I went to a talk on social media marketing the other evening. It was given at the local bookstore here in Vancouver, Cover to Cover. Ron Gompertz, author of No Roads Lead to Rome, was the speaker and had a lot of useful information to impart.
He spoke about the building blocks needed to market online: e-mail, blogs, website, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook, going through each one in some detail. But with only an hour and a half there was not enough time to delve into each one and I can tell you right now that for me they need major delving!
Take Twitter, for instance. Apparently there are all kinds of things you can do there. I'm sure many of you if not all of you already know this but I was taken by surprise when Ron spoke of organizing groups on his Twitter account. I'm just barely understanding hash tags at this point! (# is a hash tag for those of you who aren't familiar with it) And the following thing gives me a strange sense of responsibility, as though I either need to entertain or at least keep up with what everyone is doing as well as find some interesting articles to link to my tweets. Did I mention feeling overwhelmed?
I have upped my time on Twitter now and have retweeted, replied and favorited as well as gone to sites listed (in strange heiroglyphic sorts of letters and numbers that I haven't quite figured out, by the way) and read numerous blogs and commented. If I let it, this could become my entire day!
How does one get the most out of this without drowning? I have gotten a few more followers because of Twitter and I must say I enjoy learning about it but I do have two books to edit and another one that needs to be written, so tell me, how do you manage your time? Do you check into Twitter every day or once a week? What do you tweet about?
About Me
- nikki broadwell
- working writer wending her way through the labyrinth that is self-publishing
Nikki, I don't tweet and wouldn't even if I had a book to sell...two books to sell. I think a lot of all this is like primate grooming, and with little tangible effect other than ;you buy my book I buy yours.' This probably reflects deeply ingrained cynicism and is only a point of view. Ultimately I think 'product' sells, but media obsession can suck your soul dry. There, that's a cheeful thought. I bet you're glad you asked :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this. I totally feel the same..overwhelmed by it all. I just a started the Social Media thing. I really hate FB but only use it for close friends and family so when I was introduced to twitter I was completely confused. Then there's the platform of blog to have, Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr or your own site. They all have their pro's and cons. They all seem to serve different purposes and have different outlets. I'm not young but I'm not old either and even for me Its hard to learn and digest sometimes. Learning the culture of each SM network is a pain then comes the next new thing.
ReplyDeleteGood to know I'm not alone!
Thanks for the mention, Nikki!
ReplyDeleteTwitter has helped me reach a broader audience, but I'm careful to limit my investment to 1-2 hours a week. I use "hootsuite," a free service to automate my tweets in advance. I also check twitter (using the hootsuite app) from my smart phone during the day to respond to people or comment on events as I see fit.
We need to prioritize writing and editing above everything, but nobody else is going to do our marketing for us.
Good luck with the coming book releases!
Keep up the good work.