Online Marketing Symposium

Welcome to the first ever “Online Marketing Symposium”! Brainchild of Arlee Bird and hosted by Yolanda Renee, Alex J. Cavanaugh, and Jeremy Hawkins. Let’s give these four amazing bloggers a nice round of applause for bringing us such a remarkable opportunity to teach and learn.

The purpose of this blogfest is to share marketing ideas that worked for you or didn’t work at all. In doing so, you can help others successfully market their book or product.

For those of us who are just starting out, this is a wonderful way to gather bits of marketing gold that can help us to promote our books, or any other service we are offering. It can also warn us about those lumps of marketing coal that don’t seem to help at all. 

Since I am a first-time author I don’t have much marketing gold to offer. Actually, as a newbie, I have been struggling. I recently came out with my debut eBook, Hurricane Crimes, and I have been running around in circles trying to get my story out there. Meanwhile, my sales plummeted to the dungeons of Amazon’s ranking system.

Here is a summary of what I’ve tried:

I promoted on Goodreads by creating an event for the release, which did get me a wonderful response. Many of my Goodreads friends added my book to their TBR list and I am so grateful for that. I also made the announcement on my blog through an IWSG post, and thanks to all of you, I received many congratulations and a tiny spike in sales.

These are, so far, my most effective tools: Goodreads and my blog, where I can immediately connect with fellow authors and readers.

After that I made the announcement on my Facebook page. This gave me quite a few post likes, but it was my friends and family (just two, actually) who posted on Instagram and their FB profiles that garnered more of a response. Word of mouth is definitively an amazing tool.

While doing this, I orchestrated a blog tour. Some of my guest posts got a few comments and shares on FB and Twitter, but I am finding that many of them just remain at ZERO and don't increase my book sales. 

So far, the only blog that seemed to have an impact on sales was when I was a guest on Reading Between the Wines Book Club on January 5th and I offered a giveaway. The day my post went live I was at rank #693,685 on Amazon. Yes, really. I know, I know, that's sad. But the day after, I rocketed up to rank #178,960. Imagine my surprise, especially since my low ranking stopped me from checking it for a few days. My rank dropped after that, but it meant a lot of people bought my book January 6th and that is something! :D

Do you see that decline? Oh that was painful!

I have also heavily promoted through groups on Goodreads, Yahoo Loops, and discussions in other sites I am a part of such as She Writes. In the beginning, this seemed to work.

I have posted on Amazon forums too and received nada, which is probably because the majority of the people using these forums are other authors trying to promote their own books. So I would warn others that this could very well be a waste of time, as it was for me.

I also added my books to several book sites. Eight to be exact. After I created an account with ManicReaders.com I did notice a spike in Facebook visits. The other site that seemed to bring a smidge of hope to my promo efforts was Storyfinds.com. Hurricane Crimes was added to their Book Marquee feature and received some shares on FB.

Then finally came my five free days, which just ended on January 18^th. I heavily promoted this because I’m not so much concerned about making money than getting my story in the hands of readers (or rather in their Kindles). To promote my free days I created an event on Goodreads, announced it on my blog and She Writes, submitted info about my eBook to many websites (only eleven actually posted something though), and shared the news on Yahoo Loops.

This is the picture I used to announce my free days on FB.

The results: By the time I had my free days my rank had dropped almost exactly to where it had been before the spike. I didn't even check the rank the night before my first free day, but that morning, before I even announced that Hurricane Crimes was free, I was at rank #7,273. All day it rose, much to my amazement. The morning of day two, it was at it's highest (or lowest) rank . . . #267. Hurricane Crimes reached #10 in the Top 100 Free Suspense books, making it an Amazon Best Seller (or freebie), which thrilled me to no end. It also cracked the Top 100 Free list for romantic-suspense at #22. After that, Hurricane Crimes clung to the low 400's, staying around #20 in the top free suspense books. Although I didn't make it into the top 100 Kindle books or #1 in free suspense books, I think I did good for a newbie. :)

This is so much better!

In the months to come I will be trying a few creative efforts on my FB page and blog. Thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing is the key. Instead of doing what all the other billions of authors are doing try your hand at something different. These ideas are the ones that can catch people’s attentions.

For more help, visit the hosts' blogs (above) for the list of people participating in this fest. Some of them may even give you chunks of marketing gold. ;)


SHARE: Your marketing tips.