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Help Me Help You

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Your humble host

So I did a little test this past week or so. I posted on the blog but I didn’t tweet about the posts.

Wait, let me reread that. Okay, yeah.

Now, it turned out that I got just as many views and comments without tweeting as I did when I tweeted the prior week. I didn’t really do it as a test, per se, I just kinda got lazy and didn’t feel like tweeting. That happens. (Pinterest went by the wayside a while ago – but it’s always there if I have nothing to do one day and have already stuck all my hot needles into my eyes.)

Anyway, with a new book release coming up, this is a bad time to not be tweeting. Probably.

So I’ll tweet. I’ll try to do 1 Line Wednesdays. (#1lineweds.) I’ll do my part.

But it’s been nice to see the blog growing under its own weight. You guys did that, and I am forever in your debt.

Still, there’s always stuff to be done, right? You’ll need to read and comment here; and become a beta reader for The Navigators, some of you; and write reviews… maybe join us on the video show, or do a guest blog post. Subscribe to the newsletter – hey, did you do that yet? Cos the second one is getting released soon and you’ll want to read the first one first.

Yep, a writer’s work is never done.

But here’s the thing. Learn how to do that stuff here, either by watching me talk about it, seeing me do it, or helping me do it. Participate.

Do you have a blog? Comment here and people will see that and maybe decide you’re kinda interesting and follow you.

Can you do a guest post? People will read it and see how witty you are and rightly assume your books will be, too.

Then, we can all pile on and help you. Yes, I read people’s books and review them. Yes, I do interviews of new authors – which is great exposure and kinda easy but it’s also a great way to learn. Do that stuff with me! Help me so I can help you. When you see I have a newsletter, subscribe! Read what’s in there and emulate it so you can have a mailing list to help your next book do well. It’s not all about me. Well, it kinda is but it’s about helping you, too.

For example, could I give ARCs (advance review copies) of The Navigators to every reader of this blog that asks. Sure – if they agreed to write a honest review of it at Ammy. Why not? I like you guys; you have friends. It’s a win win.

But the stuff that goes into a great book and a great author platform, that you learn in bites. Here, on the blog, we try to attack stuff every new writer needs to know. If you don’t see what you need, ask. I’ll answer it or have somebody else do it. I have lots of smart friends.

So… we’re getting ready to release The Navigators pretty soon. Wanna help?

Stay tuned. Your chance is coming.

 

 

 

44 replies on “Help Me Help You”

Am I the only one considering a U-turn to run in the other direction? I’m thinking my blog has hit rock bottom and needs an overhaul to turn it into a website with a page where I can occasionally put my thoughts out there. At the moment, I don’t have enough useful things to say, so my blog looks so deserted that even the tumbleweed gives it a wide berth!!

Life’s so full of frustrating decisions! However, helping friends comes high on my list of priorities. Maybe my new ‘website’ could have a page where I recommend cool people that I feel are worth following. I dunno, what do you think?

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I think if you already have a blog in any type of the following, even if it’s just one person, you should expand from there rather than create something new. As far as finding people to help, there are lots of them here who, after reading your comments and if you want to do a Guest post or maybe put a chapter of your book up, they would be interested in following your blog too!

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Twitter is a lot of fun but most of the time when I tweet a lot I am doing it for a strategic reason. I love interacting with friends and fans, but I’m not afraid to drop 20 tweets with some cute posters and a link to a particularly interesting blog post. On days when I do that, my Twitter traffic goes through the roof and my blog traffic doubles and I usually gain a bunch more followers on both.

Also, if I don’t interact with people for a while, I will lose blog followers and lose Twitter followers. So in addition to growing my base, I need to consider I am having some attrition along the way. I have to replace what leaves and I have to grow. Otherwise in a year or two it’ll be me and three friends!

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What I do is not a secret but I think it is something that I thought of myself. If you go through my tweet history you will see there are days where I just blast 20 or 30 or 40 tweets in one or two hours. If you look at those tweets on those days, there is a commonality to them that will basically show you everything I’m doing. So it’s my secret, but it’s not really a secret, and it’s not like I can hide it, so I open the door and invite everyone to follow my example and share their own successes!

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In one of the marketing books I mention that I was a sales manager and that I would teach all my salespeople the same things. Some of them would go on to be very successful and some would not. At the end of the day, I can pretty much lay out every single thing somebody needs to do to be a successful writer. Most aspiring writers will not do it.

I have had a correspondence going on back-and-forth for over two weeks now with somebody who wants to write a book. They have asked me about what kind of software I use and whether I copyright my stories and whether I outline or whether I use sticky notes… What they have yet to do is write a single scene of the story. That person likes the idea of being a writer, not being one – and certainly not writing.

There’s always something we can’t do – until we start doing it.

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What a fantastic post. I love helping people (might be because I’m a nurse) but as far as being helped, well, I’m just too shy and scared. The interviews are great and the writers are so brave to look in the camera like that and come across as natural and relaxed. I don’t think I could ever do that. I know it involves baby steps but is there something called premature baby steps?

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I don’t know about premature baby steps. Might require incubation.

I DO know that you write well and are pretty interesting. I think you’d do well on a video show. Part of my job as host is to make the guest relaxed and show their interesting side. That’s easy when you know their work.

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*sigh* I feel like I could do some decent things if I just had more TIME.

I’d love to write more. Be more active on social media. But a 9+hour day at work, a 45-min-each-way-commute, travel, kids….yeah. I don’t watch TV, I don’t kill hours on Facebook….and I need to sleep. GAH.

So can someone donate a few hours?

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You being lazy? I seriously doubt that. 😉 I’d be more inclined to believe you were just bogged down elsewhere.

There is always SOOO much for an indie to do…and that becomes even more evident the deeper I get into the process. I’ve been laying low for a while—focused mostly on writing and devising my plan to take on the publishing world.

Social media had to be left to simmer on its own, but I have played around and done some experimenting with it recently.

Here’s the funny thing I learned…it’s relatively easy and doesn’t take a lot of time to build a base on Twitter or Facebook. By targeting the right pockets, I can add 100 followers or friends a day while remaining virtually silent. (Hopefully they don’t all run off when I start posting! lol)

The big test will be to see how they convert to blog followers when I blow the dust off and get back into the blog scene (very soon)…AND, more importantly, how I take what I’ve learned and use it to grow readers and fans going into the release of my book (scheduled for September).

Watch and learn? Emulate? Absolutely!
Thanks for sharing! 🙂

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I have been watching and learning, most of your posts have taught me a lot of useful stuff. I have reached the point where I think I need to start proper promotion. ie; paying for it? Can’t afford much, and have no clear idea what to do. I need a plan that works, are you getting to anything like that soon?

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Excellent point. Allison and I recently had a small competition where we were using paid promotions to generate likes to our Facebook author pages.

Paid advertising is tricky because you can target the wrong audience and you can run an ad that isn’t effective as far as how it looks or the message it sends. So I don’t profess to be an expert at that but I think if you try nothing is new fail at enough of them, by default you start to learn what works.

I’ll did up a few links and post them so that you can have our thoughts on it.

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Okay, here we go.

On the video show, I talk about it here at about the 19:30 mark the conversation starts (and yes I ramble a bit)

Here’s Allison’s How-To on creating ads

ideas for your author page

6 TIPS For Authors to Get Noticed and Get Reviews

your FB launch party

Tips For Hosting A Facebook Launch Party

and why you need an author page in the first place
https://danalatorre.com/2015/07/16/why-do-i-need-an-author-page-on-facebook/

Hope this helps!

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What do YOU think? Let me hear from ya.