Jeff Rutherford's Book Marketing Podcast: The Value in Social Media

Jeff Rutherford, from the popular Reading And Writing Podcast, has launched a new podcast series dedicated to book marketing. He was kind enough to invite me to speak with him in his second show. We spoke about the current and future role of social media in book marketing, some specific examples of strategies that work, and some places where there’s room for growth.

Here’s an excerpt:

JR: In what you’re seeing—not only with what you’ve been doing personally—but also with what other publishers have been doing with social media marketing and digital marketing, I’m curious if you think that some of what they’re doing is kind of preaching to the converted—people who are already devoted readers. And, do you think it’s kind of a waste of time even to try to reach beyond that to try to reach people who may not be already looking for information about books and reading.

JM: I think the social media platforms are so interconnected that if you’re reaching an audience in Facebook or Twitter that it very organically grows beyond the choir—the people who already know about you and what you do.

JR: Right. The viral effect and the basic nature of six degrees of separation.

JM: What I see a lot is publishers building really impressive web sites and loading them with a lot of content and then NOT going out into the social networks and reposting the content. And that, I think, is a good example of preaching to the converted because by doing that you’re limiting the people who see the content to the people who are already searching for it.

JR: Right. Building the content is one thing, but if you’re not taking the second, and much larger step of evangelizing it—so to speak—within the social media networks then you’re basically missing the boat in many ways.

JM: Yeah. And I think another mistake that a lot of publishers, and businesses in general, make is they view these [platforms] as marketing channels, which they are decidedly not. I mean, yes they allow marketing in that you’re promoting your books on these services, but people don’t join Twitter to get marketing messages. [...] People don’t join Facebook for that. They’re joining for genuine interaction and the value added to their day. So if you can relax your marketing muscles when you’re on these channels and actually just go out and meet your audience, you will learn a lot about who you are trying to sell to, and you will learn a lot about what people are talking about [in your topic area] beyond your books—which could give you ideas for future books, or you could meet new authors.

To hear the entire interview, please visit The Book Marketing Podcast’s site. Thanks.