The Literary Marketing Newsletter guides literary businesses, organizations, and authors on their marketing journey with tactics, tips, and stories from my own journey.

Why More Templates ≠ Better Marketing

Greetings!

This past week, I started work on a social media toolkit for the literary community. It includes plans, checklists, guides, and other helpful content designed to make posting on social media easier and more focused. One part of the toolkit will be a Canva and text template library that you can customize and use in your own marketing.

So I conducted some research to find what’s comparable to what I’m creating, and discovered a number of "social media system" template packs out there. There are thousands to choose from, yet there wasn’t much guidance on how to use them to forward specific goals.

Templates can be great inspiration for those who don’t know where to start. But without a plan on how they fit into your marketing goals, even the best templates may not help you achieve what you want to. By posting more and more and more, you’ll only burn yourself out, and what’s supposed to be fun — sharing your story and connecting with your audience — turns rigorous.

In other words, it’s good to have a map that gives you a full layout of the land. But it’s even better to have a path through that map that tells you exactly where to go.

That’s my approach: Let’s create the plan first — your goals, who your ideal audience is, your key topics of focus — so that you know exactly what you need to post when the time comes. This way, you’re not just picking randomly from a template library, hoping that one will stick.

For example:

Old way: I’m a bookstore. I pick from a database of templates and post something on my social media, hoping it “works.”

New way: I’m a bookstore that wants to promote an upcoming kids’ author event. My goal is event awareness, my target audience is kids and parents of kids, and my key topic is a specific event. I now know I need an author event post. It should have the book cover and author photo, along with all the event details, and branding that would show it’s a kids’ event (bright colors, fun characters).

Old way: I’m a literary organization. I pick from a database of templates and post something on my social media, hoping someone sees it and maybe likes it and feels compelled to donate.

New way: I’m a literary organization that offers free in-person writing classes to adults, and we need donations to fund upcoming programs. My goal is to get donations, my target audience is people in a specific location who want to support this work, and my key topic is the impact of the program. I now know I need a post that will help me tell a story about the adults the program has impacted, and include a direct donation ask.

The difference is purpose, right? One approach is random, and the other is clear, actionable, and serves your goals.

Content That Works

I’m adding a new segment here that features an interesting marketing piece from the literary community and why it works. Hopefully, it can give you some inspiration, too!

​Link to reel​

The Booker Prize Instagram account is sophisticated, confident, and stylish. This was their announcement for their 2025 shortlist (click the link above to watch the video). This piece of content works in a few ways: It’s clear on the information it wants to present, both in the video and in the caption. There’s a real sense of that sophisticated and confident tone in the video itself. The caption not only make it clear why they’re posting, but presents the list in a readable and accessible format. They are also clear on how to learn more information about the Prizes at the link in bio. Finally, it’s nice to see they tagged the creative team!

That's all for today. Happy marketing!

- Jessica

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If you'd like to learn how to do this 👆, come work with me! I have several done-with-you marketing options available, including a full marketing plan or simply a one-hour consulting call.