History That Never Was

I’m slowly but surely catching up on panel recordings from the 2025 WriteHive Online Conference that I missed during the weekend. Not too long ago, I watched the panel on “Video Marketing for Authors,” which was one I was particularly interested in because I don’t currently do any video marketing.

The panelists mentioned that video posts generally do better on social media than static posts, which I think is the key reason why I should consider doing video marketing. They recommended TikTok for small press authors, as there’s more of a feeling of discovering new things on TikTok. They also said that YouTube and Instagram reels can be places where authors might promote themselves, but each of the different platforms requires a different strategy. However, their overall assessment is that Instagram can have a better return on investment than the other platforms.

The panelists also gave some tips on using TikTok and Instagram, in particular, laying out the differences between what does well on each platform. Based on the information they shared, it seemed to me like it would be difficult to make “one size fits all” short videos, and that an author would want to make different videos for each platform.

I also made a list of my key takeaways from this video:

• Find hooks about your writing while you’re writing, and turn those into video marketing.
• Refine your audience by interacting with other authors and commenting on their stuff, but also in replying to comments on your own stuff.
• Make sure you have a consistency of themes in your videos.
• Be yourself, to create a personal connection with your potential readers.
• Build community by supporting other authors and creators.

This post doesn’t cover all of the great insights from this panel, and it’s a quite short one at just over 26 minutes, so you should definitely give this one a watch if you’re interested in getting into video marketing! You can also watch other WriteHive panels from 2025 and earlier on their YouTube channel!

 

Tags: advice, convention, marketing, online, panel, video marketing, writehive

This entry was posted by dawn.vogel on Monday, October 13th, 2025 at 6:00 am and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.