Panoramic Marketing

Originally published 2010

Authors should view their marketing activities as a panorama that covers a range of interlinking platforms. These should include a mix of on- and off-line campaigns, many of which are free.

Being recognised online can take some time, so it is also important to plan your marketing activities well in advance of your book coming out. A natural page rank on Google may take six months to achieve, whereas other elements, such as author speaking functions, are immediate - even though they may take some months of planning to book appropriate venues.

By using a couple of simple tools such as Hootsuite and MailChimp, a broad-based campaign can be managed quite simply implemented. For example, the structure in our wheel diagram covers posts to Facebook, email newsletters, a blog, Linkedin and Twitter – all managed through these two interfaces.

Once this structure is in place, it's just a matter of working out what you will say to your audience and then dedicating 1-2 hours per week to keep your communications up-to-date.

As an author try not to be too shy about all this. Cultivate yourself as a 'brand' for your book and make people aware of your knowledge. It's all part of attracting people's attention and giving them the right information at the right time.

This model is useful for all authors and creating a broad publicity campaign across a variety of avenues for your book has never been so readily available.

The important point is not to blatantly sell your book. You must provide relevant, useful information that offers real benefits to readers, then they will follow you for your knowledge and expertise. The result should be that when your online readers find you have a book that provides more of your work, they will want a copy because they trust and value your writing.