To get started on creating your marketing plan, check out Part 1 and Part 2 first. For specific release day ideas…keep reading!

Facebook Release Party

Create an “Event” on FB, then add details of where/when, who’s participating, prizes, games, etc.

Invite Friends and Readers and encourage them to invite more people.

• “Who invited you?” giveaway can be a great way to encourage more invites.

Invite other authors

• Share the burden and fans: Invite authors to participate or “takeover” during the party with their own games/giveaways/etc.
• More games and prizes means more fun.
• Other authors bring in their fans to learn about your books and your fans learn about other authors as well.

Games

• “Caption this!” – Find a funny or strange picture and ask for captions. All captions earn an entry and you can either pick the best as the winner or pick at random.
• Book themed i.e. Bad Date Stories for my Date Shark series, or favorite myth for my Twin Souls series
• “Like My Page,” “Signup for my newsletter,” “Follow me on…” are great ways to build followers and are an easy giveaway entry form
• Costume Party (post pic of costume to enter giveway)
• Task oriented games, i.e. go to my website and find all the pink letters and unscramble the word.

Prizes

• Ebooks, signed books, bookmarks, postcards, swag, name a character, etc. Be creative and personalize as much as you can.

Teasers

• Guests may have been invited by someone else and don’t know about your book. Interest them with teasers/excerpts in the form of images and/or quotes.

Time Limit

• 2-3 hours is common. If you want to include more authors and cover more time zones, a longer All Day event can work well.
• May want to leave games open 24 hours for international guests

Twitter Chat/Party

Create your own Hashtag #DelShereesReleaseParty

• This is how people follow the discussion

Play Question and Picture based games

• Replies enter them in giveaway

Retweet chain

• RT enters giveaway. Use this to have a lot of people retweet information about your book.

Time Limit

• 1-2 hours, close giveaways at the end so it easier to track entries.

For more information on contacting media, come back next week.

To listen to the full podcast on Creating A Marketing Plan That’s Actually Doable, check out the Write. Publish. Repeat. Podcast Part 1 and Part 2.