What's the best way to promote?

[Kittie_Cappuccino]

Hello fellow writers and readers!

I'm curious to if anyone knows a good way to get you work or name out there? I know not to be too pushy about it, because that's just off putting, but whats a good way to promote your work then?

I would love to know some tips and tricks, and if there is anything you like writers to do! Thank you to anyone who helps C:

Edit: If you have any questions on promotion or blogging, feel free to ask Projectlazy smile He'll answer any questions you have!

[Sir Icehawk]

In what context? In general, you get your name out there by doing. If you want to a published writer, you write and submit like crazy. If you want to be a photographer, you take pictures. It all depends on your goals.

Blogging, joining discussions on professional sites, and a billion other things are possible.

Advertising isn't entirely different. You don't want to spam your links on facebook or twitter. That's annoying. You put it in your sig on sites you visit. If you have a book published, you go to bookstores and ask if they'd like them signed. You write and submit stories. We could talk for days about all this.

[X of Castigation]

Shotgun method.

[t o l e k s z i]

I would also really like to hear more about this, too. More specifically, the best ways to promote an already-published book online and offline.

[Kittie_Cappuccino]

Sir Icehawk

In what context? In general, you get your name out there by doing. If you want to a published writer, you write and submit like crazy. If you want to be a photographer, you take pictures. It all depends on your goals.

Blogging, joining discussions on professional sites, and a billion other things are possible.

Advertising isn't entirely different. You don't want to spam your links on facebook or twitter. That's annoying. You put it in your sig on sites you visit. If you have a book published, you go to bookstores and ask if they'd like them signed. You write and submit stories. We could talk for days about all this.

I guess I'm mainly looking at ways to just get people interested in what I write. I did create a blog, but so far that isn't doing as well as I had hoped. I'm not sure if it due to the site I choose, or just the lack of unpublished work I post. I haven't gotten published yet, but I would really love it if I did.

[ProjectLazy]

Part 1

Hey Everyone, I'm going to try and keep this simple but I may rant on a bit.

Firstly if you have one project in mind you need to figure out how you are going to format it. For example I have an ongoing series I write (link in sig). You might have something all finished up and ready to go. A lot of the promotion is the same but some things may vary.

If you are doing series then your best bet is to start your own website or blog. This way you have somewhere to post it all that is your own. Having it on your own space is important. I'll explain why below.

If you have something finished then you are going to need to decide if it's good enough that a publisher will want it or if you'll have to self publish. If you are going to self publish then your best bet is to make an ebook. It's pretty easy and there's 101 guides online on how to do that. Again you are going to want to make a website to promote it. If you have a publisher interested then don't worry they might set something up for you.


Having your own space is important. When you post your work on sites like Gaia or Deviantart you are part of a much much larger pool. If some one came to Gaia's home page right now the odds that they would find your work without a link is incredibly low. However if you have your own site you could show up in different search engines.

How's this work? Well when you create a site you don't want to just dump your written work and walk away. You want to spend lots of time writing more and more that talks about you work. You would use phrases that people would search for if they wanted to find your work. This is part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

EX: Your story is a very personal memoir about dealing with bad breath. Along with the pages where your written work is you would have other pages that talk about bad breath as a whole. So maybe you accompany it with a blog about bad breath or you update weekly with stories about bad breath or maybe you talk about cures for bad breath. Now include phrases like "How to cure bad breath" "How to deal with bad breath" "personal stories of bad breath". If some one Google's that your page could show up in the results.

See writing for a reader and writing for a search engine are two different things. You could write a 500 page novel about Bad Breath and only mention bad breath 5 times. A person would understand what you mean perfectly but a search engine would barely know what your subject was. This is why we surround our work with pages that are on topic and densely populated with words and phrases that would imply so.

Search Engines like Google are by far the most reliable way to get eyes onto your work.There's more to SEO though and I suggest you spend some time looking into it.

[ProjectLazy]

Part 2

Self Promotion is great but it's very easy to waste your time or make a fool out of yourself. I could list ways to do this all night but I'll start with the basics.

Social Media
Depending on which one you use it can be very easy to gather a small following and generate traffic to your work. Don't kid yourself though 1000 followers on twitter or 500 friends on Facebook still only converts to about 2 people taking a look and your stuff. Unless you hook them most will leave after 30 seconds.

With social media you have to be careful not to over saturate people with your work. I'd suggest a 1:10 ratio to start. So if you post a link to your stuff once, then you should post 10 times about other stuff. You can play with that number a bit as well depending on the range of your work.

Most forms of social media have some way to segregate hobbies or interest. Groups, Hangouts, Tag, Circles etc. If you write horror then get in with the horror junkies. Make friends and interact but don't fall behind on the writing. Like the posters above me noted you have to create lots of content if you want to get noticed.


Links

Using Textlinks (like the one in my sig) you can forward a bit of extra traffic to your work. Gaia is the perfect example of where you want to take advantage of these. Every time you post there's another breadcrumb that could point back to your work. This is also an important part of SEO (Search Engines Optimization). Think of the links as little arrows that direct people towards you. Search engines see all these links pointing back to you and translate it to mean people are interested in you. The Image below will give you a visual representation.



Not all links are equal. In fact links posted on forums and social media are some of the least valuable. The best thing you can do is get a link to your work posted on a high traffic site with a good reputation. In the beginning this can be hard. Getting a review of your work with a link to it is the optimal way to do this. A good review for the people and a sweet link for the computer.

These kinds of links can be hard to get. My tip here would be to find a dozen of the millions of book review blogs on the net and email a few of them. Ask nicely for a review. Might work, Might not but those links are worth chasing.

There's lots of place to make links work for you. Just keep your eyes open.

[ProjectLazy]

Part 3

In part one and two I gave you the basics. The stuff that works for pretty much everyone and the stuff that will insure some eyes on the page. In Part three I"m going to through out some crazy stuff. Some of it will work, a lot won't. Results will vary from person to person.


Collaborations

Working with another person on something can give you access to an untapped market. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to co-write a book together. Maybe you could write a forward or about the author for their book. Maybe you could do a guest blog on their website. Make friends and help where you can. Everything you can put your name on is a bonus. Or at least it is in he beginning.

It doesn't have to be writers either. You could work with artists as well.


Pinterest
Great pictures will travel. If you can find good artwork to accompany your work then Pin them. It can't hurt and it's more links back to your work. Even if the the picture is just a picture of you from your personal blog Pin it.


Writing Contests
There are hundreds of these. Apply for anything that might fit your work. It's like buying a lottery ticket except it doesn't cost anything. So why the heck not?

Real World Job
This is a crazy one but see if there's a real world job that needs a writer. Schools often need writers for yearbooks and such. The local paper is a good place to try. Often they don't look for high qualifications. Anyway look around and see where you can get your hands dirty. Putting your name on something is good.

[Jesca Dragon]

Also, if you're a novelist, one of the best things you can do is publish another book.

One, get's your name into the "Latest" section of people who keep track of that stuff.

Two, inspires people to check out where the story began, if it's a series.

Three, suddenly, there's two titles out there, two chances to get seen.

As well as everything ProjectLazy said.

[I_Write_Ivre]

It really depends on the writer and the work, given how many options there are.

However, I have a follow up question: How well do the 'Ask the Author' stickies here work? So people actually care about them, or is it just spam that gaia ignores due to getting money to toerh people?

[X of Castigation]

Punch somebody out on live TV and repeatedly scream your name or whatever.

[Kittie_Cappuccino]

Thank you so much for all the suggestions! It really helps to get an idea of what I can do, and things that can/will work C:

I especially want to thank ProjectLazy for giving me so much help! I have a tumblr blog of my work, but really all the info you gave me is really going to help!

[ProjectLazy]

No problem one thing I forgot to go into is that search engines devalue contents on sites like Tumblr, DecviantArt or Gaia.

Since the base line for those sites is pretty much everything goes you want rank as highly as your own site or something made specifically for writers.

Basically you want your writing on a tight niche site or your own. Tumblr may help you get exposure but you should still set something up for just you. Blogger is a good free choice and since it's owned by Google it gets a small boost in their algorithm

[ProjectLazy]

Also in the has question in the future about promotion or making mine as a writer feel free to pm privately.

[SebastiansLittleDoll]

If (or 'after', so that I can keep my morale up) I publish my novel, I'm gonna tweet about it (though hopefully I'll get more followers by then). Then I'll probably make a pretty signature with info about the book or whatever in the sig, and post like mad hell in the Chatterbox. Eh, maybe not the best idea, but it's something.

ProjectLazy

BLESS YOUR SOUL for that mini guide you posted :')