Why YOU Must Have an Author Platform, Even if You Aren't Selling Many Books or Still Unpublished!

Welcome to the Author Audience show. The podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to the 5 Day Author Platform Challenge. My name is Shelly Hitz. I am the author of over 40 best selling books. I'm the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com I'm excited to excited to have you joining me on this challenge. This is a free challenge, so make sure you share. You invite authors you know and you can share the link. Shellyhits.com PlatformChallenge it just all came together last week for this challenge. I had just published my book 9 Strategies to Build and Grow youw Author Platform. It was birthed into the world last week because of our Kindle to print challenge in authoraudienceacademy.com and what we're going to do in this challenge is we're going to go through this acronym build. The five letters in BUILD all represent things and strategies I've done to sell more books without being pushy or self promotional. What I'm going to do is I want you to be open in your mind. I'm not about hype. I'm about let's get real, let's see what is really possible. Because most people that come to me want to sell more books and they want to do it in a way that feels authentic. It's not pushy and salesy. That doesn't take all their time. Because a lot of people, we love to write and we love to continue to serve through our writing. But I want you to open your mind. I want you to be open and I want you to kind of just put aside any preconceived ideas you have on what book marketing looks like and be open to, to the possibilities. Because what I'm going to share with you this week are the exact strategies I've used to build and grow my author platform and to sell over 103,000 books. That was the last time I counted, at the end of 2014, I think. So I want you to be open and to just have an open mind when it comes to marketing. The very, very cool thing is I am documenting this book. Launch this, this is a launch this challenge. It'll be available ongoing, so you can keep inviting your friends, you can keep sharing. Because I'm going to be having this available as a lead magnet, ongoing. I'm going to set it up to be an automated process to continue to sell my book. What I'm doing is I'm going to document everything and then I'm going to share with you the exact system, the exact templates that I'm using. That is really exciting as well. This is the book Build and Grow, your author platform. So I'm documenting everything so that I can share it with you. Because a lot of it, this is the first time I don't think I've ever seen anyone launch a book through a challenge on live video broadcasting. There's a ton of things that I had to kind of figure out. And instead of reverse engineering it later, I'm actually documenting everything right now. And I will just have everything laid out. And if you want to duplicate and try something, you don't have to use live video. You could do a challenge, a written challenge. But anyways, that's going to be cool because it'll be on the backside of this challenge. So the whole concept for the Build and Grow acronym came to me a few years ago. I have a lot of authors and they just ask me like, how do I sell more books? What do I do? And it really was puzzling to me how to explain the process I personally have used, how to kind of like reverse engineer and say, okay, this is what I've done. And yet I was thinking and brainstorming and I like to go, I do brain dumps. And it was doing all kinds of things trying to figure out how do I explain what I've done. And actually I was sitting in church one day and I don't know if this has happened to any of you, but sometimes book ideas come at the most inopportune times. Can I get an amen? But I was in church and I'm supposed to be paying attention, you know. But all of a sudden the idea, it was just like the acronym came to me, Build and grow. And all of a sudden it was just like, it was like, that's what I've done. And that's a great framework to be able to explain. But what I want to share with you is a system that works. We can get a blip and a burst of book sales from paid advertising or maybe a free book promotion that then once the book comes off a free book promotion, you get some sales or maybe you do a blog tour or you do some sort of one time marketing event and you get sales use speaking engagements. Speaking engagements are great for selling books. But how do you continue to sell books long term? How do you continue to sell books and not just get this blip and then.

Flatline? Has that ever happened to you? I Want to share with you strategies you're going to be able to use to not just get that blip temporarily, but to have something that lasts. The B in Build and grow stands for for bridge to your readers. Let's say you're driving down the road and you're in an unfamiliar area and you want to go to this specific store. Let's say it's before gps, because now we have gps. We can just type it into our gps. But you're looking for the signs. There might be a sign that says turn here. Or if you're going to an amusement park or a big place like here in Colorado City, state Parks or something, they'll have signs and they'll say, turn here, go here, and it will lead you to that place. But you can have the best store, you can have the best resort. And if nobody knows about.

Doesn'T matter. I want you to think about your book being kind of like that store. Maybe it's out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it's out in the middle of somewhere where there's nothing else there. And you have to lead those people to your store with the different signs, lead them to where to find you. This bridge to your readers is all about leaving those breadcrumbs, so to speak, or those signs online so your target reader can find you. So I want to ask you today, is your book an island? My personal brand is author audience, and the reason I created that brand is you're an author. But now do you have an audience? What I find from so many authors is they think I build it, I publish this book, and they will come, right? It's like you're standing on the stage and you have this amazing thing to deliver, Whether it's a presentation or it's a play or it's something. You have something amazing to share and to deliver. But if only your close family and friends are in the room, it's really not going to have that much impact. So that's why you have to start focusing, filling your auditorium, filling your stadium with your target audience. One of the ways you do is making a bridge to your readers. That can be online or offline. But I like to say that it includes three things. I explain it as the promotion pyramid Online. Your author platform. It's like standing on that stage. You have that platform where people can see you, can hear you. And your author platform, I believe, should consist of at least three things. Your website. That doesn't mean you have to have a blog. It just means you have to have a place where people can find you, they can have a contact link to contact you, they can find buy buttons to buy your books. You know how many author platforms I've reviewed and the author does not even have a link to buy their book. Ah, like sometimes we just forget or I don't want to put it out there, but I'll go to their site and I'll try to find the link to their book and I'll have to actually Google it. We need to at least have that place, that website where they can find us, they can find that link to our book or content about us or sign up for a free offer. Then you have social media. A lot of authors are like, eh, I don't like social media. Well, I have ways that you can use social media that frees up your time and that you don't have to be on it all the time, every day. But I really think you need to at least have a presence in one or two platforms. Pick your favorites. My favorite is Facebook. This is where I hang out the most. This is where you're going to interact. I'm going to interact with you the most. I still check in to Twitter and LinkedIn and other ones, but this is where I hang out the most. Choose one or two then. The third part of the promotion pyramid is your email subscription list. One of the things that I regret the most from the past is not building my email subscriber list sooner. You know, I always heard money's in the list, money's in the list, money's in the list. You know, you kind of get tired of hearing all of this. And I saw someone even post earlier, I hope it's just more than an email list. You know, you guys, we have to change our mindset on this because it is powerful when you build your own email subscriber list. Facebook, they could shut my account down tomorrow. Twitter could shut my account down tomorrow. Those are places we rent. But when we have our website, when we have our email list, it's like property we own.

You have that promotion pyramid and building those bridges to your readers. Today I'm talking about why you need an author platform. Even as an unpublished author or if you're not selling very many books, you need to have a place where people can find you, where they can connect with you and where they can get to know you. There is so much noise out there. There's so much competition. There are so many authors publishing new books all the time and you need a way to be able to connect with your target audience. You need to be able to find a way to build that bridge to them. The best time to start your author platform is while you're writing your book, even while you're un published. If I would have realized the power of an author platform, I probably could have sold a lot more books in the beginning of my publishing days. I published my first book in 2008. It was for teen girls and through the website findyourtruebeauty.com I've since transferred that site to a new ministry director, Heather Hart, but I did not really focus on starting an email list until years after I started that site. You know how many books I could have sold if I would have started that from the very beginning when I first launched the website? So many more I want you just to start thinking about how solid is your author platform in the member area that you'll get Access to@shellyhits.com PlatformChallenge I have a few take action tips for you today. I want you to go ahead and set up, sign up, download the worksheet and I want you to take those action tips and start applying those things right away. I want you to take a few minutes, maybe set a timer for five or 10 minutes and say okay, how strong is my author platform? How is your website? Do you need a website makeover? If so, I encourage you to purchase a copy of my print book. This is a very short book. It's like maybe 50 pages and if you buy the print book you'll get some bonuses. Which one of the bonuses is my website Workout Week? It's a seven day website makeover challenge. So if your website needs a makeover, check out this book@shellyhits.com Build Buy the Print version and then you'll be able to get all the information about the bonus@shellyhits.com photocontest so tons of fun things going on. But think about your website. Do you need a makeover with your website? Is it really optimized for what to bring your target reader in and then your social media. Are you trying to do everything or are you really focusing on one or two platforms? Because what happens is when you try to chase two rabbits, guess how many you'll catch? None. And the same thing happens when we're trying to do too many things online. We need to have fun. I talk about that all the time in Author Audience Academy. Focusing on what are your strengths, where is your tribe, where are your target audience and focusing on there. Then I want you to think about your email subscriber list do you even have one? I know a lot of authors don't. A lot of authors are resistant to starting one and we're going to be talking more about that in the next few days. I now use and recommend templates. You can find them at Shelly Hits.

These are templates that I now use for both Kindle and Print, so you can check them out. That is my affiliate link if you're interested. Day one today was why you must have an author platform even if you're not selling many books or still unpublished, and how I've been able to find my target audience online and build a tribe of loyal fans without spending a ton of money. The way I've done that is through my author platform, that promotion pyramid that I shared with you Today. We're going to go into much more detail the days to come on what that would really look like. I'm sharing resources and take action tips in the member area, so make sure you're signed up@shellyhits.com PlatformChallenge Yesterday was Mother's Day and I'm 41 years old, just turned 41 not too long ago and my husband and I have not been able to have children and I did have a miscarriage at the end of 2013. It was really tough and to this day I still struggle and I still have bad days. I had a bad day a few weeks ago when I was in the store and I was bombarded with all the Mother's Day stuff. I have an amazing mother. She is my role model, she's my mentor, she's my best friend. I have an amazing sister that is an amazing mother and has birthed two amazing daughters that they're almost like my own. But Mother's Day is tough for me and so it was just kind of a neat thing. This book became live on Amazon as a print book last week. You can get it@shellyhits.com build.

Almost like God just gave me a gift because although I'm not able to celebrate Mother's Day as a mother myself, I gave birth to this new print book. This book had been in Kindle for a year and a half and I updated some things and did some things and I was actually using it as a case study study for our Kindle to Print challenge that we did in Author Audience Academy. And it's so fun seeing people give birth to new print books and they're posting pictures and it's a really fun time. But it was a neat thing that God just allowed me to experience. I have to admit I love video. I've been doing live video for the last year. I started almost right away on Periscope, but this actually was pretty nerve wracking. I've never done a challenge that was live on live broadcast at a specific time. I usually just broadcast when it's best for me and I've never done it to launch a book. There was all these details and all these things. This was my first one. So thank you for being here. Day two I'm going to cover the power of getting crystal clear on who your ideal reader is and tips on finding your audience online. So this is key, you guys. So many of the authors I coach with in authoraudienceacademy.com are not clear on who their target audience is. Oh, I want to sell it to everyone. Well, if your audience is everyone, it's probably no one. I'm also going to tell you just why getting to know your target audience is key for success. When building your author platform and what to do about it, I'm going to give you some practical tips on what to do on how to really get clear, clear and narrow that target audience for you. An author platform is your foundation of your marketing efforts. The author platform, like what I was describing, I call it the promotion pyramid. You have three parts of it. You have your website, your social media and your email subscriber list. The platform is the basic foundation of how people connect with you online. They'll find you in a Google search and go to your website. Have you googled yourself lately? Have you been able to see what comes up? A couple years ago, about a year and a half ago, someone was telling me, they're like, I'm kind of surprised when I google your name. Not many things come up for the author niche. Well, at that time I was working with a business partner on trainingauthors.com and I didn't have that personal brand and I hadn't really worked on branding myself or SEO or things like that for Shelly Hits. And so it was really eye opening for me because I thought, wow, I'm really good. I feel like I've done really good at marketing, but not as good as I thought. Your author platform is how people are going to find you. Your website, your social media channels, your email subscriber list. Your brand is representing who you are or the books that you write. So your branding is different. The branding is how people see you, how people perceive you, and it can even interact with colors. And I have a whole training within Author Audience Academy on branding. One of the Phrases I say a lot is it's your time to shine. It's time to let the light of Christ shine through you. Let your light shine. I reach a lot of Christian authors so that resonates with them because it comes from Matthew 5. And so one of the things I've integrated in my branding is the color yellow because it represents that bright, the sun shining and also gold and glitter and things like that because it's about shining and letting your gifts shine so you can reach more people with your message. I hope that makes sense. I have been in business online since 2004, but I didn't start coaching authors until 2010. It's been been five and a half years. This fall will be six years I've been online as an author coach and I didn't get where I am today overnight. You know, it took time and it was through strengthening in that consistent daily or weekly action. Even just little things, even if you just do something little every week, it will continue to grow, continue to snowball and continue to strengthen the author platform that you have online. We are in this together and it is possible, I want you to know, like I am really seeing like the potential and the power that there is with just being able to have an online platform. We have more free tools available. What I'm broadcasting to you with right now is a free tool. It's Facebook Live on my iPhone and it's free. So right now I just heard a statistic this morning from Kim Garst. She's a social media expert and she said that Facebook is favoring live videos 10 times in the newsfeed.

If you have not done live video on Facebook yet, I definitely encourage you to consider it. Now I do want you to be prepared when you go live. You need to be prepared and have something of value. You're going to share something that you can catch their attention with and that you can really teach or motivate or share in a way that people want to keep coming back. But if you take that leap into live video right now it is a free tool that will be able to get you up to 10 times more exposure on your Facebook page than just a regular post. That's one of the reasons I'm doing this particular challenge on Facebook Live. Thank you guys so much for joining me today for day one woo of my five day Author Platform challenge. This is going to be also a book launch for my book Build and Grow youw Author Platform. You can find it@shellyhitz.com build I'm also having extra bonuses and all kinds of stuff that I want to give you guys during this launch. So stay tuned and I will see you next time. Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.