Many writers lament spending any time away from their creative worlds to pen social media posts or spend time on marketing efforts. But both social media and email can help authors find and communicate with their target audience. What's a writer to do? Let's look at how to use ChatGPT for marketing, so you can get back to your stories sooner.

I've met so many writers who can pound out a 90,000 word novel set in a wondrously creative world who struggle when it comes time to think about marketing that book to readers. Sound familiar? 

We don't like to spend time thinking of our readers as potential customers, defining a target audience, developing marketing emails or an email marketing campaign, and yet: those are all powerful tools that can help us find the people who would love our books best. 

Why is it so hard to switch gears and use our creativity toward our marketing goals? Maybe it's because we don't like sales, maybe it's perfectionism, maybe it's insecurity. Whatever the reason, I wanted to share a tool I've found helpful as I build marketing materials for my books. 

Maybe ChatGPT for marketing can give you new ideas and help you get over that fear of presenting your stories to a waiting audience! 

What does marketing entail for authors?

As authors, we need to use a variety of avenues to market our books. Most authors set up a website and send out a weekly newsletter (or monthly or quarterly!). 

For a full guide on creating your author website, see 10 Easy Steps to Setting Up Your Author Website.

Need help using email as a marketing strategy? See our article on the Author Email List for help. 

Other authors are active on social media, creating posts and videos about their books. There's a wide range of options for reaching potential customers and readers. 

You don't need to do every single platform or idea that someone suggests. It's important that your marketing strategy is true to your tone of voice, goals, and vision for your books. 

I've found that I use email and some social media the most, sharing creative ideas, tidbits of my life, along with the occasional book release or promotion. You don't spend all your life writing and marketing, so make sure you share things that reflect the human touch– the compelling person behind the books you write. 

That said, if you (like me!) don't have a marketing team, you might use technology to help you save time while staying true to your books and author brand. Let's take a look at one possibility that I tried out recently: ChatGPT prompts. 

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model. (if you want to know what GPT stands for, its Generative Pre-trained Transformer). The “chat” part has to do with the focus on generating human-like text and conversing with users. It is designed to understand and generate contextually relevant responses in natural language. 

In other words, you can ask ChatGPT questions or to write something, and it will respond using conversational language and a friendly tone.

With an internet search engine like Google, you put in a specific search term and scan the results for those that best answer your search needs. 

With ChatGPT, you're giving it a writing prompt and asking it to formulate a written response that meets your criteria. 

How can ChatGPT for marketing help?

Social media and ads or email marketing all have similar needs: catchy headlines and engaging text. Now, I’m not sure about you, but when I have to write something that must be catchy and engaging (whether email subject lines or post ideas), my tendency for perfectionism rears up and I come down with a case of writer’s block. And computer games suddenly become irresistible.

But I can put all that behind me with the help of ChatGPT.

Suppose I want to write a post about my upcoming book launch, but I need a good headline.

I gave ChatGPT the following prompt:

“You are a talented book marketer, and are promoting a book launch on social media. Based off the following blurb, give me ten posts with different headlines promoting the book. Blurb: Sometimes, breaking the curse is only the beginning…

Princess Eliana of Ymittos has long anticipated the day she gets to make the rules — and use her magic without fear of penalty. But until she ascends the throne, Eliana’s days are devoted to practicing diplomacy on inconsiderate guests and weighing the merits of her latest string of suitors.

Then, on her 18th birthday, Eliana’s parents reveal her true destiny: she alone must wake a sleeping prince from his hundred-year curse, deep in the monster-infested underworld of Malkh. Terrified, Eliana refuses. But the terms of the curse are clear: only the heir of Ymittos can break its spell. If she fails, the entire continent will be easy prey for the evil sorcerer Cetus.

Banished and stripped of his power a millennium ago, Cetus has lain dormant, rebuilding his strength and amassing his armies. Now, his carefully laid trap is about to spring destruction on the first realms in his path. Only Eliana stands in his way.

A Sleeping Beauty retelling with a deadly twist, The Girl Who Broke the Dark is the first volume of the Royal Magesseries.”

In under a minute, I had 10 rough drafts of posts I could tweak, combine, or use as inspiration for something completely different. Here are the five I liked the best:

1. “Unveiling Secrets: The Girl Who Broke the Dark – A Royal Mages Series Debut!” Join Princess Eliana on an epic journey through a monster-infested underworld as she battles dark sorcery to break a century-old curse. 📚✨ #BookLaunch #FantasyFiction

2. **”🔮 Unleash the Magic: The Girl Who Broke the Dark is Here! 👑 Dive into a riveting Sleeping Beauty retelling with a deadly twist. Will Princess Eliana conquer the curse? #NewRelease #RoyalMagesSeries”

3. **”Darkness Rising: The Girl Who Broke the Dark – A Princess's Destiny Revealed! 🌑🔥 Join Eliana on a quest against time and ancient sorcery. #NewBook #FantasyAdventure”

4. **”Journey into Enchantment: The Girl Who Broke the Dark – A Spellbinding Debut Novel! 🧙‍♀️✨ Discover a world of magic, danger, and destiny. #BookLaunch #RoyalMagesSeries”

5. **”💫 Destiny Awaits! The Girl Who Broke the Dark – Uncover the secrets of Princess Eliana's quest to save her kingdom. Will she triumph over the darkness? #NewBook #FantasyReads

You can revise, tweak, or modify any that you like to make sure it stays true to your voice and what you want to offer readers. 

 The same kind of prompt works well for creating ads for your books, generating content ideas for your website or newsletter, or anything else for your intended audience. 

If you're like me, you still revise and change things to better reflect your voice and style, but just having the ideas and possible combinations helps me get started and make my own content better. 

How to Rework Your ChatGPT results

Not every result will fit what you're trying to convey. But often with a little tweaking, you can rework a response into something usable. 

For example, one the results to my prompt above was:

**”🌌 Enter the Realm of Dark Magic: The Girl Who Broke the Dark is Live! 📖 Embark on a quest with Princess Eliana to save her kingdom from the clutches of evil. #BookBuzz #MustRead”

This didn't work for me, because I don't write dark fantasy, and didn't want readers to think The Girl Who Broke the Dark fit in that category.

But I was able to tweak the response:

**”🌌 Enter the Realm of Magic and Mystery: The Girl Who Broke the Dark is Live! 📖 Embark on a quest with Princess Eliana to save her kingdom from an evil sorcerer's curse. #BookBuzz #MustRead”

You can ask ChatGPT to offer different variations, but don't discount your own ability to make the results better with your own voice and style. 

ChatGPT for other social media posts

ChatGPT can even help with non-book related posts on my author accounts. As an author, I like to post sometimes about activities or things I'm enjoying, so I'm not always pushing my books on people.

A few months back I had a video of elephants at the zoo, and wanted to give it a clever headline.

My prompt I wrote for ChatGPT:

You are an experienced social media influencer. What caption would you give a video of an elephant spraying water over itself?

The response:

“🐘💦 Embracing the Splash Zone!

🌊✨ #ElephantEscapades

#Nature'sSpaDay

#ChillinWithPachyderms” 🐘💧

I went with “Chillin with Pachyderms.” It’s a great headline, and I never would have come up with it on my own.

10 ChatGPT prompts for marketing

You can use similar prompts for ad headline or ad copy. Here are some sample prompts you could try:

1. You are an experienced social media influencer. What headline would you give a video about the upcoming book launch of a (genre) novel described by this blurb: (include your blurb)?
2. You are an experienced email marketer. What email subject line would you give a promotional email telling readers about a new release or an upcoming event?
3. You are an experienced email marketer. What subject line would you give an email telling readers about the cover reveal of your latest novel?
4. Your are an experienced email marketer. What subject line would you give an email that informs readers about reviews of your latest book?
5. You are an experienced book blogger. Write a 400 word blog post about trends in (genre) fiction.
6. Your are an experienced book blogger. Write a 400 word blog post about the importance of book review and how to write a good one.
7. You are an experience book marketer specializing in digital marketing. Write headlines for five ads for (book title), which is a (genre) novel, and tells the following story (include blurb).
8. You are an experienced book marketer and are running the following ad (include the copy). Write four variations on the call to action for the ad.
9. You are an experienced email marketer. Write a welcome email for your new subscribers, including the download link for the free short story you are offering new subscribers.
10. You are successful at building a large following on Instagram and Tik Tok. Write 10 hooks for a 10 second video about your latest (genre) novel (title), which tells the following story (include the blurb)

While it might be tempting to use ChatGPT to write your book blurb, I highly discourage it. Your blurb needs to resonate with readers, and the only way to find out if it does that is to run several variations past live human beings.

Using ChatGPT prompts to help with your marketing efforts can especially help you get past any reluctance or writer's block keeping you from sharing your work more widely with your target audience. 

Give ChatGPT a Try

If you've been reluctant to try ChatGPT, consider setting aside some time to play with it. Using it to generate ideas doesn't have to compromise your unique voice or the quality of the work you put into the world. It can save you time and 

You might be surprised how many ideas it can help you generate. You'll spin them in your own unique way, and it can really cut down on the time you spend on social media and ad copywriting.

And with that, I solved my writer’s block problem, at least when it comes to social media marketing and ads for my target customer or reader. 

Have you used ChatGPT for social media or ads? What was the result? Share in the comments.