New Marketing 101 for Science Fiction Publications and Writers, Session 3

Okay, the normal disclaimer: if you missed Session 1 and Session 2, you may want to start with those. Otherwise, this one may not make a whole lot of sense. And yeah, I know, this is a heck of a lot of work. Welcome to marketing.

Session 3: Outreach

In Session 2, we talked about building the foundation for your online marketing. Neat stuff, and necessary, but it’s mainly passive. You’re putting your stuff out there, and you’re hoping people will find it. This time, we’ll talk about ways you can reach out actively to create awareness and compel action.

Free Outreach

Tactic 1: Engage Your Groups. If you’ve built a strong foundation, you have groups on social networks and on forums who know you. You probably also have a reasonable number of people stopping by your site to read your frequently-updated blog. Now, it’s time to engage.

Engage by friending. Let’s start on the social media side. How many friends do you have on the social networks? How many are available in sci-fi oriented groups? And I’m not just talking science fiction readers–how about groups of movie and anime fans? How about friend lists from popular sci-fi movies and television shows? Yeah, the number of your friends starts looking kinda low now, doesn’t it? You can increase the number of friends you have by being active on the boards of large groups, or you can get a friending program like FriendAdder so you can search on keywords, search through groups, and send lots of friend requests. And yes, that’s kinda spammy. Hey, it’s marketing. You decide where you want to stop.

Engage by bulletin-ing. Staying on the social network side. Once you have friends, you can send bulletins to them. And yes, this sounds a little spammy too, but it depends on how you use it. If you’re going to send bulletins every day to every person, yeah, that’s pretty irritating. If you let only your friends in Los Angeles know about a reading or signing you’re doing, that’s a different story. If you have a book or story that extends tropes in a popular sci-fi movie, why wouldn’t you let the fan-friends you have know about it? This is a powerful tool, as long as it’s not overused.

Engage by posting. Let’s run on over to the forum side. Did you know that the SomethingAwful forums have an active area that’s all about books? Well, now you know. It’s perfectly appropriate to post when you have a new book out, a new publication out, or a new story accepted. Also, for the more ballsy, it’s perfectly appropriate to show up in the General Bullshit forums in “I’m a resource” mode–as in, “ask me about being a writer,” or “ask me about publishing a science fiction magazine.” Or, if you want to go all-out, why not consider writing a story for the forums, or publishing a new work that’s written for forum consumption there?

Engage by offering. Let’s move to your blogsite. What are you giving your visitors for stopping by? Your towering wisdom, encapsulated in biting blogposts? Links to your stuff available online? Well, you should have more. You need to give people reasons for being on your list. How about a pitch to subscribe to your RSS feed or sign up for periodic news? I mean, hey, if people like your stuff, they want to know when there’s more of it available. Got a trunk novel? Put it up there. Got back issues? Put them up, too. Magazines with long histories have an incredible opportunity here. With the current interest in retrofuturistic themes, there’s no reason why they couldn’t take work from 40-60 years ago, scan it, and offer it as a separate, dedicated offering every month.

Tactic 2: Get Out There. The best free publicity is still through conventional media. Are you sending out press releases to your local and regional media when you have a book or story out? Are you pitching editors and anchors on covering you or your publication as a news item? Are you on media lists as an expert resource for quotes about scientific advancements? If you aren’t, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Engage by PRing. Even if you can’t afford to use a service like PRWeb, you should have your own list of science-fiction-friendly editors, columnists, radio personalities, and news anchors. These people should receive a press release from you whenever you do something newsworthy, like releasing a book. If you’re a publication, use stories by big-name authors, anniversaries, or tie-ins with current events to get the media interested. And yes, I know, this is a bit of work, but you’ll find marketing is like that–the stuff that is free takes more work than the stuff you pay for.

Engage by speaking. Your local colleges and universities should know that you’re available to speak to their classes on short notice. The best, of course, are classes that concentrate on science fiction, but you might find a surprisingly engaged audience even, say, in the engineering crowd. Similarly, do your local bookstores know that you’re available for signings and readings? They should.

Engage by appearing. Like it or not, you have to be visible. Most science fiction writers know this, which is why they attend science fiction conventions. That’s fine, but science fiction conventions aren’t exactly CES-like in terms of size and scope. Have you thought about Chengdu? ComicCon? There are a lot of other venues that you may want to have a presence at.

Paid Outreach

Tactic 1: Advertise in Broad-Reach Networks. We’ve all seen the book ads in Locus or any of the other industry magazines. Stop. Just stop. It’s advertising to the same tiny demographic. This does nothing for you. If you want to get recognized, you have to reach out. Far, far out. For the same price as that Locus ad, you could get in front of millions of people who are friendly towards science fiction.

Read that again: for the same price as that Locus ad, you can get in front of MILLIONS of people who are friendly towards science fiction.

Consider BlogAds: $60 geek blog ads with 802,000 impressions, $25 gadget ads with 200,000 impressions, $600 spends getting 10,000,000 impressions on movie sites–use their self-service campaign creator tool and see how many people you can get in front of.

Or look at Federated Media to get on BoingBoing.

Or look at the Google content network, where you can buy text, banner, and video ads on a broad array of sites (that you can specifically select) for $0.25-$1.25 for 1,000 impressions.

In any case, there are a lot of low-cost outreach options that will get you a whole lot more bang for your buck than taking out a full-page ad in one of the industry pubs. And this isn’t a slam on the pubs–just a call for us to look beyond our “traditional” audience.

Tactic 2: Advertise in Emerging Networks. Look beyond the edge. And find a new audience that’s already embracing science-fictional tropes.
Did you know there’s a geek newspaper that gets in front of some of the most forward-thinking people on the planet–people who are absolutely comfortable with science-fictional ideas such as virtual reality and teleportation? Did you know it has a circulation that’s approaching 100,000 people per month?

Well, there is, and it’s called the Metaverse Messenger, available within Second Life and online. And did you know a full-page ad in the Metaverse Messenger costs $26 for someone who has a Second Life presence?

Think about that: 100K, full-page, $26.

There are lots of opportunities like that in Second Life. Beyond newspapers, there are groups. Groups work like search engine optimization in Second Life–search on Science Fiction and see who owns the generic terms. Do you own your publication titles? Your story titles? It costs $0.30 to start a group. It’s time to get in and set up a presence, because there are no more sci-fi friendly people on the planet.

And that’s it for Session 3. As usual, I probably missed something, so please feel free to comment and add.

And yes, there are more sessions coming. Session 4 will cover deep engagement through some nontraditional means, and Session 5 will talk about some really wacky things you can do.

March 15th, 2007 / 6 Comments »