Finding and Creating New Exposure for Authors (Blog Post 10-24-2012)

Finding and Creating New Exposure for Authors (Blog Post 10-24-2012)

The #1 question that every author has is:  How do I get my product out to the masses?  

If the author has a contract with a legitimate and powerful publishing house, the house will do its best to put the author in front of the customer  — after the best product the author can provide is produce.  The publishing house will flood the book stores, will set up the book signing sessions, will create the advertizing to put that author’s face on the billboards.

But what if you are an author with a contract at a not so legitimate publishing house, one that provides support only if you pay for it, one that will get your product into book stores only after you fill its coffers with your hard earned money?  Or perhaps you have decided that self-publishing is your answer.

That is where the Internet comes in.  First, there is social networking.  Twitter and Facebook provide vast amounts of exposure.  There are, however, rules.  The first rule of Twitter is:  Tweeting is good, but tweeting every five minutes is bad.  

I often find the same twitter account tweeting twenty times in thirty minutes.  I don’t need to read fifty times in an hour that they will guarantee to provide me with 10,000 followers.  They might be able to do so, but I will have stopped following them long before they gain me as a customer.

I don’t have an exact number of how many times a tweet should be repeated in an hour.  I just know that I will not participate in a venture that shows up on my computer screen ten times in a row.

I try to tweet or otherwise participate in the Internet once an hour, to direct my followers to something that I think is important.  An example would be this blog post.  My WordPress account automatically Tweets my blog posts.

But, my blog is just one of millions of blogs on the Internet.  Am I being seen?  I don’t know.  I look at hundreds of blogs each month, but do not inform the blog that I was there.  If the blog has a counter, it will increase by 1, but that is the only way the blog will know I visited.

So, how can we know that we are not just another page from the newspaper soon to be used to wrap fish in?  There are a few easy ways to gain exposure.

1)     Follow as many of your colleagues as possible on Twitter and Facebook.  If they are following you, and you are active, they will get a glimpse of what you are doing.

Note: it is important to follow as many as possible on the social media.  Remember, you might be one of 10,000, and although you have Tweeted to 10,000 followers, only 5 might be interested in what you have said.  If you can successfully contact 0.1% of your followers, in 1000 followers, you will connect with 1 person.  The numbers are what drives Twitter and Facebook.

2)     Set up a blog.  The two I have used are WordPress, and Blogspot by Google.  Both are free.  And both are interested in being relevant to the blogging world, so both sites provide free Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

3)     Start a website.  Google provides free websites, as do many other hosts.  I discovered that some hosts restrict the capabilities of their free sites.  Check carefully to verify what you are getting is what you want and need.

4)     Get on as many social networks as possible.  Linked In is a good place to start.  At last count, I was a member of perhaps twenty groups.

Note:  Linked In requires participation, as do all the other social networks.  You can not just join a group and expect to get your message out.  You need to be working to make your name stand out, and that only happens if you show up on someone’s computer screen, preferably when they are actually looking at the screen.

The most successful use of social media is structured participation.  Set up a schedule of participation.  Tweet at 9:00 am, 12:00 noon, and 3:00 pm.  Post something on other social networking sites at other hours.  At one point several months ago, I began to ignore the necessity to participate, and I have discovered my return on my investment had dwindled.  It is time to refocus my efforts, which this blog post will hopefully be just the first step of many.