Marketing & Publicity: How to Get The Word Out

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:01]:

This is the third and final in the series of the behind the scenes into Publishing, Writing and Marketing, the Thriving Talent Book. This is the Happier at Work podcast. I’m your host, Aoife o’, Brien, and I’m sharing the behind the scenes of what it took to actually get this book out into the world. If you haven’t bought the book yet, you can check it out or if you want to read more about it, you can check it out on thrivingtalentbook.com and maybe I start there because I was really clear that I wanted to have a specific book website. Rather than being on my normal website with a kind of a forward slash book, I wanted to have a very specific. And I knew I wanted a.com website as well, which I think gives it a bit more gravitas. So I went back to my web developer who I’ve been working with for a number of years, and I asked her to put together the website for me. And of course, this makes you think about what are all of the elements that need to go on into the book, into what it actually means to write the book.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:06]:

Yeah, I had to think about all of those different things. So I looked at other people’s websites, the book that. And I took the bits that I liked. And sue, my web developer, she also had some examples that she wanted to share and she had some very specific examples of what she liked and what she didn’t like. Now, since the last time working with sue, she has started working with Roger, who does all of the copy. So I had this fantastic conversation with Roger where he asked me about, well, who is the book for? What is it you’re trying to do, what you want to do with the website. And that really helped me again to rethink about what is it that I want this website to actually do. Roger then went away and he put together the copy for the website.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:46]:

These are all the things that you probably don’t even think about or know if you’re not in this world of entrepreneurship. But that’s. That was the website. Kind of tied to the website is thinking about who could potentially talk about this book, who could potentially promote this book. And by that I mean if you pick up any business books, you’ll see that there are usually endorsements. There’s oftentimes someone on the front cover that, that has said some kind words about the book. They’ve read the book in advance, they’re happy to put their name to it. It’s usually someone who has, you know, who’s, who’s quite well known.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:23]:

And I wanted that for my book as well. So I reached out to, I was tracking all of this, me being me. I had my little spreadsheet, I was tracking all of this. So I reached out to maybe about 15 or 20 people. About 12 people came back to me and I think we got to 11 endorsements in the end. So one person said that they would and then they didn’t end up giving me the endorsement in the end, but 11 people did. And one of those people is on the front cover and that’s Amy Edmondson. I was so thrilled to get her endorsement for the book.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:58]:

I’m so, so proud that my spoke to her in a way that she was willing to actually put her name to the book. I also have a fantastic endorsement from several of my previous podcast guests. So I have Lisa Bodell, I have Robert Glaser, I also have Zach Mercurio, Fay Wallace, Susan Nikriathon and Jackie Jagger as well. So lots and lots of endorsements there for the book from people who’ve actually read it already. And again, you know, I talked about this in previous episodes, but how daunting it is to actually put your work out there and to have other people read it. Because when you put yourself out there, this is the hard thing. You’re open for judgment, you’re open for criticism. I am a big fan of the website or the app or whatever, Goodreads.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:52]:

I use it all the time to track the books that I’m reading and to leave reviews and to leave ratings and things like that. I love using it. Now if I go to Amy Edmondson’s book and you know, I read her book and I went to leave a rating about it. If you click into the reviews, there’s some people who didn’t like the book or who said it could have been a pamphlet. So if someone who has written as brilliant a book, as well known a book as hers, you have to be open to that kind of criticism. And I suppose that’s something that I am aware of as well, that you’re putting yourself out there no matter how good it is. There are going to be some people who just want to criticize, who just want to give their 2 cents or say that it didn’t apply to them. Maybe they weren’t there, the target audience, but there’s always going to be people like that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:40]:

And take from that what you will, that you know, it’s not just applying to books, it’s applying to everything. It’s applying to speaking up in meetings. It’s about a report that you wrote. There’s always going to be someone who has an opinion. I suppose it’s. It’s to take on board what you like and to ditch the rest. And I think Brene Brown talks about this a lot. The idea of being in the arena.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:05]:

So you can take criticism from someone else who’s doing what you’re doing, but don’t take criticism from someone else who hasn’t put themselves out there yet. I’m kind of bracing myself for a little bit of that. I won’t say backlash, because I don’t think it’s. It’s not controversial enough to cause a big backlash, but certainly for the haters out there who are gonna have an opinion or are gonna say something about it, I’m kind of bracing myself for that. The marketing side of things, that was part of the marketing is to have endorsements from people. I suppose the book cover is part marketing, making sure that that looks really as well as it can. We’ve got Amy Ebbinson’s endorsement on the front cover, which is amazing. Aside from that, I have hired someone to do the publicity for me because after I won the award for the podcast back in September, I tried to do some publicity myself as kind of a test for when the book was going to be coming out.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:59]:

What I found with that was, aside from it’s a really hard slog, you know, finding the names of the people, finding the email addresses, trying to find, like, an angle or a pitch that you want to say to someone, and in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re being really sleazy and promoting yourself, because that’s basically what you’re doing when you’re pitching to journalists. And so I did that myself, and I found it just incredibly demoralizing. I spoke to another publicist recently, and he described it as being. It’s like a rejection game. So, like, you mostly get rejections, or you don’t get any. Any feedback at all. You just get, I won’t say ghosted, because there’s no relationship there to begin with, but you just don’t get any response whatsoever, which is kind of harder as well. So I found that process really difficult.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:47]:

And so for the purposes of the book, I was like, I’m gonna have someone else do this for me because I do not want to do myself. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the energy. Yeah, I just did not want to get involved in. In that side of things. I was like, I’m going to Outsource all of this. So that has paid off really well so far. I’m recording this episode a few weeks in advance and so far I’ve had a full page spread in a national newspaper in Ireland.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:10]:

There’s another about to be published. I won’t say it’s a full page spread, but it is an article in one of the big national Sunday business papers. And so that’s going ahead. I also at the time of this recording have an a TV appearance happening the day of the book launch, which is on Ireland am, which is again a national Irish morning television program. I’ve also have three other op ed pieces. So op ed is like an opinion piece where you have, you write the actual article again. That takes time and that takes energy. But I have three more of those due to come out as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:48]:

Yeah. So like this has been a really fruitful experience for me. It’s me having the opportunity to put myself into a new audience to share my opinion but then also have a link. And I say link. People are going to have to, if they’re reading the newspaper, they’re going to have to get their phone out or their laptop out and actually put the, the put the website in to their phone or to, to their laptop. But you know what I mean, it’s out there and it’s getting word about the book out there. So that’s, I suppose, another big thing that I’m doing. If we’re Already connected on LinkedIn, you’ll see how active I am on there.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:24]:

So I’ve been posting there when I have the energy. Sometimes I just get to the end of the day and I just don’t have energy to do it anymore. Scenes. I’ve been reaching out to people, you know, reconnecting with people, telling them about the book. And I have to say people have been so supportive people. There are some people I haven’t seen in years and they’re just like, how can I help? Who else can I tell about this? And for me it’s just really about getting the word out there. That’s probably the bit that you don’t see is the behind the scenes, like individual messages to reconnect with people, letting people know I’ve set up an event as well. So I’m doing an event online, I’m doing an event in person as well at the Google offices in Dublin or at the time of that this is going out that will have been in the past but at the time of recording it is in the future.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:13]:

So again, that’s another way to celebrate. It’s another way to get the word out there and it’s another way to mark the occasion and for an opportunity for people to buy the book which at the end of the day that’s really what we want is to get the book into the hands of the people who need it the most. That’s just a little bit of a behind the scenes of what I have been doing from a marketing perspective. I won’t say that it’s been easy. I mentioned in previous episode that it is another full time job so if you think like the writing, the editing, the publishing of the book is then you’re done. It’s like no, this is another full time job on top of everything else that I have to do as well. But it is exciting. It’s great to have my book finally out there in the world.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:56]:

If you haven’t checked it out yet go to thrivingtalentbook.com com and really would love to know what you think about it.