#339: 3 Ways to Find New Readers (Without Social Media)

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 Shelli 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 foreign.

Hey, Kingdom Writers, It's Shelly Hitz here, and in this episode, I'm going to talk about three ways to find new readers without social media. I know how hard it can be when you're just starting out. You've put all this work into publishing your book, and then crickets, right? Sometimes it feels like nothing happens. You might be feeling stressed over a lack of consistent book sales, and you know you have a good book. You know this message will impact lives. And yet, you know, you're finding it difficult to attract new readers. And to be honest, it's hard to stay motivated when you're trying to build an audience from scratch. And when it may feel like, you know, maybe my work isn't good enough, you know, the enemy comes at us with all these lies of, you know, trying to get us to believe that we're not good enough and that, you know, you should just quit, give up, it's not worth it. You're not seeing an roi, a return on investment of your time or your money, and you definitely want people to read your book and love it. But honestly, sometimes it may just feel like no one is listening or that no one cares about what you have to say. You know, we've all been there and I know how hard it is to put yourself out there. There is just so, so much resistance. I mean, you talk about resistance to publishing a book, that's huge. But there's also resistance to marketing and putting ourselves out there. And I know, especially for us as Kingdom writers, we don't want to be perceived as prideful or arrogant or greedy or any of those self focused things, right? And this is not about being self focused. The fact is that even if you have a great story to tell and an amazing book and no one will read it if they don't know it exists, and if nobody knows about it, then they can't buy it. And if they don't buy it, well, then they won't read it. And it's a vicious cycle. And I know you want more lives to be impacted through your book, but the good news is that there are some things you can do to make your book more visible, increase interest from readers and create buzz around your book without having to Rely heavily on social media. You know, social media is a great way to nurture your current audience. And every month, Inside Christian Book Academy, our membership for kingdom writers just like you, we release a, a new mini marketing messages kit. They're templates that you can use on social media. Templates you can use to nurture and to sell through your email social subscriber list. You know, we provide those things for you. Social media is a great way to nurture your current audience and you can sometimes find new readers. But at least right now, in the current culture we're in, it's 2022, it's not typically the most effective way to find new readers. You know, maybe 12 years ago, you know, or 10 years ago, you know, it, it would have been a great option and we honestly built a lot of our business in the beginning on social media. But it's a slow growth method. And so let's talk about some ways to get book sales without having to rely on social media. Number one is SEO. If you don't know what that means, that's okay. It's just language and an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. And it's the process of improving your search engine ranking in Google and other search engines so that people can find your content when they search for something. So you can do this by creating blog posts, videos on YouTube, sharing images on Pinterest that matches keywords related to your book. And this is a whole complicated, complex process. Process that we could go into for hours. But just know that, you know, just think about your own searching habits. If you go to Google and you search in how to self publish a book, you know, there might be some articles that come in. If you go in into there and marketing for Christian writers, you know, there might be something that comes up from our site. But you know, you, you can also do the same thing on YouTube. You YouTube is basically like a search engine for videos. People type things in like how to do something and those videos come up. Same thing on Pinterest. You can, you know, type in a search term and these different images come up. So there it, Whether it's Google, YouTube or Pinterest, people can start to find you through optimizing your, your content. This does require a long term commitment to see results. I mean sometimes you can see results right away. I remember when CJ was doing running coaching years ago, we just optimized a YouTube video as well as one of his blog posts for the search term Colorado Springs running coach. And it worked so well. I mean people started finding him and contacting him because they were searching for Colorado Springs running coach and they would find him that way. Also, the very first websites that I created were built all around SEO. And so that's how some of you may have even found me in the beginning. But I also know that one change in Google's algorithms can tank your rankings and traffic. This has happened to me in the past as well. So SEO is a great option. It's a long term commitment and just realize things can change so quickly depending on, depending on the algorithms in Google and YouTube and Pinterest. But number one is SEO. Number two is paid ads on Amazon. So paid ads are a great way to get exposure for your book and reach new readers. And you can pay for ads that appear prominently, you know, at the top of Amazon searches related to your book topic or pay for ads that appear on specific pages within the Amazon site, such as category pages. However, ads do require having a marketing budget and being willing to invest the time to learn the platform. And sometimes again, you can see results right away, but it often takes time to see results. But when you do, it's totally worth it. We have had one of our books. It's the book I talk about the most. I know, but it's the one that God has just really allowed to reach so many people. And it's my book, Broken Crayons still Color on a whim. Years ago when ads first had come out, I mean, I don't think they had been around too long, I decided to try some ads for that book and it took off. Now other books of ours have not done as well with ads, but it's always worth trying. But you know, just know it does take time and you do have to put some money into the investment of it. But man, getting in front of readers on Amazon, there's almost no better way to find those new readers. But we have a third option. So number one was SEO. Number two, paid ads. Specifically, I recommend Amazon ads if you're an author. And number three, collaborations. Now I'm here to tell you there's another way besides social media, besides waiting for the SEO to kick in or having to pay and you know, learn and struggle with ads collaborations, you can start using them without having to have a huge budget or without having to wait forever to see the results. And there are many ways that you can actually start using collaborations now to sell your, your books. I mean, this is something that I have used over and over and over again since we have launched our business and started publishing books. And it Works. It just really works. It takes a lot of courage to reach out or to organize something like this or to, to to even, you know, do what you need to do for a collaboration. And that's why we're calling our upcoming conference the Kingdom Writers Confere Conference. We're calling it the Courageous Writer Edition because it takes so much courage, but you can have such amazing results if you'll just take the step to do it as led by God. Right? That's what we always teach around here. And so you're invited to join us in this edition of the Kingdom Writers Conference where we will help you go from unknown author to consistent book sales by gaining the courage to step out, initiate powerful partnerships, and sell more books using the power of collaborations. So this free event is happening from September 12th through 16th where 35 experts will be covering all kinds of topics and sharing actionable tips that you can implement in your marketing strategy right away. And the best part, I think I already mentioned this, but it's completely free to to attend. We'll help you build purposeful partnerships that can help you reach more audiences and sell your books faster. And you'll learn how to connect with the right readers so you can bring your beautiful message to the world without spending all your time on social media. So much good stuff. Cannot wait to get this party started. So if you don't have your free ticket yet, go over to kingdomwritersconference.com and make sure that you get signed up. Registration will close soon, so make sure to save your spot as soon as possible@dommywritersconference.com and just know that you'll have the ability to watch all of the presentations for free for 48 hours after they're released. If you want ongoing access to all the presentations, plus all the bonus sessions and bonus trainings that we have lined up for you, make sure to get the the All Access pass after you register. You'll get a short window of opportunity about 20 minutes after you register to get the All Access pass at over 50% off. That's the only time you're going to see that offer. So make sure you're you're ready and able to sign up for that when you register because you'll be redirected to that page and you will not see that offer again. So, so excited. We are doing this conference a little different this year. We're going to have more sessions on Zoom, more interaction and just opportunities for you to connect. We have over double the speakers than we what we had last September, so this is going to be an event you won't want to miss. And make sure to invite all your writer friends to go to kingdomwritersconference.com cannot wait to kick this party off with you soon.

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.

Sam.