What’s the one marketing activity that really makes a difference for book sales?

As a book marketer, I get this question a lot from authors and publishers—and while every book, author brand, and campaign is unique, I do think there’s one universal thing that sets apart people who use social media effectively. The magic bullet? 

Good habits.  

Habits are different than goals. You may have created goals for yourself—I’m going to get X number of followers in X amount of time. Or even said something more concrete—I’m going to post every day on Instagram. But so many authors I’ve spoken to have shared that it’s just not enough to create the goals. I realized that what we all need is not the WHY or the WHAT, but the how. We need a practical workflow to follow each day that is designed to deliver the sustainable social media growth results that we desire.

These intentional, mindful habits will protect us from that awful feeling of social media burnout by limiting our tasks to quick actions that will have rewarding results!

Start Simple

When an author or publisher can define the daily, weekly, and monthly habits that make them successful, they are approaching their marketing in the same way someone with a fitness goal might approach their daily training.

Social media’s purpose is to create connections, and it only really works if you take the time to read other people’s and provide value for others (entertainment, education, beauty).

Put the outcome on the back burner for a while, and concentrate on the activities that result in connections. This workflow—the concentrated sequence of activities—will be your Author Power Hour.  

Just Add Music.

Make your time on social media fun and rewarding, and you will create a habit that is enjoyable and repeatable and they will lead to the authentic connections that can actually influence book sales. Creating this fun is part mindset shift and part good planning. I highly recommend setting your Author Power Hour to music with a custom playlist.

Sample Author Power Hour

Your Author Power Hour will be completely dependent on your goals, so the first step will be defining what you want to accomplish. 

Also, it’s important to say that an Author Power Hour does not need to be sixty minutes long every day. You could accomplish your Author Power Hour in fifteen or twenty minutes, with a longer session once a week or twice a month. 

Sample starting goals: I want to grow my Instagram and Twitter to 5,000 followers each, write a monthly blog, and get 100 clicks to my website and blog post each month.

To break these goals down into actions, I need to be active and interesting on Twitter and Instagram, I need to write blog posts, and then promote them. 

For Author Power Hour, we break these down into very specific steps and make them obvious and easy to complete. Like this:

Simple. Because I included the links here on my checklist, I was able to do each task in about 1 minute. The curation tasks took a little longer, up to 3 minutes each, because I wanted to read tweets and figure out what felt on-brand to share, and who I wanted to connect with by commenting. But it’s much better than opening Twitter and clicking around randomly, which is what tends to happen without a plan.

Get the Google Spreadsheet template here.

Now, because I want some fun vibes to go with each activity, I add some tunes:

Here’s my Author Power Hour playlist if you wants to use it as a start. And you can just make your own using iTunes or Spotify or YouTube or whatever program you want to build your own playlist.

Weekly and Monthly Power Hours

There is a lot more to social media than just retweeting at a certain time each day. You’ve got to create your own content, do hashtag research, and participate in trending conversations—you’ve got to find Twitter chats, write blog posts, and actually execute all the things you know will result in growing your brand. 

So in the same way you define your daily activities (and set them to music if you’re like me!), you’ll define the weekly and monthly activities that you need to accomplish as well. 

Creating your Own Author Power Hour

You can start this important practice today, for free. If you get this practice down, you’ll have a better idea of what you might want to hire help for in the future and make sure your money with advertising or paying a contractor goes as far as possible.

Here’s how to get started.

1. Get the free spreadsheet template and download it for Excel or make a copy.

2. Think about your social media goals

3. Think backward about what you can reasonably do each day to meet those goals, and how long you want to spend each day/week/month on the practice

4. Define your daily Author Power Hour list

5. Think about the bigger picture of what you need to be doing each week and each month, and add those practices

6. Think about how to make it fun—set it to music! Eat m&m’s after each task! Take your dog for a nice walk when you’re done! Focus on building the habits and consistency first, then you’ll be able to figure out how to better control the outcomes

If you’re reading this and thinking, yes, but it still feels hard. What about creating new content? What about scheduling and posting? What about National Puppy Day and International Read Across America Day? And how can I tell if it’s all working? I hear you and I really do understand how overwhelming it can all seem—and I think I can help! I’d love to schedule a consulting call session with you to develop your custom Author Power Hour. 

Together we’ll dig in and help you research, brainstorm, set goals, and create a custom routine to follow each day, week, and month—plus tips on how to evaluate the success and create new goals as you go. If it sounds like something you’re interested in, fill out the form below to apply!