Want to know the biggest secret to becoming a successful author? It is understanding that writing and producing a book is only 30% of the work. The remaining 70% is dedicated to promoting your book. I know this is shocking! You spend years planning out your characters, setting, storyline, and then another few years writing the story. But without promoting your book, no one will know it exists. Through my experience, I have found public relations to be one of the best ways to gain awareness, book reviews, and book sales. But before you look into hiring Book Public Relations Services, there are seven things you MUST know first.
1. Public Relations Can Be The Biggest Contributor To Your Book’s Success.
Trust plays a huge role in determining whether a book will be a success. If there is no trust between your book and your target reader, then they will not buy your book. Readers buy books based on time, and they spend their time on books they trust to be good.
Experts in Public Relations can work with authors to increase their book’s credibility. They do this by building up the author’s brand and readership through articles, media interviews, influencer connections, networking strategies, testimonials, and reviews.
Public Relations is a form of marketing. PR campaigns help future readers connect and find your book organically and authentically. For example, people are more likely to purchase your book if their favorite news host recommends it or if they see your book has a testimonial from another famous author.
PR creates genuine connections with readers compared to sponsored ads. An ad is not going to be as powerful as an influencer sharing your book organically to their audience. Why? Readers already have an established relationship and trust with influencers and media outlets. Ads don’t provide that same kind of relationship.
PR generates word of mouth on a large scale by getting influencers, journalists, and media to tell their audience how great your book is. When was the last time you made a purchase based on word-of-mouth?
2. Public Relations Is Not Advertising
Many authors believe that advertising and public relations play the same role and that if they do advertising, then they don’t need PR and vice versa. However, public relations is so different compared to advertising. Both play entirely different roles in promoting your book.
Advertising is where you pay a media outlet (a radio station, magazine, newspaper, or blog) to promote your book. Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and the public. With PR, you never pay influencers or media money in exchange for promoting your book.
PR is great for building genuine value-based connections with your target reader. Readers are more likely to purchase your book if they read about it organically rather than seeing your book on an advertisement that has been paid for.
PR focuses on providing media with information and newsworthy stories about your book in the form of a pitch and a press release. When media organically promotes your story it gives your book more credibility because it is not blatantly selling anyone anything. Instead, it focuses on value and why. Plus people tend to remember products or ideas when they are wrapped into a story. PR can be a powerful tool because it can shape public opinion.
3. Understanding The Nature Of News
Before hiring book Public Relations services, it is essential to understand what journalists want to write about and what makes a story newsworthy.
Creating a newsworthy story is the bread and butter of book public relations services. Media relationships and influential pitching can only get you so far when trying to achieve coverage. It is the story that plays the most critical aspect of a successful PR campaign.
There are two main ways to make a story newsworthy- pitching an original story or newsjacking. Pitching an original story is where the pitch you are sending the media is 100% new and unique. Newsjacking is where the story takes advantage of current events or other news stories. Of course, there are different ways to get the media’s attention.
When creating newsworthy content for journalists and the media, there are three main things to think about:
1. Why should the media’s audience care about your story, and why would they like it?
A journalist is always looking to provide value for their audience by sharing stories that resonate with them. Before sending any pitch, always ask yourself: ‘why should their audience care?’.
2. Timing
Timing can mean everything when determining how newsworthy your story is. It is called news for a reason. You don’t want your news to become old before you pitch it.
3. Shock Value
Shocking news grabs the reader’s attention. This doesn’t mean that every story you pitch needs to be scandalous. But it does need to have some hook or shock value. This could be as simple as challenging a preconceived belief. If you want your story to get noticed, it has to stand out, and this is where that shock value comes in.
4. Book Public Relations Services Can Help You Reach A Wider Audience All At Once
The best part about Public Relations is that it gets you in front of a much larger audience than you would ever reach otherwise, for free. With PR, you never have to pay a media outlet to be featured in articles, and you don’t need to have a connection or relationship with an audience beforehand. You only need to have a good story. And as an author, you are in luck- as you have already written one.
Once the media features you and/or your book, you immediately get in front of thousands or millions of people who could be potential readers. For example, at Talk+Tell, we helped one of our clients go viral through the power of PR. We worked with the Huffington Post to publish an article that featured our client. The result was fantastic. The article received over one million reads within 24 hours! Plus, this one article got my client, even more, media coverage, a speaking opportunity at Yale University, increased business, and new partnerships. These results all came in within the first week the article was published!
5. Social Media Will Never Replace Traditional Media
Social media will never replace Public Relations. Tweets are not the same as being quoted on in the New York Times. So, don’t be fooled by the hype.
However, social media can support a public relations campaign and serve as an amplifier.
6. PR Changes The Way People Think Of You
The trouble with the online world is that people can say anything they want about your book, regardless of whether it is true or not. Just last week, I saw one author get a 1-star review because a person was jealous and decided to accuse them of buying fake reviews! This was 100% untrue. The author was able to quickly report the 1-star review to Amazon and have it removed. But even before Amazon deleted the 1-star review, the author’s readers jumped into action by reporting the negative review and commenting on it.
A well-orchestrated Public Relations campaign can help authors fix and prevent negative attention. The right Public Relations campaign will be designed to influence and monitor all online conversation around your book to ensure it is positive and only focuses on promoting your book.
7. Can You Measure PR?
It is true, the benefits of PR can be more challenging to track than the benefits of an ad. At Talk+Tell, we find that there are six main ways to measure the effectiveness and impact of a PR campaign:
1. Press Clippings
One method is to track the number of press clippings that mention your book or author name. When you receive a large number of mentions in target media outlets, this means your PR campaign is successfully raising awareness for your book.
2. Media Impressions
Media impressions measure the number of times an article or interview is consumed. Impressions are frequently mistaken for reach. Reach indicates the number of unique people who consumed a piece of content. For example, if a person reads a news article 10 times, the impression count on the article is 10, while its reach is one.
3. Content Analysis
With any PR campaign, it is essential to monitor the content of the articles that are published. Why? Because quality matters. You want to make sure the report mentioned the author’s name, book title, and shared a link to purchase the book. To know if your PR campaign was successful, you have to assess whether your press coverage is resulting in valuable content or not.
4. Website Traffic
Another great way to determine the success of your PR investment is to measure the number of book sales and website traffic you received before and after launching your PR campaign.
5. Lead Sourcing
To find out if your PR campaign led to more book sales, simply ask your readers how they heard about your book?
6. Social Media Mentions
Social media mentions are a great way to see if your PR campaign had a positive impact. If ‘social media mentions’ about your book increased after launching your PR campaign, then you will know your investment was worth it.
8. PR Takes Time
Public relations is not a cookie cutter process and shouldn’t be a short-term investment. PR is all about long term relationships, building trust, and continuously increasing results. Like any campaign, results don’t happen overnight. For example, most magazines already have their whole year outlined for what topics they want to cover each month and also work on upcoming print issues months in advance. A magazine’s December issue is often written in July or August.
Understanding the nature of news is vital for any author who wants to hire Book Public Relations services or try running their own PR campaign. Before hiring Public Relations services, you should budget for at least three months. This way, you will see results start to grow.
If you are interested in learning more about how PR can help you get more testimonials, interviews, and book sales, then contact us today for a free consultation.
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