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How to Promote Your Book Like Gini Dietrich

Authors: Kristen Matthews Kristen Matthews
Posted Under: Social Media
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How to Promote Your Book Like Gini Dietrich

Social Influencer Case StudyFor those of you who don’t know Gini Dietrich, she runs my favorite PR blog – Spin Sucks – and is a go-to resource for all things influencer marketing and digital PR.

Also, I find her hilarious and her favorite classic arcade game is Tetris.

A few months ago, Gini published her second book, Spin Sucks, and the method she used to promote her new book should be used as a go-to model for promoting new products.

Spark Notes Version: Campaign Background

With a goal to make the New York Times bestseller list, Gini launched a campaign that revolved around word of mouth marketing with brand ambassadors.

What stands out to me about her campaign is that she had people apply to be ambassadors so the enthusiasm from the people she worked with was there from the get go.

Over 800 people applied and she handpicked 150. The group included Spin Sucks contributors, commenters, and followers.

How to Find Your Own Ambassadors

Obviously it would be awesome to have so many people who want to be ambassadors of our product or service that we have more opt-in than we need. But the fact is, most of us have to hunt down brand ambassadors and convince them to like us.

So, I asked Gini how she got so many people apply to spread word of mouth recommendations about her book. She said she bribed them, her mom sent them a check, and she got them drunk.

The secret to success, folks.

While of course this didn’t happen, Gini has spent years building a really engaged community, so it wasn’t hard for her to find people who are enthusiastic about her upcoming book.

The real secret to success? Ongoing relationships. Build a community and network for ongoing projects.

While this opt-in approach is awesome, we don’t all have the following that Gini has. So I asked her for some tips on how to locate ambassadors if you’re still in the “community building” stage of life.

“Go to your customers and ask! Everyone has loyal customers who would love to help you out. I would have gone to our clients and to our PR influencers for some help, had we not had enough submissions through the blog.”

What Was Asked of the Ambassadors?

Once ambassadors were picked, they were tasked with three things.

  • Read the book before it was released
  • Write an HONEST review
  • Help promote book during launch week

How Gini’s Team Supported the Ambassadors

Ambassadors are arguably the best assets your brand has.

When working with them, always give to get and support them in making their content creation an easy process.

Here is how Gini and her team made the ambassadors’ jobs easy and effective:

  • Created a page with pre-written social media updates that ambassadors could tweet or paste in to their other social networks
  • Provided video content they could embed
  • Sent a daily update to ambassadors during launch week
  • Created a Facebook group for communication

Other Marketing Tactics that Coincided With Ambassadors’ Efforts

Of course, a campaign with brand ambassadors isn’t the only thing that works. In the event you want to promote a book like Gini did, here are the other tactics she used:

  • Road trip! (Well, to speak about the book)
  • Approached 80 bloggers to read the book
  • Facebook ads
  • Tons of guest blogging
  • Email marketing

…And the Results!

The goal of making the New York Times bestseller list was not met, but over 70 blog posts were written, 79 reviews on Amazon were scored, 20 podcast interviews took place, and lots of books were sold.

outreachmarketingvirtualsummit-250x250Even though the best seller list wasn’t scored, outreach marketing tactics are great to keep a strategy ongoing instead of making a quick bang and the book was the #2 public relations book on Amazon and is still strong in popularity.

Do you have a brand ambassador tip or trick to share? I would love to hear about it in the comments below. The comments and discussions that take place on my blog posts make my day happy!

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