The beginners’ guide to content marketing for authors
You probably hear the term content marketing for authors being thrown around a lot. But what does content marketing means anyway?
And most importantly, why authors should consider content marketing as a part of the book marketing strategy?
Well, let’s start with what content marketing is all about based on my own definition.
From what I see, content marketing is all about using the contents you create to promote any products and services.
What makes content marketing appealing to so many people is that you can use it to build trust and showcase your style and personality through your content. It’s all about using your contents to engage with your target audience.
While content marketing tends to benefit those who write nonfiction, it can also benefit fiction authors too. So, don’t dismiss content marketing yet if you write fiction.
Keep in mind that content marketing isn’t about blasting out the marketing campaign to get people to buy your book. That’s the job for the paid advertising.
Nobody likes to read a sales pitch, anyway. So, don’t do that.
Content marketing is all about providing contents that are useful, entertaining or both. That’s how you get people to engage with you and love anything you offer.
Different Types of content marketing for authors
Now that you already know what is content marketing and what it can do for you, let’s take a look at the type of content marketing that you can incorporate in your book marketing strategy.
Blogging
There’s no doubt that many of us will think of blogging when we talk about content marketing for authors. And it’s also the medium that many authors are comfortable with.
If you already have a website and it’s on the self-hosted WordPress, it shouldn’t be so hard for you to add the blog on your website.
But if you don’t have your own website yet, you can always start a free blog on websites like WordPress.com or Blogger. You can always migrate everything you write on this website to your brand new blog once you already have one.
Blogging is my preferred way when it comes to content marketing. It’s what I’ve been doing on my fiction author site, Sekina Mayu. You can take a look at my blog right here.
Video marketing
If you’re not camera-shy, video marketing can be another great content marketing for authors.
With video, it’s much easier for you to build a deeper connection with your audience simply because they can hear and see you.
You don’t need anything fancy to get started with video marketing. Even your phone camera is already good enough to get started.
But be sure that the viewers can hear your voice clearly. It can be off-putting if they can’t hear your voice even if they already set their speaker to the maximum volume.
Podcasting
Want to connect with your audience at a much deeper level but you’re camera-shy? If that’s you, then podcasting is perfect for you.
For those who are not familiar with a podcast, it’s basically an online radio show that you can listen through iTunes or podcast app such as Stitcher.
Just like video marketing, you can easily start your podcast with just a headphone with an attached microphone. You can also invest a high-quality USB microphone such as Blue Yeti USB Microphone if you want better audio quality for your podcast.
Content curation
Want to connect with your audience but don’t feel like creating your own content? Well, you can do that by curating contents that your audience will love.
Content curation works by leveraging other people’s contents. If you know your audience very well, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to find interesting articles or blog post that your audience will find interesting. You can then compile them into a blog post or in the form of an email newsletter.
Even if you decide to leverage other people’s content, you still need to read the articles and write your thoughts about it. It doesn’t have to be so long. Only a few sentences will do to get your audience interested enough to read the articles.
Which one you should choose?
When it comes to which type of content marketing you should do, I highly suggest you pick the one that you enjoy doing and it’s something that you can stick around doing for the long term.
As much as I’d like to suggest you go with podcasting, it’s pointless if you don’t like it and if you don’t see yourself doing it in the long run.
Content marketing is a long-term marketing strategy. So, you’d better be picking the one thing that doesn’t feel like a drag every time you have to do it.
Learn more on how to be better in content marketing
Already decided which type of content marketing for authors that you’d like to get started? Here are some of the resources that you can help you to learn more about content marketing.
Blogging
When it comes to blogging courses, I highly recommend you to take a look at Build a Successful Creative Blog online course by April Bowles-Olin.
What I love about this course is that it goes deeper into finding the right audience for your blog and how to put the fun into blogging if for some reason you’re falling out of love with your blog.
While the course seems like it’s geared towards the creative entrepreneurs, nonfiction authors can also benefit from this course too.
This is the online course that I personally took not long ago. If you’re interested in taking this course, you can sign up with this course right here at CreativeLive:
Sign up with Build a Successful Creative Blog with April Bowles-Olin
Podcasting
When it comes to podcasting, you can’t go wrong with this free podcast course by John Lee Dumas.
For those who are not familiar with John Lee Dumas, he’s the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire. It’s an award-winning podcast where he interviews the world’s most inspiring entrepreneurs.
If you want to know more about how to start a podcast, you can take a look at his course right here:
John Lee Dumas Free Podcast Course
Video marketing
If you always want to start a YouTube channel but you don’t know where to start, then take a look at YouTube Creator Academy.
This free online course by YouTube covers all the thing you need to know about making videos for YouTube and also how to generate income from your YouTube videos.
You can take a look at the course right here:
Content curation
To be honest, I’m not sure if there is any course that is specifically for the content curation. But I do know that there are quite a few websites that can make content curation much easier.
Here are some of them.
Scoop.it
Scoop.it is one of the websites that I used in the past when I discovered content curation.
With Scoop.it, you can find and select all the articles related to your chosen topic and publish them on your Scoop.it page.
You can also integrate Scoop.it with your WordPress site. But it’s only available for the paid plan, though.
If you’d like to know more about Scoop.it, you can do so right here:
Content curation tool with Scoop.it
Paper.li
Another tool you can use for content curation is Paper.li. It works more or less the same as Scoop.it.
But unlike Scoop.it, you can collect contents from any websites you like. And you can also collect contents from the social media network such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Once you already collect the contents you need, it will publish these contents in the form of a web newspaper.
The free version allows you to share your web newspaper on Twitter. But the paid plan allows you to publish your curated content on other social media accounts, your website and integrate directly with MailChimp.
You can take a look at Paper.li right here:
Note about content marketing for authors
Unlike any other form of marketing, it takes a while for content marketing to show you any prominent result. So, you may feel like giving up and abandoning your content marketing effort. And that applies to all types of content marketing.
My advice to you is to never ever give up on your blog, your podcast or any other medium of your choice. Content marketing is long-term gameplay. It’s because of this reason I recommend you to pick which type of content marketing that you enjoy the most.
When you enjoy doing what you do, it doesn’t feel like work at all. That will give you the motivation to continue even if things don’t go your way. Not only that, but people who come across your work will also enjoy what you produce too.
It’s not that hard for people to distinguish whether you enjoy what you do or not. In this situation, you just do what you always do. And your content marketing effort will pay off in a big way someday.
That’s the reason why I prefer to do content marketing over paid advertising. Sure, it may take a while for it to show me any significant result. But the connection with the audience that I build through my content marketing will go along the way more than the paid advertising.
This is what I want you to keep in mind when you’re getting started with content marketing.