marketing Archives - Elizabeth Maria Naranjo

Posted on September 12, 2014 ·

Image from Flickr by manoftaste.de

This summer I embarked on a national month-long book tour, meeting readers from Missouri, Wisconsin, California, Pennsylvania, and several other places. Of course, it was a virtual book tour–or blog tour–so I saved a lot on gas.

Still, blog tours aren’t cheap, and they’re more work than I ever would have guessed. Now that the tour’s over, several authors have asked me: was it worth it?

As with anything related to book promotion, the answer isn’t simple. It depends on how you measure worth. Many authors understandably measure in numbers, something I try to avoid (and wrote about here). But if you’re curious about the numbers, I tallied a few:

Sixteen hosts signed up to participate in the blog tour for The Fourth Wall.
Over 900 people entered giveaways for a copy of the book.
Dozens of potential readers reached out by leaving comments on blog sites, Facebook and Twitter.
Four of my blog hosts reviewed The Fourth Wall and posted their reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.
One giveaway winner has already read the book and posted her review on Amazon and Goodreads.

Not bad, right? But there were also surprise outcomes, like an on-going friendship with my tour host (I couldn’t imagine a more perfect pairing; Crystal and I had a blast).

And the fact that having to prepare blog posts about the subjects of my novel and answering pages of interview questions helped renew and focus my passion about the novel’s subjects and themes; it also helped me when it came time for an in-person interview with a local reporter.

Finally, an aspiring writer who visited the first tour stop on WOW! Women on Writing clicked over to my website, found the “classes and critiques” page, and sent an inquiry. She ended up purchasing a critique for her extraordinarily personal memoir, and I was touched and honored.

It’s never easy for a writer to share her work—it takes a great deal of bravery to commit those words to paper let alone place them in the hands of a stranger to be judged. This writer and I worked together on smoothing her essay (it didn’t take much; she’s a fantastic storyteller); I helped her craft a cover letter and she submitted her story, promising to keep me informed. That’s an outcome that can’t be measured.

Ah, but what about the biggie, you wonder. What about book sales?

It’s impossible to tally book sales in relation to the blog tour, even if I could track sales in real time, which I cannot. How would I account for the readers who added The Fourth Wall to their TBR list and purchase it months from now? Those who borrowed it on their Kindle and may later tell a friend? Or the guy researching theater terms, next year, who stumbles across one of the blog posts from the tour? There’s no way to know.

What I do know is I met some wonderful people on my blog tour and had meaningful discussions about writing, publishing, inspiration, music, and dreams (especially lucid ones). I feel like I did something to get the word out about my novel. Which feels pretty great.

And I saved a lot on gas.

Click here to visit the tour.

The Secret to Social Media–One Year Later

Posted on August 8, 2014 ·

Image from Flickr by mkhmarketing

This month I’m celebrating a birthday. No, not mine! What are you thinking? I turned 39 in July, and I’m not ready to turn 40 quite yet. 😉

What this month marks is one year of blogging, tweeting, pinning, and goodreading, although my computer tells me that’s not a word. In one of my earliest blog posts, The Secret to Social Media, I wrote about my initial reactions to each of the following four sites, and in this post I’ll tell you what’s changed a year later.

Pinterest

Then: As a writer, I’d forgotten the pure joy of expressing emotions solely through visual imagery. With Pinterest, you can create boards that reflect the things you care about, and you never have to say a word.

Now: Yep, sounds lovely, but Pinterest was the one to go. I still have an account and I’ll probably revisit it sometime, but it’s just not possible to juggle five or six social media accounts. I knew this going in, but I figured the one to fall would be…

Goodreads

Then: What I love most about this site, so far, is I have one place to list my “to be read” books. Now I can collect all the scraps of paper, sticky notes, and electronic lists buried in my phone and shelve those titles in Goodreads.

Now: For a long time, this was all I could do on Goodreads. The problem is that it’s not a user-friendly site. But on January first, I resolved to read a book each week for 2014. Goodreads came in handy for this resolution because of their Reading Challenge—where you publicly declare a reading goal for the new year. Anyone can view your progress. That was the motivation I needed to stay on task, so I dug my heels in and learned how to navigate the site. Now I truly love Goodreads, and I’m only three books behind my goal.

Twitter

Then: This was supposed to be my favorite, because that’s what everybody says. I do like Twitter—there’s something about the immediacy of it that’s freeing—but it’s confusing.

Now: Surprise! Guess which social media site is my favorite? Twitter did take time to understand—in fact, it would be months before I caught on. But once I got comfortable jumping into conversations with total strangers, I met some amazing people. Most are generous—Twitter is all about sharing and discovering. Many are also fall-down funny; I’ve laughed myself to tears on more occasions than I can count. The only downside is that it can be a distraction.

Blogging

Then: My personal favorite. This has been a shock—I worried about the time it would take to blog, I worried no one would read my blog . . . now I know it’s about perspective.

Now: I admit I’ve lost that perspective several times. There’s no question that blogging can feel frustrating because it is time-intensive and once in a while seems as though you’re talking to yourself. To ease that frustration, I made some adjustments:

I no longer spend several hours on each post. Yes, I did that. Those early posts were drafted on Mondays and heavily edited throughout the week, then published on Fridays, which could take all morning.
I stopped worrying excessively about typos.
I started posting less frequently. In the beginning, I posted weekly, but twice a month works better for me and I actually get more visitors that way. I think you have to give people a chance to miss you. 🙂

One great thing about blogging is looking back on old posts; it was sweet to read the first one—written a few days after I received my contract. I was so unsure of what lay ahead: I didn’t know what the book title would be, or what the cover would look like, or when it would get published. All I knew back then was a dream had come true, and that was enough.

Oh, and the secret to social media? It hasn’t changed: give yourself permission to have fun.

(See the original post HERE.)