Tuesday, February 28, 2017

2017 Marketing Goals: A Little at a Time

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I refined, expanded, and detailed a BryonySeries marketing plan for 2017.

It's so comprehensive that I will never check off each item this year. However, it's a good road map to keep me focused and on track. I peek at it about once a week.

Here are the baby steps I've made so far:

1) Casting a broader, and yet narrower reader net. What does this mean? Fans of vampire stories might potentially like my books. However, fans of twenty-first genre vampire stories might not. Fans of slow-paced literary suspense might.

2) Engaging more via thoughtful commentaries on social media with the intent of being social on like-minded sites. Refraining from haphazard commentaries.

3) Gradually building up the BryonySeries Twitter account. Finding a few friends, liking and retweeting in ways specific to my series and me as a writer.

4) Creating an Instagram account for Bertrand and posting once daily.

5) Asking for reviews, and sending out review copies.

6) Celebrating Ed Calkins Day with a parade. ;)

7) Starting themed lists.

8) Remembering that the goal is not to win popularity contests (Steering away from thinking in terms of "best-selling," "most likes," and other defeatist attitudes, but concentrating on connecting and finding the audience that wants to read what I write).

It doesn't sound like much, does it? But the hard truth, as I'm sure many authors (really, any entrepreneur) realize is that building a brand takes time and requires hard work. And because I'm serious about building it, I'm not taking any marketing step I can't sustain. Thus, I'm taking each step by each step.

Unless of course I'm finding it's a wrong step. In that case, I'll retrace and go another way. In the meantime, I'm viewing marketing as a journey, as slow-paced, but as sure and rich, as my books.

Comments and suggestions welcome. :)



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