Publishing your book is just the beginning of your journey as an author. You still need to get it in front of as many potential readers as possible. The good news is that content marketing for authors is a great way to do that, and you’re about to uncover five more content marketing ideas for authors.
Increase awareness and sell more books: 5 content marketing ideas for authors
At Book Launchers, we help people write, publish, and promote non-fiction books to help them grow their brand or business. A big part of that involves content marketing for authors. We also have a fabulous book marketing course to support you in getting your book and your content in front of influencers. Join us for our next six-week class!
Your book is the perfect source of curated, polished, and valuable content to use for your content marketing. But sometimes, you need some content marketing ideas specifically for authors, even with that book sitting in front of you.
So here you go. I’ve got five content marketing ideas for you:
1. Answer questions your target readers have
‘How big should my book be?‘ ‘Do big books sell in 2023?‘ This is a question I get all the time from aspiring non-fiction authors. Since this is a common query asked by my potential readers, I didn’t hesitate to create content around it.
After posting that video on Book Launcher’s YouTube channel, I repurposed it into a post on my LinkedIn page. That same piece of content will likely be found here in the blog posts with some additional resources in the future.
Answering the high-volume question, ‘how big a book should be‘ allowed me to generate 3 content pieces published on 3 different content marketing channels. The best part? These content pieces are highly-targeted. They provide direct value for my target readers and satisfy their intent.
Here’s a simple formula for creating high-quality content that will attract your potential readers:
#1 Write down all the questions you get
#2 Create content around the ones you get the most
#3 Post it to a channel (or multiple channels) where it would attract traffic
2. Take behind-the-scenes pictures and share those BTS secrets or ideas
If you’re recording an audiobook, shooting videos, or prepping for a speaking engagement, share some of the behind-the-scenes stuff of you getting ready or doing it.
To be fair, this is something I struggled with for a while. I’m often just so focused on getting the shoot done that I forget to capture the moment a bit.
Being transparent and sharing behind-the-scenes content is a great way to build a strong connection with your audience. It can also provide value by revealing the inner workings of what you and your business do.
3. Share your perspective on the latest happenings in your industry
Our bi-weekly updates in The Launch Letter are where we share the latest book publishing happenings and educated insights. You’ll also find me post about some things on LinkedIn or go live and discuss the latest in my bi-weekly livestream at BookLaunchers.TV.
The key here is keeping your eyes and ears open. What is some exciting news in your industry that you can share? Do you have any tips, perspectives, or resources you think your audience would find helpful? If you’re paying attention there are always things to discuss and people will come to appreciate your on-the-spot perspective and updates.
4. Is there a common obstacle that holds people back from achieving success in your space?
For authors, I find that imposter syndrome is often one of their biggest monsters. I’ve already published several video content tackling this subject. Here’s one where I talk about the 3 ways to handle imposter syndrome.
Now, there are other types monsters – fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of judgment.
I often hear objections like, ‘How do I find the time?‘ What if I’m a terrible writer? Nobody’s buying my book; what do I do?
Make a list of the things that hold people back from using your service, your product, or just simply achieving success.
You can then create articles, videos, or other content addressing these obstacles.
This helps you because people will see your book, product, or service as a possible way to overcome what’s holding them back from achieving their desired results.
5. Break down somebody’s success into a case study
We do this during our deep dive training, which we hold 10 times a year. You can make sure you know about them by joining our Launch Letter.
In these deep dive sessions, we bring on experts or authors who have had success and ask them how they did it.
Some good examples are when we talked about bulk buys with Carol Sanford, presentation success with Dan Fraser, writing a great book proposal with Becca Powers, and narrating your audiobook with Odille Remmert.
We break down what these experts have done so you can follow in their footsteps. You can check these out on our YouTube playlist, Success Secrets from Self-Published Authors.
Conducting these sessions is a great way to showcase how we help. And it allows us to create valuable content at the same time.
Conclusion
Apart from these 5 tips, I’m sure you can think of plenty of other content marketing ideas to increase awareness for your book.
But, as I’ve mentioned above, your book already has a good amount of valuable content. It’s only a matter of handpicking and repurposing them to fill your content marketing goals. If you want to learn more about how you can do this, check out my video on how to take content from your book directly to create articles, videos, course presentations, keynote talks, and more.
I hope you’ve gathered some new ideas from today’s list.
I promised a video for you on Spotify getting into audiobooks, so that is right here.
Also, I said I would share some content on beating your monsters into submission. Here’s the video right here:
Both are guaranteed good watches. So go ahead and click on over. See you again soon.
Don’t hesitate to schedule a call with us. We’ll help you write, publish, and distribute a great book your readers will find hard to put down.
