Drip. Drip. Drip.
Water wears away stone by constancy, not power, not volume.
Marketing with a long vision will serve you better than looking for short-term sales.
Every day, do one thing to market yourself as an author, or to learn more about successful marketing. Here are 20 ideas to get you started:
- Tweet a great sentence from your book, or better, a quote from a fan.
- Give away a digital copy.
- Ask another author to tell you about their book, and really listen so you can learn something from them.
- Read Seth Godin‘s latest post, whatever it might be.
- Add pertinent tags to a blog post that doesn’t have them.
- Add an image to a blog post that doesn’t have one.
- Subscribe to Roy H. Williams’ Monday Morning Memo.
- Spend 5 minutes daydreaming a conversation with your greatest fan.
- Take a walk.
- Drink a big glass of water.
- Go to bed half an hour early, or sleep in half an hour in the morning. Or both.
- Ask a child about their favorite book.
- Buy a book for a child. Or an adult who is like one.
- Write 20 reasons reading makes you happy.
- Watch a movie trailer. Good if the movie is the same genre as your book, but you’ll learn from it regardless of genre.
- Read the back cover of 3 best-selling books in your genre.
- Carry a print copy of your book with you when you go out.
- Ask one of your parents what their favorite book is.
- Search Amazon for your genre and see which covers attract your attention. Don’t try to codify why, just notice.
- Thank someone who bought your book, without asking for anything from them.
Do some of those strike you as not particularly marketing-like? Steady dripping includes self-care, meditation, time for the 3 pounds inside your head to pause, catch up, refresh itself, and connect dots.
What’s one simple thing you could do to improve your thinking, learn about how successful marketing is done, or do something different about it today?