Promoting anything you write and publish is a lot harder than you originally think.
You figure the masses will come seeking out your wisdom and creative genius. You figure people will be only too eager to open up their wallets and buy several copies of your masterpiece. You figure everyone who visits your site will subscribe after the first visit.
You figure wrong.
Which is why it’s imperative to find ways to leverage stuff well within your reach to help you in the process. Like leveraging your friends and their networks.
I recently posted this article, 10 Ways Your Friends Can Help You Sell More Books, over at Author Marketing Experts. This post was a lot of fun to write, and I’m eager to put to use all of the tactics suggested. You’ll need to read the full article to truly get the gist of it, but here’s a quick summary of the ten tips:
I was a pitcher my Freshman and Sophomore years at Dallas Baptist University. A little known fact about pitchers is that when you’re not pitching, you’re running.
Which gave me an interesting perspective to add at the Against the Wind 5k blog. I recently posted the mantra that drove me through countless laps around the campus. Up the steep hills. From foul pole to foul pole. And through mindless laps around the track in the Texas heat.
I received a tweet from a friend lately that I feel captures what many of us deal with on a regular basis. In response to something I wrote on selling and marketing not being the same thing, my friend said this:
I keep trying to explain this to Dad. As a good salesman, he thinks being good at marketing means being good at sales. Sigh.
Yep, we marketers deal with confusion over what is what all the time. I know my mom typically calls it all “promotion.” Others use the term “marketing” when they’re actually talking about “selling.” Then too many others think “marketing” is essentially just “advertising.”
Sigh.
Janette Stoll (@janettestoll) has some surefire tips on using article marketing to build traffic and business.
