Gain Readers by Spending Less Time on Marketing

Wow! It seems I hit a nerve with my article The Marketing Monster Won’t Let Me Write. In it, I described the massive amount of time needed to keep up with the marketing required for our work to be found, noticed, and read. The comments poured in, mostly in agreement with my assessment.

Marketing consists of not only promoting your articles and stories but promoting YOURSELF. You need to engage and build a relationship with other writers to get noticed, known, and read. You cannot expect to be successful on writing platforms if you drop a link to your articles without developing and continuing personal communication with other writers about your article/story/poem, and yourself. If they feel that they know you and like your writing, they will help promote your work.

Now that everyone agrees that the Marketing Monster needs to be tamed so we can spend more time writing, let’s examine a solution to the problem.

Step 1 –List the marketing tasks, which are:

· Promote your article/story/poem on every social media platform to which you should belong — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.

· Read the articles of fellow writers.

· Build a relationship with fellow writers -After reading their work, if you like it, Clap(Medium), give a Heart (Vocal), Like (FB), and leave a comment. Claps, hearts, and likes are nice, but you’re trying to build a rapport and relationship. Comments need to be included. If you don’t like someone’s work, simply go on to the next piece. Give constructive criticism only if it’s requested.

· Effective Comments — Cite something specific in the article you have read, such as a line you particularly liked. Ask a follow-up question to encourage more communication and bond-building.

· Answer all communication promptly. Ideally, this should be done twice daily — at the beginning and end of each day. Consistency in responding to comments matters. People are as busy as you, which leads to short attention spans and memories. Keep the engagement going by answering as consistently and quickly as possible, but don’t get bogged down and distracted by answering all day. I find that allowing time at the beginning and end of each day works best for me.

Step 2– Pre- Preparation — The Golden Key for Saving Time

· Although a lot of this is initially time-consuming, it will save you time long term.

· Sign up and make an account ahead of time, for all the social media and work-related platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and any others you may know about that I haven’t listed.

· Make a similar basic profile page for each of these accounts — a simple place to post notices about, and links to, your articles/stories/poems. I have taken courses on how to maximize followers on each of these platforms by designing fancy, color-coordinated, professional appearing self-advertisements, and it involves more work than you are already doing, so for now, make a basic profile. You can upgrade later once you get a handle on marketing time.

· Make and save a Word Document for Teaser Lines — A teaser line is a line or two that piques the reader’s interest to read your article. You use it to introduce the link to your article. This allows an easy back and forth, copy and paste method when you are posting your articles. Copy and paste your teaser line; copy and paste the article link next to it. It also allows for you to refer back to similar lines that may be used for future articles. Example of the line I used when I advertised my marketing article: “Anyone frustrated with all the time spent marketing instead of writing?”

· Make a “Promotion/Social Media Check List” of every platform and FB Group you use to promote your work. You will list the article next to each platform as you post it.

Shortened example of mine:

Vocal Writers Sharing Community — Intro story/ TOC/Monster/Alz.symptoms

Medium Bloggers- Intro story/ TOC/Monster/Alz.symptoms

Twitter- Intro story/ TOC/Monster/Alz.symptoms

This method allows you to keep track of which article you posted where.

· Notification Bell (in FB groups and Medium) — To check comments and “engagements” you have received, click on the notification symbol (bell) in the FB groups and your Medium page to quickly see the comments that have been left for you. The notification bell eliminates that time-consuming step of checking for comments in every group in which you posted. (You probably already knew about this, but I didn’t. I could have written a 500 page novel in the time I wasted looking for comments.)

· Bookmark stories by other writers that interest you when you come upon them. You can come back to them during your scheduled “Reading” time.

· Email List- I am no expert (less than a novice, to be honest) on how to build email lists. It is a LOT of work, and this article is focused on saving you time and work, but if you are interested, you can check out this Medium article on E-mail lists.

******You may balk at this and grumble that I am supposed to be saving you time, not giving you more work with Steps 1 and 2, but I promise you, pre-preparation is the golden time-saving key.

Step 3 -Set Up a Schedule for:

· Writing and Publishing -When my article is finished, I publish it on Medium and submit it to Vocal for review at the same time. Medium publishes immediately, while Vocal can have as much as a 3 day submit/publish lag time. It gives an extra “bounce” to my work to be seen and promoted on Medium FB groups one day, and then again on Vocal groups a few days later.

· Promoting published articles — This is where the Pre-Preparation proves its worth. After my article has been published, I set up my “Social Media List” next to my computer. I open my “teaser line” document and write a few lines to “tease” my article. I open my published article. I open the first group on my “Social Media List”, copy and paste my teaser line into its comment section; copy and paste my article link; post. Check off that group on my list. Repeat “Open social media group, paste teaser line, paste article link, post, check off on the list, until every social media site on the list has been checked off. This method has saved me HOURS of work. I can usually finish promoting an article in one hour or less.

· Reading and commenting/clapping/hearting/subscribing, to other writers’ work- Remember what I said at the beginning — Engaging with other writers is CRUCIAL to promoting yourself and your work. People can’t help you if they don’t know you.

· Daily or Weekly — Set up one or more days each week for one task (ex: Monday, Wed, and Friday are writing days; Tuesday is promoting day, and Thursday is reading other’s articles day.) How much time constitutes “a day” is up to you. 8, 6, 4, or 2 hours? I can’t answer that for you. Mine is about 6 hours because I am retired, and this is my full-time job. OR allot a certain amount of time each day for all the tasks (ex: 10 am-11 am — reading and responding to comments; 11 am –1 pm — writing; 1 pm-3 pm — promoting) I much prefer the weekly schedule of setting aside certain days for certain tasks.

This schedule is based on writing as my full-time job. Your schedule will depend upon your reason and long-term goal for writing. You can cut down these days and hours considerably if you are using Internet writing as a side gig or a hobby to showcase your work.

Following a weekly schedule and utilizing my shortcut tips have cut my work time down from 10 hours a day to an average of 5–6. I can live with that.

5–6 hours a day is probably too much time for those of you who have obligations other than writing, so you will have to make a schedule that fits your needs.

I hope these tips have been helpful to you. If you have other time-saving tips, please share them with us! Useful comments are welcome. Link Bombers are not and will be removed.