Marketing Monday - Katie Davis (part 2)

Katie Davis, author/illustrator of nine picture books, including Kindergarten Rocks!, I Hate to Go to Bed!, and Who Hops? uses podcasts and video to promote her books. Podcasts? Video? But that sounds so... hard!  Katie wrote up a terrific, two-part blog post about how to use YouTube to help promote your books. Read through her how-to post from last week, and check out her webinars for more great information.

The following post was inspired and partly excerpted from her upcoming eBook, How to Promote Your Children's Book: Tips, Tricks, and Secrets to Create a Bestseller, available August 4 at http://www.katiedavis.com.



Why You Need to Create your Own YouTube Channel

I did a lot of research about YouTube and then I interviewed Darcy Pattison, author of the Book Trailer Manual. Using my research and the interview with Darcy Pattison, I deleted my old YouTube channel and created a new one. The downside to doing that is that all the views and my followers were zeroed out too. The upside made that worth it.

Tip: keep in mind when you are creating your user name when creating your channel that that name will be the name of the channel, which is one reason I wanted to get rid of my previous channel.

Here is what Darcy, the book trailer maven, says about creating your own channel:

“Katie is right, you need your own YouTube channel. Take a look at her channel, here and mine, here.

“In April, 2010, Anthony Bruno reported that “fans are more engaged with videos posted to individual artists’ Web sites.” Of course, they are talking mostly about music videos, but we can probably generalize this to book videos. They report that “29% of the videos streamed on artist and label sites are watched in their entirety, compared to only 12% from aggregation services.” Warner Music Group, then, doesn’t license content to places like Vevo.com. The company, instead, drives fans to artists’ sites through custom-branded channels on YouTube.  A third-quarter study in 2010 confirmed the importance of individual artists’ channels.


Creating your own channel

“If you need another reason that you should create your own YouTube channel, listen to this.... You want your book trailer uploaded on your account, so you can control the settings. If you had help from a book trailer company, ask them to send you the video and let you upload it yourself. Otherwise, you’ve got to return to them for any revisions to the descriptions. For example, if you get a fantastic review that you want to add to the description, you can’t do it if you don’t have control. Upload it to your own channel. “Take the time to customize the look of your channel to match your website or the book cover, your choice. Notice that both Katie’s and my channel have the same color schemes as our websites.

“Another advantage of creating your own channel is that it allows you to monitor viewer statistics. YouTube Insight is YouTube's external facing analytics and reporting product that enables everyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. Just log on, then click Account >My Videos>Insight.

“As of the last quarter of 2010, Facebook and Twitter generate the most engaged viewing audiences for online video. So, once you get your video up–Tweet! Facebook it! (Which, of course, means you need a following on Facebook and Twitter too!)”

Tip: You don’t have to only do videos that are book trailers. I started my Video FAQs to both help people who come to my site as well as create some search engine juice. I made this kindergarten video that helps incoming students who might be a tad nervous about the big step. It also, of course, has images and phrases from my book, Kindergarten Rocks!, but isn’t about the book.

Thanks for all the terrific, thought-provoking information Katie. And see everyone else on YouTube!

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Children’s author/illustrator Katie Davis has published nine books and appears monthly on the ABC affiliate show, Good Morning Connecticut, recommending great books for kids. She produces Brain Burps About Books, a podcast about kidlit, a blog and monthly newsletter. Katie has volunteered in a maximum security prison teaching Writing for Children and over the last dozen years has presented and keynoted at schools, writing, and educational conferences. This year she served as a Cybils judge and has also judged the Golden Kite, smartwriters.com, and Frontiers in Writing awards. Recently Katie was selected to be on the Advisory Board for the Brooke Jackman Foundation, a literacy-based charity.

 
If you are a published author and you would like to share your experiences with marketing and promoting your book(s), I'd love to share your story! Please contact me at anpstevens [at] gmail [dot] com.

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