Victoria Pinder - Transform Cold Clicks into Raving Readers

M ind Mapping

Goals

AudienceBenefitHow to

C hoosing the Right Features for your Newsletter

Design and features of the basic newsletter

Get personal and ask reader questions

Should you do giveaways ?

Sign up for your newsletter

Landing Pages

Social Media

Facebook

Automation, what is it, and how does it help

Automation set up and the first email series

Automation, the second email

Automation, the third email

Automation, the fourth email

Automation, the fifth email

Automation, what do I do next ?

B log matches the brand

Timing of the day

Guidelines for your posts

Creating your calendar for the year

Pictures that match your brand

Finding other bloggers who match your brand

Potential contributors

Share buttons

How Topics take shape

Our short giveaways

Call to action reminders

Don't hide your author personality .

T his wasnt intended to be a book at all. It started out as a short giveaway for authors, like a top ten list. The teacher in me realized that no book on the market really addressed what happened after branding yourself .

In taking almost a year off to really study the market (and give birth to my baby girl), I realized how many mistakes I made as a new author. I put myself in marketing school if you will, though it wasn't a paid-for course. I spent hours and hours watching videos, listening to podcasts, asking trusted friends, and really redoing everything on my own website. I decided that if this was to be written down then it was my job to help other authors who were struggling like me .

None of what I say are strict rules. I made a plan and I will stick to my plan until I find another plan that's even better. The ability to change and admit to being wrong are admirable qualities and I always want to be willing to try something new .

Also, this guide for genre authors to help in setting up marketing for their next book is my way of giving back to the community. I personally love being a member of Romance Writers of America and the opportunity I have had to travel to other places to meet with other authors has truly been a treasure in my life .

I also see marketing as this area we are all trying to figure out and none of us are perfect. My ways might not be true to your voice. That's perfectly okay. We are all different and made different. I do hope some of my suggestions are helpful to you and that everyone who reads this guide is blessed with success in their fiction .

So now that this is whole book, please check out all three sections, which I tried to make into bite sized pieces. In my day job as a teacher, we have block scheduling. While I like having my students for an hour and a half every other day, class has to be divided up into more than just me lecturing. So this guide is structured to be bite sized, and many pieces have applications that you can stop and do before going onto the next part .

Now that you know and understand my intention to help, I hope you take the time and find something useful in this whole piece .

M apping out your online persona

You must envision your plans for the future before you proceed to take steps that are necessary to accomplish the goals .

As an author I went from publishing house to publishing house to sell my novels but I wasn't connecting to fans. I had no clue how to act online. I knew I could write novels. I knew I enjoyed writing and reading romances so I had my genre. However, marketing wasn't something that came natural to me .

My life never involved sales. I worked hard but I never worked sales to get ahead. I completely saw people who were better at sales connecting to fans and there I was on the sidelines, wondering how did she do it ?

Then I went through the second phase of 'I can never be like her.' Self doubt ruled at this point and I stuck my head in the sand. I wrote more novels as I enjoyed the fiction I could understand and create .

Then honestly I met a friend who does public relations for a living. She's smart. She's funny and I took notes whenever I could .

This lead me to the this phase. I studied the market. I went to figure out what the major players did. I redid everything. I created a new me online .

I also did what I always did, I took mental notes and memorized what I could. Sometimes it might seem I'm not listening in a conversation but that's absolutely not true. If I'm truly in awe of what you are saying, my mind visualizes how this might work for me. I jump ahead three spots on the mental board all while listening .

Step one for me was rebranding myself. I had to think about what an audience might connect to. While this book isn't about branding and is more hands on geared towards creating your social media to attract readers, you have to ensure that your branding works. If you have more than one book out then you need to see what the message of your books truly are .

If you have a message that connects to readers and why you write then this can lead to your branding message. My new one is 'bold women and the brainy men who love them.' With this I make a promise to my readers that my female characters are not stupid (though they might make mistakes as we all do) and that my male characters are smart. (In real life and in novels, I've never been attracted to the brawny but dumb men .)

Now that I had my promise I could retool online, but I didn't do it alone. I went to check out all the A-List authors who have a team of marketing people behind them. I wanted to see their websites. I made notes. Nora Roberts and JD Robb are the same person in real life, but how she poses in her pictures as Nora and as JD Robb is noticeably different .