Most book marketing help is focused on Facebook or Instagram these days, but did you know that LinkedIn is the most popular networking site for professionals? And that the average income on LinkedIn is higher than on any other platform? 

So, if you're a non-fiction author, in particular, you can use LinkedIn to reach your target market. Here are some tips from Happy Self Publishing. 

Your manuscript is finally complete after weeks of editing, you’ve chosen a cover design from hundreds of different options, your formatting is finalised and your Amazon Author Page is set up and ready to go.

Congratulations – you’ve managed to get everything together before self-publishing your book!

We hate to break it to you, but now comes the hard part.

Marketing your carefully crafted creation is no easy feat, even for the savviest of authors. From e-mail marketing to social media campaigns and using SEO tactics to get your book to rank higher on the likes of Amazon and Google, it can all be a little overwhelming.

We recently interviewed bestselling author and networking expert Robbie Samuels for our podcast, the Happy Self Publishing Show. Robbie stopped by to discuss how self-published authors can quickly and efficiently leverage the potential of LinkedIn to market their non-fiction books to their social audiences – both to increase sales and to grow their launch teams.

Many of us have hundreds (if not thousands) of contacts on LinkedIn. While we may not interact with them personally, we do keep up to date with each other’s posts, updates and shares.

Tapping into our social network makes sense when trying to market ourselves or our products – these platforms offer the ideal opportunity to engage with the people that are already somewhat connected to you.

Step One – Update Your Job Title

While it may seem straight-forward enough, creating a new job and listing yourself as an author on LinkedIn is a key first step in launching your marketing strategy on the platform.

Add your book title alongside your author job title, then complete a short description of the book and add a link to your Amazon Author page.

Step Two – Double Check That The Share Profile Changes Feature Is Enabled

Once you’ve enabled LinkedIn’s Share Profile Changes feature, your network will receive a notification that you’ve updated your job title.

Chances are that many people will click the update’s Like button, and others will send you LinkedIn’s generic congratulatory private message.

They’ll receive an additional notification on each anniversary of you starting your new job.

Step Three – Respond To Each Congratulatory Message

Once you start receiving the generic congratulatory messages, craft an enthusiastic and personalised reply thanking your connection and saying how excited you are about your book.

Depending on whether you’re hoping to make sales or build your book launch team, you can then link them to your Amazon page, review section or launch site accordingly.

Once your connections are already in a conversation with you, they’re increasingly likely to take action. Marketing your book via LinkedIn message is a far less salesy approach than direct pitching it to your connections, as they’ve already instigated two-way communication with you.

Personalize your message according to each contact you respond to so that they don’t feel like you’ve mass e-mailed everybody in your inbox – even though you technically have!

Step Four – Reach Out To Those Who Have Liked Your Job Update

Chances are, you’ll have received more likes on your job update than congratulatory messages. Repeat step three with those connections, only you can add an additional sentence as a lead-in reason for why you’re messaging them.

Consider writing something along the lines of “Hi John, I saw that you liked my recent update and wanted to let you know that I’ll be launching my book within the next month”, then leading into your pitch so that your message doesn’t seem too direct.

If you’re feeling hesitant about using LinkedIn to market your book, keep in mind that you’re simply leveraging what the platform is already doing.

As a professional network, LinkedIn allows your connections to keep up to date with what everybody is up to professionally and is the one place where it’s actually encouraged to highlight your accomplishments or reach out to each other for business reasons.

Step Five – Lead The Conversation To Your Landing Page

Build your book a landing page by using a platform such as Leadpages, then encourage your connections to visit it by either offering a discounted price on the book or asking them to join your launch team ahead of the book’s launch.

Once they land on the page, they’ll be prompted to fill in their contact information – sending them straight through to your e-mail marketing database!

If you want to take it a step further, you could add a Google Form after the landing page submission pop up. On the form, you could ask people to fill in what they’re willing to offer to help you launch your book or any other type of information you’re interested in learning from them – such as book topics they’d like to read and so on.

Once your contacts have received their books and have provided their e-mail addresses to you, you can then e-mail them and ask them to review the book – boosting your Amazon credibility in the process.

Step Six – Promote your book within LinkedIn Groups

What better audience to promote your book to than a targeted group of people who have a proven interest in the topic you’re writing about?

Comb through LinkedIn’s countless groups to find the ones that would gain value from your book and request to join them.

Once you’ve been approved by the group’s administrator, you can start to engage with the group and share posts in order to make your presence known.

It’s important to engage a little bit first before making your direct pitch – you don’t want to seem pushy! Once you’ve built up your relationship with others in the group, post a message about your book and offer each member a special discount code, along with a link to the landing page you’ve created.

And there you have it. The social networks we most frequently use are free, but the marketing leverage they can provide to a self-published author is immeasurable. Good luck!

Have you used LinedIn to promote your non-fiction book? Will you try some of these strategies? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

Happy Self Publishing helps people position themselves as experts by providing services related to writing, publishing and marketing their books. Within the past year, we have helped 200+ authors publish their books, including several who have topped Amazon’s bestseller list.

Happy Self Publishing is a Partner Member with the Alliance of Independent Authors.