Content marketing can be a wonderful way for authors to attract an audience to their books — but does this type of marketing make sense for you? You’re already creating content when you write your books, so why should you create even more content to promote them? And what content can you produce on a regular basis that your audience will actually care about?
After several years working in content marketing, I still ask myself this last question! Keeping up a regular production schedule of high-quality content can be a challenge, but it’s like following an exercise program: It’s easier to commit if it’s a program you can actually manage and enjoy. In this post, I’ll share some tips for finding your groove with content marketing so it feels less like a chore and more like a good habit.
What is content marketing?
For authors, content marketing is attracting an audience to your books and brand by creating and sharing original content online. It’s a long game with an end goal of enticing some of that audience to take an action that’s good for your author business, like signing up for your newsletter or buying your books or other products. But the great (dare I say fun?) thing about this type of marketing is that it’s not about selling! It’s more about bringing people into your world and helping them on their path to taking an action. It’s a way to provide your audience extra value and opportunities to connect with you, so they trust you enough to join your reader community or buy from you.
In terms of how you attract that audience of loyal readers, content marketing can come in different styles (entertaining, educational, inspiring, persuasive) and many formats (articles, videos, podcasts, emails, or even your creative writing itself). The articles you read here on the BookBub Partners blog are examples of content marketing. If you run an email newsletter, you’re already content marketing!
Content marketing has two parts: creating original content and sharing it. By “original content,” I mean content that only you can create that lives on a part of your author platform that you own, such as a blog post on your website, which can keep attracting online traffic forever. Social media is sometimes referred to as “content,” but social media posts don’t meet this criteria. You don’t own your posts on social media platforms — it’s the platforms’ algorithms that determine whether your content appears in your audience’s feeds, and only for a short time. Social media is more a channel for sharing your original content — also known as distributing it — and drawing readers back to that owned space where you can drive longer-term visibility.
Content distribution through various channels like social, email, or search is a distinct topic in itself, and perhaps a topic for another day! The challenge I want to address in this post is the challenge of regularly creating content. Overcoming this challenge requires a plan, and the plan has three main parts:
- Defining your goals, audience, and style
- Working with your strengths, values, and interests
- Maintaining a manageable schedule
Defining your audience, style, and goals
If you think of content marketing as providing extra value to your readers, then who are those readers, how can you provide that value, and what business goals should this effort support? Knowing these three things helps keep your content focused and meaningful to both your readers and your author business (in other words, worth your time!).
Try summarizing this in a sentence, keeping in mind those four main styles of content: entertaining, educational, inspiring, and persuasive. For example, our goal at BookBub is to help our author and publisher partners sell more books, so we create content to inspire them with book marketing ideas and to educate them on how to make the most out of BookBub’s marketing tools. Some more examples:
- You’re a historical romance author whose goal is to gain more visibility in your genre, so you entertain and educate readers by sharing your research on the time period you write in. (Example: Lucinda Brant’s Pinterest board.)
- You’re a nonfiction author who wants to establish yourself as a subject matter expert, so you create content to educate your audience about new ideas in your field. (Example: Adam Grant’s newsletter.)
- You’re a fantasy author trying to reach a niche audience, so you create entertaining “geek talk” videos reviewing and analyzing similar books and media. (Example: Antoine Bandele’s YouTube channel.)
- You’re a cookbook author who wants to drive more exposure for your book, so you inspire readers to buy your book by sharing free recipes. (Example: Gina Homolka’s blog.)
- You’re a traditionally published author who wants to connect personally with your readers, so you inspire and entertain your community by sharing life updates and exclusive news. (Example: Mia P. Manansala’s newsletter.)
- You’re a new author who wants to sell more books in your debut series, so you publish sample chapters to persuade readers to explore the whole series. (Example: Andrew Turpin’s website.)
- You’re a novelist with a separate business helping other authors become better writers, so you create content to educate these authors on developing their writing and editing skills and inspire them with case studies on great writers. (Example: Marissa Meyer’s podcast.)
Going one step further than macro business goals like gaining visibility, making more sales, and connecting with your readers, your content should have micro goals, too — the action you want readers to take after consuming the content. This could include sharing it, visiting your website, signing up to your newsletter, learning more about your books, or simply staying tuned for more updates. Each next step is designed to keep readers engaged and on their way towards your larger goal.
Rule #1 for sustainable content marketing: Every time you sit down to brainstorm ideas or create a piece of content, remind yourself of its overall purpose and the specific action you want it to drive.
Working with your strengths, values, and interests
“What type of content should I create?” is a common question! The answer lies at the intersection of your values, strengths, and interests:
After defining your goals (i.e. your values), ask yourself what you’re good at and what you love to do. Don’t feel pressured to be on popular platforms like YouTube and TikTok just because other authors seem to be finding success there — if you hate being on camera or you’re not interested in learning how to make videos, this content type won’t be sustainable for you. You might prefer sticking to writing, and that’s okay! In that case, you know starting a blog or a newsletter will make more sense than starting a YouTube channel.
To help discover what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing, let’s consider all your options — here’s a list of common content types, the goals they’re well suited for, and examples of what that content might look like for fiction and nonfiction authors:
Looking at these options, which content types are relevant to your goals? Which ones would you also be excited to create? Another way to approach this decision is to look to other authors whose content you admire. What are they sharing that you’d like to create your own version of?
The most important thing to remember is that you don’t have to be everywhere or try everything. Pick one content type to experiment with, see how it feels and how readers respond, and wait till you’ve grown an audience (or decided it’s not working for you!) before trying another.
Rule #2 for sustainable content marketing: Play to your strengths and interests and stay focused on what works for you, so you’re not spreading yourself too thin.
Maintaining a manageable schedule
Another common question: “How often should I post on [insert platform here]?” You might have heard the best frequency for newsletters is monthly, or the only way to make TikTok work is to post several times daily. But don’t worry too much about what seems to be the latest trend or best practice. The ideal publishing frequency is however much you can manage consistently.
Children’s author Angie Isaacs wrote a thoughtful piece about the importance of consistency. She says:
Showing up consistently on a manageable number of platforms will get you better results than trying to do everything. There are three pieces driving this advice:
- People have to see your message, on average, seven times to take action.
- Social media sites are more likely to show your content to followers if you post regularly.
- You won’t get anywhere if you burn yourself out!
Back to the analogy of starting an exercise program, if you try to do too much too fast, you might start off strong, but burnout or overwhelm will eventually set you back. Instead, try to take small steps. Once you’ve prioritized the content types and platforms you truly care about, consider strategies that can help you more easily stick to a schedule:
- Plan topics in advance: There are many sanity-saving benefits to having a clear plan for what to produce and when. Creating an editorial calendar helps keep you organized and aligned with your broader marketing goals, makes it easier to get started on projects and manage your time, and saves time by minimizing the risk of last-minute scrambles or the need to constantly come up with new ideas. For example, if you tend to break down your business planning into quarters, you could plan your content quarterly too, which means you only spend time brainstorming new content ideas a few times a year. A calendar can also help you keep track of what you’ve created and what types of content have performed best. If you’re not sure how to make one, there are tons of templates available online.
- Create and schedule ahead: Similarly, give yourself peace of mind by creating your content well ahead of publication. This is about working with your energy, not against it. Whenever ideas come to you, write them down. When you’re feeling it, create lots of content in batches — the secret to many authors’ success with marketing! — so that you have plenty of material ready to go no matter what life throws at you. You could try dedicating a few specific days of the month to prepping and shooting a bunch of videos or writing a few blog posts, for example, that you schedule to go live later. Batch-creating and scheduling content also means you don’t have to be online all the time.
- Repurpose what you already have: You can use your books themselves as content marketing! Make flash fiction or sample chapters available for free on your website, publish your notes or research, make a book permafree and use it as a reader magnet, serialize a book for Wattpad, make video scripts from parts of your book — these are just a few of many ways to turn your books into marketing materials. You can also turn one content type into another — blog post into video, video into podcast, several blog posts into a downloadable guide — or repost old content, even on the same channel. You might worry about being annoying, but it’s a legitimate way to reach readers who prefer to consume content in different formats or who might have missed the original post.
- Set limits: You could spend infinite amounts of time planning, creating, and monitoring the engagement on your content. Or, you could set boundaries around the time you spend on content so you still have time for other marketing — and writing your books! Experiment with productivity methods like time blocking, “eating the frog”, or setting a timer whenever you sit down to tasks like brainstorming or replying to comments that could go on endlessly. As you probably already know from writing books, time-limiting is a great way to beat perfectionism and get lots done.
Rule #3 for sustainable content marketing: Set up a realistic, repeatable process for creating content on a schedule, so you can rest assured you do have the time and systems in place to keep showing up and creating consistently.
If you want to learn more about managing your content marketing effectively and coming up with content ideas, you might find these resources helpful:
- 3 Book Marketing Misconceptions and What to Do Instead
- Indie Authors and Creative Self-Publishing
- How to Start Blogging: A Definitive Guide for Authors
- 30 Ways Authors Use Videos to Engage with Readers
- The Quick and Easy Guide to Fiction Content Marketing
- How Successful Authors Use Social Media: 29 Content Ideas
- 5 Creative Blog Post Ideas for Writers [Author Platform 101]
What are your thoughts on how authors can find content marketing success? Hit me up in the comments!
Want to share this post? Here are ready-made tweets:
Click to tweet: Essential reading for overwhelmed authors: https://bit.ly/4gh6JRz #bookmarketing #amwriting
Click to tweet: Authors, if you’re worried you don’t have enough time or ideas for content marketing, think about:
🎯 Defining your goals
💪 Working with your strengths
📅 Maintaining a manageable schedule
More useful tips: https://bit.ly/4gh6JRz
