How to Market Your Book with StumbleUpon Pt. 2
In the first post of this two-part article on How to Market Your Book with StumbleUpon, we discussed what StumbleUpon is and how it can bring lots of fairly targeted visitors to your site if the right people Stumble it and give it a thumbs up. If these visitors are impressed with what they see, some of these people may go on to buy your book. Since this is a form of marketing that costs you nothing, you can’t really lose (and you might win big).
How do you get people to like your site and give it a thumbs up though?
That’s the key question.
If you’ve made a StumbleUpon account before just to Stumble your book promotion page, you know you didn’t get any real traffic that way.
That’s because you were a nobody in the StumbleUpon network. No friends, nobody viewing your StumbleUpon home page, nobody reviewing you…. Hey, don’t take it personally, we all start there.
You either need to build up a network of StumbleUpon friends (and do some Stumbling yourself), or you need to find somebody who has already done that.
Think of StumbleUpon like highschool. For something to catch on, it needs to be adopted by one of the popular kids. It also needs a “cool” factor in and of itself.
The first half of the equation is relatively easy. Join StumbleUpon, join some communities related to your niche, and “friend” some of the most active Stumblers who are also interested in your niche. Leave positive reviews on their Stumble user pages to attract their notice. Also make sure you’re Stumbling some cool pages in your niche (don’t do yours yet) that others will find of value. When it’s time to promote your page, you can send the link to your new friends and ask them to check it out.
But before you do that, there’s something you need to do with your website.
Remember the second half of the equation above? Cool factor!
On the Internet, “cool” can just mean buzzworthy. If a site has some great value or is humorous or inspiring to a lot of people, it’s buzzworthy. People love pointing out great finds to their friends, so they will naturally want to share such a site with others.
If you’ve come across the term viral marketing, this is what it’s talking about. Something is so cool/valuable that everyone wants to tell everyone else about it. (If you can get your site into this category, you’ll get links and visitors from lots of sources, far beyond just StumbleUpon.)
Note that I’m talking about sites here and not books. Your book may be a great resource, but if people have to buy it to read it, they’re probably not going to Stumble your book’s promo page. Not unless you’re JK Rowling anyway.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use StumbleUpon to sell your book, so stick with me.
Now, chances are the front of your author site isn’t extraordinarily cool. It’s a business page, after all, right? It probably has some information on you, your book, and a link where visitors can buy it online.
This isn’t the kind of page people thumbs up on Stumbleupon.
Does that mean you need to redesign your whole website? Of course not. It just means your home page probably isn’t going to be the page you want to get Stumbled.
Instead, think of a new page you can create on your website or blog. If you’re a non-fiction author, this page will probably give out valuable information on the same topic you cover in your book.
Lists are popular, since they’re easy to read quickly (time is everything on the Internet). You could also try putting a negative spin on your article or list. For some reason we’re drawn to those negative headlines (I’ve seen them attract a lot of attention on social bookmarking sites).
For example, if your book is on dieting, you could write a list with a title such as “10 Reasons You’re Getting Fatter Everyday.” That’s a little more provocative than “10 Diet Tips” and even if it’s the same sort of content in the actual article, the difference in the approach can rocket your page from ho-hum into “cool.” And remember, cool pages get thumbs up Stumbles.
So, what if you’re a fiction author?
You could also write an informative article based on your experience (10 Reasons Why Your Agent Rejected You, How to Self-Publish Your Mystery Novel, etc.), you could post a short story, or really you could write anything creative that gives people a hint of what they’ll get when they buy your book.
I recently Stumbled across a short science-fiction story that I enjoyed and gave a thumbs up to: Terry Bisson’s They’re Made out of Meat (this isn’t the version I originally Stumbled, but I remembered enough of the story to find it again on Google so I could mention it here).
Don’t feel you have to be limited by text either. Videos are hot on the Internet right now (there’s even a specific Video section of StumbleUpon for those who want to Stumble videos), and they can bring a lot of traffic. If you have a camera and a knack for performing, give it a try.
Whatever approach you take, make sure your “cool” contains a prominent link back to your book promotion page. Once you create a fan of a random visitor, you’ll want them to be able to find out how to buy your book.
Remember, the whole idea here is to use StumbleUpon to sell more books!
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