Books are necessary part of life. Therein lie the thoughts, emotions, beliefs among others of men. Virginia Woolf rightly puts it, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.” By books we are informed and impacted!
Until recently, books were launched and distributed to bookshops for sales to begin. Authors rarely advertised their materials online. Technological revolution, which is ongoing, has changed the face of marketing books. The traditional way of carrying books from one bookstore to another is gradually losing its relevance to online bookstores. Authors are now making their presence felt on online platforms. Books are being advertised online in this era. The benefits of using these online platforms outweigh the traditional way. That account for my desire to share with you some advantages of using social media as a marketing tool to promote books.
To begin with, how many readers can you reach with the traditional way of distributing books to Bookstores? As a result of online platforms, social media, authors have the chance to get a wide market reach. The entire world, as it were, becomes your market reach. Authors can now have cross country marketing engagement yet stationary. Worry over getting in touch with more readers is no more. On social media, paid advertisement can be done to make the book viral. In such case, promotion of books is not limited, it appears on every news feed. This makes omnipresence on social media possible.
Moreover, when the reach to readers widens, it easily helps the author to create brand awareness. The freedom to share pictures, videos and others with followers on social media foster this advantage. By these, readers get to know the line of writing of the author, the content of specific released book and many more. This helps readers and followers to know what the author stands for, believes in and talks about. Readers will come to know the author and their books. Thereby, continuously building a relationship between both parties. With time, the author can gain their loyalty.
Again, social media allows authors to do targeted marketing. I read somewhere that you cannot sell to everyone and it is a fact. On social media, for instance Facebook, there are groups and pages. Therefore, focus of advertisement can be towards a particular group which is composed of readers and authors. In such case, you will only be engaging persons who are interested in products, as it were, that you sell. It’s important for authors to notice that to generate sales for their books, focused marketing should be engaged. When focused marketing is done, it enables leads to be generated. There’s no doubt that social media helps authors and businesses alike to easily drive traffic to their websites, books and others.
Also, the ability to easily evaluate the performance of books is something worth noting. The number of likes, comments and shares are some of the tools that can be used to judge how a material or business is doing on social media. Engagement matters in social media marketing. Therefore, it is needful for authors to respond to comments beneath their posts.
In addition, you will agree with me that social media marketing does not cost, it is cost effective. Much is not needed from authors to share the catchy cover pages of their books, links that leads to their books and synopsis of their books with their audiences online. Compared with the traditional way of carrying books from one bookstore to another, social media marketing is cost effective.
I am of the view that using social media as a marketing tool to promote books is not an option anymore but a necessity in this era, ‘digital age’. Therefore, budding writers and authors alike should abreast themselves with this new development in the promotion of books.
