The Three Skills You Need: Digital Marketing Manager

1. Can you tell us how you came to be in your current role, Digital Marketing Manager at Bloomsbury Children's?

Social media and great children’s books consume me, therefore being in digital marketing at Bloomsbury is the perfect role for me. I worked as the personal assistant to the founder and chief executive of Bloomsbury for over four years and during that time completed publishing training courses in marketing, as well as used my personal social media channels to promote books that I truly enjoyed.

When the opportunity to be the Digital Marketing Executive in the Children’s department came up last year, I knew it was the correct path for me to take in publishing, and I was enthusiastic to join such a creative and assertive team. Social media, within digital marketing strategies, has become increasingly important over the last few years and I wanted to be a part of its progression and learn more from the team on how best to utilise this essential marketing tool. 

2. Could you take us through the sort of responsibilities that you manage in your role?

To simplify this in three parts – here are my responsibilities as a digital marketing manager for children’s books:

I create engaging and useful content for social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and the big newish platform for books, TikTok, #Booktok) as part of campaigns for our lead titles.  I do this to reach millions of people online as well as specific audiences who are interested in and excited to read and gift Bloomsbury Children’s books. I create organic content (videos/images/designed assets) for our channels but also paid content which includes influencers and agencies as well as manage social media adverts.  

Newsletters are also part of digital marketing and I create newsletters aimed at parents, guardians, carers, teachers, booksellers, book gifters, big book fans and more. Engaging and informative newsletters from publishers are important for brand awareness, but also for customers to know where to buy our books and learn about exciting releases and pre-order moments. I can communicate with customers via newsletters who want to know about the best picture books to support their child’s learning, exciting adventure middle grade titles for the perfect summer read or to launch a passion for reading for their child, or cool and trending books to inspire young adults and accelerate their love for books. 

There are many other responsibilities in this role but I would say other major tasks include creating webpages, managing content on our YouTube channels and coordinating interactive online quizzes and games, so that people learn more about and engage with our titles. For example, I can create a lifestyle reel for a book in a setting which matches the book’s themes or review and quote cards or a quiz that incorporates facts from a non-fiction children’s space book. I do all of the things mentioned in this Q&A for authors including Katherine Rundell, Kalynn Bayron, Neil Gaiman and for the Harry Potter series to encourage new readers and big book fans to continue to enjoy Bloomsbury books.

 I enjoy supporting our brilliant marketing and social media teams, as well as our all-important authors, in order to help elevate book campaigns, guide them through social media, create new ideas and get wonderful books into people’s hands using digital strategies and online tools.

3. What is the first skill you need to successfully work in digital marketing?

Be adaptable: In order to keep up with and utilise social media effectively - with the quick and ever changing trends, constant changes to platforms, upgrades to systems, apps and tools within social media - you need to adapt, learn and action efficiently. Adapting plans appropriately and efficiently within a campaign, so that they are effective and on trend to reach specific audiences, is an essential skill.
 

4. What is the second skill you need?

Knowledge and experience using social media platforms including creating content for multiple channels is a required skill. You have to use social media, study and enjoy it pretty much every day and know what’s going on online at any given moment. Using, watching and studying content posted across all social media platforms helps you to learn what works and what doesn’t, and can help you to adapt and make campaigns for books the best they can be with new ideas. There are also really helpful accounts on social media specifically for digital and social media managers to guide professionals in this role and keep them on top of trends and useful editing, effects, sounds and product selling/tagging tools within the apps.
 

5. Finally, what is the third skill you need?

Enthusiasm to learn and try new ideas. There is never a dull day in digital marketing but you have to be able to multi-task and work to tight deadlines whilst keeping a high energy. Enthusiasm for lots of books, new ideas and working with different members of the team is so important, as it keeps a good flow of creativity and communication which is how big campaigns are pulled together and executed to a high standard.  Being enthusiastic about trying ideas that may seem unusual, and sometimes silly, really helps. 

For example, I wanted to introduce a new YA title, which is not only good for teens to read but also adults/all fiction lovers, to a large audience on social media. So I decided I wanted to do a quick reading challenge on TikTok via a video post to see if people could read 500 words per minute. I took a paragraph from the beautiful contemporary Fiction title called As Long As Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh, added the text to an app that generated the words showing on screen at a speed of 500wpm, screen recorded it, and posted to TikTok asking viewers to give it a go. I slapped an emotional and trending piece of music over the video and hoped people liked it. A week later the video was at 1 million views with high amounts of comments expressing love for this book and wanting to know what happened next. This single post (now at 2.7 million views) boosted pre-orders that month and increased awareness of the book and the debut author and was a huge success. We posted the same video across other social media platforms including Instagram and impressions grew massively. We then replicated the wpm challenge for other titles including Defend the Dawn by Brigid Kemmerer to increase impressions which was another success and is at 900k views on TikTok. As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow has over 6 million views from organic social media content and people are aware of and enjoying this wonderful book around the world, which was exactly the goal of this idea. 

6. What advice do you have for publishing hopefuls looking to develop these skills?

When you use social media take notes and save posts that you think are great and useful and also that you could adapt to promote brilliant books, for you, authors or your team to do. Try out ideas for posts on socials and see what works – don’t be embarrassed to record a video or try something new (it’s a job and it’s really fun and essential to every business in the world!).

Take an online training course in marketing with the Publishing Training Centre – this helped me learn a lot about traditional and digital marketing and helped my brain see social media in a new way – a more strategic way.

Have a draft plan and campaign for each title you are managing – think a day, a week, a month and a year in advance. Have great ideas and plans but keep it as a draft because you’ll probably adapt it as you go along to make it work with different cultural moments, freak occurrences, or changes in publishing schedules and trends to jump on and utilise them to market a book online. 

Kate Molyneux is the Digital Marketing Manager for Children’s Book at Bloomsbury Publishing. She was educated at St. Edward’s College, Liverpool, and obtained an International Journalism Degree (BA Hons) at Liverpool John Moores University in 2013. Kate started her career in book publishing in 2016 as the receptionist at Bloomsbury, she completed editorial work experience in the Children’s department, and then went on to be the assistant to the founder and chief executive for over four years. Kate started her role in digital marketing in 2022 and was promoted to manage lead title campaigns for Bloomsbury Children’s Books in March 2023. 

Her favourite children’s books growing up were the seven Harry Potter books and she now works on the digital campaigns for this iconic series. Kate enjoys gothic literature including the classics Frankenstein and Dracula, but also new YA and Children’s gothic and horror stories from authors like Trang Than Tran, Kalynn Bayron and Neil Gaiman.
Kate commutes into London from her home, just outside of Birmingham, where she lives with her partner. She spends her free time video editing, laughing at TikToks, listening to music, and enjoys being outdoors reading or gardening, come rain or shine.