Marketing True Magics 16 – What do You Mean, Start Over?

As much as I’d love to say, “New Year, New Ideas!” that is not the case here.  The reality of the part-time marketer is that the best-laid plans go awry.

Three things led my marketing plan astray:

1. Took longer than I expected to finish the last edit of the book, which meant time way from marketing (We’re still good for our April launch though!).

2. Facebook changed its algorithm again, which means I have to rethink (read: ditch and do something different) all the Facebook stuff I was planning.

3. And then I got sick.  Dammit.

But on the bright side, this mean you all get to follow me on a desperate journey to figure out how to market the book without much time! How exciting is that? I’m thrilled to go on this adventure! Thrilled!  Like Bilbo Baggins with a dining room full of dwarves! Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole!  Like Sir Gawain awaiting the strike from the Green Knight’s axe!

All right, maybe “thrilled” is not the word I’m looking for….

But stay tuned!  In two weeks I’ll be putting up my first new marketing post of the year: Cutting to the Chase or Biggest Bang for the Buck!

Meanwhile, buy Small Magics and Cold Magics, because you want to know what all the fuss is about, don’t you?

Next Week: This Writing Life 20: My Many Methods of Outlining

Marketing True Magics 12: Why Facebook Rocks (no, really)

Some posts are harder to write than others and this was one of them.

I said last week, Facebook sucks for marketing, but that it was still worth it.  And then I spent a week struggling to figure out why.

Because, I was thinking about it wrong.

It’s like this:

Facebook’s Business Model is the High School Clique…

You don’t get to see what everyone’s doing. You get to see what the popular people are doing. And if you aren’t popular, well, you can use money to buy popularity (Yep. Still bitter about high school).

And Posts End Up Lost and Alone and Ignored…

It used to be that I could post to Facebook with exciting news about my books and expect a fair number of followers to see it and respond. These days, I get very excited message from Facebook explaining 8 people saw my post and wouldn’t I like to give Facebook money so more can see it?

So How Can I Promote on Facebook?

The answer is, you can’t.  Not effectively.  Not anymore. And that’s all right, because…

Facebook is Not for Promotions Anymore.

It took an hour of writing this post to reach this epiphany, folks, so listen up:

Facebook is for Fan Retention

People no longer find out about you on Facebook. People find out about you through other means and then go like you on Facebook. And someone who goes out of their way to like you is called a FAN. And fans are very, very good.

Fans like you and check your page regularly. They have notifications for your feed turned on. They are the ones most likely to buy your books, and so they deserve special treatment. Fans should see special content and get special insights and fresh gossip and a chance to speak to you.

So, here’s some ways to use Facebook as a Fan Retention tool:

Targeted Fan Events 

When you get an invite to an event, it makes you feel special. Now, most of the time you’re too busy to go, but at least you were invited, right?

With Facebook you can post an event (whether real or virtual), and invite people to it.  More important, though, is that you can target that invite to specific locations, so if you’re doing an reading in Elbow, Saskatchewan (yes, it’s a real place [http://www.elbowsask.com]) and you know you have a fan base there, you can target your fans from Elbow specifically in your event and send out a special invitation to for them to attend.

Contests 

Like events, contests are now for fans.  They are a chance to reward the people who care about you and have a bit of fun doing it. Your fans get a chance to connect and to get something others don’t, like free books or autographs or posters or whatever it is you are giving away this week.

Remember: contests on Facebook cannot be used to do anything that will promote your product or yourself (Annoying, eh?). You can’t ask people to share a post, or share a page, or like your page.

However: You can to drive some traffic to your page and hopefully increase your number of fans, but you have to be careful. Use sentences like “Tell your friends about this contest so they can get a chance to win, too!” and “If you want to learn more about what Erik Buchanan is up to, please like this page and turn on Notifications so you can keep up to date on all contests, events and posts.”

What you can’t have are any sentences that imply a benefit to any person promoting your contest, because the only one allowed to benefit from promotions on Facebook is Facebook.

Q&A’s

Q&A’s are events. You set up a public event saying “Ask Me Anything!” (or something similar) and invite all your existing fans to come to your page at a specific time and date and do just that.

When it is time for the event, in your “Ask Me Anything!” post to the top of your feed. People put their questions in the replies in the comments and then you reply to their replies.  It’s a great way for Fans to connect and learn more about you.

And, like a contest, you can ask those you’ve invited to invite their friends to come along.  Because it’s fun to meet a celebrity…

Hey, I can dream...

And who knows, those friends may become fans after they meet you.

Wait! How do I get non-fans to my Facebook Page?

Massive cross-platform promotions utilizing your website, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, blogs, Google+ and whatever else you've got.

Or, you know, give Facebook money.

Next Week: How’s that Marketing Plan Going?

Marketing True Magics 11: Time To Build My Facebook Followers or Why Facebook Sucks

It’s that time. I’ve got the twitter piece down to an art, if not a science, and it’s time to turn my attention to Facebook. And here is my confession: I don’t want to do it.

Frippin’ Facebook.

Facebook used to be THE place to be for free social media marketing. Bands, authors, artists and marketing companies built their fortunes on Facebook marketing. Then it all went bad.

Before we go on

This is my Facebook Page. Please like it. And tell your friends because, hey, why shouldn't your friends get to meet me, too?

What Went Wrong With Facebook?

Facebook is notorious for mucking about with it’s display feed, as it searches for the way to display information that will make them the most money.

Instead of seeing your friends who last posted and what they’re up to, for example, now you see a feed based on who’s posts are popular and whose aren’t, even if you set it to show “most recent posts.” It’s like Facebook decided that the high school model of “everyone wants to be like the cool kids” was a good one.  It isn’t. It sucks, especially if you’ve never been one of the cool kids.

No one really like the cool kids anyway, they just suck up to be popular and when high school is over those cool kids will be the losers sitting in their parents’ basements reminiscing about the good old days and wondering why they can’t find work because they were too busy being popular to study…

But I digress. And possibly project.

Pay to Show, Because Money

So the continuous change of the feed was bad enough, but then things got worse, especially for Pages. As of the Facebook going public, if I want more than 4% of my followers to see my Erik Buchanan Writer Page at any given time, I have to pay for the privilege. And the more followers I have, the more it’s going to cost.

Now, I can remind all my followers to hit the “Get Notifications” tab, but not everyone will do that, especially if they happen to see a friend say “hey, this guy is neat, like his page!” Which means that most of the people who are following me to hear my words of wisdom don’t have a clue what it is I am doing.

And even if you have hit the “Get Notifications” tab, it doesn’t mean you’ll see me, especially if you cousin Sadie releases her latest set of pictures of her Pug dressed up a Cersie Lannister in a dozen separate posts and she gets put at the top of your feed because everyone loves her pug pictures and she’s popular despite living in her parents basement and constantly talking about her cheerleader days fifteen year ago.

Sorry, still projecting… and how does she get that dog into that costume anyway?

Back to the Point

The reality for Facebook is that, like all other popular social media, there is a lot of noise. Check out this infographic to see what goes on there (and on other social media) in a day. It’s staggering.  So the problem here is the same problem with Twitter. How do you cut through the noise and get people to notice you.

And more important, is it worth the effort?

It Is

Because reasons, which I’ll talk about next week.

Next Week: Time To Build My Facebook Followers or Why Facebook Rocks

facebooking

Just thought I'd mention, for those who are on facebook and like to see what I'm doing with my time, I've started a facebook fan page to see about doing some social media marketing as things go forward. So, if you are on facebook and not yet a fan, pop on over and sign up.

After all, if a certain well-known pizza chain can get 1,000,000 fans, there's no reason I can't. Right?

Right?

All right, I'm shooting for the stars but, hey, you have to start somewhere.

And now, editing!

NetworkedBlogs

So I'm running a test here, because I signed up for NetworkedBlogs on Facebook, which is supposed to be running material from my Blog to my facebook page -- my page, not my profile, but it seems to be sending it to my profile. Not certain just yet.

So this is a test. We will see if it is working.

UPDATE: Apparently, the blog needs at least 4 followers on facebook to be visible, so we will see what happens. It's there, and I've sent out invites.