How do we build an audience without coming across as a stalker crossbred with an MLM rep? This is no easy task, especially since most creative professionals don’t exactly shine in this area. Face it. If we’d been good at high pressure sales, we’d be languishing on our yacht along with other people who excel at high pressure sales (or in federal prison *shrugs*).
Suffice to say that it is really tough to shift gears from being artist to trying to build a following large enough to impact sales.
But does it need to be as hard as we can make it?
The answer is always “NO.” We writers are notorious for overcomplicating everything. So no. It does not need to be as hard as we make it.
If you read my last post on branding How to Create YOUR Audience: Identify, Connect, Convert, I talked about low-consideration purchases and high consideration purchases. Why is that important? Because we know that, when it comes to selling books, competing on price or give-aways is automatically a bad plan for 98% of authors. If your name rhymes with Stephen King? Be my guest. For the rest of us mere mortals….
Sometimes knowing what NOT to do is the best way to plan what one SHOULD DO.
If books (entertainment in general) is a high-consideration purchase, then we know we are going to have to curate our brand and build an audience. How do we do that with no books or only a book or a couple books?
We don’t build an audience as much as we build a TRIBE.
1,000 True Fans
In my book, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World (ebook now on sale for .99), I talked about Keven Kelly’s post about 1,000 True Fans from 2008. I wrote Rise of the Machines to be evergreen. The point of the book is to teach you how humans think and why they like what they like.
Why did I write it?
Because I knew social media was going to be one more thing we authors needed to do if we wanted to be successful. If we had to build an audience, then I wanted y’all to know how to build and what to focus on.
Hint: NOT BIG NUMBERS.
Back then, the Big Six was still around and their marketing people were giving terrible advice.
Publishers and agents became fixated on vanity numbers. I worked with a lot of mega-authors who were household names. They were apoplectic and panicking because Such -and-Such had 100K followers and they didn’t.
It is really hard for most people to grasp that big numbers aren’t the be all and end all. What matters is how much the people who DO follow you CARE. What good does a million followers do me if none of them ever engage in what I post?
To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly said this sixteen years ago and it is still true today. In 2019, influencer Arianna Renee had an Instagram following of 2.3 million followers and she still couldn’t sell 36 t-shirts to launch her clothing line. She only needed to mobilize 0.000013% of her following and couldn’t do it.
This isn’t to depress you (I hope) as much as it is to encourage you. It is far better (and easier) to dig deep than spread wide.
Using Word Clouds to Build
If you haven’t read the last branding post, I strongly recommend you do because—as promised—today is more of a workshop.
I first want to point out that everyone has different skills, budgets, lives and likes. The whole reason I took a detour from writing to even teach branding is I wanted authors to have time left to do the things they loved to do most…to create. That said, our job isn’t all writing. We have editing, revisions, taxes, research, and did I mention taxes?
Suffice to say I would LOVE to have a formula where everyone only did things they wanted to do. I am good, but not that good. Secondly, if we think we are going to open a bunch of social media accounts and just automate and expect fans to materialize? That isn’t going to happen. It might feel like we have a brand and a platform, but there isn’t any engagement so there will be little loyalty.
Most likely we will get relegated as white noise. But, for those of y’all who have followed me any length of time, y’all know how I feel about automation. I don’t like eating spam, so I don’t serve it.
Why I came up with the word cloud is it gives you a better idea of WHAT and HOW to build and WHERE. Play to your strengths. The best social media platform to build is the one you will USE.
That said, too many writers hop on social media and our brains vapor lock.
I am a writer…so…I’ll talk about….writing.
Y’all ever had a relative, acquaintance or colleague who only ever talked about one thing ever? I had an uncle who only ever talked about sports. Despite him knowing I could not care less if baseball fell off the planet, it was all he talked about.
How many of y’all here enjoy hanging out with those people?
Brands are EMOTION
Whenever you do any kind of branding, the key is figuring out the overall emotion that you want to underpin everything. Advertisers have been doing this for over a century.
Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
What’s riding on your tires?
A diamond lasts forever.
Just Do It
In just a sentence, these brands convey the major emotional through-line that hooks people first. Obviously there is a lot more to these brands than just the one line, but who cares? If Nike sells tennis skirts or wristbands it is all powered by the call to get off our a$$es and do it!
Whether we like it or not, people will feel the same about us and our writing. The key emotion I wanted everyone to feel with me and my work is “safe.” It is why I named my first book We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. I could have named my book Marketing for Writers but I would have rather thrown myself in traffic. WHY? Because most of us would rather throw ourselves in traffic than do this marketing stuff.
But since I knew we HAD to do it, at least we didn’t have to go it alone. It’s why I work to use so much humor and make fun of myself. There is no boneheaded idea you have I probably didn’t have first…but of course I believed it was GENIUS—until it blew up in my face like a “present” from ACME.
We (You) Are Not Alone
Yet, whether I am talking about fiction, branding, life in general, the core emotion is “this” is a safe place to be a hot mess. And that actually does bleed over into my fiction.
In The Devil’s Dance (ebook also now on sale for .99), Romi Lachlann did everything right and it still fell apart.
Romi grew up white trash in a tiny town on the road to nowhere. She “escapes” and gets her education and a premium job in tech sales…only to be left holding the metaphorical bag when her rich fiancé pulls an Enron-like scandal, disappears, and leaves her as the FBI’s prime suspect.
Broke, blackballed and out of options, she has no choice but to slink home, defeated and humiliated, to her Jerry-Springer-crazy-as-a-bag-of-frogs family…and then she and family run afoul of a cartel.
Whether y’all read my goofy blogs here or my fiction, it is pretty clear I am remaining true to my brand.
So that is what I would like to posit to all of you reading. What do you want other to FEEL when they see your name, read your posts, your blogs your books, etc? Because while we might post on all kinds of topics, depending on what kind of social media platform we choose to use, there will still be a certain flavor to what we post.
Kind of like our friends. We have the funny friend, the serious friend, the super mom, the sport friend, whatever…but that doesn’t mean that is ALL of who they are. When we have friends, ideally we talk about a lot of other things and experience the entire spectrum of emotion. If not? That is a pretty shallow friendship.
Our goal is to replicate that “emotional experience” on line, because whether I like it or not? Most of the people we know, like and bond with are going to be online.
Build the Foundation
The word cloud gives you not only a place to start the conversation, but the longer and more robust the cloud, the more accurate a profile you will have of your potential fan (the person most likely to gravitate to you and thus your books).
I asked y’all to submit word clouds to use as examples. I will do my best, but I will reiterate that the LONGER and more detailed the cloud, the better the results. But, I get it. It was a big ask and I am super happy a couple people were willing to be vulnerable.
What I like to do with the word cloud is to come up with that I call a branding log-line. It serves as a theme for the feeling you want to give your audience. Sort of like your own Diamonds are forever. I might not have We are not alone plastered everywhere, but if you look at the lion’s share of my content, the fingerprints are there in the way I build.
If you want to post your log-line as part of your website or blog? Go for it. Visitors will know what to expect.
Example #1 Deborah Ademola:
Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Barbara (Faroese tragic romance), Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Titanic (1997 movie), Barbara (1997 Danish movie adaptation), The Fellowship of the Ring, autumn, winter, blue, pink, purple, black, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Office (USA), Canaletto paintings, Monet, Renoir, watercolour landscapes, Sherlock Holmes, bread-making, soap, luxury hand wash, hollyhock, verdana, roses, hoards kalanchoe plants, crocuses, snowdrops, Soap & Glory lotion and hand cream, Foo Fighters, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, too much music to count, lives on Spotify and YouTube, Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, spagetti and tomato sauce, A Christmas Carol, Columbo, Sweet Home Chicago (Robert Johnson), Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix), relearning Chinese, Qin Empire Alliance series, obsessed with etymology, loves writing by hand, obsessed with medieval European calligraphy, also Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, qigong, obsessed with German rom-com Isi und Ossi, lifelong aficionado of Baroque music, Bach is the best!, always reading about five or six books at a time, walks almost everywhere, Resolve (Foo Fighters) almost brings me to tears, obsessed with Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras
Looking at this cloud, I could pull out…
Debroah Ademola: To Thine Own Self Be True
Deborah Ademola: But Here We Are
Deborah Ademola: Concrete & Gold
Deborah Ademola: All Roads Lead Home
Deborah Ademola: Nothing Left to Lose
Deborah Ademola: No Roses without Thorns
Deborah Ademola: Tiptoeing Through Time
Deborah Ademola: The World as a Canvas
Deborah Ademola: Garden in My Soul
Deborah Ademola: Pride & Prejudice in the Paleozoic
Deborah Ademola: One Rainy Wish
Once I have a log-line to work with, see how the content almost creates itself? All of these can be as broad or narrow as Deborah wants them to be. When we have just a tiny bit of a border to build in, that is when creativity kicks in.
She can look to her cloud and just be…herself. When on-line, if she simply talks and posts about the things she enjoys, other people who connect to those things will find her. Since people generally buy from who they know and like this is a good way to filter through the gazillions of people and find her people.
Example #2 Cherlyn Gatto:
Classics like Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, and The Lord of the Rings, Movies like The Bear, Gilmore Girls, This is Us, The Firm, Edison bulbs, kayaking, biking, all things melancholy, edgy, and redemptive, baking bread, farm life, sunsets, night skies, bonfires, warm blankets, cozy socks, Instagram reels of babies and puppies and surprise bears and crazy falls, The Monkees and 60s classic rock and Christian worship bands, dark chocolate, Starbucks Chestnut Praline Lattes at Christmas time, football games, rustic country anything, horseback riding, long car rides and road trips to anywhere, decorating Christmas cookies, thundershowers, sunflowers and meadows, definitely Apple over android and Starbucks over D&D, editing versus the blank page, fiction more than reality, days that open without commitments, approval from others, scheduling and organizing but not following through, wet earth in springtime, gravely voices, when my son sings in his band, ice water with lots of lemon, pine candles, fires in the hearth, corn hole and badminton and any game I can win.
Cherlyn Gatto: God Only Knows
Cherlyn Gatto: Murder, Mayhem and Cozy Socks
Cherlyn Gatto: For What It’s Worth
Cherlyn Gatto: Bad Moons and Bonfires
Cherlyn Gatto: Starry Nights and the Sudden Drop
Cherlyn Gatto: The Game of LIFE
Example #3 Barbara Meyers:
Family. Books. Reading. Fiction, Thrillers, suspense, mystery, sometimes “big” romance or “women’s” fiction. Bible, spirituality, prayer, observant, exercise, blue, salty snack foods. Raspberries, yogurt (vanilla), granola; dogs, walking, home improvement shows, cooking shows; Bourne movies, grandchildren, tee shirts, shorts, writing fiction; TikTok, psychology, human nature, personal growth, listening, cards (greeting and playing); kindness, friends, pens, journals, ideas, games, bubble baths, healthy, aesthetics, flipflops; Holidate, CJ Box, Nick Petrie, Robert Crais, Sandra Brown, Jane Casey, Claire McGowan, winter (in Florida, especially); ADD, weak follow through, Suduko, distracted, disorganized, poor career and business management ability; resists learning new things. Don’t bore me with details or directions. Quotes. Stand-up comedians, humor, laughter, smiles, adventures.
Barbara Meyers: The Rest is Just Details
Barbara Meyers: Leap of Faith
Barbara Meyers: Leap of Fai–NOPE!
Barbara Meyers: Spies, Lies & Flip Flops
Barbara Meyers: Precious Things
Barbara Meyers: Cloud on My Lips
Barbara Meyers: Got Sand in My Sanity
Example #4 Kathleen Saunders
I love reading, writing, my family and pets, all animals (the reason I’m vegetarian), the outdoors, our cottage at the lake, watching wildlife, walking, gardening, swimming, riding, teaching, continuing to learn daily, improving my French, travelling (especially Europe), The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, How to Stop Time, The Midnight Library, anything by Kate Atkinson, Ann Cleeves books, The Children of Men and anything by P.D James and Ruth Rendell, music (everything from Joe Cocker and Roy Orbison to Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars), Lost, Survivor, American Idol, and old movies, landscape paintings, and anything with an interesting use of colour especially with subjects from nature.
***Kathleen I am guessing at your last name so correct me if I am wrong.
Kathleen Saunders: When the Night Comes
Kathleen Saunders: Face in a Cloud
Kathleen Saunders: Sunshine on My Shoulders
Kathleen Saunders: Time in a Bottle
Kathleen Saunders: At the Stroke of Midnight
Kathleen Saunders: A Place in This World
Kathleen Saunders: Life on a String
Kathleen Saunders: Hands in the Dirt, Eyes on the Skies
Build With Attitude
A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who was brave enough to put up a sample cloud. Usually when I do this one on one, I will send back for a longer cloud or some more specificity in the words. These were a bit on the short side for my preference, but I am still in awe of your courage.
If I nailed it, great! If not, then y’all at least see what I am doing here.
Song, book and movie titles are great fodder for the imagination and you can’t copyright a title. If you have a song that you believe is your theme song? See if you can work with it. Just avoid the lyrics because musicians—rightfully—are very territorial.
The cool thing about this log-line is you can change it out. It is supposed to be a guideline, not a noose. Like an outfit, it impacts how you might present yourself. Sundress/suit versus a military uniform.
Again, to build a brand, just talk about the things you are passionate about. If you love kittens? Great! Animal videos? Sure! That is fantastic content people love to interact with and share. Same with funny memes. Or nostalgic posts. There are certain kinds of content that by its nature, have better “legs” and are better material to build with.
We can dive deeper into how this all works on line later. If you really want this expounded, pick up a copy of Rise of the Machines because I have a whole section on this and the book is .99.
But, I hope you can see that, with a word cloud and a log-line, you can take an honest inventory of what kind of social media is a good fit. What social platform is the best for building an audience? The one you ENJOY.
The entire point of this is learning ways to begin the conversation in an authentic way. Then, you’ll become the author people happen to know and like (and they trust your content). You have your people and, unlike buying email lists or spamming people, they’ll want to be there.
What Are Your Thoughts on the Build?
Even if you don’t use the word cloud to create a log-line, do you see how it is a really useful tool for not only starting the conversations, but to keep them going? While genre might impact the log-line, it doesn’t have to. Our log-line really is more reflective of our voice.
I can think of fantasy that is super serious The Lord of the Rings versus super silly/campy Army of Darkness. Both stories play out in a medieval setting but aren’t remotely like each other.
Whether we write romance, horror, thrillers, mystery, that is more of a side point. Readers will gravitate to our unique lens that we bring to the creative table. That’s why I don’t like us fixating too hard on the books themselves. Your fellow humans can surprise you.
They might HATE romance, but they love your romance novels. I have had people who never read thrillers or horror, but they gave the genre a chance because I wrote it. And they’ve told me they’ll likely never read another in that genre, but they loved mine. Sometimes, they didn’t even read them because, while they don’t like that genre, they have friends or family who DO…and they give my books as gifts.
Trust me, there is almost no greater compliment.
Ultimately, we don’t have to sell to everyone. Who cares if a person buys only one book, so long as it is YOUR BOOK? And if that person likes you and your books, that is a great step toward that super fan who’s positively EVANGELICAL about everything you produce. It is easier to build with friends.
The SUPER FANS are who you want to invest your heart in because they give theirs freely in return.
