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One Thing Marketing: Pieces of a Marketing Plan Part 2

By on February 18, 2014 in Melissa Tagg, One Thing Marketing, Platform-building

We’re taking a look at the various pieces to include in the marketing portion of your novel proposal. Last time we talked about including a brief intro to your marketing plan and then a list of publications. If you missed it, you can check it out here.

Today, we’ll cover two more sections: Media Appearances and Networks.

Media Appearances

Following the Publications section of my proposal’s marketing plan, I included a list of all the local TV and radio stations at which I’d seek out coverage. I had a little bit of an advantage here because in my day job I work with the media quite a bit. But simply showing your potential agent or publisher you’re informed about your local media and willing to make an effort at grassroots is just plain smart.

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One Thing Marketing: Pieces of a Marketing Plan – Part 1

By on February 4, 2014 in Melissa Tagg, One Thing Marketing, Platform-building

It’s time to talk marketing plans!

And specifically, the marketing plan you’ll need to include in your proposal when you get ready to submit it to an agent or editor. I’ve seen marketing plans anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages. I tend to be in the two-page range myself. I think it’s important that we show agents and editors we understand the importance of building a platform and marketing our books.

For the next couple months in these “One Thing Marketing” posts, we’re going to look at the components of a marketing plan. By the time we’re done, if you follow along you should have a good start on your own marketing plan. Let’s get started…

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One Thing Marketing: A different sort of marketing post

By on January 21, 2014 in Melissa Tagg, One Thing Marketing, Platform-building, Writing Life

Usually this bi-weekly One Thing Marketing “column” is meant to give small, practical tips for marketing you and your writing. But I’ve kept having the same niggling marketing thoughts in the back of my head for a couple weeks now and I decided I’d finally let them out. Next time we’ll go back to the usual content as I begin a series on the components of a marketing plan. But for today, like I said, a little something different…

So, there’s something I’m realizing more and more when it comes to marketing: If you talk about it long enough, some wrong mentality can creep in pretty easily. And that wrong mentality basically boils down to thinking we control our book sales. And it usually brings along with it a pesky dose of stress about how the book is doing and worry that we aren’t doing enough marketing work on our end.

Which is kind of funny, really, because you’ll always hear the stat that 80% of book sales still happen due to word of mouth. So unless we’re actually consistently putting words in other people’s mouths (and then hey, while we’re at it, pulling out their wallets and guiding them through the process of buying our books), we simply can’t control what happens on the buyer’s end.

And it’s these thoughts that have had me pondering lately how, really, the most important piece of any marketing plan isn’t social media wizadry or that awesome idea no one else has thought up or the best-looking newsletter on the block or a slew of book-signings. No. It’s this:

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Linking Your Social Media Accounts and Other Major Blogging and Social Media No-Nos

By on January 14, 2014 in Edie Melson, Learn the art of Social Networking, Platform-building, Social Media Primer

Successful social media is something of an art form—with lots of gray areas. Building a successful online presence takes a good amount of flexibility and a little bit of experimentation. But even though I encourage people to find their sweet spots, there are a few things you want to avoid. Today I’d to weigh in on linking your social media accounts and other major blogging and social media no-nos.

No-no Number One

Do not link your blog with social media. What I mean by that is you don’t want your blog o send a notification of your newest blog post to Facebook or Twitter or any other social network. On the surface it seems that would be a great shortcut for those (almost all of us) who find ourselves in a constant time crush. But it’s not.

Here’s why:

You run the risk of spamming your friends and followers. Computers make mistakes, and especially if you have Facebook and Twitter linked, you can get repeat messages. This is unintentional spamming.
People today are smart, savvy and cynical. We can tell when something posted on social media is computer generated and we won’t bite. So you’re not getting any traffic this way.
Finally, you need to control the way your social media updates go out and how they’re worded. Different platforms may need slightly different wording. You also want the opportunity to add relevant hashtags and mentions.

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