Please welcome Ann Everett back to the blog today! Need any marketing tips? She’s got five great ones for you!

Join HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

Sign-up–(the subscription is free)

Read–You’ll receive three emails every day with requests from sources in specific areas (e.g., travel, tech, general)

Respond–If any of the sources listed have something you can speak to, then respond directly to the reporter making the request. Authors who responded to a request have been featured on multiple news and talk shows from CNN to Fox & Friends, and mentioned in the largest outlets including Cosmo, Essence, The Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Day, American Baby, Consumer’s Digest Magazine, the BBC, US News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, ABC.com, The Huffington Post, FoxBusiness.com, MSN Money, AOL and Yahoo.

Just make sure you don’t waste their time. Don’t respond unless you meet their criteria.

I have been interviewed by an editor for Good Housekeeping Magazine, featured on a blog with many followers, interviewed by two college professors writing a book, and contributed to a book of motherly advice.

Getting your name out there regardless if you connect it to your books, will bring people to your site, and they’ll see your books. The subjects I responded to concerned marriage, advice, and Amazon.

DO AMAZON GIVEAWAYS

This is an Amazon promotion often overlooked. To set it up, go to your Amazon author book page.

Click on any of your books, then scroll down past the reviews and you’ll see, “set up a giveaway.” Amazon will walk you through the procedure. Since you’re giving the book away, you’ll get no royalties, so what is the advantage?

Followers: You can require contestants to follow you on Facebook, twitter, or your author page on Amazon. I choose my author page because all those followers get a notice each time I have a new book released. Amazon does that work for me, and it will help get my book off to a good start.

Traffic: According to Amazon, Giveaways increase traffic more than 40% during the promotion.

Twitter Exposure: If you tweet #AmazonGiveaway, everyone searching for Amazon Giveaways will see that tweet and you!

Minimal investment: The only cost to you is the cost of your book. You choose how many you want to giveaway, so you control the investment. I’ve done one book per fifty followers and gave away five books. That netted me 250 followers with each giveaway. Keep in mind, you will make a royalty off each book because you’ve purchased them at regular price, so that reduces your cost. You can choose print or digital.

Audience: Readers who love your genre will search out those giveaways, therefore targeting the exact reader you’re looking for. This fine tunes your followers.

You can run a giveaway and a Kindle Countdown at the same time for the same book. If you do that, then your cost will be less because you’re not paying full price for the giveaway book, AND you’re making the higher royalty because it’s in KDP Select.

SET UP PINTEREST BOARDS

Pinterest is the largest driver of traffic of all social media with over 110 million active monthly users.

The first thing you want to do on Pinterest is sign up for a business account. That way, you’ll have access to analytics and your website will get verified. Once that’s done, the images you post will have a better chance of getting search results.

Use your author name as your username because that helps brand you, so use it as it appears on your books.

Just like every other site, you’ll enter a profile, headshot, keywords, etc.

Profile photo—165 X165

Board display—22 X 150

Pin sizes—236 pixels wide

You’ll also want to add an icon Pinterest button to your website, so visitors can check out your boards by clicking the icon and going directly to your Pinterest page.

Not a good idea to connect your Pinterest account to any other social sites. If it automatically posts on Twitter, the pin will only be a link and not an actual photo.

You’ll want to add a Pinterest bookmark to your browser and you can find those instructions here: http://www.pinterest.com/about/goodies

On Pinterest, you can follow pinners (members) or their individual boards. Now, about those boards. Maybe you love jewelry or fashion or cars or like me, everything Texas. You can make boards for all your favorites, but don’t forget to make a board for each of your books! More on that later.

Look at other pinners, even authors, to get ideas of what they pin.

You can use the search bar in Pinterest to find items/images. It is quickly becoming a popular search engine!  You can pin directly from the web, or if you have personal images on your desktop, you can pin those. When you pin a personal image, be sure and include your website URL in the description/comment section.

By clicking the Pinterest logo at the top of your Pinterest page, you can navigate to the Newsfeed and find everything pinned by people you follow. Click Analytics and discover how many of your pins are getting RE-pinned. On average, a Pin, is RE-pinned 11 times!

Board Ideas 

Here are the boards I have related to my books.

A board for each book with fantasy cast, quotes, covers, etc.

Images of wedding dresses

A collection of jewelry

One of my characters loved Boho-chic, so I have a board for that.

Beautiful Men

Beautiful women

Quotes that will make you laugh, cry and think

Recipes from my Sweet Thangs Cookbook

Books I love

Boot and hats

All things Texas

DIY

As you can see, your boards should be all about what you like. Go crazy! You can even have secret boards. Why? Well, if you’re a Stuart Reardon fan, like me, and have a hard time finding a photo of him suitable for public viewing, a secret board is a good thing!!

Here’s a fun site to make beautiful posts for social media. They have 1000’s of templates. http://www.easil.com

INCLUDE BOOK BACK MATTER

Make sure you have sample chapters or excerpts from all your books in the back of each book published. Along with buy links. This is constant marketing working for you every single day!

DO PUBLIC SPEAKING

In high school, I was a twirler, and everyone knew when I dropped the baton.

I’ve sung solos, and everyone knew when I hit a wrong note.

But as a speaker, no one in the audience knows what I’m going to say, so they don’t know if I’ve messed anything up or not! That’s the beauty of public speaking…and it’s a good source of marketing. Because you’re not marketing your books…you’re marketing yourself.

All you need is WANT AND WILLPOWER. I find my program info from reading blogs, books, and doing searches. Once I have that, it’s easy to put together a power point presentation.

I generally sell some books, but more importantly, I get other speaking engagements, friends, followers, and it adds to my credibility to answer some of those HARO requests!

Meet Ann Everett

Award winning and Amazon Best-Selling author, Ann Everett embraces her small town upbringing and thinks Texans are some of the funniest people on earth. When speaking at conferences and to writing groups, businesses, book clubs, and non-profit organizations, she incorporates her special brand of wit, making her programs on marketing, self-publishing, and the benefits of laughter, informative and fun.

Her short stories have appeared in The Green Silk Journal, Snag Today, and Story Teller Magazine.

A top reviewer on thenextbigwriter.com, she lives on a small lake in Northeast Texas where she writes, bakes, and fights her addiction to Diet Dr. Peppers.

She’s been featured on:

Proud of East Texas with Joan Hallmark, KLTV-TV, Tyler, Texas

East Texas Live and Mid-day, KETK-TV, Tyler, Texas

KTSS-TV, Hope, Arkansas

The Authors Show with Don McCauley, Internet radio show

The Chandler & Brownsboro Statesman, Chandler, Texas

The Daily Tribune, Mt. Pleasant, Texas

Tyler Morning Telegraph, Tyler, Texas

InMagazine, East Texas

Ten things you won’t know about Ann by reading her bio:

She’s been married to her high school sweetheart.
She loves shopping at thrift stores.
She doesn’t remember her first kiss.
She hates talking on the telephone.
A really sharp pencil makes her happy.
She secretly wants to get a tattoo.
A charter member of National Honor Society in high school remains one of her proudest moments.
She’s thankful wrinkles aren’t painful.
She sucks at math.

Ann’s Books:

Tizzy/Ridge romantic suspense trilogy

Laid Out and Candle Lit

You’re Busting My Nuptials

Tied With a Bow and No Place to Go

Contemporary romance companion books

Tell Me a Secret

Two Wrongs Make a Right

Say You’ll Never Love Me

Non-fiction

Strong Verbs Strong Voice: A quick reference to improve your writing and impress readers (Amazon best seller)

Body Language: A quick reference for character action and description

Sweet Thangs: Southern Sweets from Two Sassy Sisters

Find Ann on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Amazon, and Goodreads!