Tag Archives: Canva

How To Make Your Blog Posts Go Viral Part Two

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blogIn the first post on how to make your blog, and your blog posts, go viral we covered content, social media sharing, titles, tags and keywords. Next up we have more advice for helping your hard work pay off.

Post at The Right Time

Doing a post on Christmas Day probably won’t get a lot of hits. Posting on a Friday evening is not ideal either. Have a think when people will be more likely to be online. You can research when people are on Twitter and Facebook. Use your Google analytics to find out when the ideal time is to reach your readers.

Share your post in your Newsletter

A newsletter is a brilliant way of making sure your great posts get another chance. Even your most loyal readers may miss a post or two. Build up the people on your newsletter list by doing competitions and having one of the entry requirements signing up to your newsletter.

Press Release

Writing a press release, and distributing it to the media, is a great way to get traffic and build on your reputation. The way to do this is to have an angle and then write about 500 words on that, along with a good pictures and then sending it out to the media. Channel Mum do this well by doing surveys and then releasing the results to the media, along with a statement. A lot of companies and publications do this. You could also write about a relevant subject, or have a personal story. It is all about the angle. Start building a media list. You can do this by signing up for Gorkana’s Consumer Alert or the Diary Directory. You can also find out who the editor of each publication is by looking on Twitter, the actual publication or websites. Getting a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook is also a good idea. It will be full of contacts.

Create Evergreen Content

One of the best ways to turn your blog into a success is to write evergreen posts. What is an evergreen post? It is a post that keeps getting hits. Even years later. These kind of posts tend to be informative or educational. Frost has a number of posts that are still getting hits up to seven years later. Imagine if you wrote an article and it still got thousands of hits years later. That is a great source of traffic and the only effort you had to put in was writing the initial post. Win win.

Get creative with Design

Creating pictures and graphics to go with your post is a great way to market them and improve engagement. Graphically engaging people can be done in many ways.  You will get more pins on Pinterest and more clicks on other social media too. Frost writer Jane Cable uses Canva to great effect. Canva is a free design tool which is easy to use. You can also create banner ads, headers, marketing material, ebooks and documents with it. Other design tools to use include Piktochart, Venngage, Infogr.am and Visual.ly

Optimise Your Images

Optimising your images is one of the easiest ways to get more traffic and also one of the most effective. Give your images a title using relevant keywords before you upload them, then add in a few more for good measure. Fill out the Title and Alt Text. This will optimise your images and you will get a lot of traffic through sources like Google Images.

Write Long Form Content 

Apparently long form content gets more shares than short form content according to Blog.visme.co in their article 10 Ways to make your content go viral. BuzzSumo did a study in which they found out that posts between 3,000 to 10,000 words were shared the most, while posts that were 1,000 words or less were shared the least. I am quite surprised at this but it is worth thinking about. It is a good idea to make most of your posts over 500 words.

 

I will be telling you all you need to know about blogging in a series of articles. You can also check out my book, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming a Successful Blogger which is available in ebook and print. 

 

The Business of Books: Giving it all Away

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the-business-of-books-interviewswithjanecableJane Cable’s Another You goes on free download on Amazon…

Two weeks ago I wrote about trying to be empirical in judging the results of marketing – and also that Another You would be on free promotion. While an ideal opportunity to see if I could actually learn what worked and what didn’t, it felt a nerve-wracking and risky time, because if you can’t give your book away, what hope do you have of actually selling it?

Another You proved in spades that it could be given away. The entire week of the promotion it stayed in the Kindle UK top 200, most of that time in the top 100, rising to a highest position of number 20 and topping the free women’s historical fiction chart. Far, far, beyond my wildest dreams. So what did I do to achieve this?

First, the day before the promotion I sent round robin emails and used lead generation software for linkedin to all my friends and contacts who have shown an interest in my books. It was flattering that many of them had already bought it but I am sure there were a few who downloaded during offer week.

It was also a case of extending my network to people I used to know and I used Facebook and Linkedin to reach the alumni pages of both my secondary schools and the large accounting firm I trained with. From my former sixth form in particular the response was most enthusiastic, but then we always were a rather bookish lot.

I devised a number of campaign graphics on Canva, some with review quotes from other authors, another pushing reviews in aid of Words for the Wounded. I used a different one each day on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. I also did some paid advertising and post boosts on Facebook. This included a ‘shop now’ promotion with a link to the Kindle UK download page which received 42 click throughs and cost £18. I messed up another boost later in the week by not noticing I’d reach the spend limit on my account, but by that time the book was flying and it didn’t seem to matter very much.

publishing, Jane Cable, writing

I also spent a little money (around £10-£15 each) on three free book promotion sites. For the UK market I tried Book Bongo but I have to say I was disappointed with the amount of coverage on social media and the book didn’t appear in their newsletter until after the free period was over. There was also a free listing on Book Angel.

For the US market I tried Awesome Gang and Pretty Hot on different days. The jump up the free chart was far more impressive on Awesome Gang day when Another You rose to number 671. The main Amazon.com marketing came from my publisher, Endeavour Press, who sent out hourly promotional tweets with a link to the site throughout US book buying hours. I can only think this was hugely successful because at the end of the week the book reached the dizzy heights of number 68. Amazing – as a quintessentially British author I never expected to have such appeal in the USA.

Overall the key must have been to reach enough downloads early in the promotion for the Amazon algorithms to kick in. Endeavour advises getting as many people as possible to download on the first morning and I suspect this is the reason.

Although I wish I’d had more time to prepare for the free offer period I really couldn’t knock the results and in the week since it ended Another You has continued to sell well and remained in Kindle UK top 20 women’s historical fiction. Now I need to somehow launch it closer to number one and that coveted bestseller label.

 

 

The Business of Books – 18.1.17

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the-business-of-books-interviewswithjanecableSince Another You saw the light of day almost a month ago much of my writing life has been taken over by marketing, interspersed with periods of panic that I’m not marketing enough, or that I’m doing the wrong things. It’s actually very hard to tell what works, however empirical you try to be, so one of my first priorities has been to start the reviews ticking over. That really matters.

Reviews are not all about an ego trip for the author – although I have to say with some of the initial comments about Another You my head could swell more than one hat size. In the cold light of day – rather than the warm glow of knowing someone really loved your book – reviews are about Amazon algorithms. Once you pass a certain number (said to be 50, but for The Faerie Tree it was somewhere in the low 60s) your book will be featured more and more in Amazon customer mailings and suggestions. It’s certainly worth it – I went from selling a few copies of The Faerie Tree each day to selling a thousand or so over a three week period. It just takes a little while – and a lot of work – to get there.

Some lovely reviewers will post on Amazon on the UK, in the US and on Goodreads – as well as their own blogs if they have them. There’s an extra dimension to the Amazon reviews for Another You because for each one in the UK and the US I’m donating £1 to Frost’s favourite charity, Words for the Wounded.

Over the last few years I’ve met some lovely book bloggers online. Most of them have full time jobs and/or are busy mums as well as reading, reviewing and writing and I have a huge admiration for their work rate. I try to be as helpful to them as I can by sharing and tweeting things which I think will be of interest to my followers too and taking part in their special events, so over time relationships build. That means I don’t feel bad about asking if they’ll review Another You or take part in the blog tour but it also means it’s a pleasure to work with them.

The Business of Books – 18.1.17topbookboggersinDorset

Some really go the extra mile, putting together graphics for the book to go with their reviews. Making these graphics – especially useful for saying more in Twitter posts – is something I’ve started to do myself, using a website called Canva. I have no design skills at all but even I can manage to knock up something which looks quite professional. Here’s one I prepared earlier to showcase some review quotes.

Something I haven’t been able to do before is offer a free ebook on Amazon to generate downloads and reviews. On Friday I had an email from Endeavour saying that Another You will be on free promotion from 16th – 20thJanuary. I was really excited by the possibilities but a little phased by the lack of notice. Having canvassed a few writer friends they advised me to get everyone possible to share the news – and the download link – and to look at a few well-chosen free book promotion sites. Sadly most of them need a lead time of at least five days but I have picked three and I’ll let you know well they work in due course.

To end my post with something completely different… I am absolutely made up that my first novel, The Cheesemaker’s House, has been selected by Books on the Underground for 1st February. I really believe in sharing books and this is an amazing way to do it. I’m hugely grateful to the book fairies for allowing me to join the fun.

To download your free copy of Another You before Friday please visit:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Another-You-Jane-Cable-ebook/dp/B01N9HINKI/
https://www.amazon.com/Another-You-Jane-Cable-ebook/dp/B01N9HINKI/