Thursday, May 27, 2010

Expert Promotion Tips from Nate Hardy.

Nate Hardy is one of those people an organization like Pennwriters really needs to be effective. Nate specializes in marketing and promotion. He advises writers to treat their career as a small business. You can still sign up for his class right here.


The APCs of Marketing is Nate’s breakdown of strategic marketing. His plan organizes the steps and process of self promotion in a way to alleviate the horror most writers experience at the idea of setting their main work aside for a short time each day. He emphasizes the need to put your name and your product in front of customers. He quoted a statistic claiming people need to see your product at least six times before they remember it.

Six times can be an intimidating number but Nate also supplied us with lists of social groups and where to find them. Much to our surprise despite all we hear about Twitter, that network in only 45th overall in social networks. Facebook is still number one with Myspace coming in at two, Flickr at three and LinkedIn at four. Nate thinks Twitter will move up but they’re not there yet.

Nate has a plethora of statistics on where the audience is and what methods will put your book and you in front of them. You can learn more about those in his online class or from his book, Know Your APCs: Strategic Marketing Made Easy for Writers.

One common sense thing Nate advised was to be kind and generous to fans and readers as well as colleagues. Collaborate with librarians, booksellers, reviewers, fellow bloggers and people in your hometown to promote your work and theirs.

Nate shared with us his ‘Promotion Pyramid.’ The biggest attention getting for your book and where you should concentrate your time and money is on publicity such as articles, media appearances, press releases, review sites, blog tours and a few others. Visit his website to learn more about his business, Plus Sign Promotions, and about his online classes.

So what do you find is best promotion vehicle for your books? How do you track the success of your efforts?

4 comments:

Jemi Fraser said...

Kind and generous will take you a lot of places in this world! Totally agree :)

Sounds like he has a lot of common sense and good ideas - thanks for the link :)

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

He does have lots of good ideas and I like how he helps you prioritize. It's so difficult to find time for promotion and still fit the writing in.

Helen Ginger said...

His book and class sound like they'd be very helpful to writers. There's so much to be done, you really have to learn the best methods and how to prioritize.

Helen
Straight From Hel

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

Nate would give you great kudos for your great blog, Helen.