Click Here to Win Everything!

I’m in the throes of marketing bi-polarism. Some days, I’m high on the possibilities of online networking, social groups, twitter, FB—you know the list.  Other days, I want to delete it all, screw the platform, go buy a farm in Vermont where cell service is spotty, and disappear.

 

What remains constant is my need to write. That doesn’t change.

 

What’s unsettling and inconstant is how I’m supposed to “position” myself to publishers and readers if I want to sell another book.  We all know that writers need to do this, but is it helping?

 

I’ve done the basics. I have a website.  I’m published. More recently, I started Confessions of A Hermit Crab as a way to explore a non-fiction book idea. Naturally, I wanted readers to come to my new site.

 

That’s when my marketing bi-polarism set in. I cranked up my efforts on FB. I headed for Twitterville and started twittering. Within hours, I crashed.  I’d fallen for a twitter marketing scam.

 

You’ve heard about these, right?  If you click on a link, sign up—for free—your twitter following will increase by hundreds, maybe thousands.  I signed on when I saw a best-selling novelist on twitter recommending this very same site.  If a successful writer was doing it, it must be legit.  Yes?

 

Nope.

 

My following went up (by hundreds) but so did my level of mortification and embarrassment.  My twitter messages immediately started blasting out automated ads for this site every twenty minutes. In one day, I went from hopeful online marketer to clueless nitwit, desperate for attention and utterly ashamed.

 

Then, I decided to forgive myself.

 

I managed to extract myself from that scam site and, thank God, the automated messages stopped.  Even better, no one called me up to say I’d ruined her life.  (I’ve since mentally blocked out the name of the scam site, otherwise I’d out them here.)  All has quieted down, yet I’m bothered because I’m still susceptible to online marketing come-ons.

 

I know I shouldn’t be. But I am. Am I the only one?

 

Yesterday, for instance, I got an email from a website marketer who said she’d already redone my website and all I had to do was log on to the link she’d sent me and plug in the name of my organization for confirmation. She was confident she could earn my business if I took a look. I felt the urge to check it out. After all, there’s always room for improvement, but this time I resisted. I don’t have an organization, damn it.  My “organization” is my name.

 

Still, I’m vulnerable.  The fear and knowledge that I’m one of a billion writers swimming up the same, cold stream, is terrifying. To thrive I have to do something, don’t I?  Jump, flap, squirm to what extreme?

 

Learn from me. If you’re tempted to sign onto something, but you’re unsure about it, ask around.  Check references.  Be careful, please. 

 

Jessica Keener is finishing a novel set in Budapest, Hungary, and toying with a book idea about her search for a home.  Her story, Solo, won Wilderness House Literary Review’s Chekhov Prize for excellence in fiction.  She is a fiction editor at Agni.

Comments

[Erika Robuck]

It's so easy to get caught up in social media and online marketing. I have to allow myself a fixed number of peeks at Twitter, FB, etc. a day. I've fallen for such scams before, too. When you're a principled person, you want to believe others are principled.

The good in all this, is that it takes a degree of isolation out of writing. It's affirming to see others going through the same situations.

Thank you for all of your helpful, affirming posts. And for your books!!

[another writer]

I got caught up in something that looked really reputable right up until they wanted me to sign a very dubious looking contract!

[Carolyn Burns Bass]

Just when you think you're near the top of the hill, you slide back, realizinge you've mixed your metaphors and the hill is a haystack you should have been looking through to find the needle, not climbing it. Don't be so hard on yourself, dearie. We love you!

[Bonnie]

I've done that sort of thing in the past, but learned my lesson.

Thanks for the reminder. You're not alone; anyone can get caught once. The trick is to not let it happen again.

Bonnie