BOGO

It seems like in today’s highly competitive environment for everything, we see more and more advertisements. If you have your TV on, there are ads. If you are listening to your radio, more ads. And certainly if you are on the Internet there are ads galore. Even driving down the road hosts a variety of billboards to capture your attention. Drive safely, you goof.

And in some of that heavy get-your-attention-before-taking-your-money sort of thing called advertising, there are offers to get something for free. BOGO. Buy one get one free. A deal that is pretty popular with shoe stores. The big discount stores love this approach, as do vacation spots. I would LOVE a free night when I buy two at your exclusive hotel.

BOGO J I G I S H A a.k.a Nitin Badhwar / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Heck, even the grocery store will host special get-something-when-you-buy-something-else sales. Oh, and restaurants? They have been doing this forever and a day with their coupons. Just check your mailbox.

So, as an author, this advertising idea should be a no-brainer, right? Um. No. There are still people out there who are hold-outs about giving anything away for free. They are still not sure about this whole content marketing idea. Well, I am here to get you to climb onboard the CM train.

What is content marketing for authors?
1. It’s a way to promote your current book in various forms. No longer are we stuck with simply text to shout the virtues of our work. Yes, you have a product filled with it, but you don’t have to stay only with promoting it via blog, and social media. Remember, consumers of the written word are consuming their books via mobile devices via audiobook, and also, via video.

2. Content marketing can also be considered a way to get more of your work into someone’s hands. Via BOGO, of course. Yes, give the customer something for free! When you have one book out this is a little dicey, because you only have ONE THING. But when you have multiple books or stories, now you can play in this game. So get that story written! Offer a short story for email subscription to your blog. Offer your novella for free when they purchase your novel. Give the first book in the series away for free.

Three ways you can use content marketing

There are a lot of ways this can work for you as an author, but here are a quick three.

1. Blog. Blog about your book, post your cover, excerpts, and the first chapter. Then direct the visitor to your site to a free offer for their purchase of it. This can be fed to your social media sites, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and you then get more exposure for one post.
2. Audio. There is nothing better in my opinion of getting interest in your work. A potential reader will LOVE hearing that work being read to them. They will have it in their ears as they do other things. Win-win.
3. Video. Book trailers are still a viable means of gaining interest in your work. Many people patrol Youtube just for quick reads. They listen to book bloggers detail their latest book hauls, so see about getting one of yours into their hands.

I know there are more means and ways, but this was a quickie at 5 AM. Post up your comments.