Resolve to Sell More Books–Socially
We’ve talked about using word-of-mouth (and word of “mouse”) to help you sell books before. But now more than ever it’s a great time to use the power of all the social networking sites to spread the word about your work of genius. This new year, resolve to sell more books with social media! Here are a few tips.
More people are using social networking than ever before and you can be on the cutting edge of this technology if you’re not afraid to get out there and “mingle.”
That’s right–mingle. Go around from site to site. Spend some time talking to friends and contacts. Don’t just post a simple “I wrote a book…click here to learn more” message and think you are utilizing the power of social media. You’re not. If that is all you are planning to do, don’t waste your time. Because that’s what it will be–a waste of time.
Facebook has walls…LinkedIn has groups…Twitter has retweets and topics of interest…your site might be a good one for StumbleUpon… Participate, don’t just send something out and expect something to happen. You need to be active in order to be successful.
You need to actually mix with the crowd…talk about what everyone else is talking about. Talk about what’s hot–use Google Trends to find out what’s hot today. Talk about it. Relate it to your subject if you can. Then look for an opportunity to bring your book into the conversation.
When you are able to mention your book without looking like you are a traveling salesman, tell them a little about it. Why they should buy it. And by all means, WHERE they can buy it. Say something like, “it’s at most bookstores and Amazon.” Or try this: “you’ve been to my website, right? That’s www.mysite.com…you can get my book there. I’ll even sign it and send it out myself.”
Look for live chats where you can chime in on a subject that is related to the topic of your book. These provide a great opportunity to sell books. One mention on a live chat, done properly in a not-too-commercial-seeming way, and contributing valuable information to the topic of discussion, can result in several sales, sometimes right away and sometimes days or weeks down the road. And remember–every sale counts.
Participating in social media sites is the key to transforming your book into a social contagion phenomenon!
Very interesting way to market on facebook. I also found a way to automate several very powerful methods of getting users. You can harvest ID by groups or pages or wall posts with this software. Then once you have them you can do a friend add to your profile or sudo profile. This by passes the captcha codes too. There is also a cool chat program that you can setup scripts and keyword to work with. This program, when I use it I can see a spike in my site traffic. It is awesome…