The task of generating and managing your content has to become a high priority for any author today, especially in a world where so many books are screaming for readers’ attention. The best search I could do resulted in the assessment that about 2.2 million books are published world-wide every year. That means your book is facing some stiff sales competition!

Creating and sharing online content can help bring your readers to you. It demonstrates what your book might be like, and builds credibility and trust with potential readers. And it has a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO), another important way for people to find out about you and what you do.

In the ever-evolving world of online content, authors—even fiction authors—are well-advised to consider themselves and their online presence as a publishing centre, as much as an information provider. What kind of content can you provide to support your readers? Here are some ideas:

• Make sure you have a website that is designed to support all of your book marketing efforts: you need an About the Book Page, an About the Author Page, and a Blog, at the very least. Since many of my clients are coaches, entrepreneurs and other innovators, they will simple add a page about their book to their existing website. That’s great, too.

• Ideally you want to be posting regularly to your blog

• You could provide downloadable information about your book content – checklists or self-assessments if you are a writer of non-fiction, character-related quizzes if you are writing fiction

• You could create a newsletter/email marketing program

• Develop a book trailer and post it to YouTube as well as to your website

• Start a podcast that includes interviews with people related to your book topic

• Develop a social media presence and link back to your book from your postings

• Create some YouTube videos about your subject matter

Creating Content as a Book Author

It’s important that you post new content to your online “real estate” consistently. A blog that is updated every six or eight months will add little value to your online reputation whereas one that is refreshed once every week or two will pack a much more powerful punch.

Your content needs to appeal to two separate audiences: the real people who might potentially buy your book and the web crawlers that want to know if you merit a Page One search ranking. That means your content needs to be well written and optimized for search.

What Problems Does Your Book Solve, And for Whom? Content marketing is about creating a substantial body of content related to your book and the interests of your ideal readers and sharing it through online platforms. You want the content to tell your author story authentically so that it generates trust, credibility and likeability for you, and calls upon your viewers and visitors to take another step in a growing relationship with you.

For example, you could write blogs (or create video or audio recordings) about:

• Why you wanted to write a book
• What the process of writing your book was like
• The research you did while writing your book
• Some of the interesting people you met while writing your book
• Things that surprised you about writing a book
• What you learned about publishing
• What you would do differently next time

Every time you post content to your website or other online platform you can post about it online or create a status update sending people to the content so they can engage with it. And remember that all of this content signals to the search engines that there is something good going on at your Author Site, so they will reward you with better rankings

More and better content will help you shine online and the more organized and effective you are in developing your content, the more people know about you, and the more you can grow your audience.

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