The first thing to do when you embark on writing a book is to identify your ideal reader. Who are they? What industry are they in? What are their challenges? What keeps them awake at night? What do they want?
That’s the focus you’ll need to have to ensure the content of your book is on target, but it’s also valuable information when it comes to marketing your book.
The most successful authors aren’t necessarily the greatest writers, but they have a strong tribe ready and waiting for their book to be published.
Own your Tribe
Social media is really useful in gaining visibility, but your social media connections don’t belong to you – they belong to the platform. If you want a powerful place to pitch from – you need people to be on your list.
So building a tribe is all about offering your ideal reader something that is of value to them. This might be a one-off lead magnet, a series of webinars, an ecourse, a regular podcast, a 3/5/7 day challenge, access to a YouTube channel – be creative. The aim is to get their direct email, so you can contact them directly.
This is not a scam – it’s a barter deal – they give you their email, you deliver value.
Building a community
Some authors have a Facebook group where they are personally active and engage with members. This may be around a challenge or just an ongoing community with a common interest. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do this on LinkedIn, although it’s less common to run a community group on LinkedIn. It depends on where your audience are active.
Even if you bring people onto your list through a one-off lead magnet, you’ll need to nurture them. This may be from delivering ongoing value by email. You could email a weekly or monthly newsletter sharing value with them, you could offer them exclusive access to either a live webinar or a pre-recorded training session.
If you have a podcast, you might provide a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly broadcast with information or interviews with people of interest to your audience. Similarly, if you do this kind of material in video format, you’ll need to find a way to get subscribers to your YouTube channel to provide their contact information.
An offer to share something more of value with a link to the sign up page in your pinned description will usually bring at least a percentage into your fold.
So, are you ready to create your Tribe?
