Today’s guest post is from author Kristen Lamb.
The digital age author has more opportunities than any writer in the history of the written word. But with more opportunities comes more competition, and with more competition comes more work.
Mega-agent Donald Maass will tell you there are only two ways to sell books—a good book and word of mouth, and he is right. Books are not tubes of toothpaste, though many of them sell for less.
Each writer is unique, each product is unique, and thus our marketing approach must appreciate that or we are doomed to fail. Too many social media approaches are a formula to land a writer on a roof with a shotgun and a bottle of scotch. I am a writer first, so my social media approach appreciates that books are not car insurance, and writers are not tacos.
Yes, social media is a wonderful tool for building an author platform. But, unlike Starbucks, we cannot hire college students to create our product. We need to be on social media and still have time left over for the most important “marketing” task of all—writing awesome books.
I am going to point out three major social media time-wasters. If we can avoid these social media tar babies, we will have more time to write brilliant books.
1. Joining every social media site for “exposure”
Many writers, when introduced to the wonderful world of social media, promptly develop what I like to call RDD—Reality Deficit Disorder. RDD prompts writers to run out and sign up for Facebook, a fan page, Twitter, G+, Tumblr, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, and on and on.
When pursued to an extreme, writers suffering from advanced RDD curl up in the fetal position under their desks muttering, “Soooo many circles. Tweet … tweet. Be my friend. I like friends.”
Social media is NOT traditional marketing. Social media gains the most power from relationships, and it is impossible for us to be on ten or even five different sites and still maintain the level of interaction required to make other people feel vested in us.
Blitzing out our message on six different sites is the equivalent of spam. People are gravitating to social media by the millions, in part, to escape spam. Bring spam into their sacred space, and you’ll either lose trust or be ignored.
2. Getting too focused on the numbers
We don’t need to “friend” 20,000 people to reach 20,000 people. Social media, unlike traditional marketing, works exponentially not linearly. Having 30,000 friends on Twitter means about as much as the White Pages I just threw in the recycle bin.
Theoretically, I could hold up my White Pages and say, “I have 30,00 friends.” But how many of those people know me? How many of those people do I know? How many of those people can I count on to help me spread the news of my next book? Only a very small percentage—people I personally know and a random handful of weird, lonely people.
In the end, do I really have 30,000 friends, or just a list of meaningless names and equally meaningless relationships?
Instead of “following” or “friending” hundreds of people, spend time networking instead. Get to know people and serve them. Authenticity and kindness are two of the most powerful assets we possess in this new paradigm. We are the product as much as our books. People buy from who they know and who they like. They also promote who they know and who they like, and, trust me, they DO NOT like the writer who junks up their Facebook with form letters and phony compliments.
If we focus on relationships and we write great books, others will promote us to their networks. That’s called word of mouth.
3. Using cutesy monikers
Writers love to be creative. Great! Awesome! But we need to be creative at the right time and place.
There is only one acceptable handle for writers who are serious about publishing and selling books, and that is the NAME printed on the front of our books.
We (readers) cannot purchase books by @FairyGirl, @BookMaven or @VampireChik. When writers hide behind monikers, they undermine their most powerful platform-building tool: the “top of mind.” Each time we tweet or blog, we are adding “beams” (content) to our author platform. The platform needs to support our name to the point that our name alone becomes a bankable asset—in some cases, a brand.
Writer’s Name + Great Content + Positive Feelings = Author Brand
Cutesy blog titles are equal offenders. I have run across many excellent blogs, but the author’s NAME was nowhere to be found. Thus, the author of the blog was working hard to contribute thousands of words a week to build a meaningless platform.
Bottom Line
If we focus on quality, authentic relationships, we will have more time left to write great books. Combine great books with a quality online network and success is only a matter of time. It is a wonderful time to be a writer.
Kristen Lamb is the author of We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer. Kristen has coached all levels of writers from unpublished newbies to New York Times bestselling authors James Rollins and Sandra Brown. She is currently represented by Russell Galen of SGG Literary NYC.
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Great advice, Kristen. I especially like your point about the quality of online friends vs. the quantity. I’d rather Tweet with 10 people who are more likely to buy my book than 10,000 who won’t.
-Lynne
Here, here! We know who is being genuine and who is not, and I’m only going to be interested in buying the book of someone who seems genuine. There are SOOO many books out there, and what make me buy a book is the story idea, or the fact the author posted something that struck my fancy. I couldn’t care less how many times I see an ad for something. I’m either interested or I’m not.
“If we focus on —– authentic relationships.”
Kristen,
This!
In everything.
brendan
Kristen – Another great post on building an author platform. Thanks for having the courage to point out not only what authors need to do, but what we need to avoid doing, as well. Thank you, Jane, for having Kristen on the blog.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. There are so many fabulous and interesting writers, authors and bloggers out there. I find myself wanting to know ALL of them, which is an impossible task. I think that is what many writers find so hard! They spread themselves so thin among hundreds or thousands of people that their online presence gets watered down. I think it’s a death trap for a lot of us. But….that’s why we have Kristen 🙂 To aim us in the right direction.
Love this – and I 100% AGREE
Great post, Kristen. The fourth blunder is to spend so much time on social networks that you don’t have quality tile for what you ought to be doing more of, writing!
I think that you chose a poor example in @bookmaven. Not sure who that is, but @thebookmaven has done a brilliant job of establishing an author platform associated with that Twitter ID and in creating the kinds of relationships that do pay off. Everyone knows that @thebookmaven is Bethanne Patrick and that she is passionate about books. Her latest book pubs today, and no one will have any problem finding it.
When I go to the bookstore or shop on an e-reader, my overloaded brain memory bank doesn’t have the title stored, and I need a reminder … as in the author’s name. Not everyone knows who Bethanne Patrick is, as I’ve not heard of her. And I am too time pressured to hunt.
Agreed, Laura. There are always exceptions to these rules, and @thebookmaven:twitter is a good example of an exception.
Why?
Because “Book Maven” was an established brand name before she started the Twitter account. People knew her through her other activities as “Book Maven” and would be very familiar with this moniker.
I actually randomly picked that name. It wasn’t directed at any real person. Sorry.
I actually randomly picked that name. It wasn’t directed at any real person. Sorry.
It was actually a really good example. I have heard of The Book Maven, but I do not recall ever having heard of Bethanne Patrick. I would not have known to relate a book by that author to the tweeter @thebookmaven.
Lady Kristen
Yes, it’s me again. Sorry :-P.
I hate to sound sycofin…. psychofun… sackofin… er, like I’m just agreeing with everything you say but, um, I agree with everything you say (blushes).
For me, this whole Social Networking thing is both those words – Social and Networking. But, and it’s just a personal view, it sometimes seems to boil down to ‘Hey, look at me! I said something clever!’ plus ‘What do you mean, I paid someone for my 99999999999999999 Followers? I’ve posted three times already!’
Think of the last comment, Tweet or posting you saw on your favourite social media channel. Do you remember what it said, or do you remember who said it? If you can remember ten things that were said, but not who said them, then the posters are, perhaps, failing. If you can remember ten posters, but not what they said, then the posters are, to a degree succeeding.
Well, unless you remember them for the types of reasons your mother never forgot your first boyfriend. Yes, or girlfriend :-P.
But if you remember them because they gave you that idea that day you were stuck in writer’s block, if you remember them because you posted that thing, and they replied, not just to say ‘hey, that was Kewl’, but to actually add something useful, if you remembered them because they asked that thing, and you offered a suggestion, and they told their friends, and that friend of theirs sent out a thankyou… Well :-).
As far as joining everywhere, it isn’t where you are, I’d say it’s the result of being there that counts. One Tweet, posting, action, even a constructive and useful one, in 9999999999999999999 places a day isn’t likely to add much to a writer’s visibility. And even less likely to let that writer have time to write another book. Ten constructive and effective postings/ Tweets in one place in a month might well lead to getting ‘stuck’ (yes, I remember ‘being sticky :-P) in one more person’s head.
Back in 1936, Dale Carnegie tried to tell us how to win friends and influence people. I think he’d have had a blast with Social Media, because we’re still trying to do much the same thing.
Barrage balloons. There I go, all syco… sacko… psycho… er, crawly again and agreeing with you. Nurse! The snake oil remover ointment! What do you mean, it’s all used up? :-P.