your Mailing List
I use Mailchimp as my newsletter server and it works really well with Bookfunnel. To download your emails you simply go to your homepage on Bookfunnel. Under your recent activity it will show you a list of your books that have had activity. Click on the title link and it will take you to that book’s activity in detail. When you click Export CVS you have the option to export new, all, or everything. I always click new so I don’t get repeats and I do this 1-2 times a day. Then I go into my Mailchimp audience dashboard page, click manage audience, import contacts, and upload the CVS I just downloaded from Bookfunnel. It transfers their name and email for me automatically quick and easy. Whenever I import my contacts Mailchimp automatically sends them out my welcome email that I have set up. Sometimes people unsubscribe, but most of the time they don’t, and I’ve even gotten a lot of interaction from those I’ve imported from Bookfunnel. These people love books and love to interact with authors and talk to them about books.
Bookfunnel as a Reader
Authors are the best readers and so you’ll probably want to use the service to start collecting free and on sale books of your own. Just download the app on your phone and you’ll be able to browse promos and download all the books you want. Of course, you will have to sign up for mailing lists just like everyone else, and that’s a good thing. It’s a great way to network with other authors and also gain inspiration for you own newsletters by seeing what others in your field are doing.
This is the basics on how to use Bookfunnel as an author. It has been a worth-it investment for me and I will continue to use as long as I can because it always has successful results for my sales and for growing my mailing list. I would advise any author, indie or traditional, to get on there, pay for it, and play around with it. Join tons of promos and watch your number grow. I feel so blessed to have found this service and I hope it can help you reach new readers as well. Tell me all about your experience with Bookfunnel in the comments below! And as always, Happy Writing & Happy Reading!
This has been trial and error for me over the years but now I feel like I finally have a handle on it and my mailing list is growing nice and steadily. Before I was unconvinced that an author’s mailing list could be as important as everyone was claiming it was. Now that I see my list growing in numbers daily and I’m actually getting interaction and sales from my loyal readers I see just how important an author’s mailing list is. There are many methods for growing your mailing list. I’ve tried many, some work better than others but I’ve found if you test out to find what combination is right for you then you can’t go wrong. A lot of times authors can’t afford to invest in signing up with an email marketing service so I’ve put together some free and effective methods for you to implement and monitor on your own.
Social Media
This is every author’s first go to for pretty much any marketing, not wrongfully so either. If we’ve done a good job growing our social media audience then it can be a great tool for getting readers to sign up for our mailing list. In another blog I’m going to go over the best social media platforms for authors, but lets just say for argument’s sake you’ve got the basics going for your brand; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
One way you can build your mailing list is to be sure to include a post every once in awhile informing your followers how they can sign up for your mailing list and what your list has to offer that will be enticing to them. Every time I post one of these I get a few organic sign ups from it, nothing earth shattering but every person counts.
Another way you can use social media to gain followers is by including the link to your sign up in your bio. Believe it or not, readers actually do check out your bio to figure out what you’re all about and when they do they should be led to signing up for your mailing list. It’s a great place to include the link and also entice them by letting them know what they’re getting when they sign up. A popular method for authors is to offer a free eBook of theirs after sign up. I don’t get a ton of sign ups from my social media bio but some is better than none still!
Another way is to add the link to your email signup at the end of your messages and posts with others. This is especially helpful with Facebook. Often I don’t remember to do this, and mainly because Mailchimp doesn’t have links I can remember by heart to add to the end of each post. I would like to try this more to see how successful it can be. I also need to try to participate better in author and reader groups to use this method.
Email Signature
When using your author email, or even your non-author regular email, you should include the link to sign up for your mailing list after your name. I take it one step further and include my website link, my social media links, and my mailing list links. This has been moderately successful in gaining organic followers. Not only does it encourage readers who reach out to me through email but you never know who is a reader when you exchange emails. Everyone is a potential new member of your audience if you give them the chance. All you can do is put the word out and see if you get any bites and I’ve found this to be a non-pushy, automated, and successful way of doing that.
BookFunnel
This has, by far, been the most successful method for growing my mailing list organically with real readers and quickly. If you haven’t checked out this site yet, you need to! It’s a paid program, but it’s affordable and in my opinion well worth it. The way it works is you either give away your book as a newsletter promotion or you sell your book through a landing page. You enter your books into promotions with similar genre books and each author that participates shares it across their social media and in their newsletters. Depending on which promotion you choose you are either gathering a new member to your mailing list or you are potentially making a sale. I try to do both evenly because it’s been successful for both.
Business Cards/Bookmarks
My Old Business Card for my Previous site
I have not had huge success with this but I blame it all on myself and not on the method. I know some authors that have had huge success with handing out business cards or bookmarks to promote their work and gain mailing list members. I am painfully shy and introverted when it comes to talking myself up and selling my work in person. If you have the guts to get out there, socialize, and talk about your work with someone face-to-face when this could be a great method for you! I’ve had tons of cards and bookmarks printed up and have given away maybe a handful. I would advice you don’t invest in it unless you’re committed to following through with it.
Sign Up Sheets at Events
I have yet to participate in a book signing or author festival or event. First of all, shy introvert here. Second, COVID put a pause to all that for a good two years. These events are just now starting to come back and even so they’re not the same as they used to be. I just don’t know if I have it in me to talk to all those people and sell myself like that, but if you do then I say go for it! There’s plenty of authors, indie and self-published, who swear by it. Whenever you’re putting together your booth or if you’re just setting up a small display on someone else’s, be sure to include a clipboard with a sign up sheet for your mailing list. You don’t have to pry into everyone’s personal information. First name and email is enough to build your list effectively. I would suggest having a check box for if they would like to sign up for your Advanced Reader Copy program too. It turns out, a lot of people are willing to sign up for this. Who doesn’t love a free book and it helps to build reviews for your new releases.
Book Back Matter
I have used this, though I have yet to check up on my link to see how successful it is but adding the link to your mailing list in the back matter of your book is a must, along with social media links and website links and sneak peeks of your other books and more. The person looking at it is obviously already interested in your work so why not let them know they can gain another book of yours for free and get monthly emails from you about you, your work, your life, and more? You’d be surprised how many readers are interested in the person who wrote the book they just enjoyed.
Author Website
Make sure you have buttons or links to your mailing list displayed prominently and in several places on your website. If you look at mine the first thing you see is a banner explaining what the reader is going to get that’s special if they sign up for my list and right below is the large button for them to click. This isn’t the only place I have it either. I also include it on the bottom of the main page, in the sidebar of my blog page, on my about page, and more. From a marketing perspective, a potential customer has to see something on average seven times before they click on it to consider a purchase. Joining a mailing list isn’t as big of a financial commitment as buying a book but sometimes it still takes a little repetitive nudges to get them to do it.
Guest Blogging, Author Interviews, Book Features
A great way to get the word out about you and your work is to open yourself up to more readers through other authors and bloggers. If you google book bloggers and author blogs you can contact them personally to see if they’d be interested in either interviewing you, featuring your book, or letting you be a guest blogger on their site. When you do this be sure to include all your links including the link to sign up for your mailing list.
If you have more methods of building your mailing list please share them with everyone in the comments section. I love trying new ways to reach a wider audience, as I’m sure all authors out there do. Authors are more marketers than writers now more than ever. Let’s share information with each other to help each other grow as authors! And as always Happy Writng (and Reading!)
