Tag: advertising

Ad Stacking… It works!

Good morning! I’ve been missing in action for a couple of weeks. With the end of tax season, a book release, and a short time off to relax, it’s been a little crazy.

You may be asking what ad stacking is. Well, I just learned more about it lately myself. So, I’ll try to explain it and not get too far out there while doing it. Here goes!

Ad stacking is when you run ads for several days before, during, and after a book release or promotional period. It helps to bring your book some attention before the release day. Then on the day of release. But you keep the ads running even after the day of release. That way it keeps the momentum going. And I can say this, it works.

For the release of Safe, I placed it on preorder for about five weeks. Then a week before the release date, I ran a ad for a couple of days, then on another site I ran an ad for the three days before the release. On release day I did a double ad. Then I finished it off with a ad on the day after the release. It was an amazing release, not to mention it help some of my back stock gain some momentum. Safe went all the way to #3 on Amazon in three categories. Not to mention it got pretty high on Barnes and Nobles ranks as well.

Now, I’m not saying it will work this way for everyone, but for me, it was a winner. When Book 2 of the In Harms Way Series comes out, I’ll be doing it again, but I may ad another element with another vendor. But I’ll do it again. And it didn’t break the bank either. So that makes it a win win…

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

If you haven’t checked out Safe, then here’s a link for you…

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Setting up ads for week…

It’s finally Saturday. How do you spend your Saturday? Me, I take a little longer cuddling my coffee, then I check my social media. My house gets cleaned and laundry done, not saying it’s put up, just done. Then I get to work on my weekly ads.

Photo by Bich Tran on Pexels.com

How do I schedule for a week? I’ll let you in on a little secret, I have a post spreadsheet. On my spreadsheet I have the books that I will post on for the upcoming week and where. I input the information for ads that are coming out and also, my blog posts are mostly done ahead of time.

Why do I schedule all of this ahead of time? I want more time to write. But how do I do it? Well, I use Hootsuite, Twitter Scheduler, Facebook Scheduler and other programs. No, I do not pay for the subscriptions, I do as many on each of them that I can.

A little hint, do not overload your social media with books. Post stuff about yourself, your life, inspirational pictures, pets, and so on. Let your fans know who you are. I try to alternate book posts to every four hours or more. That way I’m not too overpowering.

So, what are you doing today? Are you kicking back, enjoying a good movie? Live life… Laugh a lot… and Love…

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Social media promotions…

It’s Tuesday, which means we made it through Monday!

I want to talk with you about promotions. As authors, we constantly struggle with how to promote our books. Do we spend money? Do we wait and see how it goes? What do we do?

I’ve asked these questions many times. Advertising can be expensive, but there are less costly choices. You may be saying, but what do I do now? Promote, I say promote. I’ve been doing a little experiment with promotions. It’s amazing what I found out. Now, don’t get me wrong, paid advertising does have its great points and bad points. But, today I want to talk about promotions.

I went a whole week without promoting my book on social media. Let’s just say my sales went down. So, the next week I promoted to one site. Guess what? My sales started back up. I added several sites to the promotional train and boom, my sales went up.

Now, I’ve been doing steady promotions on several social media sites and what I’ve found is that every day I have sales, instead of gaps. Also, it’s helping to grow my platform, which is good.  I’ve gained several newsletter subscribers too.

A great point of social media promotions is that they are free! What’s better than that and you still get results. Try it out. Do the test and let me know how it goes for you…

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

P.S. Don’t forget to promote on your blog! Here’s mine:

myBook.to/Tuscany Take a trip to Tuscany and fall in love with Lana and Romeo!

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Stepping up the game…

Good Monday morning! Wow, the weekend seemed way too short, but today is a new day. With a new day, starts a new game…

If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, well, it’s promotion of our books. Look, you know as well as I do that the competition is steep. We have to make sure that our book outshines the thousands of other books in our genres. Some days it seems useless, but then the writer in me say, keep pushing.

For me, I’ve stepped up my game. How you might ask? Well, here’s how. I’ve stopped trying to be on every social media site out there. That’s just plain out exhausting and a waste of writing time trying to keep up with all of it. My main goal is to blog, keep my website interesting, and promote on a few social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Also, I’m making sure that all of my more than 30 books are on Allauthor.com. If you haven’t checked out this site, I suggest you do. You can put up to four of your books on there under the free membership and then set up automatic tweets. With as many books as I have, I went ahead and did the paid membership.

Don’t forget to build up your newsletter subscribers. I’ve met so many wonderful people through my newsletter and blog. Which if you can, keep posting several times a week. make it interesting and fun.

So, how will you step up your game?

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Finding your audience…

Good morning! How do you figure out your audience? What am I talking about? Well, who reads your books? What age group? What demographic? How do I know this stuff? LOL! It’s called search and figure out.

The reason I know this is that I’ve been looking into promoting books. This is one of the questions asked: “Who is your audience?” It makes sense. So here is what my new series ‘Wishful Harbor’ brought to mind.

  1. Age group: 18 – 25 (This is just a start, but…)
  2. Loves Small Town life
  3. Loves sweet romance with a Happily Ever After
  4. Hallmark movie lover (So far we’re describing me… except the age group ;))
  5. Needs to get lost for a moment or two

Ok, so this is just a sampling, but you get the idea. The point is to steer the advertising in the direction of the above people. In other words, I’ll focus on hashtags that steer my tweets, promotions, and advertising toward this focus group.

Have you tried this concept? If so, how did it work?

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…wishful harbor design

Don’t put all your eggs…

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Good Monday morning! It’s chilly here in Georgia and great writing weather. Saturday I managed a little over 3600 words, even with cleaning the house and planting mums. It was a productive weekend, to say the least.

Ok, you’ve written your book, now it’s time to publish it. As a self published author, you have so many choices. I’ve talked to authors that only place their books on Amazon, which is alright if you just want to get in with the Kindle reader, but there are so many other places to put your book, so why not?

You may be new to the publishing world, so I’ll enlighten you on some places that are great for self published authors:

1: Amazon – without a doubt, most authors go here first.

2: Smashwords – This website offers a one stop shop. Your book can be placed with Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and a multitude of other places just through Smashwords.

3: All Romance Ebooks – They offer your book on their website and in many different formats.

4: Barnes and Noble – Through Nook press, but I usually just go through Smashwords to get here.

5: Kobo – Again, I use Smashwords to get here too.

6: Google Play – I have some of my books here, but I’ve never done well on their pages.

7: Createspace – You need to get your book into paperback form and here’s where you can do that.

8: Draft to Digital – This site will get you on a couple of different foreign site.

9: Apple iTunes – If you use a mac, then this option is available straight to the site, but again, I use Smashwords.

This is only 9 of the many sites, but it gets you on the road to discovery and if you spread out your wings, readers will find you.

I hope this helped. If you need help getting your book formatted or the word spread, let me know. Horseshoe Publishing helps authors get their books ready for these sites and Fresh From the Book helps you spread the word.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…

Just a little Monday promo – Highlander’s Heart will be only .99 for a short while! So fall in love with a Highlander… myBook.to/HighlandersHeart

 

 

 

Book Promotions made easy!

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Good morning everyone! It’s a beautiful day, so make sure to stop today and enjoy a moment of it. I know I will because I’ve found something that writers will want to hear… Are you ready for this?

Easy book promotion… I’ve spoken on this subject before and after a couple of tests, I’ve proven it on my own. As I sat, wondering through all my social media, trying to promote my books on my Twitter, Facebook and WordPress, I was getting a little frazzled, bouncing back and forth. Well, here’s the thing, why not do it all from one site…..

Some of you already use a program that posts your promotions on all your sites, but I’m going to talk about Hootsuite today. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

First, let’s talk prep:

  1. I set up several under 140 characters promotions and put them on a spreadsheet for ease of use. Also, I use booklinker.net for my short links on Amazon and it actually promotes the book link to any country on Amazon.
  2. Then I pulled up my Hootsuite account, looking at the spreadsheet on one side of the screen and Hootsuite on the other. This way I can do it on one screen, not bounce back and forth.
  3. Now, on to the posts. I copy and paste each ad, then schedule them one hour apart. That way I’m not overloading my followers. It spreads the word gradually, but not as invasive.

It’s so easy, but I know, you’re wondering the results. Well, I found out that the retweets went up, my back stock sales went up and my new release sales went up. Now you may be saying, that was just a quirk, well, I did this on three separate occasions. It worked. Every time I had a Hootsuite campaign go out, the sales showed an increase.

So, if you’re looking for an easy way to promote your book and get some interest stirring, then try it out. I’m now scheduling several days of posts at a time, which leaves me time for writing, what more could an author ask for.

Let me know how it goes for you. Also, it doesn’t have to be all book posts. You can do cute kitty posts the same way, to change it up.

As always, great writing and May God Bless You…

 

Toes in the Sand Giveaway

toes in the sandBelow are the ways to enter Stephanie’s latest giveaway. It starts now, and ends Wednesday, May 18th at 10:00am. The winner will be given the option to pick any one of her many books as the prize! (this excludes collections) Make sure you are watching so you don’t miss any of the chances to get your name in the drawing.

On top of this over the next 9 days, if she reaches 200 likes on her author Facebook, and every 100 after that until the end of the giveaway, she will have a flash giveaway!

Monday Ramblings…

Hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day! As for me, yep. It was amazing. Being a mother is such a fantastic voyage. I actually think it prepares you to be a writer in some ways.

As for my writing, I got a long way into my latest manuscript yesterday while sitting on my patio. Sometimes I can write with a clearer head just sitting in nature, letting the worries of the world slip away and the words on the page take over. When I completely detach myself from everything, my writing goes quickly.

Here’s a reminder to check out my new website, www.freshfromthebook.com. Thanks to all of you that have passed it on to your social media and subscribed. I can’t wait to start advertising with the requests that I’ve received. That’s the goal, getting your book out there to the public. The only way you’ll get in front of your audience is to put it out there for them to find.

Here’s to good writing and may God Bless You…

 

 

 

 

Street Team

BannerHey bloggers! It’s Kaleigh again!

The Street Team is getting a good response and I want to thank everyone who signed up for it! For the next few days ONLY the first chapter of Chase (the 3rd book in the 5 Oaks Ranch series) will be on the street team page for anyone that has joined! I will have to be taking it down next week because Stephanie has provided me with some awesome new information that needs to be put on the site.

Also, make sure that you are referring people! If you refer someone and they let me know you will be eligible for an ARC of Chase before it is available to anyone else! So make sure you are signing up for the Street Team and telling everyone else about it!

Just go to http://www.stephaniehurtauthor.com/#!street-team/cdmb and it is so easy to sign up! We will approve you and then you will be able to view the newest and juiciest new from Stephanie! If you have signed up and did not receive your awesome welcome package please go back and make sure that you sign up for the Street Team and not the subscription to Stephanie’s author newsletter. If you have signed up for the Street Team you should be asked for a password and I will have confirmed your membership!

Have a great day,

Kaleigh