I have mentioned this before, but please allow me to repeat myself. Long before I became a published author, I had studied art, design, graphic art, and information technology for years. I admit that pursuing those other areas of study has slowed down my writing output, but now that my debut book The Donkey’s Song is ready to pre-order, I am happy that I have an arsenal of tools to increase the visibility of my new book:
The Donkey’s Song
by Jacki Kellum
Illustrated by Sydney Hanson
Random House Children’s Books 2022
Link to Pre-Order the Book
Recently in a KidLit411 discussion, I mentioned that I had created my own author’s website in WordPress. My site is hosted by GoDaddy. I like WordPress for authors because of its option for blogging, Blogging serves several purposes for me. Like a gigantic filing system, I store new bits of information in my blogs. [You heard that correctly, I have several WordPress sites with blogs.] My site at jackikellum.com is dedicated to my writing.
Blogging is an excellent way to market oneself, too. Every time that I write a blog post, I toss Google another nougat of information about me and my upcoming book. The Donkey’s Song was released for pre-order almost two weeks ago, and that is when I was first able to share images of my new book, as well as other vital facts, too. After that, I began looking differently on Google.
Because I am also a painter and a gardener, Google had been rather confused about how to peg me. But as soon as I began creating posts unique to The Donkey’s Song, and as soon as I began posting about it on Pinterest, and as soon as I began making movies about The Donkey’s Song for Youtube, Google decided that indeed I am a writer and that I wrote The Donkey’s Song. I performed the following searches last night:
When I searched Jacki Kellum, the following was my result:
When I searched The Donkey’s Song, my book was 5th in the results. [I am contending with other books that have already been published, but I’m hanging in there.]:
Here’s the Bottom Line: Google Only Knows What You Teach It.
And my website is the primary way that I teach Google who I am. My website is more than a pretty face. It is my primary marketing tool.
But remember this: Your website will only work for you if you feed it things that attract other people. Attraction is how people decide whether or not to select your site among the thousands of options that they might have after they have issued a search query.
Yesterday, someone on the KidLit411 site asked me if she could hire me to help her improve her Google face, and I have realized that I have a unique set of skills that other people might like to commission, too.
Here are a few post images that I have made to advertise The Donkey’s Song:
There are dozens more, but I have also created numerous images to set into videos that I have shared in various places:
I have several other very short movies working for me, too. And they are, indeed, working for me, and I can help you with your marketing, too.
When you look at my Blog, you may be confused that I have several posts about the Bible and about Bible History. Believe it or not, that is a connection to my book The Donkey’s Song, which is a retelling of the Nativity Story about the Birth of Jesus. For a debut author, my presales were especially good for the first week.
On February 12, 2022, here is how my numbers looked on Amazon:
Remember that Amazon has 33 million books in its database. It may not seem that 119,000th is a great rank, but when you realize that for a while, my book was 119,000th out of 33,000,000, that number looks better. Invariably, my numbers have been strongest in Children’s Christian Book Genres. I was #57 for a while. I realize that I need to advertise heavily to that market, and I am creating lots of information for the buyers of Christian Books for Children.
With this post, I am officially offering my services in graphic design and marketing. If you are interested in discussing this option, email me at: jackikellum@gmail.com
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