Technology

10 Ways to Market your Book Widgets

Widgets are like little windows to your website that are distributed all over the webIt’s all about your target audience. How does one reach them quickly and convincingly? And how does one grab their attention and get them to buy your service or product – in this case, your book. Since Internet is now as common as your telephone line, traditional marketing has quickly shed its regular mantle and gone on to tread new cyber-ground. Marketing online comes with a slew of advantages. Time to market, cost, efficiency and an exciting way to keep your customer constantly engaged. The aim is to reinforce your relationship with your customer and inspire them to make repeated purchases. A McKinsey global survey shows that digital tools – from websites to wikis to widgets – are increasingly being used for brand building, albeit in a more dynamic interactive way.

Given the rapidity at which digital content is evolving, publishers should also change their marketing strategy to promote their brands/books online. As more publishers create books, online publishing tools will only help them reach their audiences swiftly and in a gripping manner. And with widgets, online marketing has become more viral and participative

Going the extra mile with Widgets A small application, a widget, offers a plethora of interactive elements including streaming content, games etc.…. the list is literally endless since it involves incredible possibilities. A widget can be added to a blog, much like adding a link to a page. Very simple to do but, once added, a widget offers advanced functionality. When it comes to publishing, iPublishWidget offers several advantages in marketing books online. An exceptional viral marketing tool, iPublishWidget is designed to enhance your audiences’ experience. It allows additional marketing pages to be pulled up as well as offering a preview of the book. This is done with the help of iPublishViewInside, which enables readers to browse a few sample pages from a book before they decide to buy.

Ten ways to market your book widgets.

As we traverse the marketing route, we have identified ten simple yet impactful ways of promoting your iPublishWidget

01. Replace flat one-dimensional cover art on current e-commerce site with widgets and suggest reviewers to use widgets instead of cover art in their book coverage
02. Showcase new / featured titles as full-fledged widgets on your main site homepage
03. Add ViewInside URL to email signatures
04. Add ViewInside URLs to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc. and as comments to blogs that cover the title
05. Identify Twitter # marks or groups relevant to the book and tweet the ViewInside URL to them
06. Identify discussion groups and mailing lists relevant to the book and post the ViewInside link on them
07. Add the book widget to widget aggregation sites like WidgetBox, etc.
08. Ask authors to include the book widget on their blog
09. Ask authors to add the ViewInside URL to their email signatures and / or to change their LinkedIn status to include the ViewInside URL
10. Ask authors to add the widget to their FaceBook and MySpace profiles

While the bottom line is good marketing strategy, iPublishCentral takes the burden off your shoulders with iPublishWidget and iPublishViewInside.

And marketing has never been this easy!