Can Social Media Alone Market Your Book?
Attended a Saturday night session for about a dozen writers (after we were sure we weren't saved) seeking new ideas, a safe place to read, and companionship not of the four-legged kind (i.e., cats, dogs, horses, deer, rodents, and cicadas--although I guess they're six-legged). We ate great potluck food, yakked about the writing business, then read from some of our babies. Some people were published; some are ready to be published; some just needed acknowledgment that they have something that can be published in the future. But the most interesting thing to me, mostly because I'm pulling together my marketing plan for when I publish this summer, is this condensed thought: a great deal of the social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.) only gets your books bought by close family and friends, if them. Real marketing needs to rise above just having social media. It is the active engagement of the social media married to word-of-mouth and just the plain gumption to get out there and be in front of people at wherever people gather that will carry day. Social media can't do it alone. True? False?
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4 comments:
I'm on Facebook with loads of friends. I also have a Facebook fanpage with quite a few fans. I have a Twitter, a Myspace, a Youtube, and 2 blogs. It's not enough. Part of the problem I see is that most of my contacts are other writers instead of my target audience- young adults and teens. Maybe I'm not using the media the right way. I don't know. Writers say you need a web page. Maybe that's the answer???
Hey Amanda...A web page seems essential on several fronts: pointing people to your other social media, letting people know you are serious, establishing more of a presence. However, it just seems without an outside push that it would attract the same circle of family and friends (and to quote Seinfield, "There's nothing wrong with that."). I guess, in your case and perhaps in all cases, it might take the old fisherman's adage to create an audience: "You fish where the fish are." Perhaps attending career days at junior and senior high schools as an author will help your exposure. As for my murder mysteries, I may have to have anti-career days in federal penitentiaries to captive audiences. In some ways, both our audiences will have no choice but to attend and chat us up in some fashion. Best of luck.
LOL -- anti-career days in the federal pen! Those might be less insane than the career days I'll be attending at the high schools. :p
Thanks. :) I've missed your wit and wisdom. I'm so happy to read your words again.
Can social media do it alone? I don't know, but check back with me in six months, because that's what I'm going to try.
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