Welcome to Tip #12 of our 52 Ways to Market Your Book! I hope you’re enjoying these tips and they are helping you sell more books.  So, ready? Here we go!

Read blogs in your market

It’s really that simple: read what others are saying about your market. Even if you write fiction you can read up on publishing and other topics related to your book.

So why would you want to do this? Here are 5 reasons why you should stay dialed into your market online 

1. You’ll hear about trends faster if you keep reading blogs by thought leaders in your market. Generally if an idea is good, you’ll see it on a few blogs before it hits the news.
2. It’s a great way to connect with others. I talk about this in Social Networking on Blogs (See Selling Strategy #26).
3. You won’t be clueless. Let’s face it, the worst thing that could happen is that you get a media interview and the interviewer asks you a question you should know the answer to, but you don’t. We can’t be expected to know everything but you should keep tabs on your market.
4. Great ideas for blogging: If you’re eager to find new blog topics, why not dig into trending topics? The more blogs you read, the more ideas you’ll get.
5. Sales ideas: Not only will you stay dialed into your market but reading blogs in your industry might give you new sales ideas or new ways to market your book.

So what’s the best way to read blogs? Subscribe to the RSS feed (really simple syndication) and capture all your blog listings in one spot through Feedly, which is a user friendly feed reader. I run all my feeds though there and it’s in one place. Easy!

How Popular is Your Topic?

One way to find out is to track it on Google Alerts. Try plugging in your keyword to see what comes up. You can access Google Alerts by going to Google and typing in Google Alerts in the search bar. Alerts are free and a really easy way to track what’s happening in your market. Keeping track of what’s being said, featured, and written about your brand is a good way to know how popular it is and who is saying what in your market.

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