Whether you’re excited or not about AI and using it in your author business, it is here to stay. We are in the early days of AI systems like Chat GPT and Jasper.ai and their power and utility will increase. That doesn’t mean you have to use these things as an author, but if you’re looking for some low-cost short cuts, especially for research, AI could be your answer.
One place where AI has the potential to provide a lot of support is in your book marketing efforts. There’s no need to stare at an empty screen or even start doing your own research lists. Ask your AI of choice to help and then use your own knowledge and strategic thinking to refine and expand the work of the AI. To get you started here are five ideas for using your AI system of choice to help with your book marketing activities.
#1 – Create Content for your Content Marketing Engine
Did you know that you can load your manuscript into Chat GPT or Jasper and ask it to create a dozen 500-800 word articles from your content (or video scripts or podcast episode scripts)? You could do this with a transcript from a speech or any other content you’ve already created. If you are dreading creating content to support your book marketing efforts, AI has your back. Of course, you’ll want to do an edit of what it’s created, but because the work is coming from something you’ve already created, the content is a lot stronger than when you ask AI to write the article scraping content from the web.
#2 - Ask your AI for More Content Ideas
Whether you have uploaded your manuscript to the system or not, you can enter a topic into the AI system and ask for a list of topic ideas. Giving it something to work from can create a stronger correlation to your topic, but you don’t have to do that in order to get a pretty strong list of articles, videos, podcasts, or social media post ideas.
#3 – Ask your AI for Ideas to Market Your Book
Testing out Jasper for this I said, "Give me 10 ideas to market a book." The list wasn’t too bad if you weren’t sure where to start and just needed some inspiration. If you wanted more customized information and ideas, you could get a lot more specific and say, "Give me 10 ideas to market a book about losing weight, running a marathon, or on finding fulfillment in your fifties" and see if the ideas are even more specific to help you.
This list Jasper gave me was:
- Utilize your social media presence
- Connect with other authors in the same genre and cross-promote each other's work.
- Find and connect with other influencers.
- Write reviews on websites, such as Goodreads and Amazon for similar books.
- Work with bloggers.
- Create a website.
- Submit press releases about your book launch in local news outlets.
- Develop relationships with bookstores and libraries.
- Organize giveaways to attract new readers to your platform.
- Use online tools such as BookBub or Amazon Advertising Services to increase visibility amongst potential buyers.
#4 - Ask your AI to Do the Research on Influencers, Bookstores, or Libraries for you
Since one of Jasper’s suggestions was to utilize influencers I asked Jasper to "Identify 20 social media influencers who would promote a book about writing a book." The list Jasper gave me wasn’t people I would approach as it included some really famous authors like Dan Brown, but you can get more specific and say ‘Give me a list of 10 YouTube channels that promote book writing’ or ‘Identify 10 blogs that help authors’. But your research request doesn’t have to stop at Influencers. I’ve asked Chat GPT for a list of bookstores in a certain city and the store manager's name and contact information. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it really doesn’t, but at least I’m not starting from scratch.
Chat GPT can help you with your social media. It can make post suggestions, and image suggestions (and the newest iterations of Chat GPT and other AI platforms are even creating the imagery you can use for these posts), and it can come up with a catchy caption to go along with it. The more information you provide Chat GPT about the image and the tone you want to convey the better the suggestions you’ll get. You can ask questions like "What are some best practices for designing social media images?" or "What fonts and colors work well together for social media images?" and Chat GPT can provide you with some tips and ideas if you are stuck with the design elements you should use.
We are in the early days of AI being a tool we use in our author businesses. Right now the limit is mostly in our imagination and ability to apply the power of the tool. It can be intimidating to get started, but there are plenty of ways to use it to make your marketing easier as an author.
