Social Media Marketing Part 2: Fighting for Exposure

It's not even possible to put a number on the ways that there are to utilize Social Networks or the internet to market whatever it is that you do.  Basically, any time you put your name or product out there, isn't that considered marketing?

The problem is that with an infinite number of places and ways to get your name out there, which ones are the most helpful and will yield you the biggest response?  This is something I am currently trying to work through and let me tell you, there aren't enough hours in a day to figure it out any time soon.

I blog.  Obviously you know that because you are here and reading it.  I never did the paid posts thing.  For a while there was a site called "Entrecard" that was sort of like an "I'll stop by your site if you stop by mine" and it drew traffic to your site and somehow made your site more relevant in search engines.

They went away.

I have followers here but to be honest, I follow a lot of sites that I just don't get around to visiting on a daily basis.  Or weekly.  Or monthly.  Heck, I think I follow some sites that I was only on a couple of times and never went back to again.  It wasn't that they were bad sites, but I just don't have the time that I used to.

I tweet.  I have almost 600 followers on Twitter.  Apparently this is a good number.  My son was highly impressed.  So I tweet.  I put out news about my books, promotions, when I need help and people to go to a site and click LIKE for me (curse you Amazon!) but basically, I'm certainly not getting results from each of those nearly 600 people.  

I'm on Facebook.  I'm on there as both me and my alter-ego.  I have over 800 friends on there.  My alter ego has almost 300 likes on the page.  Does that amount to anything?  Not really.  I post all the live-long day about where I need a little help from my friends and you know what I notice?  People will click like all day long on a cartoon or a picture of Grumpy Cat but I can't get nearly the same amount to click on a link for me.

I did Facebook advertising.  I spent a lot of money and got little to no return.  Sure, people looked at my page but that did not equal book sales or likes on the page.  They liked my AD, just not my page.  Awesome.

The funny thing with Facebook is that in order for a page to be a somewhat successful marketing/promotional tool, you have to have a lot of followers from all over the country/world.  If your group is just people who are local to you and you are not getting any help from the locals, don't waste your time promoting anything to these people!  WASTE O TIME!  I don't have time to waste on sites, pages or whatever that aren't going to support of promote me.

I heard of this thing called laddering.  I'm not sure I understand it but it's sort of like the whole Entrecard thing - you like my Facebook page, I'll like yours.  Great, your Likes go up but again, if you aren't promoting me or my product and vice-versa, where is the benefit?  Stats only mean something if it's helping you to promote your business!  You can have 5,000 likes on your products page.  That doesn't mean that 5,000 people have purchased your product.

I'm on Goodreads, Google +, Shelfari, YouTube and more.  And you know what?  I'm spending 3 hours a DAY on getting my name and my book out there and for all of that time and energy (and in some cases, money), it is not equaling book sales.

What am I doing wrong?  We're told that getting the word out, getting your Google rank up, getting your Facebook likes up is all what we should aspire to.  But what good is that high number when nothing is happening for you?

So here's my thought...why am I killing myself on this?  Why am I missing out on family time?  There are over 1,000,000 books on Amazon that I am fighting against.  I'm in the 20,000's.  Not a bad stat after less than a week, right?  But when will Amazon fix it's issues to help their author's who are using them exclusively and put the Like button back?  

In the case of Amazon, that's a stat that I am interested in!  That stupid Like button and the ranking are a very coveted thing!  Why won't they fix it?  Why won't they help the authors whose money they are benefiting from?  Help an indie author out.  Please go to Amazon and click on the link for Ever After and leave me a comment on whether or not your see a like button.  I would love to present them with some stats.

And while you're there, get your copy of "Ever After".