Why should you take the time to stay in touch with your audience? Because keeping up with your audience will increase your sales. Your readers bought one book, you want them to buy another. You also want your readers to jump on board with promoting your books. Keeping in touch helps this process.
How do you stay connected with your readers? There are multiple ways to do this. There are some simple activities that will help you stay in touch. One way to stay connected is through social media. Don't just announce that your book has come out and be done with it. Connect where readers hang out. Create a Facebook fan page for your work. If your books are sold through Amazon, create an Author Central account. If your books are listed on Goodreads, consider the Goodreads Author Program. You want a presence where your readers go. You will feed content to these site pages through your website or blog.
Add new content to your blog on a regular basis. This keeps your readers connected to your work. Perhaps you wrote a book about the benefits of exercise. You might want to post recent news items and study results about exercise benefits, including a link to your book to keep it in your readers' minds. Continually add new content. Consider, if you wrote a book about a famous artist, add links to exhibits and events that may connect with your work. Share generously with your readers and generate plenty of goodwill.
One more big piece of keeping in touch with your fans is responding to them. Fans want to know you care. Always be nice to your fans, no matter how harsh your week has been. Take time to respond to every comment that comes your way and always thank readers for reaching out to you. Build email databases of interested fans. Send out informative emails (with the option of opting out) to your fan base. Let your readers know when you will be in town and always try to schedule live events. Remember, staying connected to your readers has two major benefits. One, readers may buy your next book. Two, connected readers will buzz about your current book. Consider investigating iContact, an email marketing site to help you stay connected through email.
Keeping up with your audience is called platform building and is a great way to increase sales. A great blog to investigate for platform building is Michael Hyatt's "Intentional Leadership." Hyatt's social media articles are useful research for practical ways to keep in touch with your audience. The bottom line, successful authors stay in touch with their readers.
Great information and links!