Tag: Loomly

Putting Myself Out There

An indie writer needs to market themselves. It’s perhaps my worst failing that I don’t do a great job marketing myself. I have trouble exclaiming to people, “You need to read my writing!” Call it Midwestern Female Syndrome1, but it’s real.

This blog is part of marketing myself. To be honest, the main purpose of this blog is to talk about writing and my thoughts about it. When you read my blog, I hope you’re thinking “That’s what it’s like to be a writer.” Hopefully, it also makes you want to read what I’m writing.

Just like my newsletter right now — blank.

I post now and again on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram using Loomly, a social media manager. I post mostly silly things (did you know it was National Kitten Day on Tuesday of this week?) but that’s to get my name out there. I also advertise my books there.

I also write a newsletter every three weeks. If you’re familiar with my blog, you’ll be familiar with what my newsletter is like. I talk about life as a writer, my books, and plans in a chatty way. I try for more atmospheric, with pieces of my surrounding life included. Once I wrote about the gift I received of an Emotional Support Pickle, for example. If you would like to be on my newsletter mailing list, please drop me an email here.

These are all suggested ways to promote one’s books, but I can’t help but think I’m not doing these right. I’m not good at self-promotion, as I have said above, and would like to get better. My Midwestern Female Syndrome keeps me from bragging too much. Would anyone like to read a book?

  1. Midwestern Female Syndrome is the internal desire to be perfect combined with the desire to be outwardly unremarkable; to be outstanding but not to stand out.

Playing with Loomly

I have a couple of books out there. You can find all my books here. They’re all in the fantasy romance/romantic fantasy area, although I would recommend Gaia’s Hands to those who aren’t into fantasy as well. I’d recommend Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Universe (Kindle Vella book) to those people as well.

Most potential readers haven’t found this blog, so I can’t promote my novels through here and expect a lot of new readers. Therefore, I have to reach out to my social media accounts and talk about my books.

I know I can’t afford those promoters who keep sending me emails, so I have to promote myself until I’m rich enough1 to afford one. The problem is that I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a writer, not a promoter.

For a while, I used free Hootsuite to post little ads on multiple platforms — Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It was convenient, even though I didn’t know what I was doing. Then Hootsuite dropped their free plan, and the cheapest plan for users was the $1188/year2 Professional tier.

I partook (is that the right word?) in free trials for two competitors of Hootsuite: Buffer and Loomly. I chose Loomly because it gave me one feature that the others, including Hootsuite, did not: coaching.

Loomly will give you advice as you are crafting your post to each of the social media outlets that you’re linked to for the post. Loomly tailors the advice to the specific outlet — for example, Facebook favors posts under 50 characters while Twitter readers want longer posts. They suggest better times for posts. They suggest when hashtags or exclamation points/question marks may increase engagement. Little things that are helpful in making a post stand out that amateur social promoters may not know.

In addition, Loomly features possible topics to post on daily, because posting about your project daily gets tiring for readers. Some of these are weekly items like #HappyFriday; others are one day only celebrations like #HappyGirlScoutDay.

I don’t pretend that Loomly is teaching me everything about social marketing, but I have more than I had before. It’s easy enough to use that I actually enjoy using it and my calendar is full through the first of July. It’s relatively painless to learn new strategies, unlike reading dull books on the topic. And it costs $312/year2 for the Basic (about equal to the Professional Hootsuite) tier.

  1. Not going to happen.
  2. These are billed yearly prices. The billed monthly prices are higher.

It’s a SMART Goal Now

According to my past posts, I have set a Big Audacious Goal twice already for this year. The first one was to edit and query Apocalypse; the other was the one I came up with yesterday to double my social media presence. I’ve gone with the latter, because it confronts all my lingering reluctance to promote myself:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
  • My writing isn’t good enough
  • Nobody wants to hear from me
  • I don’t need a media presence
  • Nobody loves me! (Does this sound familiar?)

I’m working on 1) creating the SMART goal and 2) having fun with it.

First, the SMART goal. I will:

  • Post using Loomly twice a week
  • Post to Facebook and Twitter (I already post my blogs there)
  • Only post book news once a week
  • Use as many Loomly suggestions as possible to improve my social media posts

As for having fun, that’s just a natural part of who I am. Funny pictures, word play, bad puns — all come easily to me.

There’s a cynical part of me that says that this will not make any difference in engagement, but I have to take something on faith. Wish me luck.