“Stacking” Waves

January 26, 2012 | No comments yet

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Last time we talked about how marketing a book is like surfing.  To surf, you have to paddle out into the ocean, wait for a wave, ride the wave to the shore and start over.

Let’s take a brief look at how this analogy works with a guest blog.

The paddling part of doing a guest blog is finding someone to post your guest blog, writing the blog, compiling the marketing package–the blog, your headshot, your bio, a tag and possibly your book cover.  Sending it all in and following up. That’s a lot of effort for one little, bitty blog, right?  That’s why they call it “paddling.”

Then comes the wait.  It takes time for the host blogger to put the article up and more time for it to appear.

Finally, the article comes out and you “ride the wave” by tweeting about it, Facebooking it (and any other promotional venues you have), and you have to monitor and respond to guest commenters.

After a day or so, that wave deposits you on the shore, and you have to start all over again.

At least that’s what I used to do. In order to see consistent sales, however, you must learn to “stack” waves.  Instead of going through one whole promotion before you start the next, learn to schedule and stack your waves.  So that on Monday one article comes out on one site and you ride that wave as you begin paddling for another wave two weeks away.

You can also “vary” your waves.  Do guest blogs, interviews, get reviews, do promotions with other authors.  When you get good at stacking waves, you should begin to see consistency in your sales.  Otherwise every time you get back to shore, you will feel a big let down and it will be much harder to convince yourself to paddle back out.

If you’ve already paddled halfway back out for the next wave, it will be much easier to go the rest of the way and catch the next wave!

Although I do recommend stacking waves, I don’t recommend doing more than two on a given day. You need, on the days the article or interview actually posts, to have time to ride the wave.  Otherwise, you are doing a lot of paddling and not much riding, and that’s no fun at all!

Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, we only recommend products or services we believe will add value to our readers.

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