#285: The Power of Partner Promos and Tips for Getting Started

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Do you want to harness the power of partner promos by borrowing someone else's audience? If so, keep listening as this is one of the fastest ways to grow your audience and sell more books.

Hi, my name is Shelley Hitz and I'm here with my husband.

Good to be with you guys again.

And we have been coaching authors for over a decade. Hard to believe, but we are helping you reach more readers. We with your message by using our social media templates and bridge building system so you can consistently market your books without feeling pushy or salesy.

In each of our trainings, we promise to share at least one thing that's going to help you write, self publish and market your books so that the message of your books can actually impact lives. Isn't that what we all want?

Amen.

So in the next few minutes, we're going to talk about the power of partner promos.

Yeah. And when it comes to partner marketing, I recommend that you do something to give first. So just as a little reminder, last month we had a podcast with 11 ways to grow your email list, and they all had something to do with a partnership. And basically, you're either being interviewed on someone's podcast, you're doing a group promotion together. There's all sorts of different ideas. You can go back to last month's podcast and listen to them. But I thought this would be a good follow up of how do you even get started into this whole area of partner marketing? And instead of just doing cold outreach, you know, we're going to talk about a few things you can do to give first, instead of looking for ways you can benefit, I want you to first think about how you can help and serve that person first.

Yeah, and I don't. You know, when we think about this whole partner promo topic, there's a quote that comes to mind from the legendary Zig Ziglar. Many of you've heard that motivational name and the things that he. The books he wrote, the talks he gave, but he said this. This was really the thing that put him on the map. You can have everything in life that you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want. And I thought that was really relevant to what we're going to be talking about in terms of even just the giving aspect. Are there things that you want in life? Most of the time we're giving to others and we're going to see things come back in return.

Yeah. And if you're part of our audience, typically our audience has a difficult time asking people to do something for you. And so this is a way that you can take that step into this partner promotions by doing something for someone else first. But then don't forget to follow up and see if there is a partnership budding from that. So we're going to talk about three different ideas. Choose just to begin building a relationship with a potential partner before you ask for them to do something for you. So number one, cj, you want to read that?

Yeah. So you want to show up and like or comment on someone's post a couple times a week so you get noticed if you also add valuable comments on a consistent basis.

Yeah. And it doesn't have to take a long time. Like you can have a little list. You know, you can even in Facebook now, they allow you to create friends list. You can put those potential partners on the friends list and then you just go to their stuff and just comment a couple times, even once a week. I will tell you, there are certain people that consistently comment on my social media posts. And I know them, I know who they are. I begin to recognize them. So that's the first thing is just being part of their community, you know, being having a relationship. Right. You know, and enjoying and interacting with their content. Number two, could be to give them a shout out on social media and tag them. So, you know, one of the best things you can do is, you know, typically for authors like us, when you're looking for a potential partnership, that other person also has a published book. So one of the best things that you can do is you can actually like share their book on social media and maybe share what you like about it or a concept. They teach a quote from their book, anything that would be positive, and tag them. But if you want to go to the next step, this is really going to get their attention. Read and review their book on Amazon. Then do a post on social media and tag them, you know, and make it about the book, not about the person. But say, I loved this book and this is why I recommend it. And you know, mention that you gave the book a five star on Amazon and why I guarantee you 100% that will get any author's attention. Can I get an amen?

Amen to that.

And C.J. do you want to read the next one?

Yeah. So the third way is to, you know, here's a courageous writer idea for those of you. Host them on a live video, either on Facebook or Instagram Live. This could also work if you have a podcast to interview them and just make it all about them and featuring them and getting to know them. In other words, the focus is on them.

Yeah. So I know this is going to be a little bit outside your comfort zone because a lot of you are not interested in being on video, let alone live video. But you know what, there is so much power. And inside Christian Book Academy we have these courageous writer challenges, but we also give you courageous writer ideas every month in our mini marketing messages kits. And so when you do this, once you've built a relationship with them, then invite them to do a promotion with you. This could be a 10 book author giveaway. Like I mentioned previously. You could do a top 10 favorite podcast and feature them, ask them to share it. You can do so many things, but now that they know you, when you reach out, you know they've been seeing you comment on their social media. They saw that you read and reviewed their book, you invited them to, you know, be interviewed with you and you featured them and you highlighted them. Now it's probably going to be an easy yes for them to share your giveaway or to share your post or to do something with you. And so these are three things that you can do to start building relationships for potential partnerships. Number one, show up and interact with them on their social media. Number two, give them a shout out on, on social media, tag them. But if you can, read and review their book also on Amazon. And then number three, see if there's a way that you can host them either on a live video, on your podcast, something like that. And again, we're, we're excited for you. I mean, I will tell you, this is one of the ways that God really used to grow our business, especially in the beginning. But still to this day is another person that has your similar audience, invites you into their space, introduces you to their audience, and it can be a win win for everyone. When we do this in an authentic way, we're not being like manipulative or anything. We're truly wanting to build relationships with each person. And we're all in this ultimately as kingdom writers to see God move through our words to impact lives. That is the ultimate goal. And so we are excited for you. Take us up on this. Let us know. Comment below. If you're going to try one of these things or email us supportrainingauthors.com we are cheering you on.

Bye guys.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.