In Monday’s blog post, I mentioned street teams as a great asset for helping in growing your book sales and finding new readers. So, today I want to discuss how to build a street team and how to get them involved with the process of getting the word out there about your book.
So, What’s a Street Team?
A Street Team is a group of readers, or fans, who spread the word about your products to their friends and others in the community. This could be from wearing your products in large venues to posting signs up in their local schools. Of course, for an author, a street team is extremely effective through social media and is there to help boost the reach on your pages, share posts, pin or any other outreach that advertises your books without feeling spammy.
How to Get Street Team Members Involved?
How I’ve made mine successful is through weekly missions. I’ve calmed them down right now as I try and change things in the group around. However, these are always fun and make it less of a hassle for people. Usually I provide some sort of “prize” at the end of the mission such as a $5 gift card or even a copy of my own book or one related to my genre to one lucky person who participates. This gets more interested because it shows their space they are gifting you is worth something of value.
Of course, make the missions simple to follow. You don’t want too many steps involved or people won’t be willing to put in the effort. One week you could have them set their Facebook avatar to your cover. Another week let them share your book to their social media, and another on pinning to their Pinterest. There are so many ideas you could do that are simple and will list them at the bottom of this post.
Making a Street Team More Profitable
If you have a small following, a great way is to join other authors in your genre and create a joint street team. This way you can trade out weeks for missions and grow faster than if you were by yourself. Right now, I have a few hundred people in my street team, however I am opening it up to other authors to come in as I redirect my street team to being for authors and readers alike. I welcome all fiction, especially fantasy writers and readers, to join my Facebook group to ask questions on writing you may have or to share your missions for readers on the selected date.
Getting People into Your Street Team
Some ways to grow is through setting your invitation to your street team on your initial newsletter funnel. This will be seen by everyone who joins your newsletter so you never have to worry. Then you can later send out another invitation to the entire list if they missed out. Another option is by posting and sharing it around on your Facebook page and even having your street team share the group around to invite friends. The more times someone sees a group or page, the more likely they will want to get involved with it through bandwagon mentality.
Overall: DO NOT ADD PEOPLE WITHOUT SPECIFIC PERMISSION! Seriously, it’s in very bad taste and will pull too many away from your products.
Mission Ideas for Your Street Team
- Share a Facebook Page post to their personal profile
- Like or comment on a post on your Facebook page
- Pin your book or repin your book on Pinterest
- Upvote reviews on Amazon
- Add your book to Goodreads Shelf
- Set profile picture to book cover
- Nominate book in different page events on book review Facebook Pages
- Invite friends to join street team
- Follow on certain Social Media
- Invite others to follow you on Social Media
- Retweet a tweet on twitter
- Buy a copy of the book
There are a whole lot more when it comes to missions, but those are the basic ideas. Try to be creative but simple with every mission you make.
Don’t forget to Join my Facebook Group for more help in your writing. If you are a reader, you are welcome to join too to get a chance at some new books.
