Welcome back, everyone, to this
week’s Interview With A Blogpire. Before the break Aimee L Salter shared some
fantastic advice on blog building, and now we’re talking about how to promote
your amazing content to the world. Here goes…
Since you’re posting a few times
a week, how do you get the most out of twitter a as a promotional tool – without
bombarding it?
This is
something that took me a long time to figure out. I had to work through the
process and learn how to use Twitter by trial and error, and believe me, there
were errors over the years!But I
feel like I’ve settled on what works now. My opinion is this (and it is just my
opinion):
- Bombarding
twitter with links to something several times in an hour is pointless. You’re
hitting the same audience every time. So whatever clicks you get will probably
stop after the second tweet. Spread your promotional tweets out so that you’re
hitting different time zones and twitter habits.
“I usually tweet a blog link 4
or 5 times in a day – but those tweets have 3-5 hours between them
and I only promote a blog post for one day. (That means I’m only “promoting” my
work 2 days out of 7.”
The rest of the time I’m just hanging out or RT’ing stuff that I actually read and liked).
- If you
spend more time getting to know
people and tweeting personal messages, getting into conversations, etc, than
you do promotion, you’ll probably be okay and followers will like you. If you
spend more time promoting and / or RT’ing everything under the sun just so
people see you RT’ing them… you are probably just annoying.
- If the
material you promote is only about you, yourself and you, people will stop
paying attention. Whatever you push into the twitosphere, make sure it has some
use to people beyond getting to know you.***
***The
exception to this rule is when you have achieved something / created a fanbase.
(A fanbase is not a platform. A platform is a group of people you have contact
with who will give your material consideration. A fanbase is a group of people
who associate themselves with you and your work. They feel like they know you –
or want to know you – personally. They are loyal and vehement, and generally
only come on the heels of something you did that they love. As writers, we gain
fans when we write books that people connect with. Usually not before).
Contest or critique
sessions - which do you think engages readers more?
I think it depends on "bang for your buck". One thing
I see too much of is competitions that require too much for entry - retweeting,
posting on facebook, blogging, AND commenting. When an entry gains the reader
nothing but an entry for a book they can buy themselves... Well, I think
readers are jaded enough to feel used at times. Or just too busy. But if I had
an arc of the hottest YA release for the coming year? That sweetens the deal.
Readers love the idea of getting in behind the scenes.
Where
competitions really draw readers though, are when they offer opportunities for
advancements, or short cuts past the slush pile.
As well
as my own blog, I'm a contributor at YAtopia. They've run or been part of some
huge competitions in the past, offering writers the chance to pitch their work
directly to agents and editors. That kind of competition will always have a
huge draw - because they give the reader a shot at something that is
potentially of huge benefit to themselves.
So, to
answer the question directly, I think critiques (provided they are of quality)
will have a bigger audience than a competition for an amazon gift card. But if
you can bring agents or editors to your blog, that will always trump a
critique.
What has been the most useful
strategy for building your blog?
For me,
my most useful strategy has been to always remember that a blog has to be
useful to people. Now, it can be useful in any number of ways. If you’re funny
(and I mean actually funny), that’s
of use to people. Most people love to laugh, to have their spirits raised on a
regular basis. If you can do that, you can write about any damn thing you want
because people will want to read it because they’ll enjoy it.
If you’re
an expert in something you can offer advice. Technically this is where my blog
falls, but because I haven’t achieved the credibility that comes with success
in the industry, I had to approach it differently.
From day one I’ve said “This
is what I’m learning, let me show you so you can learn it too.” I’ve never
claimed to be an expert, but my work still has a practical application to my audience.
The other
way to be useful to people is to bring together resources, or create resources.
Angela Ackerman and Becci Puglisi did this with their Emotion Thesaurus
blogsite (which is now a really popular book). Of course, in other industries,
the technical interests and resources will be different. I think this is why
Pinterest has become so popular – it allows people to gather up things that
help them or they’re interested in.
And finally, what stellar bit of blogging
advice would you like to share?
The most
useful advice I received when I started blogging, bar none, was that blogging
about myself wouldn’t get me anywhere. You need to find a way to connect that
benefits the other person, and if you can do that you'll have a much better
chance of repeat business in terms of blog views, retweets, shares and likes,
etc.
So for every blog post, tweet or status update, ask yourself one question:
What's in it for the reader? If the answer is consistently only "getting
to know me better," or "nothing," then you have a problem.*
Well that’s it, guys. I certainly
hope you found this as useful as I did! I’d like to send a special thanks to
Aimee for being an inspiration to us all, and good luck to everyone scuttling
off to put her ideas into place. Have fun!
* The
information for this answer came straight from Aimee’s blog, since I found it
so useful I had to share it. Thanks again, Aimee. J
