Thursdays with Amanda: Overly Aggressive Marketing Syndrome, Symptom Two
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.
First, HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, AMERICA! And a big thank you to everyone who has sacrificed to make this country what it is.
We’re on symptom #2 of the Overly Aggressive Marketing Syndrome, and it’s Social Media Saturation.
Test for this by looking at your recent Tweets, personal Facebook status updates, and blog posts. If multiple times per day your updates and Tweets focus on your book and/or career, chances are you’re either in the middle of a book release or you suffer from this symptom.
Social media is full of people demanding your attention. “Like” this! Read that! Watch this video! Visit that link! With so many requests needing decisions and response from us, we start to filter. We pick the links we want to visit, the videos we want to watch, the posts we read, the status updates we “like,” the Tweets we share. And the more friends or connections we have, the choosier we have to get.
Our “choosiness” quickly becomes somewhat formulaic. We give most attention to our closest friends and family. We give a fair amount of attention to those we find humorous, entertaining, or thought-provoking. We leave a smidgeon of attention for those who may surprise us…those we have previously written off or mentally excluded from our list of favorites. And we leave the least amount of attention to those who always have something to say…to those who overwhelm with their shared photos, links, requests, and jibber jabber.
My friends… don’t be so forecful with your online promotions that you end up in that last group.
For the record, this is not an excuse to spend less time online, but rather a plea to spend your time WISELY.
Here are 5 Rules to Prevent Social Media Saturation:
1. Limit your hard sells to a couple per week. If you’re in the midst of a release, you could do one per day.
2. Focus 75% of your social media interactions on others. This means instead of pushing your stuff, go out and interact on others’ walls, blogs, etc. Be social. Make friends. Check in on people. Leave comments.
3. Avoid always making the discussion all about your book or career. If you ask how someone’s vacation was, don’t follow up by telling them that you’re researching that part of the world for your next novel…that’s just tacky.
4. Limit your overall Tweets. I quickly unfollow people who Tweet more than 10 times a day…especially if the Tweets don’t interest me. Others have a higher tolerance level, but remember, the more you Tweet or Facebook or blog, the more likely your words will become just a bunch of noise to many of your followers.
5. Be intentional with what you put online. Many times, we feel we need to fill in the space with something. ANYTHING. That’s when the jibber jabber comes out. By thinking though your online strategies, you can ensure you provide great content every time.
What mistakes have you seen others make when trying to promote something online? I want to know!
6 Comments
“That’s enough about me. Let’s talk about my book.”
When anyone behaves like a “salesman” in an over-the-top way, regardless of what they’re selling (this includes anything from books to vacuum cleaners to religion), I tune them out and turn them off. It’s either self-centered, overbearing, ignorant or all three and I have no tolerance for it. People really need to use their heads, and unfortunately it seems most don’t.
And, as always, Amanda—one thing I really love about your posts is that you actually give figures, percentages and concrete guidelines to help us judge how to go about things 🙂 Thank you!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who unfollows an author for overpromotion. I recently unfollowed one who was tweeting ‘buy my book’ every hour. The next day it would be a different book, but still 24 ‘buy my book’ posts. And nothing else.
I also find it a bit rude if someone I’ve had no prior interaction with DMs me with a request to retweet their book promotion.
I’ve unfollowed people on Twitter who can’t quit “selling” their product. I don’t mind seeing one a day since you don’t catch every follower every time you tweet, but sometimes it’s the exact same tweet over and over.
I like that twice a week rule of thumb. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t feel so bad about being an infrequent poster and tweeter now. Thank you for the encouragement to be sparse with my own and supportive of others.
Someone on Twitter I follow has a book coming out next month. Already, every day there are many tweets promoting it. Lines from the book (often the same one multiple times), quotes from endorsements, links to pre-order. I don’t want to unfollow her but I’m already dreading how ridiculous the traffic will get when the book actually releases. It’s even a book in a genre that I would ordinarily by, but the saturation marketing has completely put me off it 🙁