Nothing to do with writing

Question: What has absolutely nothing to do with writing, but everything to do with finding an audience for your writing? Answer: marketing, of course.

Today I have my first big conversation with a social media (SM) consultant. I’m not even sure that SM can help me find an audience. A knowledgeable friend suggests that I forget SM entirely and sell my books by focusing on doing my standard library lecture on frontier feminists as a zoom presentation for book clubs.

This approach would only target one audience: older woman who attend book clubs. I could not target another audience for my upcoming young-adult novel, teenage girls, this way. Still, it’s a good idea.

One good thing about SM is it’s so easy to divide it into small, separate tasks and specific target audiences. I could try one task for a target audience for, perhaps, six months, and at (I hope) minimal expense I could use all those dandy SM tools to measure the success of this one, discrete task. I might succeed, or I’ll fail fast, which is sometimes just as helpful in the end.

Perhaps I could use SM to find audiences among book clubs for my zoom lecture. I could reach out to book clubs around the country, couldn’t I, with SM? Sounds like a good idea to me.

Perhaps someday I’ll read this column and laugh at my innocence. By then, by that “someday,” I plan to be a lot more knowledgeable about the powers – and limitations – of social media. Wish me luck.