After my baby was born, I decided to get engaged.
Which brings us to my engagement.
You may have heard something about building a platform to help you market your book. I like to think of the platform as a PR machine built of the writer, by the writer, for the writer. It's about networking and getting your name out there and making connections. There's a tremendous amount of marketing advice out there for newbie self-publishers. I'm drinking at the fire hydrant of information daily, trying not to drown in the process.
Marketing your book is not just about creating a presence on Facebook and Twitter and Blogger and what have you. It needs to be a two-way street. It needs to be give and take. To have a meaningful and productive marketing experience, you must Engage.
Think of it this way. Imagine attending a gathering, or party, or convention, or other function where you will have the opportunity to interact with people in person and it is appropriate for you to promote your book in the process. Marketing is hiring someone to walk around the event wearing a sandwich board with a picture of your book on it. Engagement is you, walking around, shaking hands and talking to people about lots of things - their book, your book, your kids, the weather, how cool it is you both used to live in Albuquerque, how the addition of pumpkin flavor to craft beer is a sign of the apocalypse, and so forth.
I imagine at this point you are trembling with trepidation, because you know what this means. If you are to have meaningful engagement, it's going to take some time. Probably time you don't feel like you have. You might be wondering, why can't I just set up Hootsuite to blast out my perfectly worded Tweet splash every twenty-three minutes ad infinitum until I sell a thousand copies so I can do the BOTH, and leave it at that? I suppose you could. From the looks of my Twitter feed, many of you have chosen to do exactly that. I think of this marketing strategy as the used car commercials of the writing world. And of course that's what programs like JustUnfollow are for.
As in real life, true engagement takes a whole 'nother level of commitment. You have to buy the flowers and remember the birthdays and watch television programs together that you would never otherwise watch. You have to subscribe to blogs and comment on posts. You have to share and Like and retweet and read and review.
Primarily I use Twitter, Facebook and more recently Instagram for engagement. I'm learning to use them in concert. For example, use the handy feature that automagically invites friends and followers from other social networks as well as your email contacts. This is a great way to broaden your outreach, but is a little too sterile to qualify as engagement. You have to take it a few steps further. Once you have built up your friends/followers, reach out to them individually. Visit their profile and spend some time scrolling through. If you see something that genuinely interests you, say so. If it's worth a share or a retweet, do it. Here's some examples of how to take your engagement level from *yawn* to Yowza!
- Ho Hum: hit the Like button
- Passable: hit the Like button and leave a comment
- Next Level: hit the Like button, leave a comment, and share it publicly to your page
- Ho Hum: mark a tweet as Favorite
- Passable: Retweet
- Next Level: Retweet with a comment and/or reply to the sender to start a conversation
- Ho Hum: add your FB and Twitter friends/followers on IG
- Passable: Like the posts you feel a genuine connection with
- Next Level: comment organically on posts that resonate with you; tag a friend/follower in the comment if applicable; use an app like Repost to share
A word to my fellow introverts who are viewing this engagement thing as about as enjoyable as being forced to make small talk with the strangers at your table when 
you're a plus-one wedding guest: this too shall pass. Sure, you may get ignored. So what? Wouldn't be the first time, would it? But as the great Wayne Gretzky says, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Put yourself out there, start engaging, and I guarantee you the positive results will far outweigh the negative. It won't be long before you, too, will start to feel fully engaged.
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