Have you ever wondered, when you’re out interacting with people on your fan page on Facebook, whether your author platform was actually growing?
Or questioned whether you should be doing some serious Tweeting, like a lot of other authors do, to gather a big following?
Well, good news. Dan Blank from We Grow Media will be here tomorrow with a content-rich article about exactly how to get started answering questions just like these.
I know you don’t want to miss it. Dan’s gathered some great resources and uses his vast experience helping authors to show you how it all works.
Using QR Codes for Book Promotion
There have been a number of publishing-related events nearby recently, and that got me thinking about promotion.
From past experience I knew that most event-goers get weighed down with freebies from vendors, and everyone ends up with plastic totes stuffed with promotional literature that might get seen, but might not.
A few weeks ago I created some new business cards at Moo.com. They print on Mohawk Superfine, probably my favorite printing paper of all time, and other similar stock. The cards are twice as thick as normal business cards and larger, too.
So I went back to Moo.com and made this one:
In this case, the book I’m promoting is the free PDF I give away on the blog (top [of the right column on my blog]).
I reasoned that, rather than try to sell somebody I had just met something they might or might not want, content marketing could make my job a lot easier.
After all, I would be in groups of writers and indie publishers, the exact people who are likely to be interested in the articles here and in the free PDF.
By giving them the card, they would have the option of downloading the PDF. If they take the trouble to get it, I can assume that they are going to be interested in the other things I do.
Here’s the back of the card:
My hope is that the promise of the PDF and the novelty of the QR codes will intrigue people enough to get their smartphone out and scan them. Of course, I’ve included a “human readable” web address as well.
After this, my next experiment with QR codes will include analytics, since I just ran across a very clever way to track QR codes with Google Analytics.
Of course, this is more metrics, more analysis to look at.
Authors as Marketers
Hate it, huh? But let’s face it. The more book discovery and purchase happen online, the more adept self-publishers have to become at understanding how this stuff works.
That’s exactly the reason I’m doing the analytics I do here on the blog and in my other projects, and why I’m excited to bring you Dan’s article tomorrow.
This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.