This is a guest post from Kathy Meis at Bublish.com. We asked her to share a little about how you can engage with readers and how to use the free publishing platform at Bublish to accomplish this. Kathy was also the guest of our fourth episode of The Author Hangout. Click here to watch the show, read the write up, or listen to the show for more great book marketing tips. Have fun engaging with your readers!
Twitter has often been described as a giant cocktail party. To some extent that’s true. There is certainly a lot of chatter there. Every once in a while, though, there’s a memorable conversation that reminds everyone why it’s worth showing up to the party. We are all drawn toward those types of conversations and the people who have them. That’s when engagement happens, connections are forged and the power of social media reveals itself. But how as an author do you start those types of conversations … especially with strangers? How do you draw people toward your work without feeling like a salesperson?
Use Bublish
At Bublish, our answer to those questions is share a book bubble! Bublish is the award-winning book marketing platform that helps authors reach, engage and grow their audience. What’s a book bubble, you ask? Here’s an example:
You can see the live “bubble” here.
Book bubbles can help authors:
- Start meaningful conversations with readers. The stories you tell in your bubbles’ author insights are great conversation starters. Readers can even comment or ask questions using the Facebook comments right in your bubbles!
- Effortlessly build an author brand. Book bubbles are designed to make personal branding easy. Not only do they include your photo and bio, but they allow you to speak directly to readers about your book through the author insight. There’s a lot of noise in the book marketplace right now. If you want to rise above it, you have to show readers you’re professional and care about the craft of riding. Also, when you share your stories and connect them to your books, you’re building your author brand.
- Improve SEO. Each bubble travels with a set of keywords you select. Each time you share your book bubbles, you allow search engines to find you and your book(s) more easily. Since book bubbles are social content, they are highly ranked by search algorithms.
- Get more social followers and website visitors. The first thing authors tell us when they start creating and sharing book bubbles is that the number of readers following them on their social channels starts going up as well as the visits to their websites. Why? For all the reasons we’ve already mentioned!
Revolutionary, unprecedented access to readers
Being an author in today’s crowded, social book marketplace may have its challenges, but there has never been more opportunity to talk directly to readers. We hope you’ll check out Bublish and see how book bubbles can help you find, engage and grow your audience.
Kathy Meis is founder and president of the social book discovery platform Bublish. She is a professional writer, editor and editorial manager with more than twenty years of experience in the media and publishing industries. Kathy was also a founding editor of Forbes MediaCritic and is a founding partner of PubSmart, a new author-centric publishing conference being held in Charleston, South Carolina. She also ghostwrites business books and is a frequent blogger on the subject of book promotion, author branding, social media and discoverability. In 2012, Kathy won the People’s Choice Award at the Startup Showcase at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change Publishing Conference.