Sometimes truly happy events occur in the life of a writer/author/publisher who is posting articles on a blog/website. The writer usually hopes to gain audience share, possibly ultimately selling more books or other “products,” such as paid talks and consulting.

Such an event transpired for me in September-October of 2018, regarding a single article.

Each year I look at this particular perennial article, freshen it up, and emphasize it to my audience on my website and in social media about September 1. That article has a two-month shelf life of popularity, as you will see. It is one of the 500+ articles on my website at Foster Travel.

I had modest expectations for this article on September 1. I suspected that, based on past recent years, I would get perhaps 400 new reads of this article in the two-month period.

But I actually got 7,209 reads. So, what happened? Why did this article become suddenly relatively popular?

Some variables may be unknown. But one is known:

For the first time, I put careful attention into improving the Search Engine Optimization for this article. I now use a 12-point checklist to review SEO for all my articles, as you will see below.\

read more https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2019/01/12-seo-tips-to-drive-traffic-and-sell-books/

Virtually every marketing expert agrees that if you want to get your message out there in 2018, podcasts are the way to go. We’re told we need to launch our own podcasts, or at the very least be frequent guests on podcasts.

This is all very well and good, but how exactly do you go about being a guest on a podcast? How do you make sure that the resulting episode is both fun for listeners and achieves your goals*?

While that might be an obvious question to some, I’m surely not the only one who feels like he is flailing around in the dark. Over the past 18 months I have been a guest on a half-dozen podcasts, and even though I tried to prepare for each interview and studied up on how to be a guest on a podcast, I still had to learn almost everything the hard way.

The following post details a few of the things I wish I had known before my first guest spot.

Using social media to get our writing out into the world can be an amazing opportunity.  It helps market our works and hopefully, gain a following that will continue to benefit from our writing. But it can also be a curse. Because of so many social media platforms, most writers languish in obscurity and end…

Writing a book is hard. Sometimes when we find our books aren’t selling well, we may have to make the choice between reviving it or letting it go. In this Reviving a Dead Book case study, we look at an author who decided not to revive his first book, but instead tried reviving his second. Then, he was able to look at both to see the difference a revive can make.

I was talking with a class that I was teaching this past week about marketing strategies and realized we haven’t had a marketing post in a while. Twitter and Facebook are what I think of as old marketing standbys, but there are other, more creative ways to market. Of course, as the kids say, YMMV (your mileage may vary) with all of them. Below is a summary of what we discussed.

Before I begin, however, don’t forget Martin Crosbie’s huge list of book promo sites.

And now, a few creative ways to market your book without constantly saying (or typing) “Buy My Book” (or the equivalent):