Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

10 Things Marketers Can Learn from Authors [My Author Nation Recap]

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 388

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I recently attended Author Nation, the premier conference for self-published authors in Las Vegas. While it might seem like fiction authors and digital marketers are worlds apart, the lessons I learned prove otherwise. From innovative uses of AI to the art of leveraging "borrowed audiences" and creating content that captivates through curiosity, authors are blazing trails that marketers can follow. Join me as I share 10 game-changing insights from Author Nation that will inspire your digital marketing strategy in 2025 and beyond!

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Speaker 1:

What can you learn about marketing from authors? Well, I actually just came back from the largest conference for self-published authors, called Author Nation in Las Vegas, and I can't wait to share with you the 10 things that inspired me, that I hope inspire you about what you can learn from authors that will drive your digital marketing forward in 2025 and beyond. So make sure you listen to the very end of this next episode of your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

Speaker 2:

Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktok, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey friends, it has been a while. Sometimes in this podcast there are a few weeks, sometimes it's been a few months, where you know the creativity, the energy, the timing, the workload. Sometimes the stars just don't align and if you feel pressured by editorial calendars, that you feel that you need to be publishing on X network or X blog posts X times a week or X times a month, it's okay to take a break. Right, and we should only be creating content only when we are at our natural high, our natural best, because otherwise it will not be as good a content as you can create. And these days, with algorithms and just the you know, the algorithms being focused on quality content and the amount of quality content that exists, just having a not so focused approach or just not doing what you're capable of doing, I don't think it's good enough anymore. I mean, it never has been good enough, but more and more we need to be at the top of our game. When we're creating content, especially long form, evergreen content like podcasts, right, our game when we're creating content, especially long form, evergreen content like podcasts, right, short form content, a little bit different. But anyway, that's always how I've thought and that's always, if you see a little break in the podcast recording, you'll know why.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's begin this episode with the latest news. So a few things to look at this week, and fortunately you're getting this in time, because OpenAI is teasing the 12 days of mystery product launches, which actually started December 5th pretty shortly before you should be able to hear this podcast. We don't know exactly what they're going to be revealing. Well, the day I record this, they actually already released their first product, but we're thinking that Sora, this text-to-video model that they've teased before, a new reasoning, ai or multimodal breakthroughs like DALI 4, where they're currently at DALI 3,. These updates could reshape competition with rivals like Google and Anthropic, the makers of Claude.

Speaker 1:

Whether you're an AI enthusiast or a professional, we really need to keep our eyes peeled on OpenAI, and I want to go over the first release from these 12 days of mystery product launches, which is ChatGPT-01, which they are calling the world's smartest language model. Obviously, whenever OpenAI puts out something new, it's probably going to be the world's smartest, whatever. So they are with this AI product, or, I should say, model. They are offering it up only if you buy a pro plan for $200 a month. This pro plan offers unlimited access, enhanced computational power and an even smarter mode for more reliable, nuanced answers, particularly in fields like programming and law. So it might not apply to all of us. While the O1 model excels in speed and features, it does limit uploads to image files, sparking curiosity as to why that is the case. Nevertheless, sparking curiosity as to why that is the case. Nevertheless, this release marks a leap in AI capability, ideal for power users and professionals. You know, $20 a month, I think is sufficient. Let's wait and see, but if you are a heavy user of ChatGPT, you just might want to consider paying that. It is not a lot of money considering how much power users are probably using ChatGPBT on a daily basis.

Speaker 1:

On other AI news, eleven Labs and Eleven Labs really has this best AI voice cloning technology. I know a lot of authors are using them to create AI-based voices for their books. You can create AI voice podcasts, which obviously I am human. I don't plan on doing that, but they now launched conversational AI agents that speak 31 languages, which is just crazy. So, in other words, if you want to build things like 24, seven customer support, outbound sales, interactive training in a variety of languages, right and with real-time responsiveness and integration with major LLMs like GPT or Claude. It is a leap toward more human-like interactions in the chatbot customer service space, making it a valuable asset for improving customer engagement and productivity. Definitely something to watch. But conversational AI has become big and more and more brands are using it, and if you're interested in that at all, I would highly recommend checking out Eleven Labs.

Speaker 1:

And then, on the social media front, tiktok. Their in-app sales for the TikTok shop on Black Friday, which wasn't that long ago, topped $100 million. There were celebrity-hosted live streams with Nicki Minaj drawing record viewers. Interestingly enough, a third of the sales came from small businesses spanning categories like beauty, home goods and fitness. While in-stream shopping in the West isn't as big as it is in China, where it's huge, they are really making headway with younger purchase ready audiences.

Speaker 1:

I don't know about you. I have a TikTok user account. Please follow me. Neil Schafer Social is the name of that account, and I also signed up for a TikTok for business, which I have not yet attached to my personal account, and they have been pitching me, I swear. Two or three times a week I am getting emails from them recommending that I set up a TikTok shop. I even had a phone call with a TikTok representative a few days ago talking about TikTok shop, where I'm thinking of setting it up.

Speaker 1:

You cannot distribute things digitally, only physically, but you can. Obviously, once you set it up, like with Instagram shopping or Facebook shopping, you can tag your products there and there is a hungry audience that are buying things just directly in TikTok through TikTok shop, and there's a whole ecosystem of affiliate marketers and content creators and influencers that are also making money off the things that they're promoting that can get sold through TikTok shop, right? So if you are in one of those really, really popular B2C, you know beauty, home goods, fitness and you target a younger demographic, primarily Gen Z, but also millennial I mean, it is aging Definitely, definitely, definitely check out TikTok shop, and I know, if you read the newspaper today, wherever you read it, that it looks likely that TikTok is going to have to sell its US assets to an American company. You know, when Donald Trump gets in office, all bets are off. I mean, who knows right? But I do believe that it is not something going away. It is so big right now I could not see it disappearing and therefore I would not let that prevent you from moving forward with TikTok shop, all right.

Speaker 1:

On the personal news, well, it was a busy little time there in between podcast recordings, but finally settling down now and getting ready to end the year strong. Still working on the update to maximizing LinkedIn for business growth, but been getting encouraging awards for digital threads. Actually, I've gotten a few, probably since our last recording up to four awards now and there's some announcements coming out over the next several weeks for some other business book awards. So it's really great to get that recognition. And once again, if you haven't checked out Digital Threads, you can go to neilschafercom slash books. You can find the links where you can find it online and there's also a special free preview edition that you can download as well. On other news, I'm really honored that I am going to be teaching a class on social and content marketing in Vietnam next spring. This is together with the Solvay Brussels School out of Belgium, solvay Brussels Schools of Economics and Management, and they have a program together with a Vietnamese university in Ho Chi Minh. So it's going to be a 24-hour module taught over a weekend, with some virtual sessions before and after. But I can't wait to visit Vietnam for the first time and to serve the next generation of savvy, digital first marketers there.

Speaker 1:

All right, so let's get into today's topic. Author Nation is, as I tease, the largest event for self-published authors. I am currently a self-published author and, while a majority of the authors who go man probably 70, 80, even 90% are fiction authors right, they were people dressed up in cosplay, fantasy, romance, horror, thriller, you name it you wouldn't think it's a place where you could actually glean any insight that can help your business, but I beg to differ. I think it's all about the mindset, and I've really been leaning into what fiction authors are doing to promote their brand, their books. They are entrepreneurs. Authors are entrepreneurs. My approach to book writing is also an entrepreneurial one. It is a product, but more than that, it also is digital PR. So, on that note, I want to give you 10 things that I learned or that inspired me, that I think will inspire you as well.

Speaker 1:

So we'll begin with AI Now. You'd think that fiction authors, people that love writing they would be absolutely opposed to using any AI in their work, and for the most part, up until last year, from what I understand, there was a lot of pushback on using AI. But man, the tide has turned so. Even fiction authors are leveraging AI in a variety of ways to improve their craft and I think, when you think about it that way, any content that your business is creating, you can also be using AI to improve your craft. Now, there are some tools that are available for authors that might not be available for businesses, but there are a ton of content marketing AI tools that are coming out that can help, you know. Just thinking of short form videos with Opus Clip or using a tool like CastMagic to take a audio or video and give you a bunch of outputs that you can use for your marketing. What's really interesting is that on the analysis side, there's been a lot of progress. There's a platform called authorsai that actually compares the pacing, the character development and other things about your book compared to other similar books in your genre. Really, really fascinating. And it was a reminder and I tell this to every business I talk to you can't upload other public examples of work that you want to emulate right and use that as a base to help it or help the AI, help you find ideas to improve your content, something I do pretty often and it was a reminder that you could be doing that as well.

Speaker 1:

Another really, really interesting perspective, someone that I hope to have on this podcast someday. Her name is Joanna Penn. She is a thought leader, founder of the Creative Penn Podcast, which is probably the largest podcast for self-published authors nonfiction and fiction author and she gave a great speech about how authors are all entrepreneurs which, as I alluded to before but AI should absolutely be leveraged at every stage, and it's really about leveraging AI to amplify intelligence, amplify ourselves, amplify our IP, amplify our thoughts, and I just could not agree with that more so. Hopefully, as listeners of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast, you are already leaning into AI, but I would almost say we cannot lean into it too much. There is so much that is still possible that I want you to explore.

Speaker 1:

I'll be talking about what to explore in future episodes, but just a general tool like ChatGPT can bring you to a lot of locations right. Go into the GPT directory, check out what's going on out there, what GPDs exist, do searches for you know chat GPT prompts, even ask chat GPT. What else can I be using you for? You'd be pleasantly surprised the recommendations that it will give you. All right, that was number one AI.

Speaker 1:

Number two is the concept of using borrowed audiences. Now authors have the chance to work with companies like and you may not have heard of these unless you're an author a company called BookBub or Written Word Media that runs a bunch of sites like Bargain Booksy, the fussy librarian. There's a bunch of these sites out there where people sign up to get notified when there are free books or discounted books available. So these are companies that have lists of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people that are segmented by what they're interested in. So, while it's primarily for fiction writers, I have been using these services because they do have nonfiction databases and it goes out in an email newsletter Sometimes it repeatedly goes out and you have the ability to promote your.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, the idea is that you're promoting a discount, but it's also the concept of leveraging a borrowed audience that I think is really really interesting. Right, you can go on your own and do Amazon ads and Facebook ads, which we're all doing, right? You can go on your own and do Amazon ads and Facebook ads, which we're all doing but by tapping into audiences which are already trusted and which already have an expectation and giving them what they want. I think that's really powerful, and I don't have all the data to prove the effectiveness of it or not, but I think you can imagine how powerful that is. So what can you do? And I think from a business perspective, borrowed audiences are being able to tap into the audiences of people that you can collaborate with or businesses that you can collaborate with. These might be partners, if you have partner marketing. These might be the newsletters of content creators or of influencers in your space. It might be being interviewed on podcasts, where you are now leveraging a borrowed audience to introduce what you and your company do to that audience. Right, so that is a really, really powerful concept. It's all about I've been talking about this for like a decade leveraging the other. It is a type of influencer marketing. Now, when I'm paying money to be part of a traditional media site that sends out an email newsletter, that's one thing. But to collaborate with those that have an audience and leverage that borrowed audience, that's really where you can expand what you do to a new audience. So keep that in mind as you're creating your marketing strategy for 2025. All right.

Speaker 1:

Point number three ads are a normal part of work. There was a day on Amazon when you could put a book up there and, organically, it would be a lot easier to sell than it is today. But just like anything else, and even just like TikTok, these days it seems, from what I hear from some content creators, everything is pay to play. It is just a normal part of work, right? And we've had Dennis Yu on this podcast. You know, a buck a day, $5 a day, whatever the equation is, but we have to accept that every month we are going to have an advertising budget for whatever networks are strategic to us, and you might be trying to avoid the pay to play game, but at this point in time it really can't be avoided. The question is how effective are you going to be? What are you going to promote? And I have a great episode coming up. It's still a few. Well, it might be a few months away, but if you go to my YouTube channel, youtubecom slash Neil Schaefer, I had an interview with James Herman, just yesterday actually, and he talked about brand building and the importance of brand awareness ads performance marketing to build sales for today and the near future, but brand awareness, brand building, ads to build an audience for future sales, and I thought that was really compelling and made a lot of sense, regardless if it's performance marketing, brand awareness, ads a buck a day, $10 a day. It is a normal part of work and I think that authors, self-published authors, have realized that as well and they are leaning into the Facebook ads, the Instagram ads, the Amazon ads and working with those sites that have those promotional email newsletters as a type of advertising. All right.

Speaker 1:

Point number four provide your work in different formats. So maximizing LinkedIn for business growth is only available in ebook format, but digital threads is an example of a book that is available in all formats. There is paperback, there's hardback with dust cover, there's audio and there's ebook. Well, why is that important? Because people consume content in different formats, which is why this podcast is primarily audio, but there's also a textual version of it. I sometimes will publish it in LinkedIn as a newsletter and for my interviews there's a video which goes out live stream and YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Give your audience different content formats to allow them to consume your content any way they want, and this really gets down into content repurposing. Now, with books, we literally like if you don't have an audio book, you're leaving money on the table, seriously. But we could say the same thing about content repurposing by not and I'm sort of kicking myself as I say this but by not repurposing all of my horizontal interview videos into vertical videos. I just cannot play on TikTok. I can't get the views, whether it's 10 views or a hundred views and then you got reels, and then you got, you know, youtube shorts and now LinkedIn video right. By not having the format, you're leaving money on the table. If you don't know how to do content repurposing, check out the interview that I did with Amy Woods, the founder of Content 10X. Check out her podcast as well. I also have a dedicated chapter on this in Digital Threads that hopefully you've read by now. All right, point number five.

Speaker 1:

Now this might be a little bit less applicable BookWorld. We have seen extreme success with fiction authors that have created custom or special editions, like books with sprayed edges or fancy book covers that have ribbons on them. Maybe you've seen some of these on BookTalk, if that's your thing, or some of the most famous Kickstarters for authors have been these sorts of special editions that have sold a lot of money. I mean, if the paperback is five or 10 and the hardcover is 20, these will sell for 25, 30, 35. You add a signature on it, you can sell it. A signed version, you can sell it for even more, but it's the concept of creating special editions of your product. So it might be a little bit harder for you to do, for you to think about. But if you have an audience of hungry customers, think about an easy way to create a deluxe edition of whatever you have that you can charge for more. Limited quantity, limited edition it's something that we've seen time in and time out in the B2C space. Limited edition only available now, only limited number of copies, but there is an audience that's hungry for that. Now. This might just be in the book world, right, but I would challenge you to think about creating a new type of product that is higher end, that has more bells and whistles. It has a higher perceived value or a higher you know type of concierge service or free onboarding or whatever. That is that I think you might be able to sell for a little bit more money, all right.

Speaker 1:

Point number six networking.

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I saw a lot of networking among authors and I also network with other nonfiction authors and business authors, and the reason is that people buy more than one book right Now.

Speaker 1:

If you're in fashion, obviously people buy lots of clothes. Now, a lot of business authors are afraid that if they collaborate with other business authors and this is what I heard from some people in the industry there that they are basically taking away their business. Right, why would they collaborate with the competition? And I think we're at the point where companies that are thinking about services or consumers that are thinking about buying things you know, whether we like it or not, they are going to be comparing multiple companies, multiple products, multiple services. So at least by collaborating with other businesses and they don't have to be direct competitors by any means you're giving more options. And I love the author mindset around this because obviously with authors, you know the whale reader, as they call them, buy lots and lots and lots of books, so there's no competition whatsoever. And I'd say in the business books as well, you're not just going to buy digital threads and never buy another book about digital marketing again. You probably own books by Jay Baer, by Anne Hanley, by Mark Schaefer and on, and, on, and on.

Speaker 1:

Even with podcasts. You're not just listening to my podcast, you're listening to other podcasts as well. So it is this notion that there is a plentiful marketplace for all and is there a way that we can collaborate? Because when we collaborate we cross-pollinate audiences. Really interesting that for Spotify Wrapped, they partnered with Google's Notebook LM. Who would have thought Spotify and Google would be collaborating with each other? But now I have to explain to my wife what Google's Notebook LM is right, and now you have a whole new generation of people that are being exposed to that wonderful technology. All right.

Speaker 1:

Point number seven the importance of they call them reader magnets. We call them basically lead magnets, right, and what authors are doing is they will, especially fiction authors. They create a series of books and then the first book in that series they'll give away for free. They call it permafree, right. They'll put it up for free. They'll ask Amazon to match that free price and that becomes their lead magnet, like, if you're hooked on the first book in a series, you're going to probably want to buy the remaining 14 books in that series. Maybe you're going to buy the box set and they build up an email list to be able to directly communicate. Obviously, for those that have read digital threads, I have a whole chapter about lead magnet ideas, but I could not agree more with this approach and it's really good to see that authors are very, very strategic about this. So here's the thing Are you creating lead magnets that people want more of you after reading it? You can't create a series of products like a series of books, but you can make it enticing enough, and I'm not talking about you need a lot of volume to make it enticing, but enticing enough that people will want more from you. So when you're thinking about your next lead magnet, think about those reader magnets. Think about that first book in a series and obviously you know, for authors, you need to have a few books in order to give away that first book. And I'd say, as a company, you need to have a lot of experience and you know, ideally, multiple products to give people something to choose from to have an even greater success with this, or to have multiple lead magnets to help you better segment your audience based on their lead magnet interest. This is something that I've been doing for quite some time with my multiple lead magnets, which, by the way, I used to have a page. I used to have a freebies page. All that has now moved to the books page neilschafercom slash books. If you're curious about my own lead magnets, all right.

Speaker 1:

Point number eight there were a number of technical service providers or vendors that were at the show, and what I loved about them is they gave us the chance to actually reserve time to talk about our customer support issues that were not getting resolved. I mean, I talked to people from Google, I talked to people from some pretty big companies and they were all extremely helpful. I made a human connection. It makes me an even more loyal user. Now you're thinking, well, how do we do that? I mean, imagine if you have a customer support agent that people can reserve time to speak with. Right, it doesn't have to be a physical event, it could be a virtual one, it could be a Zoom call, but I thought that that was a really, really great way of closing the gap between your customers and your company, your brand, your support team, and I'd say it's not only for your customers. But there were a lot of pre-sales conversations going on as well, as you can imagine. Up to you know, it doesn't have to be a 24 seven, it could just be like a half day a week, four hours of one person's time, but I highly recommend you experiment that and you put it on your website and you put it in your emails, you put it in your social and you see what sort of engagement you get from that and what business and you know higher customer lifetime bio you can generate from that.

Speaker 1:

All right, number nine, andrew Davis was one of the keynote speakers and man he was. It was one of the best speeches that I've seen and the whole idea behind his speech was about creating curiosity gaps in your content. So he had this like surprise box and he kept on saying you know who would want the surprise box? Like, you know what do you think is inside? How much would you pay for it? And he already knew what was in it, but he waited until the very end to basically talk about what was in it because he held our attention for 45 minutes while he was talking about other things, about this creation of curiosity gaps.

Speaker 1:

In other words, I begin this podcast with a teaser, hopefully to create a little bit of curiosity that you want to stick around and keep listening. And this is more important than ever with our content, especially on social media with people's low attention time spans right. We need to begin with a strong hook and we need to create a need to know and then generate a need for closure. That is really the best example that I can give you of what Andrew defined as this curiosity gap, right? So when you create that need to know, that's where you have a hook and people want to keep listening or watching until they get closure. And he gave some great examples, right. He showed this Ikea ad and maybe you've seen it before about nothing, and that 39% of people watch the entire four minute and 23 second ad, which is pretty incredible. And then he showed a YouTube channel that does slow motion videos of things exploding, and so he showed a video of a watermelon explosion is maybe 15 or 30 seconds, right. And then he showed a live stream of BuzzFeed BuzzFeed employees putting rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded, and people were on this live stream for hours watching with that anticipate what is going to happen. How many rubber bands is it going to take? And I thought that was a great example of not just immediately delivering the goods but creating that curiosity gap, building that gap and creating tension and then giving payoff and all about generating a need for closure. So Andrew's advice, which I want to echo here, is think like a reality TV editor, show something the audience desires and then threaten it. Really really compelling speech and you know I was not the presenter, so I'm just giving you the gist of what he talked about but a really really good framework to think about your own content with every piece, to try to create that curiosity gap, just to get a little bit more mileage, and I think this is especially important for short-form videos. So something to think about, all right.

Speaker 1:

The last point I want to talk about is a gentleman named James Blanche who is the co-founder of the Self-Publishing School podcast, one of the other real famous podcasts in the self-publishing arena. I had a chance to meet him, big fan of his podcast, he's one of two podcast hosts and he was on stage talking about the Swiss cheese analogy, and the Swiss cheese analogy is all about not having any holes that aren't aligned in your online strategy. He was talking specifically about books, but it could be your products or services as well and your branding. You see a book cover, you see a book title, you see a blurb Is everything aligned? And he really went deep on the book covers not being aligned and the power of familiarity. So he showed these Hollywood movie posters over the last few decades and, depending on the genre, they were incredibly similar.

Speaker 1:

Right and this is also what his advice was for authors is that you don't want to create a cover that sticks out. You want to create a cover that sticks in, that immediately when someone sees the cover, they know what the book's going to be about because of the power of familiarity, and I thought that that was a really powerful thing that we don't talk enough about in marketing, whether it is your Facebook ads or your short form videos. I mean, especially with TikTok. It is your Facebook ads or your short form videos. I mean especially with TikTok. Right, I always talk about having role models and trying to be inspired by the content that is already there, that is already getting visibility from the AI algorithm. That is really the same concept, right? Understand what people are familiar with on each social network and, looking at other ads, like in the Facebook ad library, try more to fit in so that immediately, people know what you're about. Now there is a brand building exercise where maybe you don't want to fit in, maybe you want to stick out, but for some things, leaning into this concept of familiarity, the science behind it, could work more to your advantage than trying to do something unique.

Speaker 1:

It might be a little controversial, but I thought it made a lot of sense and I wanted to share that with you today. Well, all right, so you know this is episode number and I should have talked about this at the beginning. We're at episode number 388. It was my goal at the beginning of the year to get the $399 by the end of the year. Man, I don't know if that's going to happen we shall see but I want to thank you for your loyalty in continuing to subscribe to this podcast.

Speaker 1:

I am still committed for the long haul. I can't wait to continue to serve you. I already have a few months worth of interviews that have already been recorded and many more incredible and inspirational subject matter experts that are waiting to record their interview on this show. So lots more to come. Make sure you stay tuned. Continue to stay subscribed. As I said, that was a temporary blip. I do look forward to more regularity publishing over the next several months. And hey, it's the holiday season. I know it's a little bit early, but make sure that you spend this month in introspection and really set the framework, set the base for a very powerful next year, in 2025. And this is not my last episode for the year, so I'll stop there, but thanks again and once again, this is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, neal Schaefer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastnealschaefercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at nealschaefercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neal has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.