How To Promote Your Books Using GIF Images

When it comes to promoting your books, images placed on social media are one way of doing that, but there’s a drawback.

With only a limited chance to get some’s attention, and the space you’ve got to work with, you’ve got to both produce something not only eye catching but something that’s gives all the details in one glance.

So how do you do it?

Well for me, there nothing easier or simpler to do than create a GIF image.

What’s A GIF Image?

You’ve probably seen these types of images before. They’re the ones with a small video clip shown on a loop.

Here’s an example of one.

 

As you can see, not only is it eye catching, but I bet you’ve watched it more than one time, even though you know what’s going to happen next.

How To Make A GIF From A Video

If you’ve already got a video you’ve created for your book you can go to a website like Giphy.com to create a GIF from that video.

Here you can create a GIF using images (1), upload your own video (2), or paste in a YouTube URL (3).

In this case, I’m using the video at the bottom of this page that’s on YouTube.

After I pasted the YouTube URL in Giphy, I’ve got the following settings to choose from.

1 – This is a preview screen of what  your finished GIF will look like.

2  – You can select the length of your GIF. In the case of the setting above, it’ll be 4 seconds long and repeat those four seconds of video over and over again.

3 – This slider allows you to choose the part of the video you’d like your GIF to begin at. You can slide this to any part of your full video. – The preview box will show you where you are as you do so.

The next option Giphy gives you is the ability to add text, stickers, filters and draw on your GIF.

In this example I’m just doing a simple text message on my GIF – ‘This Is My Book GIF.’

Here you can add text in the text box (1),  the style of font you want to choose(2), and if you want some animation for your text you can do that here(3) before continuing on to the next step.

Here (once you’ve created an account and logged in) you’ll be given the ability to keep your GIF private (2) and upload it to the site (3).

Once you do that you’ll be given options to embed the GIF (2) or share it on social media (1).

Or you can download your file (by selecting ‘Media’) which give you these options.

This is what I did. I downloaded the Social option and then uploaded the file to this page.

Here’s the completed GIF I created.

It could probably do with being a little better, but I’m sure you can see the little cursor going through it’s motions over and over again.

 

Using GIFs To Promote Your Book And Website

Or you can take it even further. Here’s a GIF I made for promoting my CleanRomanceReads.com domain name.

For the GIF below I simply found a ‘Free for commercial use’ video on Pixabay.com and placed some text on it.

via GIPHY

How To Make A GIF From Images

Rather than go through the whole process of using screen capture to cover all the steps in making an GIF from a selection of images, I’ll show you how to do it in this video.

You’ll recognise it as the one I used to make the GIF image earlier on.

Not only does Gifmaker.me allow you to make GIF from images but you can also re-upload those finished GIFs to make a even great GIF where you can add more detail and information about you and your books.

Now all you’ve got to do it make it.

Here’s the picture book course where I made that book above. 

 

 

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