In our writing group, we’ve often talked about how to get one’s work out there without becoming annoying. How can a person market his or her book, jewelry, or photography business without hitting people over the head? To be honest, I’ve actually hidden people who are hawking their wares on my Timeline. And yet, here I am trying to figure out how to advertise.
So far, I’ve used Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. I have a three (okay, four) blogs, an Amazon Author Central page, and a Twitter account. It’s time consuming and takes away from the hours when I could/should be writing. Last week I read an informative book entitled Let’s Get Visible that was extremely helpful. By the time I finished the book and followed some of the author’s ideas, the day was gone. Alas.
One of Gaughran’s suggestions was to have a blog. I already had three, but when I checked out his blog, I could see right away that it was related almost exclusively to his book. “Hmmm,” I thought. “That’s an idea I haven’t pursued yet.” So that’s when I created my fourth WordPress blog, www.jaynepbowers.wordpress.com. Will it work? Will it rustle up a little interest in the book? We’ll see.
Then there’s the frequent reminder to GET A WEBSITE, GET A WEBSITE, GET A WEBSITE. I had one on Yahoo, but it was so pathetically amateurish that I let it die a natural death. I’m too much of a tightwad to pay someone several hundred dollars to develop one for me so I registered for a course on website development through Ed2Go. Even for a person who has a WordPress background, it’s pretty daunting to me. Not to mention time consuming.
That’s enough venting for one day. It’s time to post this and do some writing. It just occurred to me that even if none of the social media stuff works, at least I’m learning some new skills. Plus, keeping up the blogs is excellent writing practice.
If you’re a writer reading this post, please share your ideas about the best way to market your work. What works for you? What doesn’t?
Gossip and Solitude 
I always recommend Weebly for website hosting. I bought my domain through GoDaddy, and point that to my Weebly account. It features drag and drop editing, plenty of attractive backgrounds to choose from, and is available free ( I believe if you stick with free hosting, you agree to have a little Weebly icon showing at the bottom of your page), or has a few more features available for a very small fee. My website is in need of a spruce, but I always invite people curious about what Weebly offers to go see what I did as a person who really has no concept of web design (www.jmkelleywrites.com). Best part for me is that I can keep my blog and website together on the same site. Personally, I feel that people don’t always want to travel to multiple sites/blogs to track your moves as an author, so it’s best to keep everything in one location under a relatively simple website address that is all about you, and doesn’t share the spotlight with your webhost. You want the focus on yourself, and you want as few clicks as possible between your chatty self and your products. Consumers can have awfully short attention spans, after all.
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Thanks for the helpful comments. I’ll definitely check out Weebly and your site. Since my blogs are all on WordPress, I thought having everything here would make finding me and my work more efficient. But I’m always open to change and to learning as much as I can about social media.
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This has been a 4AM writing day (!) and I just found your site as I’m ending my session…am grappling with the same issues…I like the fact that the WP template gives me the ability to offer both a website and blog as a complete ‘internet presence’ package, whereas past WP incarnations were ‘name-associated’ with being for bloggers only…I’ll be perusing your site more intensely over the weekend!
peace
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Thanks for reading and commenting on my post. The social media is something that I really struggle with. I like learning new things and playing with technology, butI like reading and writing even more!
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