Marketing a Book on LinkedIn

Finishing a book is quite an accomplishment. Once you’ve published your masterpiece, it’s time to start marketing! Fortunately, you can successfully market your book on social media platforms like LinkedIn even if you’re not a professional marketer. And because there are plenty of free marketing methods, you can start at a very low cost and allocate a marketing budget if you choose.

Free LinkedIn marketing options for your book

You might’ve noticed that self-publishing costs can add up quickly—including book promotion expenses. However, LinkedIn offers some free marketing options that you can take advantage of. LinkedIn provides helpful support for both business and individuals hoping to market their products and services—you just have to know where to look.

How does LinkedIn support marketing?

As a social media platform built mainly for professionals and businesspeople, LinkedIn is a fantastic venue for marketing. Many companies use tools like a customized LinkedIn company page or targeted ads that cater to their followers. They can even create a full LinkedIn campaign as part of their overall content marketing strategy.

In addition to corporate marketing, LinkedIn is a great book promotion venue! You can create posts about your book, join groups to discuss your work, and track your success. When you effectively market your book on LinkedIn, you can start getting ready for some serious book sales.

How does marketing a book work on LinkedIn?

Marketing your book on LinkedIn requires some work to get started. However, since it’s a user-friendly system, you’ll be on your way to book sales in no time. Here are a few elements to include in your LinkedIn strategy for book promotion:

• Update your LinkedIn profile to include all your published books and create a custom URL for your LinkedIn page.
• Write at least one LinkedIn post per week about your book to stay in front of your followers.
• Include four or five relevant hashtags in each LinkedIn post to attract your target audience.
• Link your other social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter to your LinkedIn profile so your followers can find you across multiple platforms.

You can spend money marketing your book on LinkedIn if you’d like. However, there are some free options that you might want to check out before you create a marketing budget.

What sort of free LinkedIn marketing options can you use to promote your book?

LinkedIn has plenty of free book marketing tools—especially if you’re willing to spend some time and energy on it!

One of the best ways to market your book for free is to create a great LinkedIn profile. Include a nice picture of yourself—never use a stock image or an avatar. Add all your publications, links to your other social media platforms, and a link to your author page. The easier you make it for your target audience to contact you, the better chance you’ll have of earning book sales through LinkedIn.

Another helpful free LinkedIn marketing strategy is to join a few groups. Each LinkedIn group is a lead generation opportunity. Your posts should create buzz about your book and help the other group members get to know you as both an author and a person. These are the first couple of steps toward effective LinkedIn marketing.

Effectiveness of paid book marketing on LinkedIn

Authors hoping to make money from their books sometimes have to allocate money to paid book promotion. Although digital marketing might sound expensive, you can easily and effectively control your costs if you do your research and keep a close eye on your overall spend. Just get to know your options!

What sort of paid marketing options does LinkedIn offer for books?

There are a couple of paid marketing options that LinkedIn offers for books. The first is sponsored content, which is sometimes referred to as native ads. In this type of paid media, you basically purchase advertising space on your target audience’s LinkedIn feed.

Sponsored content is available in a few different formats, including a single image or a carousel that rotates a few different images. You might include your book cover, your author picture, or some illustrations. Make sure they’re eye-catching so your followers click on your ad instead of just scrolling right past it!

In addition to native ads, you can create an entire LinkedIn campaign to market your book. This process will include a few steps:

• Set your budget. Many ads are “pay per click,” which basically means you’ll be charged a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. You can set a daily budget so you don’t spend more than you want to.
• Identify your target audience. To maximize your marketing dollars, choose the demographic that you want to see your ads the most. Narrowing your audience increases your odds of earning a book sale.
• Schedule your campaign. Instead of logging into the social platform every day, you can schedule your LinkedIn campaign to run on particular days of the week. Think of it as putting your campaign on autopilot!

Book marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. If you don’t see results immediately, it doesn’t mean your LinkedIn campaign isn’t successful. You just have to be patient and sometimes make small adjustments to your campaign to ensure that it’s effective.

How can you track the effectiveness of LinkedIn’s paid marketing options?

To ensure the effectiveness of your paid ads on LinkedIn, you’ll need to track a few different metrics. The first is impressions, or how many people your ad reaches. Even if people scroll past your ad, it counts as an impression.

The second paid social media advertisement metric to track is engagement, which is how many people interact with your ad. To calculate this, divide your total engagements by your total impressions. You want your engagement rate to be between three and five percent.

A third metric is cost per click, or CPC. This basically tells you how much money you’re spending to attract each potential customer. CPC helps you keep track of your return on investment (ROI). If an ad isn’t earning ROI, you might want to change it up so you earn money back on your marketing investment. The higher your ROI, the higher your book sales!

What else should you know about LinkedIn’s paid marketing options?

If you invest in paid media on LinkedIn to promote your book, keep in mind that you can’t actually sell books directly through LinkedIn. Digital marketing on social media is great for lead generation and letting your target audience know that you have a new book. However, you’ll have to include links to wherever your potential readers can buy your book.

For example, your LinkedIn profile and posts should include links to Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and any other websites where people can make the purchase. If you’re also selling print books at a local bookstore, include links there too! In other words, you can use social media to generate leads instead of earning actual book sales.

What to do with LinkedIn leads generated by marketing your book

Lead generation is one of the biggest goals of every marketing campaign. This is also true in your book promotion strategy! Leads are potential sales that haven’t happened yet. Once you start earning leads, you’ll need to put in some work to turn them into book sales.

What are LinkedIn leads?

In all marketing—including indie book marketing—you might think that a “lead” is anyone that could potentially be interested in purchasing your work. However, LinkedIn leads go through more of a vetting process.

When you cater your LinkedIn ads to your particular target audience, the leads that you earn though this social media platform will likely be legitimate. LinkedIn can help you generate targeted leads so you’re not wasting advertising money.

How does LinkedIn generate leads created by marketing your book?

As a social media platform, LinkedIn is a great venue for discussion. That means that every content marketing effort can start a conversation. LinkedIn can generate leads for you as long as you dedicate some time and energy to talking about your book.

Use LinkedIn to create buzz and excitement about your book. Post your book cover design or some teasers about your book. Make people excited to read it. The more effective your marketing efforts, the more leads LinkedIn will generate!

What can you do with LinkedIn leads?

Once your LinkedIn marketing efforts produce lead generation, you’ll have to follow up with your potential customers to guide them to actually purchase your book. You basically have to nurture these leads to earn a book sale.

Fortunately, LinkedIn makes it easy to communicate with your followers—including the ones who are interested in buying your book. You might send a message to a book sale lead through LinkedIn’s platform to see if the person would like to know more. You can also gather data about your sales leads, find similarities, and cater your next LinkedIn post or article to what they want to read. You can also feature your book on LinkedIn for a marketing boost!

Featuring your book on your LinkedIn profile for marketing purposes

As your online presence grows, your marketing job gets a little easier. Your followers will increase and you’ll reach a larger audience. People begin to recognize your name—and your book’s title! If you need a little help, you can also feature your book on LinkedIn.

What is the difference between featuring a book and featuring a book for marketing purposes?

Anyone can feature their book. However, when you feature your book for marketing purposes, you’re really homing in on a potential reader. The whole point of marketing is lead generation and sales. When you pay to feature your book on your profile for marketing services, your audience sees that you’re serious about your writing career. This legitimizes you as an authority on your book’s topic, which can lead to even more book sales.

How do you feature your book for marketing purposes on LinkedIn?

One of the best ways to feature your book for marketing purposes on LinkedIn is to add a publication to your LinkedIn profile. This isn’t just a free marketing tactic—it’s quite easy to do! Here are the steps to follow:

• Log into your LinkedIn page.
• Click on “Add profile section.”
• Click on “Add publication.”
• Fill out the online form and click “Save.”

Additionally, you can create a featured post about your book on LinkedIn. Featured posts highlight what the account holder is most proud of. And you should certainly be proud of your book! To add a featured post from your LinkedIn page, just click on “Add profile section,” then “Recommended.” You’ll see an option to “Add featured.” Click on that link and follow the prompts to create a featured post!

What else should you know about featuring your book on LinkedIn?

Remember: the more successfully you market your book, the more attention and book sales you’ll earn. However, one thing to keep in mind is that your job as an author promoting your book doesn’t end with featuring your work or buying some paid ads. You’ll also have to post at least once per week and respond to any incoming messages or interactions with your posts.

In other words, get seen on LinkedIn to earn book sales!

Get seen on LinkedIn—and earn more book sales!

When used correctly, LinkedIn is a fantastic marketing tool for indie authors hoping to sell books. It’s easy to use and cost efficient, and it allows you to reach a huge portion of your target audience.

If you’re not sure how to effectively use LinkedIn for your book promotion, don’t worry! Elite Authors is here to help. We won’t just increase your book sales—we’ll show you how to do it so you have the knowledge moving forward. Visit our website to learn more!