Promotional book offers have now joined the bandwagon, using social media to bring books to the fore. For your book to show up in the search engines, you must have keywords. The keywords are what sets your book apart from the others. Keywords are not your perception of how titles or topics are searched: it is actually you, trying to look into your readers' minds to ascertain what word or words they will enter when they do a search.
For example, think how an average American would search Asian cuisine on the net. Cuisine is not a common word. More likely, one of the key words would be food; and since food is very general, to zero in on Asian cuisine the person may type "Asian food". Still you may come up with a list that includes even raw food. Thus, another keyword search could be "cooked Asian food". If the author is writing on Asian cuisine, "Asian food" or "cooked Asian food" should be consistently found in your every blog post or picture. This way, your blogs and articles consistently show up whenever searches of these keywords are made.
Next, for you to help your reader to easily remember your blogs, create your own branding. For this to work, use the brand name that you created across all the platforms you use. In this way, there is no confusion as to "who wrote what". Create a name that can easily be remembered.
If the above has already been done, then let's have a look at the promotional book offers that could work for you.
Advertising. There are a number of good advertising sites that are available to you. Google Adwords, Goodreads and the Book Promo suite of sites provide good publicity at very affordable rates. You can also go to blogging sites where you can advertise your book for a reasonable amount. You have to pace your advertising so that your presence will continuously be felt, and maybe from time to time do a big promo launch.
Sales channels. A good practice is to use one and only one good sales outlet where your readers can purchase your books. Twitter now actually allows people to put two URLs in their bios, so you may use Amazon (if that is your preferred sales outlet) and your site's URL. This way, when your readers are directed to one URL, they can definitely be linked to the other.
Promotions and co-promotions. Some authors co-promote their books with books of other authors from the same genre with whom they have good relations. This enables them to do pulse pricing which allows them to lower their prices for a limited period of time, and, in some cases offer their book for free for 1-5 days (see KDP select). When talking exposure, this could give your book the boost it needs as you are supported with ads, guest blogs and tweets. And if you really have good material, the chances of you being downloaded more often is high, moving you towards the top of the rankings.
Guest blogging. This is a win-win situation because as another author guest blogs for you, they gain exposure. And as you allow guest blogging (or you blogging for another author), you create a wider audience which could actually open more opportunities for you.
Virtual book tours. Book tours offer great opportunities for you to make your book known to many. For a good price, there are excellent book tours that can give you reviews and exposure. To maximize these tours, build these around a promo: price reductions, contests, or interviews. This could definitely advance your chances of being read more.
Some promotional book offers may work well with some writers while others may just drain a writer's energy without a sale. An author should choose which of the above promotions may work for them and to do a regular check on the effect of each dollar that you put in the promo.
