Warm up your Cold Calling

Many times, when authors schedule events, they have to reach out and do some cold calling, and it can be stressful to pitch something to someone you don’t know. Here are some ideas to help make your call not just another random request.

The best thing I ever did to build my contact list was to volunteer to schedule the programming for one of my writers’ groups. This gave me the opportunity to reach out to all kinds of venues and speakers and to build relationships with local book sellers, libraries, and other professionals. (I was scheduling writing, marketing, and law-enforcement-related presentations for my Sisters in Crime chapter. Among hundreds of local contacts, I now have two bailbondsmen in my contact list who did a fabulous presentation on what it’s like to seek bond.)

Here are some ideas to help you when you reach out to plan an event:

• Contacts and relationships are important. It is much easier to call or email someone you have a relationship with than it is a complete stranger.

• When you meet new people, make sure to add them to your contacts immediately. Make sure to include a note of where you met them.

• Visit your local bookstores and libraries regularly (not just when you want to do a book signing). Be part of the community. Make sure you introduce yourself.

• When you participate in a book festival, make sure to introduce yourself to the event coordinators and planners.

• Be willing to volunteer.

• Join a writers’ group and volunteer. These groups help authors build their networks.

• If you have a skill to share, volunteer to teach a class. Even if you can’t sell books there, you can still promote your newsletter and offer bookmarks.

• Contact your local library or bookseller and proposal a panel for a program that they could offer. Many groups are looking for interesting speakers.

• Do your homework. Learn about the group, organization, or business before you reach out to them. Look at their event calendars. Make sure that what you’re offering matches.

How Do You Avoid Being Overwhelmed by Social Media?

Keeping up with all of your social media sites can be a lot of work, and it can often feel overwhelming. As a writer, your goal is to be active on your key sites and still write your next book. Both are important components of your writing life. Here are some ideas that can help you manage your social media and promotion time.

• Create a social media schedule. I still have a day gig, so what works for me is to check my main sites in the morning, at lunch, and in the evenings. I respond to messages and comments.

• The “social” part is key. You need to interact with those who comment on your posts. It’s also important to comment and share others’ posts.

• Know which sites your readers are on and focus your efforts there.

• Make sure that you post regularly. I schedule a lot of my daily posts on my main sites. This lets me plan my posts to match my goals and strategies. I still do ad hoc posts on random things that I want to share. It also allows me to have posts throughout the day, even if I’m busy doing something else.

• Remember that every post is not going to sell a book. Balance the content of your posts, so that twenty percent or fewer of your items are “buy my books.” It’s important for readers to see what you’re doing and your interests. Everything shouldn’t be a sales post.

• Social media followers are interested in entertainment and good content. Avoid being too wordy. Include graphics or videos to draw attention to your post.

• Be careful not to let your social media time take over your writing time.

• Create a business account on these platforms where you can. They offer more flexibility, features, and metrics than a personal account does. They also allow you to schedule your posts.

• Review your accounts’ metrics or analytics from time to time to see what posts are working. Many of the business tools offer hints for the best times to post for your readers. This can also help you to see how your audience is growing.

Who's Your Audience?

Who is your reader? When I ask new authors that, many says that it’s “everyone who reads.” Not quite. You need to determine who is reading your books or who would be interested in reading what you write. Here are some things you can do:

• Look at your social media analytics. Many offer information on your audience’s demographics (e.g. age, country of origin, gender, etc.). This helps you see who is paying attention to your posts.

• Look at your website’s analytics. This tells you who is visiting your site and when. Many of the dashboards show detailed information about your audience.

• Make a list of several authors who have books that are similar to yours. Look on major book seller sites and skim the reviews. What can you glean from those who have read these books?

• Find Facebook sites or groups for your genre. Look at the members or the “top fans” of the page. Who is commenting the most about your style of writing? I write cozy mysteries, so I look for groups, sites, and book reviewers/bloggers who specialize in my genre.

• When you create posts or ads for your books, make sure that you target your readers. Think about what appeals to that demographic. Do they prefer content, lots of pictures, videos?

• Build your social media platform on sites where your readers are. Search for social media platform demographics online. There are lots of articles that define all kinds of statistics about who is using what site. This gives you an idea where to focus more of your promotion time.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to narrow down your readers. It takes a little work, and as you build your website and social media audiences, you’ll have more data on your analytics pages.

What's Your Author Brand?

What is your author brand? A brand is something that is easily recognizable like a logo or packaging. It’s a way for readers to know what to expect from your writing. It’s your identity as an author.

Colors - The colors you choose for your logo, bookmarks, website, and social media sites create a feeling or a mood. Make sure your color palette matches your writing style. My first traditionally published work was a short story in an anthology series that had a black, white, and red cover. I used that color scheme for my first website and my graphics. Later, I was talking with a publicist, and she asked me why I chose those colors because my mysteries are lighter and often humorous. She recommended that I stick with brighter colors and pastels.

Fonts - Fonts also evoke a mood or style. Design applications like Canva will let you create a color and font palette with some of their packages. That way, you can be consistent with your designs. Some fonts are thicker and bolder, while others are loopier. Some fonts are more casual than others. Find one or two that match your style and your genre. If you’re using it for headlines or logos, make sure that it’s easily readable. I saw a tagline on the back of a tow truck recently. It looked like it read, “We Tow Less.” The words were on two lines and there was a squiggly something that I couldn’t read under the “We.” It was actually the word “for” in a loopy font. Their message of “We Tow for Less” got lost and twisted because of a font choice.

Things to Consider -

• Make sure you have a professional headshot. Selfies aren’t the quality that you want to reproduce online or in print.

• A logo helps link you and your brand. It’s a nice item that you can include on everything.

• It’s also good to have a tagline that’s easily understood (and readable) that describes your style.

• It’s helpful if you can get all of your social media handles to be the same. Sometimes, that’s not possible. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find you. In Meta products (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), it is much easier to find Heather Weidner than it is Heather.Weidner.1234 or Mystery_Author _Heather Weidner.

Your brand helps readers know about you and your writing style. It creates a cohesive look for your online and in-person presence.

Recent Writing Gems

I’ve attended a bunch of classes and seminars lately, and here are some of the gems that I picked up that can help writers…

Writing Dialog with Andrea Johnson:

• Johnson reminded writers that dialog is more than just a conversation. It advances the plot and establishes the tone.

• Dialog is faster for readers to process than narrative, and it’s a way to show the point of view and personalities of your characters.

• She suggested that authors avoid long physical descriptions of characters in dialog.

• Johnson also suggested that writers avoid having characters having long philosophical discussions with themselves.

Podcasts to Add to Your Favorites’ List:

• Pick Your Poison

• Dark Predators

• Murder in the Hollywood Hills

• Missing in America

• Check out Sarah E. Burr’s post on Writers Who Kill about her favorite true crime podcasts.

Book Marketing:

• Book Funnel is a way that authors can distribute their ARCs (Advance Reader/Review Copies) and book giveaways to readers.

• It does require a subscription, and several tiered options are available. Make sure you review the features available with each plan.

• Some plans have options for authors to join newsletter swaps, email builders, and book sales with other authors. This is a way to expand your audience and add followers to your email list.

Newsletter Content Ideas

New writers often ask me what they should include in their newsletters. Here are some ideas that have worked for me.

• Announcements and What’s New with You

• Give-aways and Do Shout outs to Previous Winners

• Invitation to Join Your Street Team

• Ask for Reviews/References (e.g. book clubs, speaking events, etc.)

• Highlight One of Your Interesting Blog Posts

• Recipes

• Craft Projects

• Your Hobbies

• Your Pets

• Your Favorite Things

• Feature What You’re Reading or Watching

• Interview Other Authors

• Pictures of Where You’ve Been Recently

• Highlights of Blogs, Take-overs, Podcasts, and Interviews That You’ve Done Recently

• Where You’ll Be Next

What would you add to my list?

Ways to Expand Your Facebook Presence

It takes some time and a lot of care and feeding to build a steady following on social media. Here are some ideas of things you can do to expand your social media presence.

• There are lots of specialized Facebook groups for books, reading, and all genre imaginable. Find these and join them.

• Join in discussions.

• Many book groups on Facebook offer author take-overs. This is a chance for you to meet new readers in that genre and to introduce them to your books.

• Post interesting/entertaining content on your site. This keeps people coming back.

• Make sure your posts have some sort of picture, graphic, or video. Avoid huge blogs of text. Facebook often only shows the first few lines, make sure the important information is first in your sentence.

• Follow the 80/20 rule. Only about 20% of your posts should be about your books. Readers want to know about you and your interests.

• Be social. Don’t just post and run. Make sure you respond to comments.

• Spend some time scrolling your newsfeed and comment on others’ posts.

• Celebrate others’ accomplishments on your site.

• Put your key social media links in your email signature, website, and newsletter.

• Use your Search button. Look for topics that interest you for ideas of people or groups to follow. You can also search by key words for subjects like librarians, book bloggers, cozy mystery, etc. to see what is available.

• When you meet new people, check out their social sites and follow them.

• When you post group or event photos, make sure to tag the other folks who are with you. Your audience expands when they share it with their readers.

I'm a New Author - What Should I Work on First?

New authors often ask what part of their platform they should work on and when? Here’s what has worked for me.

Website: Purchase your domain name for your site and start creating the pages. This is the hub of all of your marketing efforts. I would create it first. If you don’t have a book to highlight yet, start with a blog and build a following. Blog about things in your book, your research, your hobbies, what you read/watch, or anything that catches your fancy. Try to have a regular schedule if possible.

Link to your social media accounts to your webpage and have a place where visitors can sign up for your newsletter. You can add pages and update the look as you add new books.

Email/Newsletter List: Start collecting names as soon as you start doing events or appearances. Have a sign-up sheet where people can register. Decide how often you want your newsletter to go out and what kind of content you want to include. I do mine quarterly with some kind of contest. I include announcements, events, photos, and interviews of other authors.

There are all kinds of free and paid email services that you can use to build your newsletter from templates and to house/maintain your list of followers. Remember, you can be banned from social media platforms, or the site can shut down. When this happens, you have no way of contacting those followers. You own your email list, and that’s why it’s important to have and cultivate.

Social Media Sites: I would also start to build a following on these as soon as you can. Agents, editors, and publishers often look at your website and social media sites to see your content and what kind of following you have. I started out years ago with three Twitter followers. It takes time to build an audience. Choose the one or two sites that you want to focus on and follow at least 10 people a day.

I write cozy mysteries. Most of my readers are on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, so that’s where I focus most of my time, but I do have a presence on a variety of other sites. Make sure your readers can easily find you. Make the look and feel of each site (photograph and banners) similar. To build (and keep) an audience, you need to be social. You need to interact with those who comment, post interesting content (that’s not all “buy my book”), and share other’s celebrations.

A business page on Facebook and Instagram gives you access to metrics and insights about your page and activity and access to the business tools. I can see when my followers are most active, and I can schedule posts during those times. Some authors use their personal Facebook accounts. There is a limit to the number of friends you can have on a personal account, and once you hit that number, you can’t expand your reach. The business page isn’t limited.

I would focus on these three key parts of your author platform as soon as you decide to start your writing journey. There is a lot of waiting when you query agents or publishers or while you wait for publication. I would use this time to work on your website, newsletter, and social media sites.

What else would you add to my list?