Starting a small business (self publishing) is like any other business. We have to be smart. Make wise decisions: Where to spend money? How to spend our work time? What products are we going to offer?
I’d like to say I wrote a business plan, a production plan, and marketing plan and never wavered. But it seems like some of those plans are in a constant state of flux. Yes, I have them. Not as detailed as some I’ve seen but they work for me.
Why am I restrategizing?
I’ll be honest. I’m in the middle of a social media crisis. I’m completely rethinking my strategies and feeling the desire to streamline and be more effective. Not just in blogging.
A few things kind of hit me over the head as to why I decided this.
First, recently, I did a cover reveal for a friend, but at the top of it I added a bit of a writing tip that I’d stumbled upon. I just wanted to add something personal to the post. You can probably guess what happened. That post skyrocketed and got a zillion more hits and retweets than usual.
Second, lately on Twitter, all I see are links or rants. No conversation. It’s changed. I’ll admit it. I do enjoy the #chats because people are interacting for real. More of my conversations happen in DMing and email.
Third, I jumped on my Google Reader to catch up on blogs and comment. I do this once a week. This time it was later in the week and I expected to have a ton of blogs to go through.
Guess what? My feed, which at one point would be out of control if I waited a few hours into the day–I made it through in about ten minutes. And hardly any of the posts were personal. Business. Cover reveals. Promotion. That’s fine. I’m contributing. But I miss the personal connection. I read all of them, but I only comment on ones where I have something to say.
Or maybe it’s always been this way and it’s me that’s changing, wanting something different from social media.
So I’m going past the marketing plan and truly writing a social media plan. For me, that’s different than marketing, especially for authors of fiction.
Have you changed your strategies at all? Or rethought them?
Hop on over to the Indelible blog where I’m posting about satisfaction and keeping your eyes on your own paper.
