5 Essential Steps for Marketing Your Book on TikTok
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Are you marketing your book on TikTok?
If not, you could be missing out on a golden marketing opportunity — especially if you write in the romance and/or young adult space.
Since TikTok is only for video content, marketing your book on this platform differs from “multimedium” platforms like Instagram and Twitter that allow users to post photos and videos. However, there are still some core steps that they all share.
To find success on TikTok, you need to set a strong foundation for your account by following not just one but all five of these essential steps. They all work together to help you generate a loyal audience and — hopefully — viral content.
1. Build an audience
Before your posts can thrive and you can start seeing traffic travel from the platform to your author website or Amazon page, you need to build an audience on TikTok.
There are a few ways you can do this:
Post as much as possible because the TikTok algorithm rewards accounts that are active.
Spend time every day following ideal readers and like-minded authors. This increases the chances of them returning the favour and liking and commenting on your TikToks.
Utilize your followers from your other social media platforms and newsletter by directing them to your brand new TikTok account.
Use relevant hashtags in every TikTok to maximize your reach on the platform.
You will gradually build an audience by posting consistently, engaging with other accounts, and drawing attention to your TikTok account. Within the first month, if you build an audience, post consistently and frequently, utilize hashtags, and follow the other steps in this post, you can expect to gain at least one to two hundred followers.
It might be slow at first, but if you stick to those tips above, you will notice that your account will find traction. All of this lays a solid foundation for your TikTok account.
2. Develop a posting schedule
Did you know it takes seeing and hearing about a product seven times before a customer is ready to purchase it? It’s true!
That’s why developing a consistent and frequent posting schedule on any platform is critical. And it’s especially important on TikTok.
According to neoreach.com, TikToks have a lifespan of only 3 minutes … unless it goes viral. You must be committed to posting content regularly to reach your ideal readers. Otherwise, your content will “decay” before anyone can see it.
Since TikToks have such a short lifespan, it’s also vital to re-post your TikToks. You put effort into each video you make, so it can be a waste of time to let it get swallowed up by TikTok’s ever-changing feed. When developing your posting schedule, include at least one or two re-posts every week.
Just because a video didn’t reach a large audience the first time doesn’t mean it won’t the second, third, or even fourth time!
3. Find out what hashtags your ideal readers are using
Like Instagram and Twitter, you need to utilize hashtags if you want your content to be discovered by your ideal readers.
To reach those readers, you need to use a mixture of relevant trending hashtags and relevant non-trending hashtags.
Trending hashtags are ones that everyone is using, so there will be a minimum of one million videos posted using that hashtag. Non-trending hashtags will have less than this. They are more niche and specific, catering to a narrower audience looking for that kind of content.
To find trending hashtags, click the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of your home TikTok feed. From there, you can start searching hashtags that start with keywords relevant to your content like #romancebooks and the top hashtags that show up in the search are those that are trending. If you’re not sure if that hashtag is trending, check to see if there’s an arrow pointing up to the left of the hashtag. If you see it, that means it’s trending!
At the time of this blog post, here’s what hashtags are trending in the BookTok and AuthorTok world:
#authorsoftiktok2022
#authorsoftiktok
#authorsofbooktok
#spicybooktok
#indiebooktok
#writingabook
However, when it comes to hashtags, you always need to ensure they’re relevant to your content and brand. In this instance, they need to be related to the genre of books you write.
Sprout Social recommends only using around 3–5 hashtags per TikTok. Officially, TikTok doesn’t have a limit. That means you should also focus on using relevant keywords related to the hashtags in your TikTok caption.
4. Create valuable content
Always, always, always create valuable content. Valuable content needs to fall under one or two of these content pillars: education, entertainment, and engagement. This means your content needs to educate, entertain, or engage your ideal readers, so you can get creative with what type of content you create.
Aim for most of your content to be between 7 to 15 seconds long. Any shorter than that and it’s difficult to offer value. Any longer and people can start to lose interest — though some authors have certainly found success with content that’s up to 30 seconds long. The main takeaway here is that every second must count.
A book promotion post is educating and engaging your readers by nature. It’s educating your ideal readers on the details of your book and engaging them with (for example) a quote from your book, or its beautiful book cover.
For more valuable promotional approaches, here are 4 types of content to recreate for TikTok that will help you sell your book:
Create a video showing images representing your book's story and atmosphere. — Educates and engages
Share one of your favourite quotes from your book. — Educates and engages
Share the popular tropes in your book. — Entertains and engages
Share the playlist you listened to when writing your book. — Engages and entertains
And here are 6 types of content to recreate for TikTok that will build a loyal audience for your book:
Share your favourite book quotes from other books. — Entertains
Give your go-to writing or publishing tips. — Educates
Showcase your monthly to-be-read list and read wrap-ups. — Engages
Now that we’ve discussed your everyday content for TikTok, let’s chat about TikTok trends.
TikTok trends are constantly changing … like every single day. This is why if you want to conquer TikTok, you need to spend a few minutes everyday checking in on what’s trending. And no: this doesn’t mean you need to start dancing to sell your books! You don’t even need to show your face to hop on trends if you don’t feel comfortable with it — but that does mean you need to get creative.
Here’s an example of a TikTok that follows trends (that are long past their due date by now) without the creator showing their face:
5. Engage with your audience regularly
We’ve touched on the importance of engagement a few times in this blog post — and for a good reason. Engagement is how you connect with ideal readers, like-minded authors, and create a loyal and engaged community.
It’s especially important to engage regularly.
Here’s an engagement strategy and schedule you can follow to help you stay on top of engagement if you decide to post every day for a month.
Morning
Spend 5 minutes scrolling in your feed and liking and commenting on posts;
Follow 5 new ideal readers and/or like-minded authors;
Post a TikTok;
Do a 10-minute engagement sprint in your feed.
Afternoon
Follow 10 new ideal readers and/or like-minded authors.
Share TikTok to Stories.
Do a 5-minute engagement sprint in your feed.
When engaging, make sure it’s authentic. Don’t spam your feed with likes and heart-emoji-only comments. Spend a few seconds watching the video (most are only a few seconds anyway) and leave a thoughtful comment. The effort you put into engaging with others translates into the success of your account.
TikTok can take your book marketing game to the next level if you follow the 5 marketing steps listed above. While on your promotions journey, remember that social media doesn't sell your books on its own, but growing brand awareness does. And growing brand awareness is something this influential (but fickle) platform can do very, very well.
Zoe Mathers is a social media manager and copywriter from beautiful British Columbia. She strives to help authors grow brand awareness and find their ideal readers on social media. In her free time, she can be found writing her own stories or browsing the shelves of her local bookstores.
Explore her services or scroll through her blog at zoemathers.com.
