Category : Tips & Tricks

Tips & Tricks Uncategorized

How to track your success on social media

Sep 17,2021 / By / No Comment

It’s hard to know if you’re “doing” social media right. I mean, yes, you post unique content, you respond to comments, and you regularly engage with other accounts in your niche by liking their posts or leaving comments in relevant threads. But is it working?? By working, we’re referring to people liking your posts, following your page, clicking your links and/or visiting your website.

To know if you really are using social media to benefit your brand as an author, you can track your success using your social media insights. That is, if you’ve signed up for a professional profile like the Facebook Business Page or Instagram Creator Account, which offer you tons of added benefits for building your brand. Once you’ve created your Facebook Page or Instagram Creator Account, experiment with posting for a couple weeks and then venture into the world of your social media insights.

Find your Insights on Facebook:

And on Instagram:

Alright, now take a look at three key ways to measure your success on social media using your social media insights!

Follower Count

Having a high follower count makes a good first impression, but if it isn’t growing week-over-week you need to change up your strategy. A steady increase in followers means your account is reaching more people organically as well as getting new people’s attention.

If your follower growth rate is only increasing by 1% a month, re-evaluate your content strategy.

Content Interactions

Tracking your content interactions, i.e. how many likes, comments or saves your post and stories get is important. It lets you monitor just how interested your audience is in the content you are creating.

Your social media analytics will show your overall interactions as well as the interactions for each post.

Here’s what industry standards tell us:

  • Less than 1% = low engagement rate
  • Between 1% and 3.5% = average/good engagement rate
  • Between 3.5% and 6% = high engagement rate
  • Above 6% = very high engagement rate

How can you get from 1% to 3.5% or higher? We share a few tips for updating your social media content strategy below.

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Book Marketing Tips & Tricks

How to utilize your author website!

Sep 16,2021 / By / No Comment

So you made the decision to create an author website – FANTASTIC! A website functions as a modern online business card, and not having one can impact credibility. You will use your website to share information and news about your book, let people know where they can buy it, and offer other ways of connecting with you by including your social media links. Ultimately, your website is the foundational building blocks of your brand! But, what should you be doing with it and how can you help get traffic (views) to the site?

Unless you are creating regular content in the form of a blog, uploading new resources, or doing something unique on your site, it can be hard to drive people to visit your author website frequently or at all. So what should you be doing?

Here are 4 key elements to follow to get the most out of your author website:

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Book Marketing Tellwell Books Tips & Tricks

How to market and sell your children’s book – book marketing advice for children’s authors

May 21,2021 / By / No Comment

Whether you are published, in the process, or only just thinking about it – here are some tips & tricks for all children’s authors.

1 . YOUR AUTHOR BRAND

Your author brand gives your readers insight into who you are! Creating something that showcases your personality is key. As a children’s author, you may also want to show off a bit more of your goofy side!

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your author brand:

  • Make it eye-catching and fun!
  • GET PLAYFUL
  • Use a fun background or bright colors
  • Don’t be afraid to make a silly face
  • Let your personality shine through – both in your photo and bio

2 . YOUR COMMUNITY

The average buyer’s age of children’s books is between 30 and 44.

Females make up more than 70% of these buyers. They are also more likely to discuss and recommend a book they and their kids enjoyed. In fact, buyers of children’s books are more easily influenced by the recommendations of family and friends than any other book category. For this reason, it is really important to build a loyal community of parents and teachers that enjoy and support your book.

Consider building an ambassador program or launch team! Also, get involved in your local community and make time to meet your readers.

Meet your readers!

  • Pursue classroom visits
  • Join children’s book festivals
  • Participate in library events such as a read-along!
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Meet the Team Tips & Tricks

What to ask before you begin your self-publishing journey – advice from Tellwell publishing consultant Ejay Co

Apr 23,2021 / By / No Comment

Ejay, tell us about your role at Tellwell.

My role in a nutshell is to introduce authors to the world of self-publishing. I help with the process of identifying an approach to move forward, selecting processes and services that would fit their needs, and setting the foundation for their expectations about the process. I see myself as a pilot helping authors navigate their way to the destination they have selected. 

What do you enjoy most about working with authors?

As a bookworm, hearing about an author’s writing process is always fascinating. It amazes me how much work goes into each book an author writes. Hearing stories from authors who wrote their book over several decades, and others that have been completed over a couple of weeks is a manifestation that there is no “standard” process for writing a book. These conversations are always the best part of the job.

What advice do you have for authors who are considering self-publishing a book?

I understand just how much work and love is poured on to every page an author writes and I think, ultimately, authors would expect the same amount of dedication from the team in charge of developing their books.

I assume it’s a relief for authors to know that they can get all the professional help they need while still keeping a level of creative control over their book, and keeping their full copyright ownership is just the cherry on top. 

If you decide to take the route of assisted self-publishing, where you partner with a self-publishing company, ask about their company culture. It’s essential. You’ll be working with the team for a significant period of time and it’s important to consider the dynamics of the team you’re working with. This helps ensure that you’ll feel comfortable throughout the process which makes completing your book a lot more fulfilling in the end. 

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Book Marketing Tips & Tricks

TIPS & TRICKS: Author resources that exclusively promote POC authors

Feb 19,2021 / By / No Comment
#imatter: Unicorns Sleep Here by Irony James

When meeting with author Irony James about her upcoming inspirational novel #imatter: Unicorns Live Here, she posed the question of not only what resources were available to her as an author, but also what resources were available to her as an author of colour. Irony is passionate about being a black, female author, and wanted to connect with fellow POC creatives within the industry to share her story.

This conversation prompted a deep dive into festivals, organizations, and platforms that pride themselves on giving black authors a voice, and allowing them to make connections with other POC creatives. 

We wanted to share some of our awesome findings with you!

APPLICATIONS

The StoryGraph
The StoryGraph is an up and coming virtual library platform! Created by Nadia Odunayo in late 2019, The StoryGraph prides itself on being ethnically diverse with it’s authors and content, instead of focusing on only mainstream books. Similar to Goodreads, The StoryGraph provides readers with a place to find great new reads, and review their favourite books.

When signing up for the website, readers are prompted to fill out a survey discussing their reading preferences including favourite genres, favourite book characteristics, genres that they would be uninterested in, and what they don’t like about certain books. The StoryGraph uses these preference tags to recommend different books to users across the platform, so readers can request to see books that only feature POC Characters, LGTBQ Characters, books written by POC authors, etc.! Readers are also prompted to rate books based on criteria like themes, moods, pace, and the characters themselves (such as character development, how diverse the characters are, whether or not the characters are loveable, or if their flaws are on display, etc.), so the ratings can’t be skewed or biased.  

Similar to Goodreads, The StoryGraph provides users with the option to create reading challenges that are accessible to the whole community. They have a a whole section of these challenges dedicated to reading #OwnVoices, with challenges such as 100 Black Novelist You Should Read, Inclusivity Reading Challenge, and Reading Writers of Colour 2021, among others. 

The StoryGraph is definitely a platform to keep an eye on, as it’s going to be one of the most important virtual libraries around!

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Tips & Tricks

How do I choose the best keywords & categories for my book?

Jan 23,2021 / By / No Comment

Categories and keywords are the words and phrases used by online retailers such as Amazon or Indigo to help categorize your book among similar titles, similar to how a bookstore shelves books with others of the same genre. This is the metadata linked to your online book listing.

Choosing relevant keywords and categories will help readers interested in the subject matter to find your book among similar titles when searching online retailers, which can help you sell more books. 

Choosing Categories

METHOD 1

Selecting your categories can be as simple as scrolling through the available categories (or BISAC codes) and picking the ones that most closely fit your book’s content.

  1. Pick categories that actually match your book’s content.
  2. Pick the most specific categories available.
  3. Follow the guidelines below:
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Book Marketing Tips & Tricks

How to choose a good domain name for your author website – 3 tips

Apr 29,2020 / By / No Comment

By Cassie Smith


Having an author website is a bit like a business card – it establishes credibility, a point of contact, and an opportunity to showcase your work. 

It can be well-agreed that in 2020, having an online presence as an author is essential, and an author website no exception. 

As an author, you might have even envisioned what you want to put on your website – maybe a blog; an annotated gallery; links to events etc. What you might not have considered, however, is your domain name. 

What is a Domain Name? 
A domain name is the address of your website that people type in the browser URL bar to visit your website.

In simple terms, if your website was a house, then your domain name will be its address.

An example of a domain name is:  www.google.com

Now that we have an understanding of what a domain name is, let’s move on to determining what the right one is for you!

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Tips & Tricks

How to market your book during the COVID-19 pandemic

Mar 30,2020 / By / No Comment

Physical distancing, self-isolation and quarantines during the coronavirus pandemic have completely altered our lives. We’ve all had to reimagine the ways we connect and engage with each other. With so much fear and uncertainty circulating during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a great need for breaks from the news cycle. We are also spending more time at home now than, perhaps, ever in our lifetime. Indulging in a good story is one of the oldest and most enjoyable forms of escapism. Hopeful, cheerful, funny or just straight-up weird and quirky content can lighten our mood and make us feel so much better.

For authors, it’s a great time to promote and market your book. While holding book launches, book tours, book signings and school visits are not possible in a physical setting, you can take these activities online. Authors are using social media, and platforms like Zoom, to hold live events, digital book tours, and Q&As. They are partnering with other authors, book bloggers, booktubers and influencers in their space to share their stories and engage with their audiences.

Here are some ideas and strategies to consider on how to market and promote your book during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Book launch → Digital book launch

Considering using Facebook live to launch your book. It’s free and relatively easy to setup. Almost everyone has a Facebook account together and it’s likely the people you would invite to a physical book launch event will already be your Facebook friend. Facebook Live can also accommodate another person which is great if you would like a co-host, emcee or someone to introduce you.

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Book Marketing Tips & Tricks

The secrets to forum marketing for authors – how to promote your book online

Jun 26,2019 / By / No Comment

Tips on how to successfully promote your book in online forumsmockupshots-monicamartinez14900-mock-00193

Online forums offer a huge opportunity for writers and poets to share their work, expertise, and advice with others as well as engage with readers and authors. Many online communities are dedicated to specific subjects where people go to seek information, share their experiences, opinions, and offer advice. These forums allow people to build community, engage and learn from each other on issues that are important to them.

 By being active in a forum, you are positioning yourself as an expert and are allowing for your content and book to be discovered by people who are actively seeking information (or even books) on the topics related to your book.

Here are our tips on how to use forum marketing to generate awareness and buzz for your book:
 
1. FIND THE RIGHT FORUM. The key to forum marketing is finding the right community in your niche. You want to narrow your list to a handful of forums and then commit to being active on a few. Here are some tips on how to narrow your search:
·        Look for forums that have at least 1,000 members and 10,000 posts
·        Make sure the forum gets at least ten to fifteen new posts on a daily basis
·        Ignore forums that are overrun by spam
·        Avoid forums hosted by your direct competitors

Here are a few suggestions for you to check out:

 

·        Writing Forums
·        Published Authors Forum
·        Canadian Forums and Canadian Content: for news and politics
.        Maple Leaf Web: For all things Canadian
.        Reddit: Find a subreddit for your genre or subject related to your book
 
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