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This is fair warning. The minute I hit save on this document, something new will come out, or something will change to render some of it out-dated.
That’s what happens with the social media today. “Keeping up” is literally impossible, so my advice is don’t even try. Choose the things that fit your style and use them. Forget the rest or you will drive yourself crazy.
Here are some of the promo platforms we will be discussing as we go forward in this course:
Facebook — Profiles and Pages
Facebook — Groups
Blogs
Google+, Shoutlife, Christian Chirp, et al.
All of these deserve at least a glance to see how and if they might fit into your marketing strategy. Some will fit you well. Others will feel like sandpaper. Use the ones you like. Disregard those you don’t.
What I want you to know here is that in addition to your content and how it’s packaged, you need to also have a strategy for platforms to promote your products as well.
Now I am the #1 biggest breaker of this rule. For 4 years I had a blog, and all I did was put up new blogs twice a week. Okay, I did invite my previous followers over to it (and lost 90% in the switch), but I honestly didn’t know how to promo what I was putting up.
Part of the problem was there was no Twitter and I was Facebookaphobic. So although I had tons of great content, I didn’t have a lot of new subscribers, etc. because they couldn’t find me because I wasn’t at all visible.
The point of promo platforms is to make yourself visible!
I will also tell you that for many in the Christian author realm this can seem like an uphill battle you’d rather not fight. First, you’re a writer. You like to sit by yourself for hours and talk to your imaginary friends. Secondly, isn’t it arrogant to say, “I’m terrific. Please come and check out my writing”? I hear you. Believe me, I do.
But there is that verse in the Bible about not hiding your light under a bushel basket. Remember, the Light you are carrying here is not you. It’s God, and of course you want to carry HIM everywhere, right?
So get into that frame of mind when we talk promo platforms and I think you’ll be ready to climb every mountain to get the Word out!
I had seen a tip you gave on the G&F group page about how you used FB groups and pages to advertise your freebie run. I started doing that as well, weeks in advance by posting to civil war related pages and groups for my blog posts covering civil war topics. Those have been the biggest source so far of blog traffic in the last 3 weeks, doubling my exposure. I didn’t want to just bounce onto the page, pimp my book and then never be seen again, I was regularly posting links prior to so I think for me that helped drive some of the 6300 books I gave away during my two days.