Tag Archives: SOcial Media Reach

December 26, 2019 · 12:00 am

IN a world where you can be anything, be……

So this post has been a long time coming, so buckle up buttercup ‘cuz I got something to say.

People who know me know I like to quote famous women when the situation calls for it. One of my favorite sayings is attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth and was reportedly stitched on a pillow she had in her receiving room. I pull this little ditty out at times when people start to make disparaging comments about other people and I don’t want what they are saying to be overhead. It goes, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anyone, come sit by me!”

Now one variant on this I’ve seen is this one:

Which, truthfully, is what most people think when they hear the first iteration.

But I have a different slant on this because I have saved people from making fools of themselves on more than one public occasion by interjecting this into a conversation that, if overheard, would cause the person speaking some embarrassment at the very least.

Because I say this – often – it got me thinking about the state of the world we live in these days, where strangers have been given carte blanche for saying anything and everything about you on social media without any real consequences. Social Media and especially in my opinion Twitter, is the new bully. Not the entity itself, but it does give bullies the pulpit ( the very real definition of a BULLY PULPIT!) and a platform in which to advance their hateful ways.

We all know that the saying sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me is a blatant lie. Don’t believe that? Get your head out of the sand and check the high school stats for teen suicides from relentless verbal and social media bullying.

I have a dear and lovely writing friend who never comments on social media about her political views or beliefs. One day, she broke that rule and within seconds began to suffer a backlash from tweeters calling her stupid, an epithet I will not repeat nor spell here, and various other nasty things. She could have done the knee-jerk thing that 99.99% of people do nowadays and responded to the negativity with negativity of her own.

She did not.

Instead, she took the high road and for every nastygramTweet she received, she responded with a meme featuring Mr. Rogers, the king of kindness. Brilliant. Why was it brilliant, you ask? Well, when she responded to the hashtag feed, every negative statement made to her was flooded with a kindness themed one. Pretty soon it was those Mr. Rogers kindness memes that were trending and not the hateful hashtagspeak.

Now, bear with me here for a moment. D0 you remember that 1970’s commercial for Fabergre Organics shampoo? The one that said,” If you tell a friend, and she tells a friend and so one and so on?”

Well, that was a very effective marketing campaign for its time. My idea to combat the negativity spreading like venereal disease along the planet and born of that effective marketing campaign, is this: when you hear something negative be it on twitter, facebook, any where there is a platform for bullying and hatespeak, combat the negativity with something positive and then retweet/share/link it to all your followers. People will respond to that positive message by retweeting/sharing/linking it all their followers, and so on and so on.

Think it won’t work? Let me give you a come to Jesus moment, peeps.

Every day I tweet/fb/ instagram a morning motivation. It is always a positive affirmation. And every single solitary morning and all throughout the day, I see it pass by my twitter and FB feed with retweets and shares. Most of that traffic is from people I don’t know from Adam. SO if you don’t think you have the power in your hands and at your keyboard to combat the negative with a positive, again I will say to you: get your head of out of the sand.

I could have said get it out of a different place – like a body part – but…trying to be good here, peeps.

Does this sound a little Pollyana to anyone? Too saccharine? Too old school? If it does, okay, ‘cuz sometimes you gotta go old school to combat the present day bulls**t.

So, darling peeps, my rant is over. The lesson learned today: Don’t give into the negative. Shine your light in the direction of positivity any way you can. It does work. Light will ALWAYS drive away the darkness.

Rant over.

Until next time ~Peg

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Filed under Pet Peeves

Tagged as #amblogging #amwriting, #beatbackthedark, #chooseKindness, Banishing negativity, Do good, hate-speak, in mu humble opinion, Kindess, LIght vs dark, Mr. Rogers, OpEd post, OPinion, Social Media Content, Social Media Engagement, SOcial Media Reach, Twitter

October 15, 2018 · 4:00 am

Something new…part 2

Last week I wrote a blog post about a new marketing strategy I’ve adopted to connect with new readers ( and old ones, too!). Facebook Live Videos.

If you know one thing about me, you know that I absolutely cringe when I see myself on film and hear myself on audiotape. A perpetually scratchy, whiney voice plus a really crooked face are the reasons I never went into the performing/visual arts. In all honesty, people would have paid me to NOT speak.

But….

In this ever-changing-by-the-minute publishing industry I am now immersed in, I need to not only frequently connect with the people who are already reading my books, but with new readers who haven’t heard of me yet. To that end I’ve been taking a month long author marketing class. It was here I first heard about author facebook live videos for promotion.

Now that I’ve started doing the videos, the next step, according to the marketing guru I’ve been listening to, is to find alternate ways of promoting them. Facebook is great, but you want to increase traffic to those videos, and not have them seen by just the people who are already your “friends” nor do you want to solely depend on those friends to share the vids with their friends who might not be your friends.

Confused? Think how I feel.

Next step, then, is to offer them on a bigger, wider, platform. Well, what platform for videos is bigger and wider than You Tube?

Yup, peeps. I’ve become a You-Tube queen. I actually, freely, and of my own volition, put my crooked mug – my videoed crooked mug – on display for all the world to view and comment on. Butterflies have nothing on the nerves flapping in my stomach.

But I’ll be honest and tell you that first video I did had more hits, likes, and shares than any post I’ve written or put up in over a year, so yay for that!

I’ve added the youtube link to my “find me here” spiel at the bottom of most of my blog pieces and I’m hoping that people who have no idea who I am click on that link if they read one of my posts.

It seems that the marketing and promo end of the publishing-a-book-business is never going to end for me, so I’m trying to embrace it as best I can. And I’m smiling while I do it. Well….trying to smile and not cry, at least.

If you’re looking for me, here I am: Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me //Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// BookMe // Monkey me //Watch me

Social Media and the Quest for Name Recognition…

That’s a wordy title, but it’s an accurate one for what I’ve been mulling over lately.

I’m a household name. In MY household…no other. This is tantamount to the Kiss of Death for a writer, because no one is going to read your books if they don’t know who the heck you are.

True ‘dat, right?

In the past, publishers have had entire teams of people who diligently took steps to make sure their writers’ names were recognized easily. Marketing campaigns, publicity tours, multi-city book signings. Any and every effort the team could get the author’s name to be recognized by the general book reading public was made. With the advent of less traditional publishing avenues, most of the tried and true publishers now are only moving their advertising dollars toward their already recognizable, big-name, authors.

What’s the relatively unknown writer to do?

I’m traditionally published by two presses, Kensington/Lyrical Shine and The Wild Rose Press. Both love their authors, make no mistake about that. They are in the business of selling books and they need authors to achieve their goal. But taking a chance on a relatively new author – and by chance I mean throwing advertising and marketing dollars behind them to promote them – is something both of them are reluctant to do. In the WRP case, they do minimal to no marketing for their authors – the authors and the other writers associated with the company do the bulk share of getting the word out about a new book release. Lyrical Shine has a marketing department, but with so many authors on their docket, those dollars are stretched thin.

So, what’s an author like me – unknown, no advertising or marketing background – to do, you ask?
Well, of course I’ll tell ya.

When my first book was scheduled for publication I frantically tried to learn whatever I could about marketing and how to promote myself on a nearly non-existent budget. It was hard, peeps. Real hard.

I joined TWITTER, had my best friend set-up my WEBSITE, and made a Facebook Professional Page. I didn’t go out and employ any book-tour companies via the web because I didn’t know they existed back then!!! I garnered several hundred new followers from all this, but it wasn’t enough to make me more well known as an author ( and you know that ultimately means – no sales!)

When the second and third books rolled around and were ready to be published, I had discovered on-line book tours, PINTEREST, and INSTAGRAM, and Goodreads.

I got even more followers and saw a tiny uptick in sales, so a good thing, but still, my name is not showing up on any bestseller lists, or on any “Watch for the next book from this fab author” lists.

By the time I got my Lyrical contract, I had joined Triberr, BookBub, and Google + and started entering more and more contests. My thought was if I finaled in any of them, that will introduce my name to more people. If I, GOD-PLEASE! – won any of them, my name and my work would be more accessible and known.

Haven’t won any yet, but have finaled in a bunch, so that’s a positive thing, right?

My first book was published in 2015. Since then, 3 years later, I’ve got 2,260 Twitter followers, 1343 people on my FB author account, on Triberr I have a personal reach of 183K and on BookBub I have 281 followers.

Now, those numbers are…okay. But they need to be waaaaaaaaaaay more to have any kind of impact on the romance reading world.

So…

I have a favor to ask ( you saw that coming, didn’t you?!)

If you aren’t already following me across my media, please take this opportunity to do so. At the end of most of my blog pieces I usually list all my Social Media sites and beg, er, ask you to find me. Well, please continue to do that, but could you also please follow me? Here’s the list:Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// BookMe

And if you are already following me across my SM sites – #BLESSYOU and #ILOVEYOU

It’s so humbling to beg!

My current #SocialMedia obsession…

So you can probably guess the answer to the blog title today. I discovered TRIBERR a little over a year ago when author (and good friend) Marianne Rice spoke to my NHRWA chapter about using social media to build a target audience. It was a great workshop overall, but when she told us about TRIBERR, I immediately looked into securing a spot on the media site.

So, what is Triberr and why is it such a worthwhile Social media site to be a part of? Here’s a great article on exactly what it is and does, link, but in a nutshell, Triberr hooks you up with other bloggers on the web who will share your content to their sites, blogs, social media posts, etc. When I first joined the social media world I had a world wide web “reach” of maybe ( on a good day) 100 people. That included Twitter, FB, and Instagram.

After one week of joining Triberr, I saw a 10 percent increase in traffic across my sites and within a month, that had risen ten fold. My Triberr reach as of today is 171,ooo. I don’t even know 100 people, much less 171,000!! My Twitter followers increase daily ( this morning they number 2,220) and my FB author page is up to 1,301, up nine since last Monday. I know those numbers may not seem impressive, but when you’re a virtual nobody like I am, getting your name out there so poeple can buy your books is hard. The fact that when I started writing for publication I had 1 follower on Twitter ( my darling daughter) and now I number 2k+ is amazeballs!

How I increased those numbers is no secret: I joined TRIBERR and then started following other TRIBES devoted to writing, marketing, and author branding. This is my own site (called a TRIBE) Strong Women. Loving Men

where my blog postings get listed daily, and where other authors/bloggers/readers ask to join my tribe. I’m a member of about a dozen other tribes where I read and post those bloggers’ content daily, thereby increasing my own web reach. It’s a win/win situation as far as I am concerned.

Since I’ve limited the type of tribes I want to be associated with – all romance writing, marketing, and review sites – I can target my reach to those individuals who read and write and review romance books. If I wanted to really expand my reach, and I probably will in the next year or so, I’d include book bloggers, readers, and reviewers of all book genres, not only romance. But even if you wanted to narrow down your scope to, say, just romance readers/bloggers/reviewers who only read/review/blog about Paranormal Romance, or historical romance, you could do that as well.

The site is free, the only cost – the time you take to share the posts you want to each day. And you don’t even have to do it every day. I do because I typically blog every day, but if you’re a once a week blogger, that’s fine. As long as you share other posts in your tribe, you’re fine.

If you’re looking to grow your on-line and social media presence, Triberr is a great way to do so with very little every and a whole lotta reach! I’ve even included it in my search engine sites.

And when I’m not on Triberr, you can usually find me here:

Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// Book Me