Top 10 Countdown #7 Gathering All Your Friends Around

#7 Gathering All Your Friends Around

OK, you've finally got some people following you around. (Relax it's just me and about 1000 of your closest fans!) It may be that manly body spray or the pheromones that you put on this morning, but whatever; it's working for you. We're here and we want to know where you are going to be. You need to make sure that you are SPECIFIC when you tell us where you are hanging out.

* Instead of, "Hey, I'm going to be over at AJ's blog tomorrow, why don't you stop on by!" Consider the following. "Hey guys, I'm going to be over at AJ's blog tomorrow (www.ajbestwrites.com) The blog post is going up sometime around 8am and I will be answering questions on and off throughout the day. So stop by and see me! I need all the support I can get!"


When you give all the pertinent information make sure to include everyone in there. There may be people who honestly don't know who I am. (I know, I know, I can't imagine it either, but seriously they don't!) And there are people where you do your promo work who have never been by AJ Best's website (shock of all shocks since I haven't gotten it up yet!) and don't know when the blog normally posts. So tell them these things. Maybe AJ is a night owl and likes to have her posts run at night, so your friends and followers may end up confused and lost in a time warp. (You may stop dancing now, we are not at a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show! Attention here people, attention!)

* Signatures lines baby, signature (sig) lines! Now don't get over zealous here. I have seen some sig lines that are actually longer than the email message that the author sent me. That is a little bit much. If your audience gets bored after two lines then you have just over two lines too many! So keep it to the point. Where do you REALLY want to have them come see you? Where do you spend the vast majority of your time working the crowds? Start with the most important thing first your website. They have to know where to find your important information. Then list things in order of importance from there -- blogs, and then social networks. Now let's say you have a MySpace page, and a Facebook, but spend 85% of your time at MySpace, well for goodness sake, put that one in your sig tag and leave out Facebook. No need to clutter it with everything else. And if you have 12 lines of text about all of your books that you have out, do you really think that a flashing neon sign flashing the book covers, your name AND your website will get them to pay more attention to you? All things in moderation.


* OK, so you have the readers hooked on you, and they are on your website. They are searching frantically for your contact information so they can tell you just how wonderful you really are. Hold on, they can't find it? It's not there? WHAT!? Make sure that if you want readers to contact you, that you are available. Even something as simple as a contact form enables them to get in contact with you without giving out your email address if you are afraid of getting too many emails or getting spammed. Remember, you can't gather your friends around if they don't know where to find you!


* Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a great way to get in touch with people quickly to let them know what is going on in your life. You have 140 characters to get in there, and leave a message letting them know where you are. You can shrink the URL down by using a number of different methods (http://bit.ly/) which is a website you can go to that will enable you to shorten the URL, but I happen to have a favorite way to shorten mine. It's called Glue (www.getglue.com). Not only does it shrink URLs so you can get them on Twitter (and with bit.ly also) easily, it connects you to friends and the things that they are looking at. I can go on and on about that, but this is an article about gathering all of your friends around you. (Hold on, isn't that what Glue does?)


* Calendars! They are the easiest way in the world to keep in touch with your readers. I have created calendars for friends and they have added them to their page so their readers can keep up with where they are blogging, chatting, and guesting. It's very easy to do with Google (www.google.com/calendar) and you are able to give access to all of your friends, family and relatives. It's a great way to keep everyone up to date on what's going on in your life.


So you need to make sure that people can see where you are, when you are, and who you are hanging out with. Make sure to keep the lines of communications open, because we all want to be around you, -- Don't You Know That You Are A Shooting Star? Don't believe me? Just ask Bad Company. Catch you next week when I have to tell you to Be Prepared to Catch the Bug!