My top book marketing tip …

In the olden days

In another life I was a successful marketing manager – I even have a degree on the subject. So, when my first book, The Blue Suitcase, was published a couple of years ago,  I was not daunted by the thought of marketing it. Far from it. It seemed as easy as floating on water. And I certainly didn’t think I needed to use social media to help me – I’m sort of old school when it comes to technology. This is still my phone today. You get the picture?

However

I only realised how wrong I was when my techie son insisted I set up a twitter account and blog and I saw both paperback and ebook sales soar. I’ve been blogging and tweeting every since and, until recently, I even thought I was quite good at it. But that was the voice of ignorance and before I discovered the wonderful blogs by the super blogger, editor and writer Belinda Pollard and the excellent writer and blogger Molly Greene.

The future

I now realise I have merely been dipping my big toe in the social media pool. There is a whole lot of stuff  I could be doing to market my books and my time better – as anyone who has a blog will tell you, keeping a blog can suck the creative life blood out of you, if you let it!

So, I’ve made a decision! In the run up to the launch of my new novel, Killer Shoeshine, I am going to plunge into the deep end of the social media pool and make some changes here.

Change number one

One of the first things I’m going to try and do is make a new landing page for my blog and  book/s. I read an excellent piece about landing pages in Belinda’s helpful blog post: 2 enduring, low-cost, book marketing tactics.  And if you are looking for strategies to help you market your book/s,  my top tip is to follow Belinda’s and Molly’s blogs! (Molly even has a great book on blogging called Blog It).

Mistakes will be made

Of course, mistakes will be made. Especially as the techie son who helps me with all this stuff  is away on his travels! But, mistakes or not, sink or swim, this neo-luddite is moving on 😉

So, what about you? Do you embrace social media or do you run from it?  Do you think writers can be successful without using social media? Do you have a book marketing tip of your own? Whatever your thoughts, I’d love to hear them, so do please leave a comment 🙂