Of all the choices a writer will make, these two stand out among all the rest. In fact, without these two, it is barely believable, your manuscript, once turned into a book, will be purchased. Of these two I will only speak of one at this time. The first is to develop a platform by which you already have an audience and following. The other, hiring a marketing team.
You can learn it, develop it and do it but I chose a marketing team because when it comes to art and design, I rarely know how to get to what I want. In other words, that is not my skill, writing is. So, I hired a social media and marketing team to help me create three elements:
Platform Social media expressions such as, a Facebook Fan Page, a Designed Twitter page, a web page, and a Designed Blog Page to attract followers.
Outreach Being able to be where I needed to be was created by my media and marketing team by well placed ads. I like the Facebook ads but not AdWords. I especially didn’t want to pay for a click because it was difficult to budget for it not knowing the results or the number of clicks I may receive in a month’s time.
Credibility To have a social media presence gave followers the humanization of the author. A real person with a real family with real aspirations, just like we all do.
The marketing team I work with has a Social Media Professional, a Designer, Photographer, and a Web Technician. The Social Media Professional develops your social media sites, assists in growing them and maintaining your presence. At this point I still do my own Twitter, Facebook and WordPress Blog, maybe someday, I will need an assistant but right now I enjoy it too much. The Designer, of course, puts together the logo, pictures, artwork and fonts. The Photographer takes commercial photographs capturing your style and personality, (make sure the photographer is willing to release all rights to the photographs since they will be used commercially). Lastly, the Web Technician, this is mainly for the set up of the webpage for your book but you want to make sure the call to action button links the reader to a purchase site.
I chose the Marketing team based on three main desires that I settled in my mind before I made the decision of what company to go with.
Personal I felt if I couldn’t meet with them over a cup of coffee, laugh, work and share stories then I had the wrong team. Having a personal team creates a mutual feeling of friendship and respect bringing the team, well, into a team. We met weekly at a coffee shop for three months and developed friendships along the way.
Professional Sorry, but I wasn’t willing to risk the project, the money, or the time into someone who was learning along the way. I wanted the team to know where we were going and how to get there.
Punctual Waiting for someone, who sails through past deadlines, is not a virtue of mine and putting off the project because someone missed the date they told me ; only frustrated the project for everyone. We discussed punctual for me and the rest of the team at the very beginning. One more thing, Be sure and start early enough – at least, five to six months before the book launch, if you don’t already have a platform then start at least one year in advance of your published work.
Here are my links, (as of this writing we are presently redoing the WordPress blog design) – the website will launch right before the book printing (hopefully soon).
https://www.facebook.com/JimLaudell?ref=hl
Comment: Would you hire a marketing team or would you do it yourself?
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JIM LAUDELL 