ReBlogging – What’s That All About?

While you are building (or expanding) your platform, it’s a great time to polish, edit and add or delete whatever you want added to or deleted from your book. Plus, a lot of the time we have to make choices about what the blurb will say and what the cover needs to look like. Bouncing that stuff off a bunch of Facebook author page friends or Twitter followers or Blog subscribers is a great way to see what the feedback is – and spend no money to find out.

Part of the way you increase your base is by adding people as followers on Twitter, Facebook, and your blog, or whatever other social media you like doing. Most of you have blogs, so let’s focus there.

Look what happened when I posted and tweeted about my friend recently, and then reblogged one of her posts the next day. Many followers and subscribers came on board. Imagine 20 people doing that over the next few months. Booyah! Big numbers!

Now, if that was easy…

But it’s only as hard as finding them and asking them (and maybe becoming friends for a while first). There are lots of people who have a crazy amount of followers – which is a few hundred more than you, however many you have.

I have an artist friend with 1250 followers to her blog, a good amount. But if she has a personality like yours, and if you were to become friends with her, she might post and tweet and reblog your stuff sometime, like oh, say when your book comes out. Or she might not. I have never asked her to reblog anything, and she may protect the heck out of her brand, who knows. But I’m not the only person with a blog and neither is she.

As you make friends with writers and bloggers, you might ask if you can reblog something of theirs, like I did for my friend. Or just do it. Merry Christmas! Look what happened! Many of my followers became your followers, too!

And when they repay the favor, or even if they just thank you, their people see your stuff and some come over.

Your mom was right. Sharing is awesome.

That is what’s in in for other people who would reblog your stuff. It’s a sales thing: show them what’s in it for THEM.

Then what happened? My friend was invigorated! That’s a nice thing, too.

This reblog stuff works. A LOT. I don’t do it much cos I never had anybody who wanted to reblog my stuff. Oh, wait, why didn’t I reblog their stuff? I don’t know. Didn’t think of it. And the people who would’ve said yes were teeny tiny. Nobody wanted to reblog me… probably.

What the hell did I know? Everybody needs content or wants a day off at times. Or wants a bunch of new followers with almost no effort on their part.

I did a post on race a while back, and a few people reblogged it. I had NO idea what would happen. (Not about the race thing, about the reblog thing.) BOOM, did my follower count jump. And when people stopped in to read that, they said hey, this guy is smart and funny. What else does he talk about that’s interesting and relevant to me? Click, click, click… subscribe.

And maybe they become a reblog opportunity later. Because they obviously have great taste and so would their followers.

My blog is centered around helping others put books out, but that means helping cookbook people and photographers and poets as well as authors. So in a way, everything is relevant. I can reblog anything. Or be reblogged by almost anyone. Which means I can help and be helped by almost anybody.

Which should help a LOT when it’s time to roll out another book – mine or theirs.

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REBLOG me! Or SHARE this post on Facebook and Twitter! See that “F” and “T” buttons down below? Click them. Put on your glasses. There they are.

Got a QUESTION? ASK IT! Hit the Contact Me button and I’ll see what I can do.

Dan Alatorre is the author of several bestsellers and the hilarious upcoming novel “Poggibonsi: an italian misadventure.” Check out his other works HERE .