moving at the · moving at the speed of twitter 7 unknown. this is a problem when you want to make...

Moving at the Speed of Twitter How Authors Can Build an

Online Platform to Sell More Books

By Sonja Hegman

Open Door Publications, LLC

Moving at the Speed of Twitter How Authors Can Build an Online Platform to Sell More Books ISBN: 978-0-9888319-6-4 Copyright © 2013 by Sonja Hegman All rights reserved. Printed in the United States No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Published by Open Door Publications 2113 Stackhouse Dr. Yardley, PA 19067 www.OpenDoorPublications.com Cover Design by Jessica Chao

Other Books by Sonja Hegman

Trials of an

Entrepreneurial Virgin

Available on Amazon.com and

OpenDoorPublications.com

Dedication

To every “nobody” who is

destined to become

“somebody.”

Table of Contents

Introduction .......................................... 9 1: Social Media Is Fun… Really! ........... 13 2. Building Your Author Platform ........ 16 3. What Is Twitter?.............................. 24 4. Debunking Twitter Myths ............... 27 5. Ten Tips for Using Twitter .............. 38 6: Facebook: Oh How I Hate Thee. Let Me Count The Ways ........................... 45 7: Ten Tips for Using Facebook........... 53 8: Building Online Relationships ........ 60 9: Top Ten Tips For Pinterest ............. 65 10: Your Author Platform’s Core ......... 74 11: Making A Stellar Book Trailer ....... 81 12: Other Platforms ............................. 86 13: Your Press Kit ................................ 93 Glossary............................................... 98 Resources .......................................... 102 Acknowledgements ............................ 107 About the Author .............................. 109

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Introduction The author platform: that elusive buzz

phrase people spew at you as soon as you proclaim to the world, “I’m writing a book and it will be grand, stupendous, the greatest thing since Apple.” It’s super-great that you’re writing a book, but when starting out you must remember that you are a nobody.

I use the term “nobody” in the most loving way possible. I consider myself a nobody. When I say that, I mean I’m currently unknown. People in certain circles now slightly perk up at the sound of my name, but I am ultimately still an

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unknown. This is a problem when you want to make money selling your books.

When you’re a nobody, the publishing world doesn’t give a shit about you. As long as you understand this up front, you won’t be disappointed when you get your first royalty check of twelve whole dollars. You won’t get rich. Let me rephrase that. You won’t get rich without a good marketing plan, and even then, chances are slim. Becoming well-known via a book might not happen for you. I understand now why my early mentors suggested I have a Plan B. My Plan B was becoming a journalist, so, really, I was screwed either way.

Since I assume most of you reading this are self-published or will self-publish, you know that all the marketing of your book falls to you. And for those of you publishing traditionally, all the marketing falls to you, too. You will get little, if any, help along the way. I don’t write these things to discourage you. I write them so that you know what you’re getting into. I thought I knew what I was getting into and, boy, did I have a wakeup

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call. Like many, I suffered from the

misconception that writing a book would change my life immediately and significantly. I actually thought gobs of money would fall into my lap, interviews would abound and a movie deal wouldn’t be far behind. Yes, I am exaggerating...slightly. You see my first book, Trials of an Entrepreneurial Virgin, is fantastic. I expected others to see, realize and observe this fact immediately and reward me for it.

That didn’t happen. I learned quickly that not only did I have the full-time job of running my business, but I also had to work full-time promoting my book. Not enough time in the day, my friends. If you want to make money from your books, you have to start talking about them—early. Your book could be the greatest thing ever written, but no one will know that unless you build buzz for it yourself. You can, of course, hire a promotions team, but I know that is an unrealistic expense for most of you reading this.

If you’re going to make it in publishing,


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you must be aggressive. I know this is terrifying to the introverts out there, but this is a part of your job now. Don’t confuse aggressiveness with spamming your book link whenever you can. Think of marketing—of your author platform—as building your fan base. No one will be your fan if you don’t show support for others or are full of yourself.

I wrote this book because, until I published a book of my own, I was clueless about the process. The tips you’ll find here are ones I’ve learned along the way. They are by no means the only way to use social media or spread the word about your book, but they will give you a place to start.

I’ve been promoting my first book for more than a year now, and things are finally starting to move. It’s taken long hours and some sleepless nights to get there, but if you’re willing to put in the time, you’ll find success. And with that, here’s to your marketing journey.

- Sonja H., August 2013

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1: Social Media Is Fun…Really! Conversations. That’s social media. If

you have a knack for chatting, you’ll have fun and fit right in. I’m the type who’s much quicker on her feet when she’s typing than a face-to-face conversation with someone. Once I understood social media, I took to it like a nerd to Princess Leia at a Star Wars convention.

Many people are overtaken by an instant, crippling fear when they hear the phrase social media. The cause of the fear? You know you should be on it, but aren’t quite sure what to do with it. This is very common, and it is the reason for


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this book. Authors are especially confused on how to utilize social media, specifically Twitter, to attract attention to their books. It is easy if it’s done right.

The most common question I get is, “Why should I be on social media? No one cares what I have to say.” How do you know that no one in the entire world cares what you have to say? Have you tested the waters yet? I bet not. Like many writers, I adopted technology a bit slowly. Mostly, I like to see if something truly works before jumping on a bandwagon. I finally bought a smart-phone at the end of 2011.

I first started working in social media for my clients, rather than for myself. By going this route, I learned what works and what doesn’t, which made me better equipped to take on my own social media profiles when I decided the world must hear what I had to pour out. Best of all, I had already made many Twitter friends.

If you’re using Twitter correctly, you will, eventually, have followers who will preach your gospel. They’ll promote you and your book(s) without you asking

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them to give you a shout-out. This is a reciprocal thing. If you scratch some-one’s back on Twitter, they will likely do the same. Twitter is a community like any other. If you act like a dick, you’ll lose friends/followers. If you act like a friend, you’ll gain followers.

Now, you’re probably thinking that social media, Twitter especially, will take over your life. It can, but only if you let it. When you start thinking of social media as a way to meet more people than you ever could in “real” life, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the activity. Social media is noisy. Now you must choose how much noise you’ll listen to. (I’ll explain how to filter the noise in a later chapter.)


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2: Building Your Author Platform Your author platform is the single most

important thing you can create for yourself. And I’m not kidding when I write this: You must start promoting your book at least a year ahead of its release, more if possible. This might sound ridiculous, but starting the buzz early will give you a better shot of getting onto best seller lists in your opening week.

What is an author platform? It’s that thing you create to generate excitement and interest about you and your awesome book. Much like a brand, it

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takes time to build up that hype. The first thing you need to do is to

begin to think of yourself as a brand. What do I mean by this? You are not just a person any longer, you are a product— just like Nike and Coca Cola. I know that you don’t like to think of yourself this way. And many authors are horrified at the idea of thinking of their books, much less themselves, as products. But, you can’t expect to sell thousands of books in your first week in print if no one has an inkling of who you are or that you’ve written a book.

I’ve been around as a writer for a long time, but even I didn’t give myself enough of a head start when I wrote my first book. I thought it would sell like hotcakes during its first month because 1) the title was magnificent and 2) any writer worth a damn would care about the subject matter. Not so. The buzz didn’t start until about six months after its release—and nine months after I’d started to really promote the book.

Once your book is written, you must become a full-time marketer and sales-


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person. No one else is going to do this for you, not even your publisher. Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble out there. Traditional publishers might write a press release for you, but that is just the barest tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting the word out about you and your book. You must be on Twitter and Facebook and Goodreads and possibly a few other social networking sites to generate sales for yourself. If you have the money, you can always hire someone (like me) to perform these tasks for you. But when you’re first starting, you’ll most likely be on your own.

This is overwhelming. I won’t lie. I work in social media, so translating that knowledge over to my book sales wasn’t too difficult. But when I received my first royalty check, I was anything but impressed. I’d busted my ass for months and felt I had nothing to show for it. So, what did I do? I kept pushing, and things finally started to happen.

For Trials of an Entrepreneurial Virgin, I began heavy promotion in July for my book’s October release. This was

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not even close to enough time to generate a real conversation about the book. It took until April (nine months after I first started to promote and six months after my book’s release) for things to finally start happening with sales. So, how does one begin to create his or her author platform? It’s not as overwhelming as you might think as long as you give yourself the gift of time.

In a perfect world, this is how I should have laid out the promotion for Trials:

• One year before: Start a Twitter chat based on the book called #WritersChatStew. Build a tribe of people who will inevitably buy in the first week and write wonderfully awe-some reviews. Also, start blogging about principles from the book.

• Nine months before: Start guest posting on as many sites as possible. Continue this up through, and beyond, the release date.

• Six months before: Create press materials; a press kit that includes a press release, author bio/background, author photo and sample questions. (I


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created this after Trials released.) Book radio/podcast interviews from now up through and beyond the release date.

• Three months before: Create and post a book trailer to YouTube.

Basic Online Platform It is absolutely essential to have an

online presence if you are going to succeed as a writer today. A basic online platform includes:

• Social media (Twitter, Facebook,

etc.); • Website (for example, this can be

yourname.com or the title of your book); • A blog (this can include excerpts from

your book); and • Sales (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.). A more advanced platform would

include these along with a presence on other online sites such as Google+, Goodreads, LinkedIn, YouTube, as well as advertising, an email newsletter and

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others.

Your Platform’s Core

Your blog is the core of your platform. It is going to be your best friend when you start promoting. Why? Well, every time you write a blog entry, you can post it to all of your social media channels. In effect, people will go to your website, read the post and then stay on your site to explore it a bit. On this blog you’ll have links to all of your social media profiles and your book’s link on Amazon along with anywhere else it’s for sale.

Now, your blog and your website can be one and the same. If you can’t afford to hire someone to design a kick-ass website for you, start with a free blog on Blogger or Wordpress. This blog can always be integrated into a more formal website later.

Blogger is my platform of choice because it allows the blogger to buy a personalized URL. I created the site sonjahegman.blogspot.com on Blogger,


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for example, then bought the URL sonjahegman.com. It’s very easy to set-up and is only ten dollars for one year, which includes hosting. It’s a great option when you’re first starting out.

What to Write on Your Blog

What do you write about in this blog? Anything you want. Because I created a Twitter chat to promote my first book, I opted to create a separate site just for that, which is writerschatstew.com. All topics in this blog relate back to principles from Trials. If you’re writing a how-to book, this is fine. But what about fiction? Write about your char-acters. What are their motives? Post excerpts to give readers a bigger taste. Think about how you can intrigue potential readers/buyers. Write in the voice of your character.

One of my clients writes spy novels. On Twitter, I pretend to be the character, writing in the character’s voice and pretending that James Bond is the little

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brother the character never had nor wanted. Creativity is the key.

Now, let’s break each of these pieces down.

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