New Marketing 101 for Science Fiction Publications and Writers, Session 2

Okay, if you missed Session 1: Basic Concepts, please read that first. If you can’t accept the three basic concepts, then don’t bother reading further. Success in this new era demands wholehearted participation. It requires an ability to think of your publication (or yourself) as a public persona. It means that you have to be committed, engaged, and enthusiastic.

Hey, I never said this would be easy, did I?

Session 2: The Foundation

Got a website with links to all your good reviews and online content, a news section, and a profile about who or what you are? Good. Now blow it up. It’s as meaningless as a single airbrush-retouched photo in this new age. Your first order of business is to build a real, engaging, and immediate online persona. And you won’t do it with a site that you update once a quarter. Get used to spending a whole lot more time online. Because this is where your audience is. And it’s the only place your audience can engage with you as a person.

Here’s what you do:

Tactic 1: Blog. And don’t just complain about how nobody understands your publication anymore, or why The Evil Editor Won’t Buy Your Crap. Post interesting stuff, whether it’s something real and human, or position pieces, or even content. Allow comments. Make sure you’re tagging and keywording posts. Do this at least once a week.

“Oh, barf,” some of you are saying. “There’s a billion of them out there, what can I possibly contribute?” Or. “I already gots me a blog, and nobody cares.”

Great. Now go back and read the above. Yeah, there are a billion blogs out there, but most of them are nothing more than an extension of a sophomore’s Livejournal. You’re the editor of a major publication, or a professional writer. You have interesting things to talk about. Hell, you have content. Set it free. There’s endless interest in proto-science-fiction communities such as Slashdot, SomethingAwful, and BoingBoing about publications and authors. Use this.

But even the most interesting blog will get you exactly nowhere if you aren’t making your content visible, and you aren’t engaging the community. Are you using Technorati tags? Do you have links so viewers can immediately Digg or del.icio.us-ize your posts (yeah, I know, I don’t, the cobbler’s children and all that). Are you assigning the right keywords to your posts? Hell, are you publishing on a platform that supports all of this? Find out, and get thee fixed, right fast.

Finally, are comments enabled? I’ve seen a whole lotta blogs with comments turned off, which is just plain insulting. One of the key values of a blog, besides its immediacy, is its ability to start a dialogue with your readers. And if you aren’t open to dissenting opinions, well, hey, it’s time to grow a thicker skin. It’s amazing what you might learn.

Tactic 2: Get a Social Network Presence. Create a MySpace page or Facebook account. Or maybe even Mixi and QQ, for those of you with Japanese and Chinese content. Look for friends. Have friends look for friends. Make lots of friends. Send them bulletins.

“Oh, super-barfola-matic-deluxe,” you may be saying. “Mixing with the kids, ick, I’m not comfortable with this.”

Well, FYI, MySpace has grayed significantly. And it has some relatively large groups who are interested in science fiction. If you want to ignore this audience, fine, but it’ll just hold you back. Why not talk to them? It’s free, after all.

“But we have a MySpace and it doesn’t do anything for us,” you may be saying.

Go back to the rest of the summary above. Putting up a social media presence and expecting it to be the major traffic driver for your website is a bit unrealistic. You need to seek friends, add friends, have friends recommend you to other friends. And you need to tell them what’s happening. Having an event? Bulletin to your friends. Speaking? Another bulletin. Got a great idea to have the MySpace community send you their stories? Bulletin. You get the idea. Your friends have signed up to get stuff from you. Don’t abuse this, and it’s a very powerful marketing tool.

Oh, and by the way, forget the MySpace blog as your blog platform. It’s widely-ignored by the search engines.

Tactic 3: Participate in Social Media. Take photos? Have photos taken of you getting that Reelee Big Award? Put them up on Flickr and tag them correctly. Take video? Someone make your story into a short film? Put it up on YouTube an tag it correctly. Basically, if you generate other media, or have it generated for you, put it up and tag it right.

“Huh?” you might be saying. “This has nothing to do with writing!”

Or does it? Remember, we’re building an engaging and memorable persona here. Visual media is more immediately accessible than text, whether we’re talking photos or video. Getting out on those open networks gets you in front of, literally, hundreds of millions of potential readers. Tagging the content with your name and relevant keywords means it comes up on Google and Yahoo searches. Your profile gives you a chance to link back to your site.

Do it. The search results alone make it worth it.

Tactic 4: Participate in the Proto-Science-Fiction Community Sites. Comment on a Slashdot posts. Submit your own. Respond to BoingBoing articles. Submit your own. Post on the SomethingAwful forums. Get in front of people who have warm feelings for science fiction, and may even know a few of the larger authors in the field.

“Huh?” you’re saying. “I don’t know how to get started doing that.”

It’s easy. Google the names above. Then search the sites for “science fiction.” Believe me, there will be things you want to comment on. Get an account and comment on them. Put a link back to your main site on every post. The more links you have, the better your search engine results. And the more you post, the more content you have.

And that’s it for Session 2. Do all of that, and you’re well on your way to building a foundation for people finding you and engaging with you.

“Wow, that’s a lot to do,” you say. “I don’t know if I can do it/don’t know if I have the staff to do it.”

Well, that’s too bad. Because if you don’t do it, someone else will. And they’ll be the one who’s visible. And who’s going to get the next book contract or big pub mention? An Alexa rating above 100K and 11,000 MySpace friends may not be the only criteria, but they can’t hurt.

March 7th, 2007 /