Net Marketing for Ludites: Part 4 (Friends & Followers)

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You've got your sites set up and you're sending out pithy thoughts. You're cooking! But who is reading them? Your "followers" (on Tumblr), your "friends" on Facebook and MySpace. With luck, maybe some of your followers and friends will re-blog your posts, in which case they go out to all their friends and followers, etc. etc. etc.


But basically, you need to have some friends and followers of your own ... and there's nothing more humiliating or infantile than having to send out "Will you be my friend?" messages hither and yon.


What you can do: follow and befriend others, and then maybe they'll follow you back. Troll the friends and followers of the hip and famous (or simply like-minded) for possibilities. Some sites allow you to upload your email contacts to see who might be on the sites: this is a good way to create a base. MySpace allows you to find people on-site by age, sex, marital status (creeps!)...but also by interests. You might be able to hone in on people who might be interested in your subject.


One word of caution: only go looking for friends and followers after you've posted some interesting posts and all your sites look inviting.


Also: limit it to 20 minutes at a time. It's too demeaning!

Related posts:

Net marketing for Ludites: Part 1

Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 2 (Cracking the Social Net)

Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 3 (Blog? Website? Both?)

How to promote your book without giving up writing

A wonderful article by Margaret Atwood on discovering the Twitterverse and other foreign realms: How I learned to Love Twitter.

Next up: Net Marketing for Luddites: Part 5 (The Book Trailer) 


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Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://bit.ly/sgullandFacebook
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Sandra_Gulland
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Charting the writing process

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I love this chart on the writing process, posted by Sarah Eve Kelly on Twitter:

Right now, I'm making the editorial changes I scribbled onto the 1st draft a few weeks ago. It's a tedious mechanical process, but it suits me right now: lots to do, lots coming up, a persistent cold (life!).

What impresses a 20-something son?

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What really impressed my 28-year-old son? My book on the best-seller list? NO: My Tweets making a Mashable list.

I haven't been Twittering for long — since January, perhaps?

For those of you who don't know Twitter, it's a social networking site where posts can only be 140 characters long (as I recall): i.e. short. Obviously not conducive to big words, much less sentences — much less serious thought.

But it's fun, rather in the manner of a hot ping-pong match. In fact, it's become rather too much fun, I'm afraid (as in addictive). Luis Alberto Urrea, for example, author of The Hummingbird's Daughter — a novel I love — regularly posts, plus a host of other writers and publishing-related folk. I'm star-struck. I admit it.

So today I got four Tweets in a row from Susan McKinney, a writer friend in San Miguel: Did you know ... ?!?

Apparently I'd made a list of authors on Twitter.

Oh? (So?)

I found the list, but it took some time to find myself. (Way at the bottom, under Miscellaneous — annoying.) But the list itself was interesting. "Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter," put out by Mashable, which I'd only vaguely heard of.

I emailed my son, Net Guru in NYC. He immediately wrote back: Oh. My. God. This may be the coolest thing (in my books) you've done!

Which woke me up a bit. Really? Not the best-seller list, but a Mashable list?

And so, I have to admit, it has been quite a day. If you're at all inclined, come Twitter with me in the "Twitterverse." I'm at:

http://twitter.com/Sandra_Gulland

Now that I'm official, I'm going to endeavour to Tweet in a more — ahem — literary manner.

(And perhaps, when I'm dawdling writing The Next Novel, you might ask: "Too much time on Twitter, Madame Author?")