How To Promote Your Children’s Book For FREE

You may have already tried many different things to promote your children’s book. But today, I’d like to introduce you to a new and powerful method I’ve been using for quite some time now.

Not too long ago, an article I wrote was published on BUSINESS INSIDER, one of the world’s biggest business sites that (traffic wise) outranks even sites such as Forbes, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal. 

The title I gave this article I wrote was: 3 Valuable Lessons That Even 5-Year-Olds Can Learn From Their Entrepreneur Parents.

So in today’s article, I’m going to share with you my why, and perhaps more importantly, how doing so helps me create awareness for my work, my brand, and myself as an author to ultimately help me promote my children’s books.

Today, you’re going to:

1. Learn what guest posting is.
2. Understand what guest posting can do to promote your children’s book(s).
3. See an actual case study with real-life examples.
4. The DOs & DON’Ts to make your own guest post a success.

So …, why would I ever write an article for another site instead of working on my next children’s book? 

This is exactly where my big, humongous teaching lesson for you comes in. If you haven’t yet, feel free to read the article over on Business Insider first to see and understand what I’ll be sharing and talking about in this post. 

Ready to learn something new? Then let’s get started!

WHAT IS GUEST POSTING?

Before diving in, I’d like to take a second to quickly explain what guest posting is. Guest posting is essentially where you write an article or blogpost for someone else’s website or blog. 

I guest blog quite a bit myself, as it’s a great way to connect with new readers and get my name and my work out into the world.

There are lots of advantages to guest posting, and I’d like to share with you the main ones so you see that it really does pay off to invest some time in writing for others.

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF GUEST POSTING?

1. Expanding Our Reach:

If you’ve watched my free Your Story Idea masterclass, you already know how important it is for your book’s story to have a mission or purpose. Guest posting can be such an impactful way to now spread and share your book’s message far and wide. 

There are, of course, many other methods out there, but this particular one is absolutely FREE. But not only is it free, we’re also using another site’s traffic and already established communities to get some serious eyeballs onto our books.  

If chosen correctly, the website or blog you’re writing for is already catering to a highly targeted and curated audience that can’t wait to learn more about you and your children’s book.

2. Creating Credibility:

One of my favorite by-products of writing for already established sites is that it greatly boosts my own credibility. 

Having shared my thoughts and ideas on sites such as Forbes and Huffington Post increases my voice’s authenticity and makes me as an author more trustworthy. 

3. Posted & Shared Forevermore:

A fantastic guest-posting advantage often overlooked is the fact that you’re essentially creating something that will be accessible and searchable for life (or until the other site owner decides to take it down). Unlike other promos that only run for a certain amount of time, a guest post has the potential to stick around for a long time. 

And if the other site allows you to add a link that leads back to your own site, then this will also help with your own site’s searchability and Google ranking.  

CASE STUDY: MY OWN BUSINESS INSIDER ARTICLE:

Writing an impactful guest post can be very time consuming. And that’s why I try to be very strategic about what I write and whom I write for.

So for the second part of this article I’d like to share with you what I did for my article in Business Insider so you too can give this guest-posting method a try. 

Let’s look at all the choices I’ve made for this particular article. 

1. Getting clear on my goal

Before I decided what media outlet to go with, I first looked at what I wanted to achieve with my guest post. Since I just launched my brand new series Braving The World, I knew that I wanted to create some awareness in order to promote my children’s books.

2. Why did I choose Business Insider? (PART 01)

In order to figure out what media outlet to approach, I looked at my books’ target audience. Remember that per my Your Story Idea masterclass, we have two main audiences for our children’s books. 

Since my Braving The World books take some of the most beloved, influential books within the entrepreneurial world, and turn them into beautifully illustrated children’s stories, I knew that my target audience consists of entrepreneurs with children.  

As already stated, Business Insider is one of the world’s biggest business sites, read by thousands of entrepreneurs every single week – the perfect home for one of my articles.

So by choosing Business Insider, I proactively went to a hotspot of my target audience instead of passively waiting for them to find me and my books.

3. Why did I choose Business Insider? (PART 02):

The other reason I chose to go with Business Insider is twofold:

• Business Insider allows for a byline at the TOP of the article
• Business Insider allows for a direct backlink to one of my websites

Business Insider, however, showcases this information at the very top of the article, which means it is a lot more likely for people to (A) see my name and (B) click on the link to my website.

This is what the byline looked like for this particular article:

4. What I didn’t do:

This is important!

If you’ve read my article, you may have noticed that I didn’t mention my books or the fact that I’m a children’s book author. Not even once. The only place this information is shared is in the byline that (remember!) is at the very top of the article. 

This is important, because if I would have made the article about my books instead of Business Insider‘s readers, the probability of them accepting my pitch and publishing my article would have been close to zero.

Other websites and blog owners don’t care about our books. But they do care about their readers. So if what you have to say aligns with their readers’ interests, they’ll alway be interested to hear what you have to say.

I do, however, talk about (A) children and (B) entrepreneurship, and how important it is to teach our kids certain entrepreneurial principles early on. 

Based on my provided research in the article, more than half of entrepreneurs are parents. And as parents, we always want the very best for our children and would want to set them up for success in life …

Now, each of the “3 Valuable Lessons” I’m introducing in my article are the actual themes of each of my books in my new series:

So even though entrepreneurial parents may have never before thought about these points made in the article, they do now. So the seed is planted…

5. The results:

Now, you may be thinking: ‘Eevi, this is way too complicated. No one will put 1 and 1 together, read this article, figure out that you write children’s books that address these ‘issues,’ and then find and purchase your books. 

Well, let’s take a look at the results: 

Was writing this article worth it? I truly believe it was. And even though I didn’t get paid to write this article, I …

• Now have an incredibly powerful backlink to my website
• Have a new and very recognizable credibility marker 
• Am presented in a publication that caters specifically to my books’ target audience 
• Increased my sales by hundreds of dollars

And while the sales increase is only temporary, the other benefits this article brought with it are not. 

Leaving your digital footprint behind like this can be so very powerful. Do this a number of times on websites and blogs that are highly relevant to your book’s topic, and you’ll see how powerful this marketing strategy can be. Plus, it’s absolutely free. 

I so hope this article got your creative juices flowing. I can’t wait to hear how you can apply what you have learned today to promote your children’s book! 

xo
~ Eevi

P.S. If you’re interested in how I reach out for coverage like this, you may be interested in my 3-part Influencer Outreach Masterclass. Please feel free to check it out right here.

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