LinkedIn for Authors and Book Marketing

LinkedIn can be a great place to network, uncover opportunities, and even sell a few books. If you've written a business book and you're not on LinkedIn or you're not using it, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of a fabulous professional self publishing services company called Book Launchers. I've often joked that LinkedIn is like Facebook without the fun, but honestly I don't even think Facebook is fun anymore. So I'm back on LinkedIn. It's designed for professionals who want to network with other professionals. And if you're an author of a self help, how to or business focused book, heads up because that is you and LinkedIn is actually a great platform to help you build brand awareness, find people who will benefit from sharing your book with their audience, and potentially find speaking opportunities or strategic partnerships. Notice I did not say that LinkedIn is the ultimate book selling platform. If you want that, maximize your Amazon sales page and run Amazon ads, which we talk about that all the time on this channel. So if you haven't already subscribed to the channel and turn those notifications on, you're missing out. So you might want to do that right now. Step one in using LinkedIn as an author is to update your profile or create one if you don't have one. All right, so if you haven't done it already, the first thing is to get your custom profile URL. To do that you go to your LinkedIn profile and in the upper right hand corner you'll find a link called Edit Public Profile and URL. Click it. Now you have the option of putting in a custom URL. I generally recommend you use your name, but if your name is taken you can go with your author branding. I don't generally recommend you do anything with your book title because you are much more than one book. I've written three books so far and a fourth is most certainly in the cards. So it's much better to have my name as my custom URL. We've talked about your author brand before and we'll most certainly talk about it again. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel with those notifications on so you catch that. Plus when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some of our awesome branded swag like our hashtag NoBoringBooks hoodie and our mug and our journal and our backpack. Now that you've got your custom URL, upload your great author headshot at the end of this video. I'LL link to a video that will help you get a great author photo, and you probably want to put a banner at the top. Pay special attention to where the circle of your author photo goes because so many folks have text that you can't read behind the banner when their author photo goes on top of it. If you want to stand out from the crowd and build instant credibility, change it to a personalized banner that profiles your book. Here's the criteria for what your banner should be recommended dimensions are 1,584 pixels wide by 396 pixels high. If you're not gifted with graphics, hire someone on Upwork or Fiverr or a graphics designer to help you create a really professional look that fits your author brand. Next up, let's update your LinkedIn headline and this should be short and clear. If your profile page turns up on a LinkedIn search, you want people to immediately know what you have to offer. Our client Wendy Pease has done a great job of optimizing her headline and making the most of the real estate at the top. She's selling benefits, increases revenues, reach new markets, decrease risk, accurate translation and interpretation and you can see from her banner she's got her book featured there. And because the title and subtitle do a great job of selling her book and explaining who it's for, that's really all she needs with a call to action of get your copy today. Using keywords really help too, because you will be found in searches on LinkedIn when someone is looking for an expert in a specific area. The optimization of your profile is all about what's going to generate more profile views. Remember, it's not about you. Kind of like your book. It might be about you, but it's not for you. So you want to fill out details on the about section to explain who you are, how you help, who you help. So so that someone interested in your product, services, your expertise, or your book. Get that in a few short sentences. Share only what's going to be relevant to the people you most want to connect with. It's also useful to use this section to tell someone how you want them to contact you. Email, Website, Snail mail Now as an author, comes the best part adding your featured items. Here's where you can highlight big media features, important things you've written or awards you've won, and drumroll of course, your book. You can add as many links as you want, including an Amazon link to buy your book, but only two will display on your front page. So somebody has to scroll to the right to see the other things. So when you're choosing those two, what do you want your ideal connections to see? Okay, your profile's up and it's looking good. How can you use LinkedIn for your business and your book? Well, there's plenty of fabulous ways to use LinkedIn. Again, I'm going to highlight Wendy because she does a great job of creating high value content for her book and her audience around her business. She adds humor, shoots videos, shares tips and images. She changes it up and adds value. The big thing is that this is professional networking, so leave the pics of your kids off this platform unless there's a very clear connection to a point you're making or it's part of your subject. Like if you've written a parenting book or your book is all around education. Generally speaking, focus on sharing only content that adds value to your audience. You can create book related content which is advice from your book. Images created from your book like infographics or or social media post shares that highlight a quote. You can share interviews and media you've been featured on and highlight quotes or advice that you shared or reviews that added value. This is not about promotion as much as it's about adding value. Some people also write a lot of content for LinkedIn so you could write articles. If you do this, it's often best to create something timely or relevant to what's going on in the world or share something that people aren't necessarily aware of right now so they're more likely to share it. Look at what's trending, what awareness months are happening right now, what time of of year is it and think about what's relevant to your content, advice or expertise that is related to this time of year so it's relevant and timely. You can also create video content. I tend to link to my YouTube videos, but LinkedIn doesn't like that. Just like Facebook, they don't want people to leave their platform, so they don't tend to show very many people those videos. If you really want people to watch your videos, you need to create a video specific for LinkedIn and upload it directly. Those videos will get a lot more love from LinkedIn so than something that links off of their platform. Once you've done this, it's time to start looking for connections. Who else has your audience in their audience? Check them out, reach out, connect. Maybe there's a way you can help each other find relevant LinkedIn groups and start adding value to the conversations happening there. People will come back and check out your profile. Please don't post promotional content in these groups. Add value. People will come and connect with you when you've added value to a conversation. This was basics. There are next level things you can do on LinkedIn like run ads and pay for their sales, navigator tools for advanced prospecting and connecting. But I think this is more than enough for you to do today. Don't you let me know by smashing that thumbs up button because that feels good and it tells me that you got a lot from this video. And then you'll want to watch this video right here on getting a great author photo, which is a must for your author brand, and this video right here on how to create your author brand. You're going to need both these videos to create your fabulous LinkedIn profile. Go ahead, click on the next video you need to see and I'll be hanging out there with some coffee, tea or hot chocolate. All three taste better in the hashtag noboringbooksmug, which you can get when you comment on the day a video is released. All right, see you there.