Do You Have a Social Media Strategy?

I was talking to a potential freelance writing client the other day. One of the reasons she’d gotten in touch with me in the first place was because she was pretty impressed with the amount of social media I’d done in the past year or so on behalf of Zombies Don’t Cry, Ushers, Inc., etc.


We talked about Twitter and Facebook, about giving stuff away versus charging for it, and about my philosophy of “less is more” social media. And everything was going really well until she asked me how many books I’d sold.


When I told her, you could have heard a pin drop.


And I knew, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t be getting that job. But more importantly, I also knew that she felt that all the social media I’d done – all those free poems and stories, the cool book covers, the Twitter followers, the Facebook friends, the homemade book trailers, the guest posts and interviews and giveaways – was just a big waste of time.


Although I was polite and quickly moved onto the specifics of the job, inside, I couldn’t have disagreed with her more. It hasn’t been a waste of time. Sometimes it feels like it, sometimes I get discouraged, sometimes I feel like I’m losing ground, but… I’m not.


That’s because the minute I heard that Zombies Don’t Cry had a publisher, I started devising a simple, sound strategy for rolling out my social media over the year it would take for ZDC to come out.


And that strategy included all the things I’ve done in this past year; starting a blog, joining Facebook and Twitter, posting on Scribd and Smashwords, making friends and connections, sharing ideas and information, getting to know bloggers and reviewers and doing what I can to make our lives easier, etc.


Has it sold millions of books? No. Has it made me rich? Heck no. Was that ever the strategy? Not really. The strategy has been to take my time, to roll out quality books in the supernatural YA genre, to do informative blog posts, to offer fun, entertaining and FREE quality content about zombies, vampires and werewolves, and to quietly but persistently add my name to the growing list of YA authors online.


And I’ve accomplished that. I know I have. And I’m still accomplishing that. And that’s the point of a strategy: it works if you stick to it. And I’m sticking to it, it’s even evolving with some Youtube stuff and the book trailers and v-log(s) and such.


And, yes, it works. I read a comment on Facebook the other day where one author was lamenting how “stupid” it made other authors sound when they bragged about their Amazon sales rank, and how it may have meant they may have only sold one book that day.


And my first thought was, “So what?” I notice every time my sales rank goes up or, more often, down. And I feel good when it goes up, even if I kind of, sort of know that means only one person bought a Kindle version of Ushers, Inc. that day, or a paperback copy of Zombies Don’t Cry or whatever.


I feel good because it means the strategy is working, slow and steady, just like I planned.


So for all the slow starters with low numbers out there, for all the folks who wish they had bigger sales, more subscribers (for my blogger peeps!), followers, friends or “fans,” they’re coming.


Stick to your strategy; it’ll work. And if you don’t have a strategy, take some time out from your promotional activities and make one, then stick to that so it can work.


I’m not, by nature, a confident person, but I had no trouble letting that client think I’d been wasting my time. Why? Because, for once, I knew different. I haven’t been wasting my time doing social media using a quiet, careful, methodical strategy.


How about you?


Yours in YA,


Rusty