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):

Social media is, without question, a big book promotion time suck for most authors. We know we need it, but there’s a lot around social media that still leaves us baffled. The biggest issue is this: When it comes to book promotion, is social media really effective? Yes and no. Posting to social, for the sake of posting and “looking busy,” isn’t a great way to drive engagement. Posting thoughtful pieces that drive engagement and audience response is a better way to grab attention on social, but does it drive sales? The answer is not technically – but it drives exposure, which helps drive sales. As with anything you do to promote your book, it’s got to be more about exposure, and less about sales. In most cases there is no direct correlation between a post on Facebook and a book sale. The same is true for a book review, blog interview, etc. But it all leverages into exposure – and the right kind of repeated exposure will get you book sales.

Facebook has dozens of features and news stories to compete with; Twitter is insanely fast-paced and not conducive to disappearing for days at a time to meet a writing deadline; Goodreads is fantastic for genre specific book promotion but Instagram…Instagram is that unicorn social media site that helps you build a brand on a very simple premise – captivating visuals and positive vibes – truly.

Instagram is a very positive space to operate in, and while creating visuals can be daunting, it’s a great balance for an author who typically is hyper-focused on the written word. Yes, Instagram images needs captions and hashtags, but those are supporting roles, the visual is the star and this is something that resonates to easily with many of us, so why not capitalize on it?

So here are 8 tips for really making Instagram work for your book promotion. And if you’re not on Instagram yet, I strongly encourage you to go through this list as a way to determine whether or not Instagram is your speed – and if so, it could be the social media site that changes the game for your author brand and book promotion.