The 3 Habits of Successful Social Authors - article

Non-fiction authors, coaches and business experts can use social media to drive sales of books and information products by following the 3 Habits of Successful Social Authors.

Successful authors know that the difference between wasting time with social media and selling with it relies on developing three habits. These are:

1. Getting back to basics by solving readers' problems on social media.
2. Designing to sell, provoking responses from prospective buyers in ways that begin a journey with buyers—ultimately connecting with your books and info products.
3. Translating, discovering customers' evolving needs & desires, using them to induce more sales transactions more often.

You can immediately begin selling books and other info products on social media platforms by applying these 3 success principles. Let's look at each more closely and make them actionable in your everyday work life—let's make them habits.

#1 Solve problems & create experiences
There's nothing more powerful than solving readers' problems to create sales if you work in non-fiction books, reference kits and informational products like Webinars and DVD collections. The main idea is to use social media platforms to:

1. Provide answers to potential buyers' most common questions in ways that provoke more questions (that your books answer!) and
2. Make it easy for the prospect to take action—to actually do something that puts them on the path to understanding why you are the hands-down expert in helping solve their problem and 
3. Give prospects a chance to actually begin to experience the power of your wisdom/method/solution through a small sample of the actual product.

This is the best way to effectively nurture prospects toward buying books, Webinars or any kind of information products you publish. If it sounds simple it is.

Remember, the objective with social media is to convert visitors to a lead. Then it's up to you to nurture this lead into becoming a buyer of your books and information products. This is easy work if you follow the formula.

#2 Design to Sell
Making social media sell your books is simply a matter of designing (planning) ways to relate your book's content (or existing coaching or consulting material) to:

1. Question-and-answer oriented “digital conversations” (non-fiction) and/or
2. Deep-seeded, emotional, desire-driven interactions (fiction).

You can create these conversations yourself or discover them as pre-existing, on-going discussions in social spaces. These conversations are “out there” on the Web.
All you need to do is:

1. Find virtual places where the substance of your book is relevant to a readers' need or experience;
2. Provoke response from customers and trade a sample of what they crave (what you're ultimately selling) for insight on who they are and what will motivate them (to buy). Get them to raise their hand as a valid buyer;
3. Deliver what you promised—a taste of success that ultimately proves your worth and earns trust by creating confidence in the buyer.

Blogging with this technique helps buyers discover answers to specific problems in search engines and makes subtle yet direct, controllable connections with what you want to sell them.

You see, when readers type specific questions into Google or Bing your blog will pop up and direct them to an author with terrifically useful answers—yours. The trick is to supply prospects with answers (within the blog post) in limited, short-form ways that provoke them to interact more with you... so they can more clearly understand the thought you just provoked.

The key to selling more books and products is to answer potential buyers' questions in ways that allows distribution of small samples of the more comprehensive solutions your books or products provide. To accomplish this simply give prospects a clear pathway to “get more of that kind of thinking” into their head.

Give prospects something to sign up for.

Help prospects act on their impulses by giving them a way to “get more” of what they just sampled. Mix in a direct response marketing element—a clear, irresistible call to action.

The action your prospect takes begins an educational process or journey for them. This approach will make it easier to connect your ultimate product pitch to that journey in ways that create more conversions. For an example of this technique in action check out my free sales training videos that teach prospects how to make social media sell for them using a blog.

Don't quit!
Now you know enough to be dangerous. The difference between wasting time with social media and selling with it relies on developing three habits: solving readers' problems on social media, designing it to sell and translating... discovering customers' evolving needs & desires, using them to induce sales transactions.

Now go get 'em! Let me know how you do with this technique.

Jeff Molander is the authority on making social media sell, adjunct faculty at Loyola University business school, author of, Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You and a social sales training speaker. You can reach Jeff at www.makesocialmediasell.com/blog.