Building An Audience Part 3 – Group Think by author Liz Crowe #buildingaudience #amwriting @beerwencha2
Group Think
By Liz Crowe
Using “groups” be they on Facebook or yahoo or elsewhere to tout your books should be a key component of any new author’s promotions and marketing platform. There are probably a zillion and a half of these things, as wide as one actually called “Promote Yourself Worldwide” down to “Romance Authors who Don’t Have Cats but Like Cowboys and Firemen but Without BDSM and Live In Mom’s Basement.”
Ok, I exaggerate (not on the “Promote Yourself Worldwide,” it exists) but you get my point.
On Yahoo there are “loops and groups” you can join so that you can send out emails to like-minded authors who are also readers and, sometimes, even to “just readers.” You have to be careful to follow moderation rules on these, as many of them are fairly militant about “over promoting” or following the “promotions days” rules. But if you are new to this, I recommend joining as many as you can and spending a few days or weeks observing what other, more established/successful authors do on them. Some of them are more for exchanging ideas and getting advice or solace when you get a rejection or a bad review. This sort of support is just as important as having a dozen or so of them in place JUST for promotion. Once you are signed with a publisher, many of them have their own groups that you should definitely use for advice and promotional help.
I’m in an interesting point of my own writing and promotions life, evolutionarily speaking. When I started out, I used my Yahoo and Facebook groups religiously. Every time I had a blog post anywhere, or a release, or a decent review, I would hop on the ‘book and plaster the same message in 20 or more groups. Until I noticed that my own “notification feed” (that annoying pop up thing at the left bottom of the screen when you are on Facebook that tells you that someone has “posted in Romance Authors Who Need to Go On a Diet” or whatever group) kept dinging me as other authors did the same thing I had just done—plastered the same message into a dozen or more groups at the same time.
So, I have adjusted my approach a bit. I have observed a few of the groups where I actually get “likes” or comments on my posts and limited my activity to them and I try really really hard NOT to write the exact same post in them. Even if I am promoting the same release/review/contest/post I will vary the message for each of them so feels less spammy. It’s a much better use of my time. Also, I have left over half of the groups I started out in as they were more focused on books that I would either: 1. Never read. 2. Never recommend or 3. Never consider in the same general realm as what I was promoting.
I have my own private, strictly Liz centric, fan group that has 500 or so members (the numbers jump around as authors will join, figure out they are not allowed to promote in it and leave). One of my publishers did this so I had a platform to offer “specials” to my more loyal and dedicated fans. It’s sort of but not really a “street team” (a term that has unfortunately been corrupted by legions of fan girls who have no real concept of the purpose of such a thing). I do post exclusives in this group, and allow the members to get first shot at certain contests. I’m in there every day in some capacity or another, interacting. I don’t necessarily recommend this approach as a newbie, until you get your head around the “whys and wherefores” of the group promotion concept and have a bit of a backlist to promote in it.
So my advice to you fresh meat types with regard to groups is this:
Join a ton of them both on Facebook and Yahoo specific to your genre or subgenre. There are options for sweet/hot/weres/vamps/hard core BDSM/ man love/lady love/polamory you name it, its there. You just have to search for them.
Facebook allows you to search for key words now that will pull up pages to “like” AND groups to “join”
Yahoo does the same thing in the “groups” section but these are many times limited to invite only. So if you have a critique partner or an editor who you think could get you into one of them, ask them to add you.
I can recommend these: Romance Books 4 Us, Bookfair Buddies, Exquisite Quills, Coffee Time Romance, TRS (The Romance Studio) Blue (for erotic), The Romance Studio (for non erotic).
Watch and observe how more prolific authors use them for a few days/weeks once you introduce yourself. Don’t hijack threads to promote yourself on either email or Facebook. This is a Very Bad Thing to do as a rookie.
Don’t argue or bring up politics or religion in them. There ARE groups for that but they are NOT where you want to be promoting your work.
Don’t Spam! I.e. If you are on a book/blog tour, list it once then back away until the next day.
Interact and be supportive of the other authors in the group by commenting and posting THEIR posts on your networks.
Try to keep track of how much ROI you are getting. I.e. monitor how many “likes” or comments or hits you get on your blog post or whatever you are promoting in order to determine after about 6 months or so how useful that group is to you. I have left more than one (see above) when my posts fall on virtual deaf ears again and again.
Have fun! Post jokes and stuff but don’t bog the groups down with a lot of personal drama if you can help it. Most folks are there for the same reason you are and your daily iteration of your woes will really not incline them to want to read your books.
Good luck to ya~
Liz
About Liz Crowe:
Microbrewery owner, best-selling author, beer blogger and journalist, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major college town. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse. While working as a successful Realtor, Liz made the leap into writing novels about the same time she agreed to take on marketing and sales for the Wolverine State Brewing Company.
Most days find her sweating inventory and sales figures for the brewery, unless she’s writing, editing or sweating promotional efforts for her latest publications.
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction,” while remaining very much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and many times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate, and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.
If you are in the Ann Arbor area, be sure and stop into the Wolverine State Brewing Co. Tap Room—but don’t ask her for anything “like” a Bud Light, or risk serious injury.
Website | Blog | Beer blog | Facebook | Twitter | Romance For Real Life on Facebook
Red Card (Black Jack Gentlemen: Book Two)
by Liz Crowe
Free will makes us human.
Choice makes us individuals.
Love makes us unique.
Metin Sevim has it all. At the pinnacle of international soccer playing success, he has managed to craft a perfect world for himself along the way.
When fate strips him of free will and the ability to choose his own path, he retreats from everyone and everything, destroying his hard-won career in the process.
Dragged back from the brink by his desperate family, Metin reluctantly agrees to coach the Black Jack Gentlemen Detroit soccer team but remains debilitated by memories and loss. When a surprising friendship emerges, it renews his passion for life, providing much needed solace… and extreme complications.
A saga of family dynamics and gender politics that cuts across cultures and circumstance, Red Card illustrates the human capacity for forgiveness through the life of one man as he attempts to rebuild his shattered existence.
Available From:
Building An Audience Schedule:
August 9 - Intro & Knowing Your Audience
August 16 - Blogging
August 23 - Using Yahoo & Facebook Groups with author Liz Crowe
August 30 - Twitter
September 6 - Facebook with Tawania from Wicked Readings by Tawania
September 13 - Pinterest with author Desiree Holt
September 20 - Google + with author Fierce Dolan
September 27 - Goodreads with author Cassandra Carr
