How to promote your eBook

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Compiling your previously written articles into one solid digital eBook means giving your old content a second chance (and ultimately building an additional source of income). 

But it also means lots of planning and additional marketing efforts.

But fear not, the internet is full of tools that will help you to spread the word about your work.

Moreover, it generates interest, with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter helping you to reach the masses with minimal effort.

Be as effective a marketer as you are a writer by using these five tips for effective social media promotion for eBook authors.

Be informative

No matter what type of writing you do or what kind of finished product you’re looking to sell to the masses, using social media to grab attention requires that you be thorough and informative when creating your profiles.

Whether creating a Facebook page or fleshing out a Twitter profile, make a point to describe yourself and your work in a way that is both personable and telling of your genre.

READ MORE: Five social channels under-utilized by businesses

Set yourself up to be seen as a living, breathing person and an expert in your niche.

Text Optimizer is a great way to keep your updates informative and relevant: Just let the tool generate many content ideas for you to implement.

Utilize the whole social web

When you think of social media, it’s very likely that your mind skips directly to the niche’s major players, such as Facebook and Twitter, but never forget that the social web extends itself far further than just the most obvious networks.

Major networks like Facebook and Twitter should be on the top of your list simply due to their sheer size and potential reach, but don’t neglect the many niche social platforms that cater to you and your readers specifically.

For example, promoting your ebooks at MyBlogU can be very rewarding, given the targeted audience.

READ MORE: How to attract more customers to your local business

Utilizing social media networks like Viral Content Buzz will allow you to push your own content farther and wider than ever before at no cost.

Make sure you have your mini-site promoting your book set up.

All your marketing efforts should be consolidated around an asset you 100% own, i.e., your domain. Email marketing is another strategy to set up before starting your promotion.

While we tend to limit ourselves to a relatively tiny corner of it in daily use, the Internet is a huge place.

Make a point to explore it to be sure that you’re leveraging every available tool in getting your book out there.

Engage and enjoy

With informative profiles set up and the web’s many social tools ready to be utilized, it’s time to do exactly what social media was meant for from the beginning: engage and enjoy.

Your new fans and followers will come around because they’re interested in your niche.

Still, it will take real effort to interest them in you and your work, leaving you to work for the crowd like any good salesman by engaging new visitors, answering questions and comments, and adding new content to your social pages regularly.

You’ll quickly find that, even with a commitment of only 15 minutes per day, you can create a very happening place for your fans to gather, helping you to draw more attention – and sales – than ever.

There are lots of free plugins to make your life easier.

Stay on the ball

Once you’ve established a strong social presence and you finally start to see your marketing efforts pay dividends, it can be easy to let your foot off of the gas, especially as you begin to take on new projects.

Still, you must fight that urge and continue to make social media marketing a small part of your daily routine.

Remaining on the ball and continuing to build your social media empire will help you maintain strong sales of your current work and build a platform from which to market new works in the future, making it well worth the effort.

Start investing in your SEO strategy because it provides long-term results.

SE Ranking’s keyword suggestion tool will give you lots of ideas on which keywords (including those with lower competition) to optimize your site to start generating ebook downloads from organic search:

Consider bringing your efforts offline

Traditional “offline” marketing will complement and reinforce your social media marketing. If self-publishing seems too overwhelming, consider starting small.

You can offer to send printed materials to those of your readers who choose to upgrade as an added bonus.

And you can send out those printed materials to social media influencers who helped you promote your eBook (thus building stronger connections to them).

Ultimately you should feel more comfortable with the idea of printing the whole book. Your first book doesn’t have to be perfect. Good luck!

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