Author | Social Media Diva | Tea Lover

This guest blog posted today at The Savvy Book Mar­keter blog by Dana Lynn Smith. Thanks to Dana for host­ing me!

If you pop­u­late your web­site or blog with fun, free con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis, fans will con­tinue to visit your sites — and remem­ber your work when they take their cash to the bookstore.

Free short sto­ries writ­ten by Untold cre­ators, as well as fans of the role-playing card game, sent hits to the game web­site sky­rock­et­ing and sales fig­ures soaring.

Author Bran­non Hollingsworth — who is also one of the cre­ators of the game — says empow­er­ing fans to take own­er­ship of the site gen­er­ated more enthu­si­asm for the game. Not only that, but the con­tent gen­er­ated was so great, they decided to cre­ate a fic­tional anthol­ogy with sto­ries based on the game.

What Untold cre­ators learned is a uni­ver­sal les­son for all authors: Free stuff nets sales and increases web­site hits.

Won­der­ing what type of con­tent is best to reach read­ers? Check out these exam­ples and suggestions:

• Short sto­ries. Authors Jaci Bur­ton and Ilona Andrews offer up free short sto­ries for read­ers online.

• Free full-length nov­els or novel­las. Some­times read­ers want some­thing with more meat. Longer fic­tion gets them excited about your work and more likely to buy. For any fic­tion, con­sider also shar­ing on sites like Scribd to expand your audi­ence reach.

• Sneak peeks. Give your read­ers the scoop before the book comes out. Don’t just start with the first chap­ter; give them some­thing to sali­vate over from the mid­dle of the book — but don’t give too much away.

• Videos. Movie diaries of the writ­ing process, or book trail­ers, are excel­lent ways to draw read­ers fur­ther into your web­site. Start a YouTube chan­nel and also post them to your blog.

• Media. Read­ers and vir­tual book tour hosts love to find inter­views and reviews of an author’s work in one place. Link to inter­views and reviews, or repub­lish them with per­mis­sion, to your site.

• Quizzes and games. Many read­ers love a chal­lenge. Offer them some brain teasers to keep them com­ing back to your site. Or do some­thing fun, like author Angie Fox, who’s web­site offers up a quiz that gen­er­ates fans’ biker witch names. The quiz dove­tails nicely with her Demon Slayer nov­els. (My biker witch name is Skull­cap Sue Steel Butt.) Some authors use quizzes to let fans name a char­ac­ter in their next nov­els, or chose their next web design.

• Free­bies. As always, read­ers love free stuff. Offer up fre­quent con­tests with small items, or once a year give away a big item — like a Kin­dle. Always have book­marks, post­cards, pens, refrig­er­a­tor mag­nets and other cheap items to give away to readers.

Free stuff is a ter­rific way to grab read­ers and increase site hits. Your most valu­able con­tent is free fiction.

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