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MyClipboardIsMyViolin replied to the topic Platform Building and Marketing Stuff in the forum General Writing Discussions 7 years, 1 month ago
Thank you so much for the help so far, everyone! There’s probably more I need to research before I get to more questions, but I wanted to respond to these.
Um… as far as my blog is concerned, Pinterest drives a lot of my traffic. As soon as I started designing Pinterest-friendly graphics (and mine aren’t even the most Pinterest-friendly out there, seeing as Pinterest likes vertical pins and mine are square) my traffic skyrocketed.Interesting. I spend too much time on Pinterest myself, and I do have a designer background, so this [i]might[/i] work. Though the conversion aspect of it might be weird – it would only really work if you were selling an expensive designer book, which we aren’t doing. I’m looking at about a 6 book prose-fiction series that I’m editing/rewriting. Maybe the book covers would be enticing, like the Chip Kidd Ted Talk on that.
You can blog, though I only recommend this if you actually love blogging. It’s a lot of work.Amen. Been there, done that. 😛 The word on the street is that blogs are supposed to be topical, and I know too much stuff about too many topics. Of course, then the solution is to have multiple blogs, but that’s too much work.
Do a quick google search for how authors go about this, and I’m sure you’ll find lots of data.*googles*
The Author’s Guide to Building an Email List (and selling more books)
http://bookmarketingtools.com/blog/how-to-build-an-email-list-in-30-days/
https://thewritelife.com/authors-grow-your-email-list/ <–this one was the best for actual traffic driving tactics, heh.
Whether it’s social media, IRL, or whatever, the first step is to find and engage with your tribe. And by-the-way, “engage with”, means PARTICIPATE, not spam them. That means friend, like, follow, comment — be a part of the group. The trend is that people are growing tired of the drive-by advertising schtick. Real engagement is all about interaction. Which brings me to another little nugget I found: not all followers are of equal value. Modern search and ranking algorithms determine credibility based on engagement, so those that like (or better yet, comment) are far more valuable than those who just follow you. This is one reason why things like: buying followers, bulk following, and follow-to-unfollow are all ridiculous. Fake followers don’t engage, don’t click through to your webpage, and sure don’t buy any books! In other words, advertising is dead (to quote Seth Godin). The future is a conversation, not a billboard.An interesting side-effect is that if you’re engaged and attentive, the tribe will tell you what it wants, give you feedback, then buy it, share it with their sphere of influence, and in some cases will even fund it! (If you make that recipe work out, let me buy you coffee sometime!)
You make a valid point, but you have to be careful that your group is not too small as well, otherwise you don’t have enough readers to make the bank…
I think my biggest problem now is that I don’t know what my target reader for my book (s) actually is, which means I need to go back to the writing and figure it out. The overall thing is a sci-fi story with realistic fiction and fantasy elements in parts of it. It centers on a three-person family with the daughter as the lead character.
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