Authors - How to Use Blogs and Social Media to Promote Your Book

To me, authors and blogging are a natural fit, yet many, many authors I know are not blogging, don't want to blog or are afraid to dilute their writing time with blogging. Yet, it's such a powerful tool to build an audience for your books.

In the last few days I've come across several articles, blog posts and events that demonstrate how blogging, and social marketing can help you build an audience of raving fans and book buyers.

The is a "link post" as I'm simply providing 5 links to resources I think you can learn from or model for creating a successful book launch.

1. From the New York Times: Blog's Readers Enjoy a Good Whodunit
(how a group of authors share a blog and support each other's writing and new book promotions)

2. David Meerman Scott (author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR) has a new book out called Marketing Lessons from The Grateful Dead. Check out this post and study how David is building buzz and followers for the book tour. David is a very savvy marketer so pay attention. (I'm waiting for the Kindle version so I can't give you a review yet.)

3. Earlier in the year, I did a blog review for Cindy Bradford, a romance novelist. We tweaked a few things, improved the navigation and tightened up the content and in May she published a new book and launched a blog tour, managed by Nikki Leigh. My sources tell me that traffic to Cindy's blog doubled each day there was a post on a tour blog and higher sales could be directly attributed to the online book tour. Check out Cindy's blog to see how she's focusing most of her content on her book to increase buzz and sales.

4. Finally, I was alerted by Kathleen Gage, to an amazing online training event for authors that begins in August. Successful Author Secrets is the brain-child of Christine Kloser and Lynne Klippel, and features 21 published authors (many are names you'll recognize and New York Times bestsellers). It’s a ground-breaking program that walks you through the crucial 9 steps to becoming a successful author including how to use social marketing in your promotions.

5. One of the undisputed masters of using blogging and social media for promoting authors is Warren Whitlock. Check out his blog for tons of book marketing tips.

Each of these resources is going to help you see new possibilities for getting your passion (and book!) out to the readers who want it.

Related Posts:

13 Mistakes Authors Make on Their Blogs

Authors Need to Use Social Media Too

Facebook Pages Are All The Rage

Comments

[Denise Wakeman]

Forgot to add this excellent post by Chris Brogan: An Author's Plan for Social Media Efforts http://www.chrisbrogan.com/author-social-media/

[Warren Whitlock]

I can't imagine how any working authors would not want a blog

[Rob Pene]

Thanks Denise, I'm actually using Social Media as a vital piece of ebook promotions, so those links will come in handy for references!

[Enrique]

Social Media Expert, Brian Solis, came to our office to talk about the benefits of Social Media and to promote his book.

We put together a video with some questions and this is what he had to say:

http://bars-tone.com/2010/07/brian-solis-interview/

[Julius]

I especially like the Marketing Lessons from The Grateful Dead post. Thanks!

[Lynn Jordan]

Thanks for this great list.

I'm forever telling fiction authors that they need to promote themselves. Writing articles and blog posts is a great way to do that.

[BookWhirl]

This post is terrific! Great list. I'll share this to our authors.