This is Part 3 in my ongoing series explaining my experiences going from a relatively unknown writing schmuck to an Amazon best-selling author. Today's post is about more of my experiences on the social networking site, LinkedIn. This is the second post about LinkedIn, so if you haven't yet read the first one, you should probably scroll down & start with last week's blatherings.
...So when I saw all those comments (over 3,700 you'll recall), I was quickly discouraged. There was NO WAY I was going to go through all of those! Instead, I did what most everybody else did: I posted my own comment with my own link to my own Facebook page, and closed my LinkedIn tab, hoping for the best.
I was amazed at how quickly I gained more fans. Within two days I had gone from 422 to 450. By December 10th (only a week later) I had crossed 500... a number I had once thought was at least a year in the future. It was the biggest surge since I'd launched my author profile. This was great!
My proverbial snowball was thus at a precarious position.
It could easily sit there forever filled with potential, and sadly never move.
....or...
The gentlest of winds could nudge it downhill.
The nudge in question came when I noticed I was getting some personal messages on facebook. These were all from authors saying they'd found my page through the LinkedIn thread, and would I mind liking their author page in return? I'm always happy to support and encourage other artists, so even though most of them were not my style of writing I was more than happy to do so. Besides, I thought, It's only fair, right? And who knows, maybe some of them will share some other good writing and marketing ideas.
In the meantime I realized that these people who sent me personal messages were getting a lot more exposure. Why? Because they took the time and effort to ask for it... in other words, they worked their ASSES off! It was then I made my decision.
I was going to go through ALL of those old comments, dammit! I was going to connect with EVERY single author on that list, and every one of them would get my polite, personal message with a link to my page.
And so it was that the snowball was not so much nudged but thrust down that proverbial hill.
It took me 6 days and more than 50 website hours, but there was an explosion of activity on my Facebook page. People were liking my pictures, visiting my first couple of blog posts, and commenting about my books. I crossed 600 fans only 2 days later, and I remember joking with my wife that I might actually get to 750 by New Year's Day. Oh how wrong I was. On Christmas day my Facebook author page stood at 888. WHAT!? This was more than double the fans I had started with less than a month earlier.
By the time the holidays were in full swing, I was exhausted, elated, and unfortunately frustrated. Frustrated? you ask. Good grief, why? Well, there's one more post I'll need to write about that. For now, let's just say that my LinkedIn experience also had an ugly, annoying, nasty side to it too.
As I mentioned once before, people are idiots. Still, it was worth the effort.
Appreciatively yours,
-K.
ps: Words written since last post: None on paper (or on screen), but I did do some serious thinking and I'm happy to report I had minor breakthrough about one of my major concerns for my "Man Hunt" sequel. I'm very happy about it & I'm looking forward to getting it into the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment