As well as Writers and Authors I also do a lot of other writing related content. One such project is my Quick Tips video series on YouTube. (You can find the whole playlist here). For today's post I thought I'd share with you a video I did back in October last year about adding a video to your Amazon author page.
You can upload one video of your choice to your Amazon author page. Video is as close to in person as you can get and so is a very effective form of media for building a relationship with your readers. Use this space to connect with your fans, showcase a book trailer for your most recent release, or to reinforce your author brand.
Screenshot from my Amazon Author page showing video section
Share the link to your Amazon author page in the comments section below so we can all pull ideas from the ways everyone is making use of this feature.
YouTube is a great way of building your author brand and marketing your books. Not only one of the world's most popular social media sites, YouTube is also one of the top method's of search.
Are you using video as part of your marketing plan? What kinds of video content are you uploading to reinforce your author brand? Leave a comment below with your 2 cents.
When it comes to creating content online, video is as close to in-person as you can get, and has proved to be a highly effective marketing tool. Marketing experts around the world agree that video is big news and regularly offer reasons why you should be creating video content. I'm going to assume that you've already been told that video can be a powerhouse and move on to how you can promote your online videos. After all, it's not enough to just upload a video to YouTube. You need people to watch it too.
This infographic gives some good tips for promoting your online videos, but first let me list some of the take away points raised:
1) Don't forget about SEO. Add a keyword rich description and tags to your video to help it show up better in search results.
2) Send the video link to people you think might be interested in it. If you have an email list or newsletter use them to let people know about your content.
3) Include a call to action. Video is another form of social media and the more likes, comments, and shares your video gets the more viral it will become. Ask viewers for feedback and get them talking about your video.
4) Embed your videos on your blog. Most of you probably have an author website or blog (if you don't, why not?) and therefore have the perfect channel already in place for sharing your video content. Video makes for an easy blog post too as you can just embed it using the code from YouTube. A quick intro or follow up and your post is done.
5) Share your video on your other social media sites and widen your reach. Tweet it, pin it, post it to Facebook and/or Google+... This is also a great opportunity to cross promote your various profiles and let your fans know they can find you on other sites too. It makes a nice break from just written posts too and gives your followers a bit of variety.
6) Check your stats. Learn what's working and what's not so you can improve your marketing plan and get better results in the future.
Are you using online video as part of your marketing plan? What are you doing to promote your online videos? Leave a comment below and share your experience.
If you write non-fiction then you're probably already aware of the impact explainer video's can have in helping to build your author brand. They can be very effective for fiction writers too though. If you've added "do more video content" to your list of new year resolutions (which I hope is on most of your lists) then explainer video's should be amongst your ideas when brainstorming what content you're going to be putting out.
Below is a nice infographic by the people at explainio.com that sums up what explainer video's are and best practices for using them. Whilst it's designed for a more general market, the points covered can easily be related to writers.
As you can see, explainer video's are designed to quickly deliver a message and can be a very effective way to build engagement with your audience.
So, what kind of explainer video's could you do to help build your author brand and make yourself stand out as an expert in your niche? Pretty much anything that shows you're an expert in your field. You could talk about the pro's and con's of self publishing or share insight about plotting. Get creative and I'm sure you'll come up with plenty of ideas for things to explain that will be of interest to your audience and that will strengthen your author brand.
Have you already done some explainer video's? Share the link in the comments section so we can all go and check them out for inspiration ;)
Video is big news this year and social media is the driving force for online marketing. The combination of the two is therefore an essential part your promotional strategy.
This infographic by Films About Me gives a nice overview of how you can use video content for social media marketing
How are you using video in your marketing efforts?
Can you remember what it was like before YouTube? These recent statistics show just how much YouTube has grown over the years and as the second most popular search engine in the world it's not showing any signs of slowing down either. In fact 2013 has been dubbed "the year of video" and as such there is likely to be even more content shared and watched via the site.
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