Everybody knows buzz is an important part of book marketing. It can help catch book reviewers’ and bloggers’ attention, which can in turn drive sales.
But how do you create buzz? How do you get people talking about a book?
Obviously, one way is to get Beyoncé or Taylor Swift to post your book on Instagram. But if that’s not in the cards, there are are several tools available that can help. Some of these tools can help get a book exposure to relevant new readers, while others encourage existing loyal fans to spread the word. We’ve included only free tools so they’re accessible to anyone, and some ideas on how to use them.
1. BookBub New Release Alerts – to spread the word about a new book
Letting existing fans know about a new release can help create buzz and drive sales immediately after launch. BookBub sends New Release Alerts to an author’s followers whenever they launch a new book or novella. The more followers an author has, the more people will see their New Release Alerts.
Keep in mind that if you have not claimed your BookBub Author Profile (and completed it with a bio and picture), you will usually get less exposure on BookBub.com. So be sure to claim your Author Profile here.
New Release Alerts is a free tool for all authors — traditional or independently published. These alerts are not subject to BookBub’s editorial selection process, which means any author releasing new books can take advantage of this feature.
See how to get a book approved for a New Release Alert here, or get started by claiming your Author Profile here.
2. Canva – to create ads and shareable social media content
What’s one of the best ways to get more buzz on social media? Include images in each of your posts. Social media posts with images are more likely to be shared. For example, tweets with images get 150% more retweets, and Facebook posts with images account for 87% of total interactions. Instead of posting text-only social media updates, including an image can encourage fans to share or like.
Here’s an example post from Mary Kay Andrews’s Facebook page of a simple yet stunning visual that got lots of engagement:
If you’re not a graphic designer, it can be time-consuming to create fancy images from scratch or source help from a professional designer. That’s where Canva can help. You can search from a library of images, backgrounds, layouts, and fun fonts to quickly drag-and-drop a unique design. They have templates for Facebook posts, Facebook cover photos, Pinterest graphics, Instagram posts, blog graphics, and more.
3. BookBrush– to quickly create book ads
Book Brush is a tool dedicated to making ad images specifically for books, so creating an ad image is straightforward — you don’t have to sort through other types of image options that different design tools may offer. They offer Community Templates, which are essentially premade book ad designs with various backgrounds that only require you to plug in your book’s cover and any text you’d like to add. They also have a few filter options, such as genre and ad platform, so you can easily choose a design that best suits your needs. These templates are available through their Plus Plan.
4. Rafflecopter – to run viral giveaways
Giving away free copies of a book is a well-known way to generate buzz and reviews. Instead of solely distributing advanced reader copies (ARCs) to book bloggers or reviewers via Netgalley or Edelweiss, allocate a few copies for a free giveaway that gets people excited to read your book, even if they don’t win one of those free copies. You can do this before or after a book’s release, and give away either print or digital copies.
Rafflecopter makes it easy to run book giveaways while simultaneously getting entrants to promote the book or participate in the conversation. For example, with the free version of Rafflecopter, people can enter a giveaway by:
- Tweeting a message you specify.
- Following a specific Twitter profile.
- Visiting a Facebook fan page.
- Leaving a blog post comment.
The Rafflecopter widget can then be embedded on an author’s website, a publisher’s blog, a guest post in a blog tour — wherever it fits into your promotional efforts. Winners are randomly selected once the contest ends.
5. HARO – to find free PR and interview opportunities
Looking for ways to publish content about a book across different websites? This can be a great way to gain exposure to a new audience and build buzz — but it can also be a massive time suck. Instead of spending hours researching websites and pitching your way into guest post opportunities, let the publishers and reporters come to you for relevant quotes.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a sourcing service that connects journalists with relevant experts, enabling brands to tell their stories to the people looking for them. If you sign up for a free HARO account, you’ll receive an email three times per day that includes media and interview opportunities. You can customize which email alerts you receive so you’re not bombarded with irrelevant queries.
Since these categories are fairly broad, it’s often best to sign up for the Master HARO list and set up your own email filters so you only get alerts for relevant queries. For example, in Gmail you could set up a filter like this to delete HARO emails that don’t include relevant terms:
from: haro@helpareporter.com -{“term one” OR “term two” OR “term three”}
Once you receive an email, search that email for the terms that let the email get through your filter.
If it’s a relevant query, don’t hesitate — reporters often quote from the first response or two they receive. This is a fantastic way to get free publicity for a book.
6. ClickToTweet – to get fans to tweet a custom message
Making it easy for existing fans to share your content on their own social media profiles is a great way to create buzz. ClickToTweet is a free service that lets you add ready-made tweets to any online asset via a short URL or hyperlinked text. When a reader clicks the link, Twitter spins up a tweet using your copy, and the reader can customize the text before tweeting it out to the world. Click this link to see it work!
Nonfiction author Jon Acuff uses ClickToTweet on his blog to let readers easily tweet top quotes from his posts. You can see how many people tweeted his ClickToTweet link here.
There are many places you can add these ClickToTweet links:
- On a book’s page on your website.
- At the end of a free chapter excerpt.
- On the bottom of each of your blog posts.
- In the header of your email newsletter.
- In your email signature.
- Below any announcement you make online.
To create a new link, go the ClickToTweet website. Simply paste in a tweet, uncheck the CAPTCHA box, and click Generate New Link.
If your site or blog uses WordPress, you can also install a ClickToTweet WordPress plugin to create fancy boxes like the ones Jon uses on his blog.
7. Facebook Group – to build fan loyalty
You’ve probably heard a lot about creating a Facebook page as part of building an author platform, but Facebook groups can be just as valuable for inciting word-of-mouth marketing. While Facebook’s algorithm notoriously hides most of a page’s posts from fans unless you pay for reach, group members will see all group posts in their news feed unless they’ve specifically unfollowed the group. Within a group, you can:
- Encourage members to discuss a book.
- Host live author Q&A sessions.
- Host contests and giveaways.
- Post exclusive content about a book’s sequel or the next book in a series.
Fans who are part of exclusive groups can often become a book or author’s most loyal advocates. These are the fans who will spread the word and tell their friends about a book.
Hybrid author Colleen Gleason has a read-along Facebook group where loyal fans who bought or downloaded her books read 3-5 chapters per week and discuss those chapters. An added perk of the group is that Colleen occasionally pops in to answer questions, make comments, and announce updates to the group, so fans get to interact with her directly. Here’s an example promotion she posted on her Facebook page to promote the group:
The Jewels Salon is another great example — 12 romance authors partnered to create this Facebook group of over two thousand members. They cross-promote each other’s books, hold monthly joint giveaways and contests, and announce new releases. It’s a free and creative way for each author to reach not only their own fans, but also 11 other authors’ fans.
8. Pay with a Tweet – to use word-of-mouth as currency for content
Giving away free content — a free chapter, short story, or even a full book — can be a great way to build buzz. When you give away content on your website, consider asking site visitors for a social media share instead of an email address in exchange for the content. This lets you use word-of-mouth as currency, which can be more valuable than collecting a single email address.
Pay with a Tweet automatically gives people access to content once they tweet or post about it on Facebook. This gets the content more exposure, which could drive more social shares, thereby driving even more exposure. You could also use Pay with a Tweet to encourage people who are already subscribed to your mailing list to share your content. The core features are free unless you want to customize the design, get detailed stats, or remove ads.
9. Playbuzz – to engage fans in the cover design process
A great cover design can have a major impact on buzz and sales. Case in point: romance writer R.L. Mathewson updated her cover design and saw a huge jump in word-of-mouth traction. She went from selling five or six copies per day of her novel Playing for Keeps to over one thousand per day. According to Mark Coker in The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success:
Her cover made her book more desirable to readers, and this sparked a breakout, which was further fueled by tremendous word of mouth, and word of mouth propelled her higher and higher in the rankings, which increased her visibility even more.
Since a cover has so much influence over a book’s virality, ask existing fans to choose between two cover designs using a tool like Playbuzz. This can even be part of a cover reveal campaign. Before announcing the official cover, give loyal fans a chance to take part in the cover design process by helping choose the final design. They might be even more eager to spread the word about a book they took part in helping design.
Playbuzz lets you embed a poll directly on a website or on a blog post, and there’s no limit to the amount of responses you can get. It also makes it easy to share the poll on social media sites. Here’s an example of how you can create a cover design poll using Playbuzz:
What other tools have you used to build buzz for a book? Let us know in the comments below!
Want to share this post? Here are ready-made tweets:
Click to tweet: Authors, check out these 9 free tools you can use for book marketing! Are there any others you use? http://bit.ly/1LWLfUv
Click to tweet: Free tools authors can use for book marketing:
✅ BookBub New Release Alerts
✅ Canva
✅ BookBrush
✅ Rafflecopter
✅ HARO
See more free tools here! http://bit.ly/1LWLfUv
