Presenting yourself as a Professional Part 2

Ahhh the joys of social media, you can vent, you can keep in contact, you can advertise, and you can well...destroy your career. Don't want that now do you? I'll be honest with you. I hate social media, it sucks my time away, but it is honestly the only thing that has worked for me as far as building my platform and my marketing. Now you're wondering where this comes into play when it becomes to being professional. Imagine you're a reader and you're talking to an author, just in passing, an elevator or something and the first thing he/she says to you is. "Oh my fucking god, someone gave me a one star review! How dare they not appreciate my genius!"

Now I hope realize that it's rude and probably should have been kept in the authors mind. I get being frustrated, especially with drive by ratings, and reviews that just make no sense to you. I get it, I do, but here's the deal. They are going to happen. Every author gets bad reviews. Don't believe me? Go look up your favorite authors. Honestly, as a reader, I don't trust a book that doesn't have at least one low rating. Why? Because I feel like one book cannot be everyone's cup of tea. As an author you need to realize that. My point? You wouldn't do this in person, don't do it on your Facebook, tumbler, blog, twitter, whatever you use.

Best policy? Don't respond to the review or rating. Do not let your street team respond, and for the love of the writing gods do not stalk the reviewer! I can hear you now: But it's my personal page! I want to be real with my readers!

My answer to the first one: Yep, but this is the age of the internet, nothing is truly private. That's what's scary about it. Personal or not, you need to control your emotions and feelings. You are a business now, the way you act reflects on your product.

Second one: Be real with your readers, yes, let your readers know you're human to, but do that by interacting with them. Not ranting about them. I'm going to touch on that in just a minute.

Okay, so no responding to reviews. Next thing....do not go on some crazy rant about haters that you have. Seriously. We all have them, we all have people who say things mean about us or our work. Move along, for many of the same reasons above. You are going to hurt your brand if you react badly. This goes back to not ranting about your readers.

Interact with your readers, invite them to answer questions on your pages, they don't have to be related to writing or your books, they can be, but don't have to be. If they ask you a question, answer them honestly. (within reason of course) Even if the question is "What is the order of your series." You need to appreciate your readers, because without them you would be nothing.

Basically don't do anything online that you wouldn't do in person.

I fell off the marketing horse....and it hurt.

Not to mention I'm late with posting this. I'm sorry, my life got crazy (though I don't have any broken fingers like Mia, sooo really I have no excuse). This is another post about marketing and how important it is. Are you tired of us talking about it yet? Yes? Too bad.

So here's the deal. I read a marketing book and thought, oh yeah these are great ideas, but I'm doing most of them. But then over the past month, I noticed one thing here and there dropping off. Eventually I was just left with twitter and I let that die too. A few weeks ago, I sat down and asked myself, why? Why did I let it just drop off, I was doing well, the numbers were are least moving. What on earth was I thinking?

The conclusion? Not enough hours in the day. Like I mentioned, my life is crazy, it's gotten crazier since my last post on how I work my schedule. How? Try this on for size: I start a nanny job tomorrow, I'm attending school, and I'm freelancing. Yep. That's just the addendum to my list, I'll spare you the rest of it. So what did I decide to do? I had to sit down and make a choice:

Do I let myself drowned and fade into the background? Or do I start kicking and swimming again? I'm choosing to swim. The last two weeks I've pretty much ignore all my social media, except for little updates here and there, but no true marketing. I have a notebook now, on one side is one personality's marketing plan, on the other is the other personality. I do this because each pen name caters to a different cliental. What's in the notebook?

A schedule for Twitter: Themes for each day, what will be advertised and at what times, and a meme to follow for the day. *note* I only actually advertise every 3rd post or so. Why? So it doesn't seem like I"m spamming people, because that's not fun, it annoys everyone.

A schedule for Facebook: Similar to Twitter, I have Themes for each day, what to advertise and times. I get to work a little more freely with this one because I'm not limited to characters.

Google +: A bit on what I want to do on G+ every day.

You see the three above are very similar, yes, but each theme is different everyday and do not mimic each other. Would it be easier to have the same post on every social media, yes, but as a reader that annoys me...if it annoys me, it annoys someone else. So that being said, I don't do it that way.

What else is in the notebook? Current books, current number of reviews, current number of followers or likes. Why? So I can see where I need improvement or where the numbers are actually moving. There's also a spot for what I want to do on my blog. That is an important factor. I also have goals, because without them I have no sense of achievement for all my hard work.

WOW! But you said there's not enough hours in the day! It's true, there's not, but I'll be pre-scheduling everything I can so it runs without me. You may think that's cheating, but here's the deal...until I can hire someone to do it for me, I'm doing it that way. I'll still be checking in to respond to readers/followers questions and comments, but scheduling saves me a ton of time.

So that's how I'm getting back on the marketing horse! Here's hoping I can hit those goals!

Connect With Readers And Authors On Twitter, Part 2

My last post was all about #Hashtags on Twitter as a way to connect... This week is part two of connecting on Twitter.

Lists. Oh the “List” the often over looked hidden gem of the Twitter-verse. More powerful than a single #Hashtag, leaping over mounds of mindless tweets in a single bound. Is it lifesaver? A sanity-saver? Nope! It is all that and more! Okay no, not really, it’s just a simple “List” on Twitter. But it is a damn helpful tool.

There’s been some confusion as to what function Lists have on Twitter. It’s not any sort of group thing like on FB it is simply a way of organizing your Newsfeed. In a perfect world where we have no distractions the only thing on our Twitter feed would be only the things we are there to do, like network or reach an audience. But in reality most of our twitter feeds are full of celebrities we like, TV shows we watch, news sources, the actually people we are there to follow, and the random person we’ve found entertaining with their tweets.

On any given hour my twitter feed is a mess of jumbled up information, political debates, some funny response to something very serious, and multiple authors sharing info or passing along links. This morning I have a couple of authors tweeting about their books, Tyrese from Fast & the Furious, and a retweet from Ice-T:

This can make it very hard to find the stuff I am actively searching for. This is where Lists come in handy. I’ve organized the people I follow into categories. I have a list for Celebrities, Music, Nerd/Fangirl stuff, Publishers, Authors, Book Bloggers, TV shows, etc.

Yes it’s a little tedious to put everyone, one by one, onto a list. But in the end it is worth it when you are looking for something, or even better when you are trying to avoid looking for something, say like a show spoiler (this happens a lot on twitter) so if it’s the day after a show that I haven’t watched I will purposely not go to that shows list, so I can try my best to avoid spoilers.

But when I’m looking for say calls for submissions from Publishers or publishing news I can go to “Publishers” and get only a newsfeed full of the publishers I have on my List. Huzzah! That makes my day easier.

Then when I want to indulge in some Nerdy/Fangirl stuff I can pop on over to my “NrrrdGrrrl Stuff” List (don’t get the spelling reference, you need to look up mc chris and enjoy the nerdy goodness) and check out cast, crew, artists, and what not from some of my nerdy passions.

So bottom line, Lists make Twitter in all of its eclectic glory a little bit more organized and helps you find exactly the Tweets you are looking for. No jedi mind tricks required.