Thursdays with Amanda: Overly Aggressive Marketing Syndrome, Symptom Three
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
We’re addressing our third symptom of Overly Aggressive Marketing Syndrome, and it’s Solitary Administration.
Test for this by looking through your correspondence for times in which fans, bloggers, friends and family have come to you, seeing how they can help. If you have very few instances in recent months in which others have taken the initiative or the lead…heck, if you feel alone in most of your marketing endeavors, you may suffer from this symptom.
While it may seem that I’m pointing to those who carry the world on their shoulders and refuse to let it go, I’m actually talking about those who have so overworked their supporters that the desire to help is gone.
It looks like this…
My book is on sale this week! I need to let everyone know!
So, I go to my friends and family…people who I KNOW I can rely on to share the info on Facebook, Twitter, and such.
But wait! Barely anyone is responding! WHY AREN’T THEY SHARING MY NEWS WITH THEIR FRIENDS?! It only takes a second to send a Tweet! What’s the hang-up!
Okay, maybe I can strike a deal…
Friends, if you share this news, I’ll be eternally grateful!
Crickets.
Okay, maybe a different approach…
Friends, it’s really important that you Tweet this for me, so all who do so will get something special from me!
A few comply.
Now that’s not the response I wanted! What am I going to do?!
FRIENDS, IF YOU LOVE ME, YOU WILL RETWEET THIS.
Sheesh, what’s a girl gotta do?! Oh, I just realized I have a new Amazon review! EVERYONE MUST KNOW AND CONTRIBUTE!
Friends, please support me by leaving me reviews! …
Look familiar? Sound familiar?
These are the people who are constantly asking others to help with x, y, or z. They’ve roped their family and friends and fans into being part of a street team that the family, friends and fans never signed up for! Consequently, the author ends up doing 99.9% of the work, while they simultaneously spin their wheels, trying to energize their spread-too-thin fan base.
DON’T BE THAT WAY. It’s exhausting for everyone involved.
Give your fans, friends, family, room to breathe. Don’t demand or ask too much. Make participation easy for them.
You’ll end up with a base of supporters who will come to YOU, asking how they can help. And that, my friends, is a nice place to be.
Do you feel overworked by some of your author friends? Let’s hear it!
11 Comments
I’ve had a few friends who wearied me with their requests to help promote their book. I did what I felt was reasonable and when they asked me to do more, I grew increasingly irritated (but we’re still friends).
This is a hot-button issue for me. I used to feel sorry for writers who did that all the time because they simply came off as needy, but the more I think about it the more I realize that they’re more than needy, they just don’t care if they drown you in constant advertisements. Some of those who do that are simply desperate for someone outside their normal circle to read them, and others, I think, are megalomaniacs. They are so self-important that they can’t see how badly they turn others off, but that goes hand-in-hand with any serious delusion… I’d say a good 70 percent of writers who have friended me on Goodreads, or Twitter, or wherever, immediately start off pitching their revolutionary novel to me, and I am very picky about who I add now. Great post, man.
I’m really enjoying this series, Amanda. Thanks!
Thanks!
I absolutely agree 100%! Asking for reviews is the kind of thing one asks their crit partners to do. That’s “normal.” Beyond that is over the top, to me. I think of the admonition of “Don’t toot your own horn.” 1 Chip 7:3 ;o)
No one is pushy about it, but I have to pick and choose what I post. Otherwise, with all my writer friends, my twitter and fb account would be a steady stream of advertisements for books. I have several authors who have been especially helpful to me in the past, so I try to help them out. Let’s face it, I need all the help I can get. So I try to form some alliances. If all I have to do is share a book every now and then, it’s well worth the effort.
Thanks for this thought, Amanda. You say to not demand or ask too much. What would an appropriate amount of asking look like, in your opinion? (Not that I have to worry about this now, but it’s always good to think ahead!) Thanks!
I’m sorry to say I had one author removed from my facebook account. I would get over ten messages per day for a few days when her book was coming out. It shouted, “Look at me.” And even when her book wasn’t coming out, everyday she used facebook and sent something out.
Yep, overkill for sure.
The best thing is to divide your peeps into different groups. You can ask more of your street team than you can your run-of-the-mill FB friend. With your regular friends, I’d say you can ask them to do a couple things for you around release, and then very little after that. Also, limit your book chatter on your personal FB wall to one or so comments every week/every other week. This way, they won’t feel as though their friend has been replaced by a walking advertisement.
As for Street Teams, we’ll talk more about them in a couple weeks
Makes total sense. Thanks, Amanda!