Marketing Monday: Accidental Advertising

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Accidental Advertising, Book Marketing, Dillon Josephson, Marketing Monday, Marketing Tips, Promotion, Roberta Trahan, Social Media Marketing, Stairfaces & Josephson, Twitter, Viral Threads

Authors, like every other person or company plugging their products, are constantly refining their marketing message and dry-running new social media strategies, trying to figure out how to engage our potential readers – whoever they are. It’s all a very frustrating exercise in futility, most of the time, because who knows? No one, really.

There are paid services and books and blogs with tips-o-plenty, but the truth is no one knows what makes a video or photo or post or tweet go viral, just like no one knows which books will hit the best-seller lists or get made into blockbuster films. The only thing we know for sure is that there IS a cultural stream of consciousness out there that everyone is tuned into on some level, and if you’re lucky enough to accidentally tap that vein, anything is possible.

Accidental advertising is just what the term implies – unintentional. You can’t plan for it or pay for it or pick the place or time to show up. It happens organically, but oddly enough, not necessarily randomly.

One of the universal truths in marketing is that people respond to messaging with their emotional right brains more than their practical left brains – even when making a perfunctory purchase. They respond to things based on how those things make them feel more than anything.

Take as study the most amazing example of accidental marketing I’ve seen in years – the case of Dillon Josephsen, who inadvertently blew up the internet last week by tweeting something kinda silly-sweet he noticed about his dad’s business Facebook page. Dillon discovered that his dad, a flooring guy in New Jersey, had been taking pics of dogs he met on the job (in his clients’ homes) and posting them on the page as his “employee of the week”. Super cute, right? Dillon innocently tweeted a collage of the photos to his friends, and inadvertently staged a mega marketing coup.

EVERYONE LOVES DOGS! Who knew right? I know *I* do. When I saw that tweet retweeted in my feed by someone I follow, I clicked on it SO FAST. And then I clicked through to Dillon’s dad’s Facebook page because I just had to see it for myself.

And now, like over 14,000 (!) other people across the globe, I am a fan of Stairfaces & Josephsen Hardwood Floors for no good reason, except DOGS, and of course one day I might move to New Jersey and need some reclaimed barn door planks refinished and installed as flooring in my home office. It could happen, right?

But, even if it doesn’t, my heart has been warmed by some guy I’ll never meet and the pets he posts on his business page. I’m ALSO now following his college-age son on Twitter, because this kid? He’s trying to make something of himself, maybe in the media/entertainment industry, and I’ve got a daughter his age who is trying to make her mark as a vocalist. ABN (always be networking), people!

See how this works? Sometimes it’s just about being yourself and sharing information that matters or moves YOU. If it makes YOU happy or sad or mad, odds are pretty good it will affect others the same way. Being a member of the audience you are trying to reach and engaging in honest dialogue without contrivance or artifice or hidden agenda is the easiest form of social media marketing and networking there is. And it works surprisingly well!

To learn more about Dillon and his dad, here’s a great article (one of many) that popped up after that tweet went viral:

 

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The Week in Review

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47North, Amazon Publishing, Apub, Author, Blogging, Blogging Tips, Book Marketing, Fantasy, Roberta Trahan, Social Media Marketing, Week in Review, writing life

This week was exhilarating, and exhausting. BUT, I accomplished all of the goals I set for myself, AND was able to track some measurable results from my efforts. Here’s a brief recap:

• Got this week’s Marketing Monday post up – late, but better than never. Next week’s is already in the can and will be uploaded early!
• Consulted with a very successful author friend who gave me some solid, specific suggestions on my new project. This was hard, because it’s always hard to ask others for help, but she was very gracious and her guidance has already paid off!
• Asked three other successful author friends to help me with some promotion. I felt I could do this because a) I’ve been supportive of their careers and b) we’ve traded these kinds of favors in the past. A trusted writing community is essential, so if you don’t have one yet, start building.
• Launched a new project – my Writing in Real Time endeavor, a serial novel released in episodes, for free on my blog. This is a controversial thing to do, but my number one goal right now is to build an audience for my work. It’s been five years since my first book was published, and more than two years since the sequel. Since then, my career has stalled. I need to feel inspired again, and interacting with readers can do that for an author. But first, I need readers! Here’s the link to the first episode (read and share!): Blooded – Episode One: Leap of Faith
• In support of the serial novel project, I made a directed effort to raise my public profile – I spent some $ on boosting likes on my FB page, and invested a big chunk of time in social media. This is where I’m seeing those measurable results I mentioned. I’ll be talking about this in more depth on an upcoming Marketing Monday.
• Got some writing done, too!

Whew, right?!! I don’t know if I can keep up this kind of pace every week, but I’m going to try. For now, it’s wine o’clock somewhere…

See you on Marketing Monday!

Marketing Monday: Measurable Results

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Advertising, Audience Capture, Book Marketing, Book Promotion, Increased Visibility, Marketing Monday, Marketing Tips, Referral Business, Roberta Trahan, Social Media, Social Networking, writing life, Writing tips

A measurable result is one of the touchstones of any successful marketing campaign. But how do you define it? Most folks look at number trends before, during and after a promotion and look for an uptick in sales. Metrics are an obvious measurement of whether or not our marketing efforts (and investment) have paid off. But, they are not the only yardstick of success.

Increasing your sales, and ultimately your bottom line, is the prime objective. However, specific marketing efforts rarely correspond directly to an increase in units sold. A lack of a sales spike, however, does not necessarily mean your ad plan has failed. There is more than one way to measure success. For example:

Increased Visibility in the marketplace – every campaign or promo you run will at the very least garner you attention. Most of the people who see a sponsored post, tweet or Instagram ad respond impulsively to the concept if it interests or appeals to them. They will “like” your promo, but don’t click through to purchase. They aren’t actually shopping. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t make an impact. The hope here is that when they are looking to buy, they’ll remember you. There are sales conversion formulas that calculate how many impressions (number of times someone sees your ad) it takes to convert a sale. It varies, but every person who notices you gets you one click closer to that purchase. In  the long run, how many “likes” you get matters.

Audience Capture is just a sexy term for saying followers or fans, and is another important measurable result. These are folks who aren’t yet ready to buy, but have more than just a passing interest in what you have to offer. They take the extra step of connecting with you – becoming a fan of your FB page, following your blog or Twitter or Instagram account – in order to keep you and your offerings in their que for later reference.

Referrals (or “shares”) are also a powerful measure of a successful ad or promotion. It’s harder to track these results directly because there’s no way to follow the sale back to the source, but every time someone retweets your Tweet or shares you FB ad or blog post, you are reaching a new potential market you had no way of reaching otherwise. It’s essentially free advertising, and should be counted as a win.

The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to evaluating your marketing plan is to expect a dollar for dollar return on your investment. Factor the long term payoffs from increased visibility, audience capture, and referrals into the equation. In other words, don’t sell yourself short. Building a customer base or audience takes consistent effort over time. And remember, sales metrics are not the only measurable result that matters.

 

Marketing Monday: Just What is GoodReads Good For, Anyway? (and other thoughts on Social Media Sharing Sites)

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Author Branding, author marketing, Book Marketing, crowd sourcing, Facebook, Good Reads, Novel Writing, Social Media, Social Networking

I have been annoyed with GoodReads for a while now. Oh sure, it’s a great community for readers. For authors, not so much. At least not for me. It all started a couple of months ago when I accepted a seemingly harmless friend request from a new author.

Now, let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I did in fact make a conscious decision from the beginning to make my GoodReads profile an interactive free for all – meaning that I would accept any and all friend requests. I made this decision based on my loosely researched (and as I later discovered, erroneous) understanding of this very intriguing community. The risk to my privacy seemed to be minimal, and the audience is vast. And though I knew all about the bullies and the trolls, I was fairly certain that I had the savvy to steer clear of that kind of trouble. Besides, it makes good sense to go where the readers are. Right?

What I didn’t see lurking in the shadow was yet another kind of trouble – predatory purveyors looking for the opportunity to pfish the friend lists of other authors in order to market their own books. In some cases, including mine, these predatory purveyors are pushing even more poorly written low rent derivatives of 50 Shades of Gray by anonymous persons with generic and sometimes false identities, slapped into a downloadable format and sold on the cheap through blog sites or Amazon Kindle Direct. Cuz, you know, anyone can publish a book now and call themselves an author.

Let the reader beware and all that, I guess. And the author, too, for that matter. By the time I figured out what these predatory purveyors were up to, the damage was done and could not be undone. My many correspondences with the GR customer service folks resulted in little more than a few episodes of dangerously high blood pressure, but they also helped me better understand the beast I was wrestling.

GoodReads, for all their attempts to give appearances to the contrary, has no real gatekeepers. No one is minding the store, and what’s worse, that’s the way they want it. GoodReads is literally nothing more than a giant crowd sourced database curated by random members who are granted the status of “librarian” merely for the asking. Folks with little or no knowledge of legitimate publishing practices or consumer protection policies hold all the power, and claim that imposing even the most minimal standards is an act of censorship.

Everyone can do, say or promote pretty much anything they want without regard to their audience, and it is considered free speech. This sounds like fun to a lot of people. Anarchy usually does. But when we throw out all of the rules, people tend to get hurt. NO BOOK OR AUTHOR on GR is vetted before it is added to the database. Really. Let me say that again. NOTHING IS VETTED.

Like I said, reader and author beware. I could go on (and on) about my feelings on crowd sourced information and open access projects, but I’ll stick to the relevant point for this post: taking steps to protect your public identity is every bit as important as it is to protect your personal privacy.

Gates and boundaries are both prudent and necessary. If you haven’t already done so, dear author, it’s time to start putting some degrees of separation between you and the rest of the world.

Everyone is not your friend – not all people play nice in Cyberspace. Consider the potential consequences of unrestricted interaction before you engage, and then do so cautiously. Blindly accepting every friend request is a bad idea (and this goes for Face Book too). If you decide to do so, understand that there are risks. Big ones.

Fans are Better Than Friends – when it comes to your public life. With social media sharing sites like Facebook and GoodReads the lines between virtual reality and real reality are a bit too easily blurred. For your own sake, and the sake of your true friends and family, build two worlds for yourself – one in which you can safely engage with the people in your real life (i.e. family and other people you actually know), and one in which you can safely engage with the general public. Encourage readers and other interested folks to follow you (become your fan on GR or your FB fan site) rather than friend you.

Social Interaction Is Not (Necessarily) the Same as Social Media Marketing & Neither Guarantees Real Results  – one of the big draws to social networking is that it appears to be free advertising. But is it, really? In today’s social media world an investment of time and energy is generally considered equivalent to an investment of capital. There are people out there touting some very attractive metrics supporting this idea, but the concept of risk vs reward still applies. Just remember that while social media marketing may not cost you any money, there is still a price. You may be saving some cash, but you are still paying – with your valuable time, your precious credibility, and your priceless personal privacy. And you could risk it all and never sell a single book. It all comes down to making informed choices.

Just for fun, let’s do a little crowd sourcing right here. What’s your favorite social media platform, and why? Least favorite? Help another author out by sharing your success stories, and/or your spectacular failures!!

I’m Singing the Marketing Monday Blues – Again…

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47North, Amazon Publishing, Author Branding, author marketing, Barnes & Noble, Book Marketing, Book Sales, Jennifer McCord, M.J. Rose, Novel Writing, publishing, Randy Susan Meyers, Roberta Trahan, Scott Driscoll, The Well of Tears, writing life

With the holiday season and a first-of-the-year deadline behind me, I’m finding it easier to breathe, and find time for the rest of my life – which includes Marketing Mondays.

But first I’d like to announce that the THE KEY TO THE REALMS (the much anticipated sequel to THE WELL OF TEARS) is finally done and off to the editor. As soon as we have a firm pub date, I’ll be sure to let you know!

This was the first book I’ve written under contract (and to a deadline) and I find myself thinking about and examining things like creative process, motivation, and discipline. Mastering the management of my writing life is an ongoing journey, and I am beginning to believe that it will always be at odds with my artistic impulses. It’s almost an oxymoron, isn’t it – the idea that you can (or should) manage creativity. In the immediate aftermath of deadline hell, I am full of conflicted feelings. But, the book is done and I’m not dead, so it’s all good.

Every winter, I co-teach a writing class on novel structure with writing/publishing pals Jennifer McCord and Scott Driscoll. This session is the first I’ve participated in since becoming published, and I am really looking forward to sharing my recent experiences with the new students. We’ll be doing a lot of talking about what it means to be a working writer.

Another discussion that always comes up in these classes centers on the realities of publishing – and learning how to work within an ever changing business model that is often unfriendly to authors, and even downright hostile.

I have a lot to say on this subject, especially as an Amazon Publishing author, and especially when it comes to Barnes & Noble. But this last week two talented authors whom I admire said it best – and with a lot of class. For those of you out there who are writers aspiring to publication, or even authors who are looking for good advice on book marketing strategies, I highly recommend taking a look at this article from authors MJ Rose and Randy Susan Meyers :

Seven Ways Two Anxious Writers Are Making Lemonade

This blog post offers some common sense ideas and good old-fashioned common courtesies for self-promotion. Not the least of which are thoughts on how to create a supportive author community, and some suggestions for grass-roots marketing efforts that we all would do well to put into practice.

I’ll be back next Monday with my latest thoughts on Social Media buzz-builders.