Social Media: How Do I Make it Work for Me?

One thing I'd really like to get better at is using social media as a more effective marketing tool. Last year I did an on-line marketing challenge that gave all sorts of great tips. One of the best things that came out of it was setting up a Twitter account, which previously I hadn't had. I was super stoked about it, but now nearly a year later...it is sitting and languishing. I rarely post on it, so it's out there collecting cyber dust. And to be honest, I'm not sure how it's that much different than Facebook, other than you're limited to the number of characters you can use in a post. I'm sure I'm missing the point because I don't understand how it really works.

The same for my Facebook account. I rarely check that either. The biggest issue I have with Facebook is when I first set up my account, I did it as a personal account. What I needed to do was set up an author page. Does anyone who is more Facebook savvy than me know if I can switch it?

And will switching cut down on the endless stream of day-to-day from the hundreds of friends I have? I don't want to offend anyone, but what I'm looking for is a way to promote my books, not look at pictures of everyone's cats, babies, birthday parties, etc. I totally don't even know enough to know if having any author page would cut out the zillions of personal posts. Is there a way to use Facebook for strictly promo and not get an endless stream of everyone else's life?

Because I just can't keep up. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I am sorely tempted to go completely off-line with my Facebook account. I think, but again I'm so not up on how it all works, that I can put a 'hold' or 'stop' or 'freeze' on my account or something like that until I figure out how to switch it over from a personal page to an author/business page...if it's even possible to do that. Maybe I need to just 'erase' and start completely over. I just don't know.

What I need, me and every other author out there I'm sure, is a fresh approach. What's going to make me stand out from everyone else out there? I tried a promotion for my New Year's Eve release last year, but it didn't really pan out. I think I fell about 995 short in my #sellathousand 'challenge'. But in a sense, I don't consider it a complete failure. It got me to try something different as a way to reach readers. And as part of the promotion, I joined a few Facebook groups strictly for promoting books, which were great while I was running my contest and 99c book sale. The sale part of the promotion seemed to work better than trying to sell a thousand of a single title. I may try putting some of my others titles on sale in the near future, to see what kind of results I can garner.

What I need is to set aside time to really work at promotion. Part of the problem is I think of my writing as a hobby, not a 'real' job. Which means that other things in life always come first and take precedence over my writing. I know I'm not the only one. Everyone is busy and has a million things going on. I think I used to be better at balancing everything. I'm not sure what changed. Maybe just my attitude.

I don't mean to sound whiny...and I apologize if I do. What I'm really looking for here is to know how you use social media. Do you post on Facebook or Twitter everyday? Do you find there are certain types of posts that tend to draw more attention? How do you deal with the non-writing posts of Facebook? I'm not looking to steal anyone's unique and original ways of promoting, but if you're willing to share some tried and true strategies you've used, I'd be eternally grateful.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Promotion

It's time for Debra to start thinking about getting the word out.

I have a new book coming out in August. Yay!

I need to start thinking about promotion. Line up blog appearances. Purchase promotional materials: bookmarks, postcards, etc.

Trouble is, I don't want to do any of those things. Promotion is one of those things you put so much time and effort into and there seems to be no good way to measure whether those efforts were successful or not.

I am sorely tempted this time around to do something different with promotion...translation: do nothing. What would happen if I didn't do a blog tour? What if I don't order bookmarks? My gut feeling is my sales will be exactly the same as they always are. My books do okay sales-wise, but nothing close to anything that will help me retire early to a tropical island when I turn 50.

The question is, am I willing to take the risk? And even if this book doesn't do 'as well' as my previous ones...what are the consequences of that? Am I going to lose readers as an author? I'm sure my mom and the rest of my family and a few friends will still read my stories. Some days it seems like those are the only people who do read my books.

Have you ever done absolutely nothing to promote a book and just let the chips fall where they may?

I'd love to find a new approach to promotion. But that's what everyone else wants, too, right? The blog thing seems to be losing speed. Too many blogs out there with the same people posting and commenting. And those tend to be other authors rather than readers. Not that authors aren't readers, but I know I can't buy every book by every fellow-author out there, so I can't expect everyone to be buying my books. I haven't tackled Twitter yet. For most of the year, there's no way I can keep up with it. Maybe I'll try it as a summer thing this year. We've discussed the merits of Pinterest. So that has possibilities.

I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Setting Up a Blog Tour

My Halloween novella The Vampire and the Vixen makes its world-wide debut just about a month from now on October 16. It's been out on Kindle for awhile, but next month it will be available in many more markets. As I've done in the past, I'm in the process of setting up a blog tour to celebrate and promote its release.

Some people use a professional blog tour organizer, but I've always done my own. I don't solicit spots, but when someone posts about blog openings I e-mail and ask if they have something available in my time frame. This has always worked well in the past, and I usually wind up with anywhere from six to a dozen stops. Having a book with a holiday theme is also helpful. This time around I'm also jumping on with some Halloween-themed special events.

So far I have three set up and an e-mail out on a fourth. Not too bad since I really only started thinking about this at the beginning of the week. One of my other blogs, Authors by Moonlight, is also doing a Harvest Moon Reads special event for the month of October, so I'll have an extra day over there to post an excerpt and offer a contest.

Many of the sites I'll 'book' do like to have a give-away of some sort. I usually do an e-copy of the current book or sometimes an autographed paperback of one of my back titles. For my tour for The Vampire and the Vixen, I'm also going to include some swag 'prizes' and send out book marks and postcards, which will hopefully generate some interest in my other holiday e-books (I have a Christmas one and a Thanksgiving one.) and my paperbacks as well.

This weekend I will get to work on writing my posts for the various blogs. For one in particular, I need to write a piece of Flash Fiction. I already have an idea and have jotted some notes, which is exciting in more ways than one. It's been a long time since I've written anything new. My WIP is sadly languishing. Hopefully writing the blogs and the Flash piece will get the juices going and stir up my muse.

I wish there was a way to make a definite connection between a blog tour and sales. Tours definitely get your name out there, but what I notice on many of the blogs I've guested at in the past is they tend to attract fellow authors, which is great, but perhaps not as many stand-alone readers. And if other authors are like me, there are only so many books you can buy, even if we wish we could support everyone.

But no matter what, it's always exciting to be in the publicity stages with a book.

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

Promotion - what works?

In June last year, I discovered Six Sentence Sunday. This is a regular, weekly bloghop. You sign up each week (between Wednesday and Saturday), and on Sunday you post six sentences (no more, no less) from either a published work or your WIP.

The trick, of course, as with any excerpt you post anywhere, is to choose carefully. You need to find six sentences that hang together without needing a lengthy explanation of the context. If the sentences also provide a teaser to make people want to read more, so much the better.

My very first six, on 27 June 2011, had this brief intro to my six sentences from His Leading Lady:

To save her twin sister's career, Jess is pretending to be Lora who's gone missing. She's just been out for the evening with Kyle Drummond, the director of Lora's new show in London’s West End.

And this was the six:

Kyle tightened his arm around her and Jess closed her eyes, not to relax but to try to think straight and to work out just how she was going to extricate herself from what seemed to be the inevitable sequel to all this.

She couldn’t say she was tired, not when she’d made such a fuss about wanting to stay at the club, but there were limits to what she was prepared to do ‘for Lora’s sake’ and going to bed with Kyle Drummond was definitely way beyond the limits. If that was what he expected, then she would have to admit to the whole pretence, even if it ruined everything for tomorrow's TV interview and Lora’s contract.

When the cab came to a standstill outside Lora’s apartment, she eased herself away from him but couldn’t stop herself from looking round at him. “God, I want you,” he breathed, his voice husky.

She stared at him, sure he must be able to hear the sudden frantic pounding of her heart.

That first time, I had 18 comments, most saying similar things e.g. “What a sticky situation. Can't wait to find out how she handles it.”

I’ll admit that, at times, I have ‘edited’ my six slightly, either by missing out a sentence or two from the original, or by combining two sentences into one, in order to provide a meaningful six. Most of my ‘sixes’ are usually much shorter, too, than this first excerpt.

You’re not expected to visit all the other contributors (there are now 200 or more each Sunday), but of course you can’t expect other people to visit your blog if you don’t make an effort to visit theirs. It’s time-consuming, of course, visiting many different blogs each Sunday and leaving comments. Of course, I always try to make positive comments even if excerpts about vampires, shape-shifters etc do not appeal to me personally! I also make every effort to respond to the comments on my blog, although i do wonder if anyone actually has the time to return to read them! The net result is that, over the last year, I have built up a ‘network’ of contacts and, in some cases, new friends.

So how does all this affect promotion and marketing? To begin with, I looked on it simply as a case of getting my name known and making more contacts. I had absolutely no idea whether it led to any sales – until a couple of weeks ago.

On July 8, one commenter said she had just bought my latest book ‘Changing the Future’ from Amazon. A week later, she posted a 5* review – which began: “I loved this book. I rarely read straight up romance, but after reading snippets of this book on the author's blog, I thought it really sounded good.”

Last Sunday, four other commenters said they had my book in their TBR pile. Okay, it’s not thousands(!), and it’s taken about 40-50 Sundays (I did miss some!) to reach this point. I leave it to you to decide whether or not this kind of promotion is worth the effort one puts into it week by week but, of course, even one sale is better than none!