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27 February 2014
...running Away With Me

I’ve decided to keep up the musical blog post titles with all my blogs from now on.

So today I’d like to talk about twitter marketing.  If you’re a writer you must have a pretty good imagination so when then do so few writers apply this to marketing their book.

Imagination by Drifting Spirit

Do people really think the following is going to make me want to buy their book:

Billy Joe Bob was an innocent boy until his neighbour corrupted him and made him a man! blahblahlink

If I am honest I see this so much and it lacks imagination, it lacks thought and it lacks anything that is going to pique my curiosity.

There are some authors among my twitter followers who seem to do nothing more than use a program like Pluggio to spam their followers with poorly thought out, instantly ignorable posts trying to sell their books.
 
Is there any evidence that this sort of thing works anyway?

Before you think hold on he uses Pluggio he has admitted as much in previous post.  I do indeed use Pluggio.  It posts 3 times a day for me when I remember to set it up.
  1. is a quote of the day that I believe is cool and think others will too and this is often retweeted so I guess I must be on the same wave length as some of my followers.
  2. reminds my followers about my blog, if you’re reading this it may be due to that tweet.
  3. directs people to www.georgeandthedragon.co.uk which is part of my overall campaign to highlight the arrival of my début creation.
I tweet and retweet throughout the UK working day when workload permits but it’s important to me to tweet when I'm possibly sleeping.

2 and 3 are
 broadcast at a time when I consider I maybe asleep but for my US followers it’s early to mid evening.
The tweet I use to publicise the website looks like this:

Dragons Battle of Britain RAF Luftwaffe Teenage Hero Nazis
For a teaser check out: georgeandthedragon.co.uk


I’m still not entirely happy with it but it conveys the premise of the book far better than I think something like this would:

“George and his dragon, Spitfire, fight the Nazis during the Battle of Britain.”

Although if you think differently let me know.

It's about trying to stand out from the crowd, I've used the phrase 'pique someone's curiosity' before but I think it is so relevant in this situation.  
For me though Twitter isn't the place to push by book when I release it next month.  Facebook is a far better medium for that.  But we shall see when the time comes for me to implement my on-line marketing strategy for George and the Dragon.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Philip- As someone coming to your blog through one of your ghost tweets, I suppose I'm proof that these things work! I like the premise for your book- and maybe I'm out of touch, but I quite like "George and his dragon, Spitfire, fight the Nazi's during the Battle of Britain" though admittedly the format you've chosen is punchier. Good luck with your marketing.

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  2. Hello Victoria,

    Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

    I thought after I'd written that strap line that it didn't sound half as bad as I thought it would. I can even see myself using it after my rhetoric about not doing so. :)

    Phil

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  3. Not at all- it's actually one of the few unpublished (or is pre-published the correct term?)/ self published writers blogs that isn't full of empty self promotion or littered with overly positive reviews of other aspiring writers works in a sphere of self- congratulation (a similar probem to the one you diagnose with twitter)-- it's nice to see some interesting content!- particularly your 'I am not a writer' post, which struck a chord with me.

    You can see my blog at http://thecharminghermit.blogspot.co.uk/ It seems I started it at around the same time as you did dragonintherubble so it might be interesting to compare experiences.

    Best Wishes,
    Victoria

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  4. I've already found some of your blog insightful I shall read more later :)

    ReplyDelete