Book Launch Basics: Part 5

Social media and guest blogging are great ways to build a buzz about your new book in the weeks leading up to and directly following its release.

In this 8-part book launch basics series, I’ll demystify the process of proficiently releasing a new book into the world with flair. The information I’m providing is focused on those who will independently publish their book, but many of these components/strategies are equally usable for those publishing traditionally. (If you’re lucky to go that route, you may even have a publisher doing some or most of these things for you—but it is still important to understand the elements that go into successfully launching a new title.)

Part 1 covered your online author image and overall branding.  

Part 2 is all about manuscript readiness and book presentation.

Part 3 covers reviews—how and where to get them.

Part 4 helps you create your media kit and develop a traditional media outreach strategy.

Now, in Part 5 we’re working through your approach to social media and guest blogging & blog tours.

SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION & GUEST BLOGGING & BLOG TOURS

Social media and guest blogging are great ways to build a buzz about your new book in the weeks leading up to and directly following its release.

Social Media

In part one of this series, we talked about the importance of creating your online author image. Ideally, this is established well before you hit the weeks leading up to your launch. This means you’ve (hopefully) chosen your favorite social media platform(s) and have been engaging there for a while, building an audience of followers.

You’ll want to begin talking about your book occasionally before you get into the nitty gritty of promoting the new release. But still, my advice is to balance your posts with about 80 percent social type engagement vs 20 percent direct promotion (as in – here’s how you can buy my book.) However, most posts do straddle that line when you’re building the buzz for an imminent release.

In the four weeks leading up to your launch and perhaps the two weeks after, you will want to post consistently with fun and engaging content on all the platforms you’ve chosen to use. What consistently means is different for each author, but my recommendation is at least 3 posts per week. If you vary the type of post, this won’t seem like too many. (In fact, many authors post far more frequently than this, with many posting daily—but I’ll leave that frequency up to you.)

What Should You Post?

Most authors aren’t sure what they might post that would be considered interesting … If you are already getting good engagement from your followers, then continue to post that kind of content, but if you’re looking for ideas:

1. Stylized photography or short video (animations) featuring your book. (Websites like Mockup Shots can create these photos with your book embedded in them very quickly.) See one of mine below.

   

2. Promo images that evoke your book’s theme along with a book teaser or bit of actual text from a chapter. If you don’t have your own photos to use for this, you can find good photos for free use on sites like Unsplash or Pixaby.

3. Quote cards (from you) that include a photo of you or the book’s cover (or both) along with a quote from you or pulled from your book . . . something you’d like readers to know. (You can include more info and perhaps even a scene excerpt in the main post language.)

4. Bonus content – anything that is interested that you’re willing to divulge via social media to ramp up interest in the story. (Recipes/info on locations in the book/historical photos/family photos.)

5. Early reviews can also be incorporated individually or as snippets along with promo images or videos as discussed under numbers 1 & 2.

6. Short video clips – these could be as short as one minute – giving inside information about your writing process/life of an author/what it takes to bring a book to market etc.. Or even things you love about your story. There are so many options for video. These could be you talking or mini-book trailers that have music overlaid with the video clips or images you’re using.

Creating this content will take time in advance but will make the pre-launch month run smoothly. In addition to Mockup Shots, I also love Canva for creating excellent images, animations, or video. There’s a free version that’s quite good, but I prefer the Pro version of Canva because I use it so much.

Don’t forget to include a call to action (CTA). Normally, this is going to be a pre-sale link to gain as many pre-orders as possible. But you might have other calls to action—like follow me on Amazon, follow me on BookBub, sign up for my email list etc.…

Organizing & Scheduling Social Media Posts in Advance

I tend to use a spreadsheet to organize my posts, making note of the date/day of the week, the post image/video, the post language, link and more. That makes scheduling the posts far easier than doing one at a time.

If you’re using Facebook and/or Instagram, you can schedule those posts at the same time from your Meta dashboard. Other platforms allow you to schedule posts directly on the platform – like Twitter/X and LinkedIn. But if this feels like you’re managing too many platforms individually, you can utilize a social media scheduling dashboard like Later, HootSuite, Sprout Social, HubSpot and others.

BLOG TOURS & GUEST POSTS

Leveraging the network of followers/subscribers that others have built is a proven way to reach more potential readers/book buyers than you could ever reach on your own. If you’ve been a good supporter of others’ blogs by commenting on and sharing their content, you should have a group of bloggers you can ask to feature you in some way as you celebrate the launch of a new book. Offer to write a guest post or see if they’ll feature you with an interview that also allows you to promote/preview your new book. Value added if they are an advance reader and will write a review for you.

Another way to get featured on a wider range of blogs beyond the people you know personally is to schedule a blog tour through a reputable organizer. There are many of these available at price points that fit just about any budget. Often these focus on specific genres. What’s nice is that these organizers have a proven list of bloggers that have good-sized audiences. Your blog tour stop on each participating bloggers’ site might vary in focus from interviews to excerpts to reviews and sometimes more innovative content. I personally more of a fan of the blog tours that guarantee a review. That type of tour makes the most of the effort as reviews are so important to gain in the early days after your launch. There are many companies out there, but this article from NewShelves.com can get you started with a list of vetted tour organizers. Ask around to your other author friends who they’ve used and were happy with. Those types of recommendations usually serve us the best.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out with a message or comment below.