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working writer wending her way through the labyrinth that is self-publishing

Thursday, August 9, 2012

mostly marketing

I have several things on my mind today so bear with me if I meander...since mercury is now out of retrograde I feel an edginess that I need to explore even if I've talked about these subjects in previous blogs...

1. Hashtags on twitter: Just yesterday I realized that I've been posting links to twitter without sending it to the places where my readers might be hanging out...I'm sure most of you know this already but for me it was an epiphany...

2. The goddess principle: This is connected to the hashtags--my book is filled with goddesses and at the risk of sounding weird, a goddess wrote my book using my computer and my fingers to type it out...so how do I employ the goddess (feminine) principle to my marketing plan?
   
3. Twitter: I need to have a theme for each week and places to go--for instance, #mythology or #druid/pagan  etc...tweet once a day on the theme of the week--fifteen minutes max. (good luck)

3. How to organize the social media marketing in general: Advice to myself: get on Facebook and Goodreads at certain times of day--spend a half hour or less at those times--and then, step away! Hard to do since now I'm on 'indie authors', 'fantasy authors', 'bookjunkies', 'authors pitch for readers' and a few others--getting caught up in the threads is not only time-consuming, it takes energy from my writing, draining me before I've begun.

4. Reading blogs: This one is unbelievably time consuming and yet it's vitally important. If I expect others to read mine I have to make the effort...and many bloggers have kindly taken time to read my book and review on their blogs...many thanks to all of them!

5. Writing blogs: I have two blogs on blogspot as well as one on my website...I love the exercise of writing and I love the disparate subjects I'm writing about--so time spent doing this is good.

6. Website: My extremely expensive website is languishing. I don't know how to get people there--I've put links on this blog but have no way of knowing if anyone uses them. Wordpress is unfamiliar to me and more complicated..plus I don't like the black with white type--but it's part of the template and can't be changed.

With my second book about to come out I need to think about a blog tour--contest/giveaways, all things I'm unfamiliar with...luckily all the author pages I'm on will be a tremendous source of information...

Sorry if I've repeated myself here...and thanks for reading! Comments are greatly appreciated.

And last but not least: The Moonstone will be free on Kindle from August 10-12th


5 comments:

  1. Hm. A few quick thoughts. (#2 will take some time, will come back later.)
    3. I think it's worth coming back and tweeting at different times of day. I usually tweet a blog post around 3 times. I usually twitter late at night, so there are certain people I see, but others (like you!) I never see. There are services you could use, if you want, and they will tweet for you at intervals. Be careful, though, they can be annoying if you do it too often. I like the theme idea, though.
    6. How often do you change/update the site? Often enough to make it something a person would come back to frequently? I'd ask the webmaster if you can get more statistics. EG wordpress automatically gives you a page of stats, which includes any links that people clicked to get to your site. I know most of the search engine terms that lead people to me, when someone shares on facebook or twitter, if there's a link from another site to mine. You can probably get these kinds of statistics for your site. I don't know about blogspot, though.

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    1. Thanks for reading and commenting, RAchel--I always appreciate what you have to say--yes, tweeting at different times would be good...I don't have much control over my website-- I can add stuff to pages and I also write a blog there but probably not as often as I should (although it doesn't seem like anyone's reading it) Blogspot I understand fairly well and I post here more often--I've been using the website blog for Wolfmoon related topics...

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  2. We are in the same uncomfortable spot, Nikki. You are much more active than I have been, and now I have a chance to publish a POD with SheWrites if I choose. I hesitate because I know my reluctance to market would make the investment an unprofitable one unless I got busy and made a profession of selling my book. Not sure I'm willing to do that. Let me know how things are going. Have you tried Google analytics (I think that's the name) to view activity on your website?

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  3. I worry a bit about twitter, facebook etc. It too easily becomes compulsive timewasting - unless you have ruthless discipline : )

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    1. Mike, your comment came at the right time--I'm seriously trying to change my marketing ploys since none of what I've been doing is working!

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