Blogging About Tweeting

     When I'm not blogging, I'm parenting, or working, or watching Netflix. But when I'm not doing any of those things, you might find me "tweeting." (Which would really weird me out because I do this in my little attic office and would be completely freaked that I don't know you, and yet you were there. Still, maybe we could be friends—especially if you brought whisky—or Pop Tarts.)
     As I've been distracted launching my latest book, I haven't kept up on my blogging and am feeling quite guilty about that. But, recently, I tweeted some useful information for those who are new to Twitter. In lieu of a proper blog entry, I present that information here, followed by a couple of relevant excerpts from an article I did about "ReTweet Trains."
     Yes, I am stalling. I hope it works for both of us. Pop Tart?

  

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Check out my latest book...

Putting Twitter Back in the Box

(Part 3 of 3. CLICK HERE for Part 1)

Today is a big day for me. It's January 31st; the day I hang up my compulsive Twitter-er hat and revert to being, simply, a writer.

I’ve already blogged about my last 2-3 months playing with Twitter, trying to evaluate it’s marketing power. In fact, I’ve already written my conclusions on the matter, and I stick by those. But there are one or two things I discovered along the way that I did not relate. And these things are worth mentioning.

1) My final results: 

Whereas, in October, I paid Twitter $150 to generate 50,000 impressions for me, in January, I generated 350,000 impressions on my own with the only cost being 1-3 hours work a day—and very light work, at that. The total hours of work is difficult to determine as I did a lot of it in small batches, through the course of a day, jumping back to Twitter between other projects.

Here are my Twitter stats as of January 31st, 2016... 

2) How did I learn this? Credit where credit is due...

I applied basics I learned from several sources, including an ebook (How to Gain 100K Twitter Followers) I purchased from @mistersalesman (M LeMont) who runs a very popular reTweet Train Twitter account. I did not employ all of his methods, but if I were going to continue with this, I would. Everything he says I found to be entirely true. He claims that you can add about 10,000 followers a month and that seems about right, based on the amount of work I did. This means that in a year, you could have 100,000 followers, if you were dedicated and determined. If you quickly want to gain Twitter followers, then I wholeheartedly recommend his book. It’s a very easy read and describes the methodology quickly and clearly.

Another thing he claims, and which I came to believe is true, is that as your numbers climb, it gets easier because you will have more influence and be perceived as a more attractive Twitter account to follow. I noticed some of this effect as soon as I breached the 2000-follower barrier. People rely on the endorsement of others to tell them that “investing” even as little as a mouse-click is a safe thing to do. As well, they all want to reach your followers. The more followers you have, the more they yearn to reach them.

3) What exactly did I do?

The basics are simple, and I can pretty much guarantee that if you do what I did, you’re pretty much guaranteed to achieve similar results.

Read the following closely and you will learn the exact methods I used to gain 1500 followers, spending less than two hours a day, for a month. This is a brief description of the hows and whys of my methods I wrote for followers who asked:

Perhaps you are wondering why I am following and reTweeting you. Perhaps you wonder if I am a “bot.” No. When there’s action on my account, it’s really me, at the keyboard. Here’s what and why I do what I do, on Twitter… I will follow anyone, provided they follow me back, unless they are promoting hatred or violence. So I will follow photographers, pornographers, moms, followers of Islam, Cosplay fans, gun lovers and fun lovers, spammers, faceless corporations, and even Donald Trump, because he’s funny. Everyone gets a Follow and everyone gets one free reTweet. The only exception is that I won’t reTweet hardcore porn, because it offends too many of my followers. That first reTweet is a gift; the only one I have to give. I try to find something that represents that particular Twitter account. Easiest, if it’s pinned to the top of the profile. (Which, by the way, is the best way to make sure people reTweet what you care about.) Whatever message is important to them, I will ReTweet to my followers.  While I am there, I look for things that appeal to my own tastes, ambitions, beliefs, mood… whatever. If I find such things, I reTweet more. If I find a lot of such things, I place the account on one of my lists as generators of good content and come back, from time to time to reTweet, purely for the enjoyment of my followers. While I’m looking, I look for people who originally generated the content and follow them and give them one free reTweet. If they have good content, they may get several reTweets. Whenever you like or reTweet something of mine, I notice and try to reciprocate. Usually, it’s the only “conversation” my time allows, but I do try to answer a DM, if you’re not just trying to sell me something. This way, I can fill my Twitter feed with more quality entertainment than promotional material. As well, my Twitter feed comes to reflect (overall) the essential me. You may be able to see by the things I choose that I prefer visuals, that I like intelligent quotes, that I like pretty women, kids, animals and nature and that I will reTweet a good cause more than once. I am particularly interested in real people tweeting stuff they find interesting for no better reason than they enjoy it. What do I get out of this? A new follower and a small advertisement: A very small “(wmdean.com)” which occasionally brings me a new follower who might one day buy one of my books. That’s it. I am an independent author. And the single biggest reason I am on Twitter is to promote my work. As an author, I am very sympathetic with other independent authors, because I know what they are going through to try to promote their own work while trying to maintain the time and energy to keep writing. Most readers are not posting their preferences online, so finding readers often comes down to a time-consuming shotgun approach, and I know how difficult a task it is to balance this with the rest of life. So, if I see an author, I will usually follow them and reTweet at least their own book promo, or whatever is pinned to the top of their profile.  In these ways, I hope to build my network while minimally spamming the Twitter-sphere. And, it all seems to be working. I get new followers each day, and the number keeps growing, quickly. My exposure through Twitter is growing even more quickly.  I can’t spend as much time engaging with Followers as I’d like, but I want you to know that I appreciate every person who follows me, whatever their reason. Also, I am totally interested in doing my part by reTweeting your messages. This applies even to the purebred spammers, because I do believe that there are people out there who are waiting for whatever they are selling and will welcome that message, no different than I do a picture of a child and his dog on a beach at sunset… in the distance, behind a girl in a bikini. regards, Wiliam M Dean  :^)

One thing not explicitly mentioned above is that I also un-followed anyone who did not follow me within 48 hours. I used a free online app called Crowdfire to help with this.

4) Engagement: 

I did engage in conversations when the opportunity arose and this tended to be fun, as well as popular with my followers. People will take a moment to observe if they see a Twitter exchange. My exchanges amounted to about two dozen people and was always interesting… though not always in the way I expected. 

I was unceremoniously blocked by two people who objected to me adding words to their Tweets, which I thought was hilarious because the posts they were talking about were reTweets that they had added words to. I am guessing—can’t ask because they’ve blocked communication—that they just didn’t like what I wrote. I try not to be offensive, but I do make jokes and, as I have found in the rest of my life, humour is both a funny and dangerous thing.

Another person objected to me putting my web address on everything I reTweeted. That was an odd one because I was a fan and was reTweeting her a lot. So what she did was block me and leave a message saying she considered my messages to be spam. So short-sighted. She lost a fan as well as all my followers who probably would have liked the original material she was sending out. This one made me pause a bit. I am relatively new to Twitter and thought that I may have violated an unwritten bit of Twitter culture that I didn’t know. So, I took my address off my Tweets for about fifteen minutes and watched my blog-hits plummet. I decided to decide that she was a nutbar and moved on. 

I think that a lot of this comes from a false perception of power. Many who have, say, 10K followers, do not feel that those below them are important. If they are temperamental, they may be tempted take out their frustrations on those “lower” down the pyramid. What they are forgetting is that they have no real power and are easily replaced. If you don’t want me to follow you, that’s completely ok because there are 307 million other active Twitter accounts for me to draw from. Beyond this, if I really wanted their material, I could create another Twitter account, go steal their material and repost it without any acknowledgement at all. They would never know. 

On Twitter, we all need each other.

Anyway, as with all social media, there will be idiots and trolls. They are by far the minority (about 1 in every 1000, in my experience), but steel yourself.

5) Besides followers, what did I gain?

Answer: Nothing tangible. 

When you looked at my Twitter stats and saw that I had generated 350K impressions you might have been as excited as I was. However, Twitter counts it as an impression every time one of my messages enters another person’s Twitter feed. The fact that they are probably not there to see it is not taken into account. According to M LeMont, a person is watching their feed about 1% of the time. So: 1% of 350K is 3500, which is a much more useful estimate of impressions.

Even a couple of minutes’ work on Twitter would immediately generate 2-300 hits to my blog (9500 hits in January), but the trickle-down to sales of my books was nil. I saw little evidence that anyone even read the blog, and no evidence that anyone bought a book. So this remains about as effective as any other online marketing tool: It takes hundreds of thousands of  real impressions to make a sale.

Meanwhile a mere mention on Japan Today’s Facebook page generated twelve sales, overnight. I think I prefer the targeted approach.

6) What did I lose?

Answer: Concentration.

Twitter is addictive and distracting. Besides this experiment, I was preparing and launching my latest book (I Married Japan) which involved a lot of not-too-creative grunt work, so I was able to skip back and forth to Twitter. But still, it was highly distracting and nibbled away at my time. I certainly could not concentrate enough to write well, while actively trying to build a Twitter following. 

Also, it was a lot less rewarding for me than writing something.

Previous to this, I used my Twitter feed mostly for my own material (either blog posts or original quotes) and I always felt good at creating and disseminating something of my own. Not having the peace of mind required to be creative was a bit depressing, and I felt  better the moment I stopped actively seeking out new followers. Beyond being the final resting place for what I have learned during this experiment, this hastily composed article is the first writing I have done in six weeks, and for both of those reasons, it feels amazing!

At this point, I will continue the follower-building methods I have learned, but will not go chasing new followers. I’ll just apply the system to the ones that stumble upon me. And, since I've grown fond of the community there, I'll still check it out and contribute, each day.

Still, it’s going to be depressing watching those numbers fall by 90 percent, and the compulsion to hit the Twitter-sphere will not fade immediately.

7) Why don’t I continue?

Besides the loss of concentration and time, there was one thing that M LeMont’s ebook did not mention: How to effectively turn these Twitter numbers into money.

In the final analysis, I think I am much father ahead (and happier) to keep writing, establishing a larger portfolio. Perhaps in a few years, when I have five or six books to my name, time spent on marketing will be a better investment as, then, it will benefit 5-6 possible income streams.

(This was Part 3 of 3. CLICK HERE for Part 1)

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OK, my marketing experiment had limited results, 

but you can still buy my books!

Visit wmdbooks.com!

http://www.wmdbooks.com

Retweet Trains: The Final Analysis

(To read part one of this 2-part series, CLICK HERE.)

So, I've spent some time now trying out the basic methods suggested by @MisterSalesman (M_LeMont) a ReTweet-Train Master, on Twitter. Right off, the one thing I can truly say is that he delivers on all of his promises, and that's a rare thing, these days.

I cut and pasted my Twitter Stats for you to see, below...

This system definitely sends traffic to my blog, from which I hope people check out my books, from which I hope to get a sale or two.

The first two weeks I was working this system, I spent at least two hours a day, but at this point, I can easily generate a 100 extra blog visits just by sitting down and ReTweeting people on Twitter for 15 minutes. As of these stats, I spend about 30 minutes a day actively seeking out followers, following them and ReTweeting the first post on their feed (adding my blog's url to each). Then, I use a program called CrowdFire to cull those who do not return my favours within 48 hours. And that's it. Because of this, my blog now averages 300 visits per day, up from 40-50/day, a mere month ago.

One day I looked up to discover that I had 1574 hits in the course of a few minutes!

Upon ferreting into the stats, however, I saw that they had all come from Isreal. Not exactly my target audience. The stats show that they landed on my blog page, but there is no evidence of any clicking through, or perusing. The number is high, but those clicks might as well have never happened. Did create a moment of excitement, though.

What I don't yet know, because my publisher iUniverse is criminally slow in posting the stats, is whether any of these blog visits translate into book sales. If not, then what's the point?

I will also say that if you are really working at this, it is surprisingly distracting. While I only give Twitter my undivided attention for a few minutes each day, it's always on my mind and I feel the need to check in, several times a day, to try to keep up with the Follows and ReTweets. Meanwhile, my writing has definitely suffered.

My Twitter page, as of Jan 12, 2016
Started in December with about 500 followers, I think.

The other thing I hate is that I am now, officially, a spammer. I hate spam. Yet, I now spread spam. And, if I'm going to spread spam, why am I not spreading the most popular spam: Namely porn? It would be more fun for me, but I just can't bring myself to do that. I'm sure it's a mistake not to, if you're going to utilize this marketing idea. As well, I'm very sure that spamming one million, will generate about three clicks... no different, in the final analysis, than what I was getting before the spam campaign.

So, though this actually works, it stresses me out by taking a chunk of my time which puts pressure on my writing. As well, I have no idea what it really achieves that can not be accomplished by amassing a body of valuable work. A friend and fellow writer has been whispering in my ear, throughout this experiment, that I should just get back to focusing on producing books, and the wisdom of his words becomes more apparent by the day.

My plan, at this point, is to maintain the 300 hits/day until my second book is ready for final release, in a couple of weeks. I want to see if the increased volume of hits has any effect on first-release book sales. It won't. After that, I will hang up my Twitter hat and get back to writing.

Meanwhile, in a platform, far, far away... something I've noticed is that posting tidbits and articles to the FaceBook and other large, relevant Communities on Google+ also has a marked effect on blog visits, and this effect, while smaller (say, 40-50 instant visits) lasts much longer. For some reason, people on Google+ keep stumbling upon my posts months later, even though a million others have posted since. I haven't yet figured this one out.

Once I have my book sales data, I will update this post.

(Final, final update is a separate post: CLICK HERE to read it.)

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Wan'na skew the results of my RT experiment?

Do it now! Buy my time travel, action/adventure novel?

LINK TO BOOK ON AMAZON.COM

What's So Great About Retweet Trains?

(To read the final update, in part 2, CLICK HERE.)

The other day, I climbed aboard a ReTweet Train, for a brief ride.

In case you've never heard of ReTweet Trains, they are, basically, Twitter accounts where every follower is committed to (a) ReTweeting each other, and (b) following everyone who follows them.

I started by looking over a ReTweet Train that was recommended to me, through a friend: The Twitter page of M LeMont (https://twitter.com/MisterSalesman) which is largely a long repetitive list of ads about his ReTweet Train. I began very noncommittally by ReTweeting one of the ads. Within seconds, new followers and ReTweets began to accumulate on my account. I was seriously amazed to see 20... 30... then 40 new followers and 50 ReTweets, all in the space of 10 minutes. The number of clicks on my blog soared, as well. I got an extra 200 hits, within the first hour.

M Lemont's ReTweet Train Twitter Page

In the end, however, it was against my policy to follow people who aren't providing interesting content, and so I only followed one person from the train. Consequently, all the followers I had gained, unfollowed me within 24 hours, as is part of the ReTweet Train code of conduct.

A ReTweet Train is a sure-fire way to gain Twitter followers. If you follow the advice of @MisterSalesman, for instance, and put in the hours of hard work, you will probably reach the target of 100,000 followers, within a year.

The basic theory is that with numbers that large, it doesn't matter whether or not they are your target group, you will still gain genuine followers—it's a shotgun approach. It makes some sense as almost every account on Twitter habitually trades a follow for a follow. This means that mixed in with all those professional number-generating spammers are millions of ordinary people, and if your material gets spammed to millions, then by happenstance and good timing, several hundred might actually see your stuff. As almost everyone's Twitter feed is filled with follow-for-follow spam, this type of numbers strategy might well be the only way to get significant exposure, through Twitter.

My recent experience seems to have proven this shotgun approach valid. I ended up with no more Twitter followers than I had before, but a week later, my blog is still getting 50-80 more hits than before this experiment. As I'm not honouring the ReTweet Train code of following everyone and ReTweeting a whole bunch of crap, the number of hits on my blog may ebb—though one week later, it hasn't. Nevertheless, I am impressed: This is, possibly, the first thing I've seen in social media that had an immediate and measurable effect. I'd be 100% on board, if there were more interesting things posted on the ReTweet Train that I could ReTweet, rather than just ads for the ReTweet Train, itself.

Of course, this strategy flies in the face of Twitter advice I published only a couple of weeks ago (see My 1st Year in Social Media), but that advice was for building a strong Twitter account, assuming that Twitter is your main platform. This shotgun approach is more suited to using Twitter solely to promote another site. If you adopt this strategy, your main Twitter feed will soon be polluted with thousands of ReTweeted ads and junk, so you'll have to start using Twitter's List feature to create separate, more useful streams for yourself. If you want a more pristine Twitter feed for others to view, you might have to create a second one, to which you post more selectively.

My next excursion on a ReTweet Train will be a more ambitious outing. After all, my focus is my blog and from there, my book. I only use Twitter as a traffic-generating tool. So, why worry about the virtual pollution that tool creates? If that's the way this particular tool is most effectively wielded, then perhaps it's silly to be using it any other way.

I'm still reluctant to participate in generating numbers using endless cycles of spam, but my feelings are not really a valid reason not to do it. And, if it produces results, then I'm sure that I'll quickly warm to the idea.

 * * *

UPDATE: After a heated debate in my own mind, I've spent the last 5 days actively involved with the M LeMont ReTweet community (https://twitter.com/MisterSalesman) accepting followers in return for follows which has yielded a couple of unexpected results. Firstly, My blog hits immediately started growing. But the larger surprise for me was that during the initial follow-for-follow exchange between myself and other people, I have had some very nice exchanges and connected in a small way, with others who are all part of the same social-media experiment. Somehow—perhaps because all of us having laid our cards on the table about why we are following and ReTweeting—the initial contact is much more comfortable as people are more open to the approach and to conversation.

Also, I eventually realized that M Lemont's page is not the place to find stuff to ReTweet. You are supposed to explore the pages of other ReTweeters who follow you. M Lemont is just a central hub to connect us all. I now check out each follower, I thank them for their follow with a ReTweetable picture and I ReTweet something of theirs.

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NOTE: This article has turned into what may appear to be a huge endorsement of M Lemont's Twitter page. I want to assure readers that I am in no way affiliated with M Lemont and am just reporting what actually happened to me. There are other ReTweet Train pages, this was just one recommended to me. If I seem enthusiastic, it's just because it seems to work. If it stops working, or I determine that there are negative consequences, I will update this post appropriately. Sincerely, William M. Dean.

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Bonus Twitter Tip: Thanking those who choose to follow you is an opportunity to make contact and get ReTweeted. As part of my ReTweet Train experiment, I followed author, Christina Paul (https://twitter.com/ChristinaPBooks) and received this thank you, in return. I liked the earnestness of her reply, as well as the idea of including so much info in a picture. Also, I found her Twitter policies interesting. They might take a lot of time to implement, but would probably generate a lot of ReTweets of her material.

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(To read the final update, in part 2, CLICK HERE.)

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And, while you're here...

Why not buy my time travel, action/adventure novel?
 

LINK TO BOOK ON AMAZON.COM

William M Dean's Marketing Plan 1.0 Update

In case you haven't read it, this is a link to my original marketing plan

TWITTER:
* My choice to follow every single person who requests it led to a Twitter feed littered with pornography. Finding something of substance to retweet was considerably difficult... and distracting. The good news is that a couple of weeks later, things had settled down a bit. There's still a lot of porn in my feed, but a lot of other things as well. The latest trend is unremarkable young people promoting themselves and/or their relationships and/or their body parts: Substance is drowning in a sea of banality. Recently, I am noticing that gay guys may be trending.

* I am going to try to alter the types of people who end up asking me for follows, by intentionally searching for and following a specific type—probably science fiction fans. Then Twitter should start recommending more of these new types and eventually, they will drown out the others. (update to the update: this plan worked.)

* My next experiment will be to stop following some people and see if they return the favour. If not, then I can work my way to only being followed.

* I've connected my FB page to my Twitter feed which has increased my Twitter posts by quite a bit. It does cause some of my FB re-posts comments to seem a bit brief and stilted as I don't want to exceed the 140-character Twitter maximum.

* One trick I found: Following the advice from the APE guide, I want to post 4 times, at least twice a day but could not make this work with my schedule until I realized that I had another Twitter account for work and retweeting my original posts can be done in a few seconds, at work. I am now trying to build the work account's audience so that my retweets will hit more people. This is not exactly the same as what is suggested in the APE guide, but I just can't work that out without help from an online service. I'm not yet willing to spend the money, but I am considering it.

* I still accept almost any Twitter-request to follow, but I try to keep the outflow pure with higher quality stuff that truly interests me. Following all the requests is now becoming a significant time-suck; probably 30 minutes a day. Too much for such a small thing. I will soon have to turn this task over to a service of some kind.

* Suddenly, I have hit Twitter's arbitrary following limit. Didn't know there was one. Anyway, once you are following 2000 people, some sort of algorithm kicks in and bans you from following any more until you hit a magic ratio of followeds vs. followers. Exactly how this algorithm works is a carefully guarded secret and it sets limits differently on every account. It has been a problem for many: CLICK FOR DETAILS AND SOLUTIONS Guess I'm now forced to unfollow some people.
   There's a lot of debate over this "feature" of Twitter—especially from writers who might be reaching out to everyone and anyone—but it forces you to cull and hone your list which might be a good thing. As I mentioned above, culling was going to be my next experiment, anyway.

* I no longer will follow anyone who's language I can not understand. There are messages I do not want to spread.

It's probably significant that the largest, closest hashtag to scifi is "free." An indicator of a trendy marketing strategy.

(ABOVE) on a related note...
HASHTAGIFY.ME is my new favorite place to go to improve my hashtags. The interface is better than hashtags.org, it's faster and I can interpret the graphic display much quicker than hashtags.org's graphs.


FACEBOOK:
* The Facebook author's page is pretty much useless. You can't like other pages from it, you can't post using it's identity. I think I'm just going to direct people to my real life on FB. My friends will just have to suck it up and deal with being known as "William's Entourage." It's probably going to get messy.
 

GOODREADS:
* I rarely make it to Goodreads, but am increasing my presence there. Took me a while to understand that the only discussions that I can participate in are on books in my "have read" list. I must have already read a book to discuss it.

* A bit restricted, to me. My memory just doesn't work well enough to allow me to add to in-depth discussions on books I read 10 years ago.

* Another unexpected thing was that I had to rate every book on my reading list. I had read a couple of books by people I have met on Google+ and because I felt there were large flaws, I decided not to comment, review or rate them publicly. However, I still support those writers and would like to  discuss these books. Unfortunately,  in order to do that, Goodreads forces me to publicly rate the book. Now I feel that I should review them in full because the reasons I did not care for them were largely editorial and this may not be important to many potential readers.

* Seems very list-based without a good way to search and jump around. I can't see any way to like a comment or to reply specifically. Also can't see any easy way to mention someone's name in a comment. I'm sure that some of these features must be there.

* I have signed up for their author's program and linked my profile to my book. We'll see what that has to offer.

 * I read somewhere online that Amazon bought Goodreads and people think it will be absorbed. That might prove to be convenient.


LINKED IN:
* I always make it to LinkedIn though I do not like the platform and can't see what good it's doing me. As a result, LinkedIn informs me that I am an "All-Star!" top contributor! I contribute a comment to some thread or other about 2-3 times per week. I don't want to, but can't stop myself. It's because they email me directly with interesting new conversation topics. If Goodreads or Amazon did this, I'd get to them more often. This does graphically demonstrate the power of email.


GOOGLE+:
Still my home turf and favourite place to be. Love the people and the communities there. I need to spend a bit more time finding readers. I want to be genuine and at least appear to be intelligent in whichever forum I participate and strangely enough, most straight-up, hard-core sci-fi discussions bore me so I haven't spent enough time in the sci-fi communities. I don't obsess about much except my writing career. Somehow, I will have to work this out.


PINTEREST: 
I only use this as a repository for my original work and as a way to attach a url to specific images. I can use these url's to refer to an image on platforms that only allow links. I have somehow gained 8 followers. Two are known associates; how the rest stumbled upon me is a mystery.


AMAZON:
* Rarely visit, except to check out new books or see if I have another review. My print book seems to have settled in to the 1.3 millionth postion in the rankings; the Kindle version closer to 700,000th.

* I think that in February, I will check the discussion forum out, rather than visit Goodreads, which to me is limited to discussing the most recent book I've read.

* I did fix up my author's profile so that it's linked to my book. I also added myself in to the top-seller's list using completely fictitious sales information. That lasted for about 3 weeks before it was removed. Those were heady days, my friend—heady days, indeed.

EMAIL:
* Got my first 2 fan emails, thereby tripling the content of my exhaustive list of known readers. 

BOOK SALES:
* Because of the way my "publisher," iUniverse, gathers stats, I still do not have any sales numbers. However I am not really looking forward to this information as it will probably be the only number I am disappointed in.


Overall, I am satisfied with the progress, however, being back at work after Christmas holidays has really impacted my ability to keep up with social media while continuing to write. I've slacked a bit, on the writing, but must soon reduce my reading, commenting and re-posting because, if I'm not writing, then why am I doing any of this?

Another thing that has come to light is that I enjoy talking with other writers about writing and marketing more than I enjoy talking with readers about science fiction. This could be a major marketing stumbling block and it must be addressed.

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Post Script:
I stumbled upon this graphic about the best times of day to post on various platforms. Great info, but you've got to realize that it must be applied time-zone by time-zone. In other words, you will want to time your posts for peak-readership within time-zones that have the greatest number of readers. I don't have such flexibility, but am considering an online post-scheduling service.

to follow my progress,

CLICK HERE FOR THE NEXT MARKETING PLAN UPDATE

William's Social Media Marketing Plan 1.0

I've been at this social media marketing thing for about two months, now.  I've learned a lot and formed a sort-of marketing plan—or, at least, established some priorities.

I would like to share this with everyone, partially because I like to share, and partially because sharing is the heart of a good social media marketing strategy.

Also, I just like to talk.



Here are some things you might need to know about me:

• I do not take a good picture. I'm actually much more handsome, in person.
• I'm 56 years old, have a wife and 2 kids (7 and 9 years old) and I put them ahead of my writing—though sometimes, it's a tough call.
• I am not a multi-tasker by nature—don't actually believe in it, for humans.
• I am not someone who can just chug out reams of material. I could, but it would all suck. (It takes me 2 years to get a novel ready for professional editing. A typical blog-post will take 3-5 hours.)
• I have written 3 full-length novels—all highly praised in publisher rejection letters. I recently self-published my most current sci-fi novel, The Space Between Thought, through iUniverse (a division of Author Solutions).
   It takes a few weeks for a novel to become available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc. My novel began to go live on December 16th, 2014. As with all great science fiction, it started in Japan—on Kobo.  Marketing genius, or what!  By January 2015, it should be fully available, everywhere.
• I have a bit more time than most people as I only work 25-30 hours each week, at my day-job.
• At present, I spend about 4 hours each day, 7 days a week, at the computer trying to learn and contribute and connect. I don't watch a lot of tv.

  
The following regime may not be sustainable, however, I thought you might be interested in my priorities and intentions...

Using the material I already have to generate new material...
1) Comb through my manuscript for interesting quotes and one-liners. I can tweet some. I noticed that there are many Google Communities and websites dedicated to things like metaphors and similes, so I pull those kinds of quotes, as well. I will keep my eyes open for more venues into which to deposit my book quotes.
   I turn some of these into text-on-graphic jpeg's which I immediately post on a Pinterest board. Sometime after that, they get tweeted and posted as one-liners on Facebook and relevant Google+ Communities.

2) Extract one-liners and memorable quotes from my blog to use later in the same way as above.

3) Edit my unpublished short stories and make them available, either as a free/cheap kindle book or as gifts. I spend very little time on this, but at some point, I'm going to have to take a week or two off of social media to work on this book.


My blog posting rules:
• Make sure that it's entertaining and/or informative. No crap.
• Use hashtags. (check the popularity of a hashtag on hashtags.org before using.)
• Use entertaining pictures.
• Title the post in some catchy, but not irritatingly inaccurate, way.
• When distributing my blog posts, I try to include links to my blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.


My personal rules when contributing to discussions etc: 
• No spam.
• Stay within a Google+ community's rules.
• Post only my blog-posts that are truly relevant to the Google+ community.
• Use the +name option to mention people whose posts or comments I comment on.
• If I see someone interesting, try to connect a bit. Engage in conversation, and/or follow them.
• Try to include "wmdean.com" when commenting in a discussion or on another person's post.
• +1 and Share, if I find something useful or interesting.
• If I stumble across something truly interesting and not already saturated, repost it on all my platforms, except my blog which I want to contain only original material.


Here are the forums in which I currently focus my efforts (in order of decreasing priority):

1st PRIORITY) Website: wmdean.com is a domain I own and redirect to my blogger account. This will be the main cache of my information. On this site I will have my regular blog, a bio page, A consumer section on my novel, a reviewer section on my novel with info like ISBN number, page count etc., a small gallery of pictures, contact info with links to every social media platform I am currently on.

2nd PRIORITY) Blogger: Express myself. Create original content about the things I know and the things I am interested in. Blog something significant at least once a week. This will include: Personal Anecdotes, Relationships, Marketing/Publishing Info, Japan, science, time travel, Apple devices, select movies, select books, observations about life. After publishing the blog, post it on Twitter, both Facebook pages, Google+ (publicly) and Pinterest.

3rd PRIORITY) Google+: My main connecting forum. Contribute to interesting discussions, curate interesting articles from communities I follow. Post relevant blogs into relevant communities; including non-writing-related communities. Keep learning about Google+ to make better connections.

4) Twitter: Follow anyone. Whenever I Tweet, I will Tweet 2-4 times, 8 hours apart. (The only exception to my anti-spamming policy, as encouraged by Kawasaki & Welch in their famous APE guide.) I should use the lists feature to segregate followers so that I can direct relevant info to each group, but t his is a long process and I'm already about 400 followers behind.
   At present, I am able to tweet something about twice a week. APE suggests several times a day! I do not think I can do this.
   I am still unsure how to really connect with people on Twitter... it seems so quantity-based. It's one of my least-favorite platforms, but everyone is using it and everyone keeps telling me it's useful. I am not sure I believe. In two weeks I was able to go from 14 followers to over 500. What can that mean? Well, for one, it could mean that you need about 500,000 to make a single significant random connection.
   One thing I do know is that you some people and organizations judge your value by the number of followers you have. Also, I am looking for readers and readers are everywhere so I see no harm in following anyone who will have me because most tend to follow me, in return. In the end, when I post something, if that post goes out to a million people, I am sure to generate some degree of interest.
   Jury's out on this one, but I actually like having followers and tweeting my blog posts and one-liners to see if I can get any retweets. Current record 9 retweets for my blog-post: The Untimely Death of William M Dean. Only 3 for my favorite one-liner... (see pic below)

5) Buy and Read Books by Other Authors and review the good ones on their Amazon page and Google+.
   I only do this for stories that I truly want to read. So far I have found and read 4 authors' debut novels. I liked 3 of them and posted good reviews on Amazon. I did not review the fourth. The writing was slick and the story interesting, but the novel was weighted down by poor editing. I know how difficult a thing it is to put your thoughts, talent, skill and hard work out there, open to criticism. I only want to help, so I only want to post positive things. Also, genre-addicts will accept a much lower standard, so it is entirely possible that his target audience is not concerned about technically deficient prose.  I did contact the author to offer my notes.
      NOTE TO AUTHORS: It might surprise you to learn that a review on Amazon.ca does not get published on Amazon.com. Also, just so you know, the preview feature is not made available on Amazon.ca, though it might be on Amazon.com. Look forward to a detailed post on this subject, in the near future.

6) Kboards.com: Contribute to discussions in Amazon's Writer's Cafe discussion area. Always a lot of very interesting discussions. Side note: as soon as my book is fully online at Amazon, I must create my Amazon Author's Page. This is a free service offered by Amazon and it helps provide extra info to others, whenever you post a comment on Kboards.

7) Amazon "Meet Our Authors" Forum: Once my Amazon Author's page is complete, I want to check this out. I'll start by checking out the links offered on kboards.com.

8) Goodreads: Contribute to conversations there.

9) Facebook: Keep up with family and friends and post things of general interest on my main personal page. On my writing page, accept connections from anyone who is interested, but reach out to authors and readers, especially locals and ones whose writing I really like. I do not consider this to be a high priority.

10) Pinterest: Post all the lengthier blogs to one board. Post one-liners and short quotes to another board. Bring traffic from other sites here to discover the collected treasure trove of my genius. I'm new to this platform and still not sure how to connect with others. I have 4 followers.

11) LinkedIn: Maintain minimal presence. Mostly by connecting with other professionals in the arts and publishing world and randomly contributing to group discussions. I like this platform even less than Twitter, however, LinkedIn emails me with some interesting publishing discussions to which I can't resist contributing.

12) Email List (Readers/Writers/Individuals in Media or Book-Related Services): Collect whenever possible. Build a list. In APE, this is suggested as the single most important thing but I think it is also the most difficult. Right now, I am pretty much ignoring it, other than having a subscribe button on my blog which will collect interested parties. So far, one. I love you, Mom!

I suspect that this is more true than I suspect.

Another difficult, but important thing is keeping track of what I post, when and where. Within Google+ I am monitoring and contributing to at least 6 communities on a regular basis. I have to keep a spreadsheet to keep track of where and when I publish each of my blogs or one-liners. I do not want to accidentally spam by repeating myself on any forum.

At this time, I think that I am keeping up with most of the above. However, it is stressful as I feel unfocused; that I am spread a little too thin.

This list is for you, but it will also help remind me of my priorities so that I can ignore the lower ones, whenever the workload gets too heavy.

Above all, I want to keep writing—in the blog, for now and start the next novel, within the next year.

To follow my progress,

CLICK HERE FOR MARKETING PLAN UPDATE 

Promises, promises...

 

 

When I promised her that I would follow her anywhere, 

I was really just thinking Facebook and Twitter.

wmdean.com