Every Day Should Be A School Day.

Writer’s groups on social media are very popular, and quite rightly so.
 
Writing is, by its nature, a solitary life so it is nice to know that you aren’t alone. A real life writer’s group is better, but if you don’t have regular access to one of those, social media provides a useful alternative.
 
People use writer’s groups to seek advice on a wide range of topics: writing techniques, gaining feedback on their work and, the reason behind this blog, they seek advice on book marketing.

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The problem with seeking advice on marketing on social media is that it as an extremely wide ranging subject and few writers have the knowledge and experience to more than scratch the surface.
 
That means that the person seeking advice tries out a few approaches, many of them the same ones as everyone else is using, and some of the most basic techniques are by-passed because the people using social media don’t know enough about the subject.

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As with any subject, you have to understand the basics if you want to understand how to apply the techniques.

​To use a metaphor, if you don’t know how the internal combustion engine works, you will never get as far as diagnosing a blocked carburettor as being the reason why your car won’t start.
 
The same applies to book marketing. If you don’t understand the basics, you’ll never understand why all the things you are doing to promote your books aren’t working or, at least, not working as well as they might.
 
As an example, some authors never get as far as understanding that using social media as a marketing channel isn't about plugging your book all the time. It's about building relationships with readers so that they want to know about your books.

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As professional book marketers (that’s what publisher are, really) we contribute to those social media groups when we think we can offer good advice and we stay quiet if we aren’t so sure.
 
One of the bits of advice we offer on a regular basis is to study marketing properly.
 
Marketing of any product needs a wide range of skills and knowledge. Within marketing itself the professionals tend to specialise in certain areas and hardly scratch the surface in others. If they need a specialist in an area they aren’t so well versed in, they seek one out. So, for amateurs, it is even harder to know where to concentrate their efforts.

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Marketing is a subject that continues to evolve.

The “marketing mix” as it is known (aka the 5Ps,  6 Ps, 7Ps or even more Ps depending on who you listen to), first started to be discussed in the 1940s, long before Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea for the internet, so marketing has had to adjust to cope with new technology while at the same time having to continue to deal with physical marketplaces such as bookshops.
 
Take the P for People heading.
 
This used to mean the people who sold the product – their recruitment, training, personalities, product knowledge and sales skills.
 
But so much of our modern marketplace is now on-line, where people play almost no part in the sales. We have to hope that the website designers know what they are doing as they are now the people who influence the direct sales.
 
The real salesperson is now the author or publisher, as they decide what words and images to use on the product page. Never before has cover design, for example, been so important in selling a book (that's covered by another of the Ps: Product).
 
The P for People topic is now more about who reads the books – the demographics of particular genres, or “who reads what”.

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If you are putting a book on the shelves of bookshops then you don’t have to worry about that so much.

​Books sellers have their stores laid out in subject order and people of the appropriate age, gender and interests know where to find the books they like. But if you are trying to promote a book on social media you have to know where on social media your target audience is likely to hang out.
 
That’s the opposite of the bookshop.
 
Which is why asking for marketing advice on social media isn’t really going to help an Indie author.
 
Let’s face it, if you are asking a question on Facebook and it is being answered on Facebook, then the chances are that the person answering the question probably knows quite a lot about Facebook, but probably doesn’t know much about how to market on TikTok or Instagram.
 
For the modern marketplace, the Indie author has to be almost as knowledgeable about marketing as his counterpart in one of  the Big 5 publishing houses.
 
And to become that knowledgeable requires proper study, not asking a few random questions on social media.

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I’m not talking about a full 3 year course of study at a  university (though it would be great if you can afford the time and money to do it), but I am talking about study of some sort (don’t worry, I’m not going to try to sell you a marketing course, because we don’t sell one).
 
One of the owners of Selfishgenie Publishing has a Masters Degree in business management. He knows quite a bit about marketing. But when he decided to set up the company he didn’t realise how much more he was going to have to learn.
 
In the few years that elapsed between him picking up his MBA certificate and setting up the business, the whole world of marketing had moved on. The internet was now King (or Queen if you prefer, or even President). What worked for business in the early years of the new millennium was no longer working. That meant he had a lot of catching up to do, so he did what any sensible person would do and went back to school.
 
Not full time residential school, but part time online learning.
 
And if you need to learn about marketing, that is what you have to do too.

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Some people are reluctant to go back to school, however. We can’t understand why.
 
You are not a failure just because you don’t know something. In fact, it is a mark of maturity to be able to admit that you don’t know some things, especially if they're in an area that you have never studied. Besides, only you know that you are studying, unless you choose to tell the world.
 
Yes, it can cost money – but it doesn’t have to. There are organisations that provide free training and at the end of this blog we will provide a link to one of them. And you can sign up from anywhere in the world.
 
OK, you can ask questions on social media and the answers may sell you a few books, but they will never sell you as many books as a fully developed marketing strategy, backed up by a plan and the knowledge and resources to deliver it.

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That can only come from in depth knowledge of the subject.

​So, if you want to climb the ladder of success to become a bestselling author, we advise going back to school.
 
For information on free online training courses in marketing, click here.
 
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