A couple of weeks ago, someone asked how we could pinpoint the key people to extend our social media network. That is a good question. A smaller network of effective influencers is far more powerful than a thousand followers who add little social media value. What is social media value? Well, these are the members of your social grid who participate actively and add good content to the Internet community. We are going to talk about the different kinds of influencers in a moment. Find these key individuals, and there are no limits to your digital reach. These influencers are platform-building GOLD and your most valuable asset.
So how do you find the key influencers?
Well, there are a number of ways to pinpoint your major influencers, but it is tricky. Why? Because unlike direct marketing or old-fashioned PR, the goal of social media is to influence entire groups of people. We aren’t just targeting one individual, but the individual and his/her surrounding community. That is one of the reasons that, unlike direct marketing, the overall effectiveness of social media is not as easy to measure. There are some SIM (Social Influence Marketing) metrics that one can run, and companies that can help you locate your referent influencers, but I don’t know that they are all that helpful for authors wanting to build a platform.
Yeah, you are going to have to do some work.
Writers are different than companies doing social media. That was the impetus behind me writing a book for authors. Not all tools that work well in the corporate world cross over.
Unlike Honda or Victoria’s Secret, most of us are a one-man operation. We don’t have a marketing department, and we also have a different kind of product. The CEO of Honda is not responsible for making every car that comes off the assembly line. Yet, until we become brand names and too big to handle all our own writing, we are responsible for the material that hits the bookstore shelves.
We cannot outsource our social media content (blogs, articles, excerpts, commentary, group activity, etc.) like, say, Bud Light or Geiko.
The plain fact of the matter is that the more you participate in social media, the better the results. And when I say participate, that means strategized participation (mixed with fun) with clear end goals. I talk about how to do this in my upcoming book, We Are Not Alone—Writers and Social Media… or something to that effect. Title could change slightly. Publisher wouldn’t let me call it, Stop Sending Me Farm Animals and Go Build Your Platform before I Send You a Digital Kick in the Butt.
But basically, you do need to have a plan. In order to have a plan, you must understand the players if you hope to identify those who can maximize your influence, thereby minimizing the time you spend on social media. Not all users are created equally. They are divided into categories that correspond with the influence they exact of their surrounding networks.
Expert Influencer—is just what it says. These are the authorities in a certain subject, and people look to these experts for information, advice, and guidance. The experts are heavyweights when it comes to influencing the decisions of those in their networks. Expert influencers usually have a picture of themselves as their icon. They also generally have huge following that number in the thousands or tens of thousands, depending on the platform. Also, a quick glance to their website (which is usually denoted in the bio) will give you a clear picture that this person is an expert in her field. Oprah. Enough said.
Referent Influencer—is in the person’s social network and exercises influence. Referent influencers are a little trickier to figure out. They generally have a fairly large following, but not always. Quality and quantity are not the same thing.
So how do you figure out the referent influencers? Well, you have to participate so you can pay attention. For the most part the referent influencers are highly active on social media and thus usually have a larger following than the casual user, but maybe not as large as the expert. Yet, it is their level of meaningful activity that makes them essential to have in your network. They post a lot of times a day and are well-known, liked, and respected for good content. People around them trust them for good stuff. These are the people you miss when they take a day off.
In my opinion, the referent influencer is the most valuable. Why? First, it is easier to get close to them and befriend them and gain their support. If you write a blog about parenting (as part of your NF book platform), what are the odds of becoming part of Oprah’s inner circle? Referent influencers are far more approachable.
Secondly, referent influencers are genuine and personal and thus exercise tremendous authority. I think that people tend to trust these types influencers almost as much the experts, if not more. Why? Well, human nature. We like things from the proverbial mouth of the horse. We can’t really be sure Oprah picks her Books of the Month for herself. Likely she has gatekeepers who narrow the field. But, Suzy Lit-Girl, freelance writer and respected book reviewer who posts every week and has 3000 over people in her immediate network (including big authors and publishing houses) is easier to win to your side. It is a much easier feat to get Suzy Lit-Girl to repost your blog or your book's review than it is to make it on to Oprah's radar (let alone get a plug). Additionally, those who follow Suzy view her as an authority and listen to her much like an expert, even though, by strict definition, she isn’t.
Thirdly, there are far more referent influencers than expert influencers. A lot more. There are a lot more Suzy Lit-Girls to befriend than Oprahs.
*** Many referent influencers are considered experts in certain subject areas. Pay attention.
Positional Influencer—is often in the person’s inner circle. Friends, family, spouses are all examples of positional influencers. Yes, whether most of us admit it or not, our mothers’ opinions still influence us.
Virtually everyone on social media is a positional influencer to someone else. Positional influencers can be very valuable to a writer, especially in certain genres. For instance, I imagine that most 4-year-olds don’t drive down to Barnes & Noble, slap down a credit card and buy a stack of kid’s books. But moms do. If you happen to write for children, middle grade, teens, or any group that typically would not be the purchaser of the book, then you must target the positional influencers or risk losing a huge percentage of your potential consumers.
This goes back to what we discussed a couple of weeks ago about profiling the reader as part of your social media campaign. But one would also be wise to profile the purchaser.
Ideally, you will recruit the referent and expert influencers who hold sway over the positional influencers. Recruit SuperCarpool_Mom (referent influencer) and @ParentingMagazine to your side and the moms will listen.
*** The key to doing social media well, resides in recruiting and mobilizing the all types of influencers, particularly the referent and expert influencers.
At the end of the day, be good to anyone who is being good to you. Networks are hard to build, and we need as much help as we can get from our social community. So if others help “raise your barn,” (repost your posts) make sure you pitch in with theirs. It is just good manners.
I might qualify, I advise being kind and reciprocating because it is the right thing to do. But, we do have to deal with
reality. We only have so much time. Yes, we need to be good to as many as we can, but we need to be mindful to pay attention to those with greater reach and influence if we hope to have time left over to write great books.
Happy writing! Until next time…
For more ways to grow from writer to published author, I highly recommend Bob Mayer’s Warrior Writer Book and Workshops, the inspiration behind this Warrior Writer blog series. Sign up today at www.bobmayer.org. Bob teaches all over the country, but he also runs Warrior Writer classes on-line, so don’t wait. Take charge of your destiny today.
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Monday, May 31, 2010
Is it a Good Idea to Post Chapters of Your Novel On-Line to Build a Fan Base?
As many of you might already know, I teach Social Media for Writers and I am also finishing a book designed to teach writers how to use social media to market and build a platform. I am all about helping writers get content up on the web and teaching you how to use that content to gather a following of readers. The largest component to building a Web presence is that you must post regular content that is informative, entertaining, and ideally, engaging. At this past conference, the question I got more than almost any other was, “Is it a good idea to post my writing on-line?”
My answer was, “Depends on what you’re posting. Most everything yes, in limited quantity. Chapters of a novel? No. No. Definitely…um, no.”
Yesterday, I ran across a blog post from Jane Friedman, a prominent member of the publishing community. “Stop being afraid to post your work on-line!” she claims. Ms. Friedman’s blog was excellent and made some really informative points, but I think there were a number of caveats that should have been included, which we will discuss.
Ms. Freidman cited all kinds of successes, blog-to-book deals and self-published books that landed contracts and success, but not one of them was a novel. She also cited the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, but here I feel we have three large problems 1) totally different medium (text messaging) 2) likely a different format than a traditional novel and 3) could possibly be a Japanese idiosyncrasy.
I agree with Ms. Friedman that posting your work on-line is helpful for certain kinds of writing and it certainly worked for “Stuff White People Like” and “Julia & Julia”, but what about novels?
Well, fiction does tend to always be the sticky wicket where the rules don’t apply the same way. Ms. Friedman kept using the generic terms work and manuscript, but the successes she cited were all non-fiction, How-To, observational humor, etc . . . but, again, no novels (Japanese text novels being the strange exception).
Ms. Friedman’s blog is fantastic, and has great advice for all kinds of writers. Non-fiction and humor lend themselves to making good blogs and building an Internet following. But, for novels, many of the benefits of posting pieces of your book break down, and I’ll explain why.
Test marketing. Ms. Friedman asserts that posting your work on-line is a great way to test market.
Fair enough. But before you get too excited, there are certain inherent problems with doing any kind of accurate test marketing for fiction.
First and foremost, are you certain that you are getting an accurate statistical sampling when you post chapters of your book on your blog? Most of us cannot accomplish this.
In my experience, the majority of new writers do not have a statistically large following on their blog or even on social media.
Because chapters of a novel are a piece of a larger whole, they are extremely difficult to gain the following and fan base like “Fail Nation—A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails.” In fact, “Stuff White People Like” had a Facebook following in the tens of thousands so it was easy to glean that it was popular and well-received. But chapters from an unknown, unpublished author? Tougher to duplicate these kind of numbers. Way tougher.
Thus, any posted comments about your chapters are a hard way to gain any genuine insight because of this huge problem of numbers (or lack thereof). The smaller the group sampled, the less accurate the Bell Curve. Ten or even twenty people who take time to comment, positively or negatively is in no way an accurate litmus test as to how well your story is being received.
Additionally, the individuals who are most likely to follow or comment on the writer’s work are generally a member of that writer’s peer group—friends, family, fellow writers. Thus, it seems to me that this is the digital equivalent of telling an agent, “All my friends and family just love my book!”
Can you test market fiction by posting on-line? Sure. Anything is possible. But I think it is a lot tougher to do than it seems, and requires a very large and diverse following to get an accurate idea of how good your novel really is. Not to mention that a writer’s work could look perfect and lovely when viewed in small snippets, but the novel as a whole, could be a disaster. I think there are better uses of a new writer’s time and better content to use for platform-building than sections of a novel.
Getting feedback on your work. Ms. Freidman is definitely correct on this point. Feedback makes us better writers. But again, I think this is one of those ideas that are way better in theory than in practice.
Sort of like, in theory I want my husband to tell me if I am gaining weight, but in practice?
The plain truth is that we have feelings and we all care deeply about our writing.
My issue with posting on-line is that it is a tough way to get accurate feedback for a number of reasons. When you get critique in your writing group, you know whose opinion is valuable and whose isn’t. When an agent critiques your work, you know that is a valid critique whether you agree with it or not. But when you open yourself up to the worldwide web, who knows if that person commenting knows a protagonist from a potato?
Additionally (this ties in to my earlier point), if you have a network comprised of mainly friends, colleagues and family (which most people do), do you really believe they are going to be brutally honest and comment publicly that your writing was awful? They won’t, because they aren’t jerks. They are your friends and do not want to hurt your feelings.
It is one thing to ask for our brutal feedback in person, discussed over a table in a local library during critique group. It is a whole other ball of wax entirely when you want us to post that same feedback on the Internet publicly and in writing. Most of us just aren’t going to do that to another writer, even when it comes to mild critique. If the writing isn’t that great, most of us just won’t say anything. And is that helpful to the writer for the purposes of feedback? Probably not.
But what about those who don’t care about your feelings, who aren’t personally vested in you?
Before you post anything, ask yourself one important question. Can I take someone eviscerating my work in a very public forum? Anonymity does weird things to people. Most of the time readers will be nice and kind and helpful, but sometimes they can be just plain horrible. If they tear apart a blog, that is one thing. That’s 500-1000 words. But with your novel? All it takes are a couple of negative remarks to crater your self-confidence and send even the best of us scurrying back to our laptops to rewrite our entire plot (and there might not be anything wrong).
I remember a couple years ago I posted a humorous piece for public critique on my MySpace blog. I must have had 20 people who told me is was awesome and hysterical. But I had one huge jerk who posted a really hurtful mean comment, and I am still not over it to this day. I never felt the same joy about that article, and all it took was one person’s nastiness to crush it. Was my response logical? No. But it was common. Humans are emotional creatures, and when you look up “Emotional Creature” in the encyclopedia, I think it says, “See Writers.”
Even published authors have a tough time when someone posts a nasty comment about their work in a public forum. But there is a difference. They have a published book, professional validation, and sales figures to ease their pain. The rest of us can just end up feeling like we are trapped in Hell's Dunking Booth.
My professional opinion is that for all other kinds of writing, go read Jane Friedman’s blog. The link is posted at the end. But for those who desire to be successful, published novelists, chapters of your novel are not the best choice for content on your blog or your web page. I recommend my blog from two weeks ago, “Where are All the Readers?—Social Media & the Writer’s Revolution” for some ideas of what makes good content (instead of chapters of your novel).
Happy writing! Until next time…
Jane Friedman’s blog
http://writerunboxed.com/
(specifically) http://writerunboxed.com/2010/04/23/stop-being-afraid-of-posting-your-work-online/
To learn how more about the publishing business, I highly, highly recommend Bob Mayer's Warrior Writer book and workshops (now on-line, so no excuses). Sign up today at www.bobmayer.org.
My answer was, “Depends on what you’re posting. Most everything yes, in limited quantity. Chapters of a novel? No. No. Definitely…um, no.”
Yesterday, I ran across a blog post from Jane Friedman, a prominent member of the publishing community. “Stop being afraid to post your work on-line!” she claims. Ms. Friedman’s blog was excellent and made some really informative points, but I think there were a number of caveats that should have been included, which we will discuss.
Ms. Freidman cited all kinds of successes, blog-to-book deals and self-published books that landed contracts and success, but not one of them was a novel. She also cited the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan, but here I feel we have three large problems 1) totally different medium (text messaging) 2) likely a different format than a traditional novel and 3) could possibly be a Japanese idiosyncrasy.
I agree with Ms. Friedman that posting your work on-line is helpful for certain kinds of writing and it certainly worked for “Stuff White People Like” and “Julia & Julia”, but what about novels?
Well, fiction does tend to always be the sticky wicket where the rules don’t apply the same way. Ms. Friedman kept using the generic terms work and manuscript, but the successes she cited were all non-fiction, How-To, observational humor, etc . . . but, again, no novels (Japanese text novels being the strange exception).
Ms. Friedman’s blog is fantastic, and has great advice for all kinds of writers. Non-fiction and humor lend themselves to making good blogs and building an Internet following. But, for novels, many of the benefits of posting pieces of your book break down, and I’ll explain why.
Test marketing. Ms. Friedman asserts that posting your work on-line is a great way to test market.
Fair enough. But before you get too excited, there are certain inherent problems with doing any kind of accurate test marketing for fiction.
First and foremost, are you certain that you are getting an accurate statistical sampling when you post chapters of your book on your blog? Most of us cannot accomplish this.
In my experience, the majority of new writers do not have a statistically large following on their blog or even on social media.
Because chapters of a novel are a piece of a larger whole, they are extremely difficult to gain the following and fan base like “Fail Nation—A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails.” In fact, “Stuff White People Like” had a Facebook following in the tens of thousands so it was easy to glean that it was popular and well-received. But chapters from an unknown, unpublished author? Tougher to duplicate these kind of numbers. Way tougher.
Thus, any posted comments about your chapters are a hard way to gain any genuine insight because of this huge problem of numbers (or lack thereof). The smaller the group sampled, the less accurate the Bell Curve. Ten or even twenty people who take time to comment, positively or negatively is in no way an accurate litmus test as to how well your story is being received.
Additionally, the individuals who are most likely to follow or comment on the writer’s work are generally a member of that writer’s peer group—friends, family, fellow writers. Thus, it seems to me that this is the digital equivalent of telling an agent, “All my friends and family just love my book!”
Can you test market fiction by posting on-line? Sure. Anything is possible. But I think it is a lot tougher to do than it seems, and requires a very large and diverse following to get an accurate idea of how good your novel really is. Not to mention that a writer’s work could look perfect and lovely when viewed in small snippets, but the novel as a whole, could be a disaster. I think there are better uses of a new writer’s time and better content to use for platform-building than sections of a novel.
Getting feedback on your work. Ms. Freidman is definitely correct on this point. Feedback makes us better writers. But again, I think this is one of those ideas that are way better in theory than in practice.
Sort of like, in theory I want my husband to tell me if I am gaining weight, but in practice?
The plain truth is that we have feelings and we all care deeply about our writing.
My issue with posting on-line is that it is a tough way to get accurate feedback for a number of reasons. When you get critique in your writing group, you know whose opinion is valuable and whose isn’t. When an agent critiques your work, you know that is a valid critique whether you agree with it or not. But when you open yourself up to the worldwide web, who knows if that person commenting knows a protagonist from a potato?
Additionally (this ties in to my earlier point), if you have a network comprised of mainly friends, colleagues and family (which most people do), do you really believe they are going to be brutally honest and comment publicly that your writing was awful? They won’t, because they aren’t jerks. They are your friends and do not want to hurt your feelings.
It is one thing to ask for our brutal feedback in person, discussed over a table in a local library during critique group. It is a whole other ball of wax entirely when you want us to post that same feedback on the Internet publicly and in writing. Most of us just aren’t going to do that to another writer, even when it comes to mild critique. If the writing isn’t that great, most of us just won’t say anything. And is that helpful to the writer for the purposes of feedback? Probably not.
But what about those who don’t care about your feelings, who aren’t personally vested in you?
Before you post anything, ask yourself one important question. Can I take someone eviscerating my work in a very public forum? Anonymity does weird things to people. Most of the time readers will be nice and kind and helpful, but sometimes they can be just plain horrible. If they tear apart a blog, that is one thing. That’s 500-1000 words. But with your novel? All it takes are a couple of negative remarks to crater your self-confidence and send even the best of us scurrying back to our laptops to rewrite our entire plot (and there might not be anything wrong).
I remember a couple years ago I posted a humorous piece for public critique on my MySpace blog. I must have had 20 people who told me is was awesome and hysterical. But I had one huge jerk who posted a really hurtful mean comment, and I am still not over it to this day. I never felt the same joy about that article, and all it took was one person’s nastiness to crush it. Was my response logical? No. But it was common. Humans are emotional creatures, and when you look up “Emotional Creature” in the encyclopedia, I think it says, “See Writers.”
Even published authors have a tough time when someone posts a nasty comment about their work in a public forum. But there is a difference. They have a published book, professional validation, and sales figures to ease their pain. The rest of us can just end up feeling like we are trapped in Hell's Dunking Booth.
My professional opinion is that for all other kinds of writing, go read Jane Friedman’s blog. The link is posted at the end. But for those who desire to be successful, published novelists, chapters of your novel are not the best choice for content on your blog or your web page. I recommend my blog from two weeks ago, “Where are All the Readers?—Social Media & the Writer’s Revolution” for some ideas of what makes good content (instead of chapters of your novel).
Happy writing! Until next time…
Jane Friedman’s blog
http://writerunboxed.com/
(specifically) http://writerunboxed.com/2010/04/23/stop-being-afraid-of-posting-your-work-online/
To learn how more about the publishing business, I highly, highly recommend Bob Mayer's Warrior Writer book and workshops (now on-line, so no excuses). Sign up today at www.bobmayer.org.
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