I have a favor to ask of any who are interested in helping me promote my work. A lot of times I ask people to share my fan page and/or blog with people they know. I kind of take it for granted that everyone knows how to suggest a fan page to their friends, or how to follow a blog. Last time I sent out a round of requests for promotional assistance from friends and fans, I got a few questions back asking how they were supposed to do that. So, for those of you who aren't as net-savvy as others (nothing wrong with that--my father is one of the smartest people I know and he once asked me how to buy stamps to send email) I offer the following illustrated tutorial on how you can annoy your friends into following my work.
Please, please remember that all promotional assistance any of you decide to render is wholly voluntary. I do not mean to make you feel obligated to do any of these things, or to make you feel guilty if you don't. And all kidding aside: please do not irritate your friends with any of this. That is actually counter-productive for me, as people don't tend to buy products that annoy them, and that is especially true with pushy authors. So, please only promote my work if you want to do so, and even then only to those friends and family that you think will enjoy it. Also, some of this stuff will seem very basic--almost to the point of being condescending--to more seasoned social media users. I'm not trying to put anyone down: these are things many people don't know how to do, and it's hard to know how to do something if you haven't been shown. So, bear with me as I go through this, and thank you all for your continued support! It means the world to me, and it will never, ever be forgotten. I promise.
You can start by suggesting my fan page to your Facebook friends. The pictures below will demonstrate how to do this. The first step is to go to my fan page and join if you haven't already. I do not run the fan page: it is actually run by one of my best friends: the lovely miss Roberta Navarro-Harder. So anyone wanting to send me a private message on FB will still need to use my personal page. Once you've added my fan page, you'll see the following screen:
Once you click on the Suggest to Friends link, this screen will pop up:
Again, you can choose which friends to suggest the page to, and which ones not to. Please don't sent the invite to people you think will be offended by my books, or will just not enjoy them. And if they decline the invite, don't pester them again about it. It's nothing personal: not everyone likes the kind of books I write.
Next, we can increase the number of LIKES on my blog. You'll notice that the same LIKE button and counter found on my blog is also on my official website. They use the same code and counter, so if you like one you automatically like the other. This is the one that seems to confuse people the most: I ask people to click LIKE on my blog in a Facebook status message...and instead they click LIKE on the status message. I appreciate that, but it isn't the same thing.
First thing you need to do is go to my blog and look for this in the middle-right hand corner, right under my photograph:
You only have to click this once, ever. If you click it again, it "unlikes" it. The LIKE button is for the blog as a whole, not each individual post.
If you use blogger, or have a gmail/google account, you can follow my blog in google. I'll follow back any bloggers who follow mine, so long as your blog isn't offensive...fortunately, I'm not easy to offend. As long as your blog isn't about White Power or how great America would be if we made Sarah Palin our queen, we likely won't have a problem.
To follow me in blogger, go to my blog and look for the link bar at the very top of the screen. While you're there, you can click the SHARE link and send a message to any social network site you're a part of, including Facebook and Twitter. Both links have been circled here:
If you use the Facebook Networked Blogs application you can follow my blog and recommend it to others who use the application.
Again, all of this is voluntary, and you don't even have to do all of it to earn my gratitude. I appreciate everything my friends, family and fans have done for me. When my books make it big (when, not if) it will be in large part thanks to all of you and your help. It will not be forgotten.
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