Find Marta on Twitter or Instagram @wordhoundwriter!
Find Marta on Facebook
Find Marta elsewhere online at Wordhound Writing & Editing Services, LLC!
| Indie Author's Guide to Search Engine Optimization: An Interview with Dr. Kevin W. Tharp On June 5, 2018, I had the real joy of interviewing Dr. Kevin W. Tharp, Associate Professor of Digital Marketing Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. We had prepped for the interview call with a Facebook Messenger exchange and, on my part, by reviewing Dr. T's Fireside Chats about Search Engine Optimization--SEO in marketing parlance.
Much
of what Dr. T shared in our interview applies directly to sole
proprietor businesses, and indie authors automatically fall into that
category. So get ready to for some knowledge, here's the first piece of
our interview.
Marta: Hey
Kevin, thanks for agreeing to talk to me today. I've got a few indie
author marketing questions for you. I'm going to be asking about finding
an audience/social media, handling reviews, what to look for in a web-hosting company, and managing video, voice search, and paid search.
Dr. T: Thanks,
Marta. I'll do what I can to help. Mostly I'm going to stick to
recommending strategies rather than specific tactics, because this is a
field where the practices change all the time, but the theory behind
them remains sound.
Marta: Sounds like a plan. Here's my first question: what
does an indie author need to know about finding an audience and how does that
impact decisions regarding social media presence?
Dr. T: Anytime you're talking about marketing, you have to think
about who the user is. Who is your prospective audience? Everybody likes to
think they're writing for everyone, but you're trying to find, more and more,
very niche audiences. Think about who is in that audience.
One way to do that is to create personas. There are plenty
of places to look at how to create a persona. You are essentially creating an
avatar, not a visual one, but a psychographic avatar, a caricature of a person
that lets you escape your own perspective and think about, "Okay, Suzanne
is a middle-aged mother of kids ranging from ages 12 to 4. Active
lifestyle."
The idea is to allow you to see some answers when a question
about how to proceed comes up. You ask, "How would Suzanne respond to
this?"
Then, you get to role play your own marketing efforts.
"Suzanne will love that. There's a tie-in to her yoga group!"
Whatever the case may be, it's the first step in building an audience. Start
stepping into the psyche of that person. Marta: And how does that apply to social media?
Dr. T: There are so many social media options now, there's
been a huge fragmentation of the channels you can use to reach specific
audiences. Now, if Suzanne from our example is an 18-year-old, you're not going
to find her on Facebook, but you might on Instagram. If Suzanne is the mother
of an 18-year-old, you'll probably find her on Facebook. It's important to
start looking at the channels that will work for your audience. That
information can be found online by doing search queries like these: "What
is the typical audience for Pintrest? SnapChat? Instagram? Facebook?"
Regarding social media efforts, it's better to pick something
and do it well that to pick too many things and do none of them well. Then, if
you find you still have time, then you can start going to other places. If you
try doing thirty social media platforms on Day One, you're going to burn
yourself out.
There are tools like HootSuite that combine multiple social
media outlets and are free up to a certain level. Once you identify where your
audience is likely to be found, then you need to start establishing your brand.
Marta: Dear readers, for more information about branding, come back for
another installment of our series!
|
By Date
2020
2019
2018
By Topic
|
