- Did you know that IngramSpark
has these robust reports available by genre
that can give you a whole lot of reader data?
If you didn't know about these reports or you knew
but you weren't sure how to use the data they're providing,
well, then this video is for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Julie, the book Broad.
I'm the founder of a fabulous self-publishing
services company called Book Launchers.
Earlier this year, we made a little discovery
on the Ingram content website.
They had these reports that were just kind of hanging out
bare (inaudible) site called Reader Insights.
Turns out they have all kinds of reports in there.
Check it out.
To get familiar with the data,
we immediately bought their business report and dove in
The report was $50, which is not a crazy price point
when you see all the information inside of this report.
In Ingram's words, this report provides insight
into the online behaviors of your target reader.
Where they're active, who they follow,
and how they talk about your area of books
and related content.
Intended as a compliment to traditional book sales data,
this data can inform and guide your marketing, publicity,
sales, and overall publishing efforts.
Our key audience characteristics are based on consumer use
of social media, search engines, websites,
and media such as videos and podcasts.
These data are indicative
of the audience's online footprint, including demographics,
psychographics, behaviors, and affinity.
So the report is intended to help you sell more books.
This is cool because you don't get a lot of information
from your Ingram dashboard.
I've often said it would be really nice
to know what channels are selling the books
so you can lean into those channels
but you don't get that kind of information from Ingram.
But there is some really cool data in this report.
We have a section on audience, a section on influence,
a section on press, and a section on consumer insights
which includes some keywords being used
and hashtags for social media use.
So let's take a look at some of the sections
and discuss how you can use this report.
Now, my first caveat here is that this is general data.
Business books are a big category
so you still need to know your reader
and none of this data is going to provide a magic bullet
or a magical solution to your book marketing needs.
But savvy thinking authors can buy their genre
specific reader insights report and use what fits for them.
What this report says
about the business book audience is that it skews
to males living in Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta.
I'm less interested in where they live
as the next piece of data,
which is they follow Harvard Business Review,
Wall Street Journal Business News,
and New York Times business and many other brands
and engage with podcasts like Yahoo Finance Daily,
media outlets like Forbes.
So now I might be thinking about writing articles
for those publications or focusing some of my pitches
towards the journalists that write for those outlets
because that is a business book reading audience.
They also give you some general demographic info
around education and experience.
Again, if you know your reader well
and I sure hope you do this data isn't as relevant
because you are more focused on the problem you can solve
for your reader and selling this solution
versus worrying if they have 20 or 25 years of experience.
Now, the report also has some more location information
and that might be useful to you
if you're planning a book tour
or you wanna line up local media
where you're more likely to get readers.
But again, I really wanna emphasize knowing your reader,
you are more solution focused than demographic focused.
And for most authors, their first area of focus
will be their local area or areas they frequent already.
One of the sections in this report that I do really love
is the social media influencer accounts list.
Likely you probably know a lot of these already
but it gives you an idea of people or businesses
or accounts you may want to actively engage with
to help get in front of the biggest influencers
in this space.
They have four and a half pages of accounts listed here
and they are all hyperlinked
which makes it really easy to check them out.
I'm gonna link to a video at the end
on influencer outreach to help you with that,
'cause once you have the list,
you still need to know what to do.
They also do something similar for podcasts and YouTube.
So depending on where you are in the process,
this data is useful for potentially sending out
copies of your book,
looking for endorsements or early support.
It also might be useful to get yourself booked
on their show or build relationships
with them for future partnerships and collaborations.
You can also use it to find places
where you may want to sponsor and advertise
or just use it to get creative.
We talked about how Carol Sanford built a relationship
with Tom Peters just by engaging in a meaningful dialogue
on Twitter and now he's promoted her books.
It's been a great relationship
but she didn't go into it thinking, here's what I want.
She engaged in a meaningful dialogue and discussion online
and the relationship grew organically from there.
So look at these podcasts, YouTube channels,
and social media accounts
and see where you find synergy, opportunities to connect
and see how ideas might spark for you
and your book to get in front of their audiences.
A lot of the YouTube channels are big brand channels
so they will likely be harder
to get connections with at first.
So start with the smaller brands
or the individual influencers and start commenting.
Creators notice and brand managers notice.
I've built relationships with brand reps
by being active and supporting brands.
You can also create content that supports what they're doing
or talks about their shows and episodes
and messages and that gets noticed too.
If you're a genuine fan of someone's work,
that goes a long way.
So check out the list and see who you may already love
or who you might come to love.
This report also has a robust list of press
but most are major media.
That doesn't mean you don't use it
but there's quite a few steps you have to take
to find the right journalist
and come up with an angle to pitch them.
It takes research,
but if you didn't know where to start, now you do.
They also have a huge list of websites
these business book readers follow.
There's duplication with the above lists,
but checking them out may uncover opportunities
to post guest articles, build partnerships,
find advertising opportunities, or you may even uncover
affiliate relationship opportunities.
This is where you can profit
from building a relationship and sharing content, services,
or products your readers are likely to need, want, and love.
Okay, the final section I want to spend a moment on
is this section, hashtags.
We've talked about leveraging hashtags
to gain some traction, followers,
and maybe a few book sales on social media.
If you didn't know what hashtags might be working
and being used and searched well, now you do
with this gigantic list that this report provides you.
All right, this is how Ingram describes their hashtag data.
Hashtag data from Twitter and Instagram
showing the most used hashtags among social media posters
within this audience can be used
to inform organic social media,
which hashtags to use on posts to garner more views,
as well as advertising tactics where you may choose
to target followers of a certain hashtag.
I love that they have difficulty ratings too
with high, medium, and low.
Where do you think you should start?
With the low ones, of course, because they are telling you
which ones are likely to be easier to be ranked
and get attention for you.
You also have data on the number of unique posts with that,
your competition, and the likes per post,
so the popularity of a subject
and how big the reach could be.
The data is explained in the report
and broken out for Instagram and Twitter.
This is pretty cool data especially for people
who are using social media.
If you're not already a savvy social media user
well it might take a few more ideas to make it work
but at least you've got a great list to start from.
Finally, they have a great section on keywords.
This will help kickstart your specific keyword research
for your book.
Our favorite tool for that remains Publisher Rocket
and KDSPY, but this is a great starting place.
And it could also be a great starting place
to kickstart Amazon ad campaign keyword research.
They give you some trending information on the word
so you can see if a word is up and coming or on the decline.
They also have pages and pages
of keywords and most were high competition.
Thus, you're really gonna have to dive
into the data and research.
But it gives you a starting place
and I really love seeing the trending data for each keyword
because keywords do change over time
and that gives you some insights
as to where that word is heading.
We like to verify the data we've gotten
from Publisher Rocket as well.
And knowing that trending information really helps us
kind of verify what we're seeing, if it was just a blip
or if it's actually something that is a stronger trend.
This report ultimately
is not going to sell your book for you,
but it may spark an idea, help you take action,
or give you some information
that directs you towards an audience
that ultimately becomes the very thing
that helps you sell a lot of books.
For $50, this report is a small investment in data
that could help you with your book marketing efforts.
Now, how would you use this data?
I'd love to hear from you below
and when you comment the day a video is released
you get entered to win some sweet #noboringbooks swag
or a copy of Self-Publish and Succeed.
The #noboringbooks way
to write a non-fiction book that sells.
Oh and before you head out,
here is how to do that influencer research we talked about
and over here, well, that's the latest and greatest
from the channel.
Both are absolutely worth your time
and I'm excited to see you there.