Some ruminations on the ever popular facebook and twitter:
When I first started researching the how tos of small publishing, conventional wisdom was that one needed both a facebook account and a twitter account in order to effectively market one's product. My experience is that they both can be effective marketing tools if one spends a lot of time on the computer and one can work with more than one window active.
While I have both a facebook account and a twitter account, I don't have the time to devote to making them work for me as a marketing tool. And I can't work with more than one window open at a time. I lose track of what I am doing and make many mistakes.
Unlike my website and my blog, what I post on those accounts is only available to be seen by the people that I am friends with or who are following me. Facebook and Twitter are not the most effective tools for reaching people who don't already know you. I find it rather surprising that they are/were so strongly advocated, because a blog and a website are much more effective at reaching people you don't already know. Anyone can read this blog. And if the Chinese spammers and hackers can find my website, then it is pretty easy for anyone else to find it, too.
Not to mention that your status and your tweets about your book are buried in everyone else's blathering about what they ate for dinner, how tired they are, OMG I just watched the most fantastic episode of Glee, and John found a lonely bull on his farm will you give it a home. I have to wonder how those who have used facebook and twitter to market their work got through all that noise.
If you made up flyers or bookmarks or something similar and took them down to the library, independent bookseller, coffeeshop, etc, you would have a better chance at reaching people interested in your book than you would with casual use of facebook and twitter.
The bottomline is don't sign up for a facebook account and/or a twitter account thinking that it's a great marketing tool. It takes a lot of time and effort on your part to make them work for you.
Amen.
ReplyDeleteAll marketing tools only work if you put in the time and energy and effort they require. Great post!
ReplyDeleteNicole, you're absolutely right.
ReplyDeleteI want to get the most bang for my buck of time expenditure. These two don't do that for me.
I'm not even sure that for an avid facebook user or tweeter that they work that well either. I'm a fan of several popular bestselling authors on facebook, and with their posts, they're only reaching the five thousand plus fans who are going to buy their books anyway.