Working on Promotion
One of things I’m working on, aside from writing my next book (yes, I have started) is promoting my blog, and to a lesser extent, promoting my current book. Why the blog first? Because this is my primary platform to reach out to people to let them know what I have done and what I am doing. Ultimately, I want to be able to get people to my books, but to do that, they need to know I exist.
I’m not particularly comfortable with being a salesman, I’d rather people see my work then spread the word, but that can only happen later, so for now, it’s up to me to get the word out there.
There’s different ways to do this of course. I’m going with a slow and steady method that isn’t too much in people’s faces. I’m writing here things I hope people will find interesting, building networks with other blogging websites, discussing things in various forums, and joining communities across the web. Now, this isn’t something where I just hop on a forum and just tell everyone to check out my site and/or book. While it would be cool to be able to do that, most places and people don’t really want that, and I don’t intend to be that guy. So instead, I’m just participating in their communities, which will hopefully help me get better known. If it does, awesome, if it doesn’t, I’m still participating in communities that offer value to me and that I can offer some value to.
Some of my networking does involve blog directories, which is why you see links to some blog directories popping up. As a general practice, blog directories tend to trade exposure through links in what hopefully turns out to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. To be honest, I’m not sure how well that works these days with how search engines have changed, but it’s worth a shot for me for now.
You’ll also note that while some of my posts definitely push my book a bit, I’m trying to keep it in context with content that is otherwise useful to people as well. I’m not trying to just blindly push it, though there are times I’d like to do that too. When I have another book or two, I’ll likely add an actual books page to my site here, but for now, it seems unnecessary for a single book. I may reconsider that though, depending on how things go and what I can think of down the line.
I’m sure there are more direct ways I could be promoting myself, but this is something that is new for me, so I’m still learning and also figuring out what may be the most effective, as well as what exactly I can do that I’m not doing already. For me, this is a learning process, to find both what I can do, and also what I’m willing to do. For instance, I know there’s all sorts of crazy sales page designs that do nothing but throw tons of bright text and obnoxious claims at you. I’ll never do this, because I hate it. But a sales page that just lists what I can offer with a brief summary? That will happen at some point. I’m sure many other things will happen too, as time goes on and a I get a better feel for this. For now, I still need to focus on actually writing and having my next book ready to go. I just also need a way to tell people about it when I’m done.
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