How do I promote myself without social media?

I get the feeling this is a little like asking how to sing without a mouth, but I gotta try anyway.

In a previous life, I got pretty good at creating a network of followers from scratch, using Twitter. But now I have sworn off social media for the sake of my mental health. I have ADHD, so those networks built up in previous lives were part of abandoned projects, and I can't lean on them. So, I am starting from scratch, without the only tool I know how to use.

What I am promoting is articles. I finally have a website that will pay me for content. I am paid per pageview, and it turns out that I am expected to provide the eyeballs.

I am thinking an email mailing list, or a newsletter, but how do you even start one of those? I have also heard that guest blogging would bring exposure, but that's a world I know nothing of too. I kinda thought the blogosphere was a thing of the past, usurped by social media.

Amd advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

 

Same here. Twitter and Facebook drove me crazy, so I decided to avoid the stress.

Let me add that it’s easier to publish your book than it is to promote it, and easier to make it available than to make people aware that it's available. Keep in mind that marketing can exist without promotion, but promotion cannot exist without marketing. Marketing is selling yourself, whereas promotion is selling your book.

Also keep in mind that preparation is about quality—doing things to give your readers your best writing in the best format. People won't buy your book if it's poorly written. Promotion is about quantity—doing things to compete with books like yours. People can't buy your book if they can't find it.

Hope you get more feedback on this. We're writers, so we're all searching for ways to find a wider audience than just friends and family!

 

Hey there, welcome.

Not trying to be a pessimist but I'd be mindful of cost-per-acquisition; it may end up costing more to provide the eyeballs than what you'd receive subsequently from page views.

You could always cut out the middleman by starting your own website/online publication; there are many ways to monetise a website and to many different degrees. You could have something to use simply as a platform for your work and which pays for is own upkeep, or you could be more adventurous.

As to your main point, you can promote yourself with a sandwich board or Morse code and a flashlight - there are many options - but it's best to work backwards from your intended audience. Start with them and consider how they prefer to consume information - which devices, channels and platforms do they use - and align your efforts accordingly.

Bon voyage.

 

Honestly, I have writing social media accounts that I schedule posts on, but that I don't regularly use. I pop on a couple of times a week to answer questions, but otherwise I don't interact with Twitter (which is a complete cesspool) or Facebook (which I detest with a passion) and that seems to work fine. It's probably not as effective as just sitting there all day staring at the screen, but I'm not going to do that. I have only so much patience for idiocy.

 

Starting from scratch is hard, especially if you’re ruling out social media.

Apparently newsletters still work, but they’re hard to maintain and without a following, established website, or access to social media I don’t see a way to get people to subscribe.

What I would do is create a substack and focus on building a following there. You’d be showcasing your writing and building a following, assuming your writing in a specific niche. They probably have a subscriber/newsletter function. Substack also allows you to expand to paid subscribers in the future if you want.

If they’re paying you for pageviews, that sounds like a bad deal to be honest. If you’re writing articles for them you should probably be paid per article. I guess it depends on the niche and the details of your arrangement since a viral article could generate substantial page views, but you could end up spending 4x the time promoting the article you wrote for virtually no return.

You could try to get a link to an article somewhere with a lot of exposure. Twitter account… oh right. A link in another relevant article. There’s also search engine traffic, but SEO today I think is much harder than ten years ago. If you can crack it it can generate a lot of organic traffic.

Are they sharing analytics with you? If an article goes viral, would you even know?

 

My books are available at my website and on Amazon's KDP platform, but the Internet and Amazon are two very large haystacks, and my books are just tiny needles in those haystacks. There are consequences for seeking an audience for our writing without participating in Twitter or Facebook, so I thank you all for suggesting some of those other ways.

 

Social media is a great resource but also a bit of a nightmare. Book marketing has been around since before social media. The thing is, you have to go where your audience is. If you're writing to a crowd that hangs out on social media, and you're not there... you're creating a massive hole in your marketing plan. That is FREE traffic and visibility if you know how to do it. Getting traffic on social media is not easy either. But that's where knowing your reader comes in handy.

You have to know your target audience super specifically and then think of all the places they may be hanging out. You can try cross-promotions and events in local stores. You can pitch to podcasts. news paper and magazines are great. Writing conferences are great. But Social will by and larger be the easier path to gain a bit of a following. You can see exactly what your readers like, match that and get some traffic. Direct them to your own website and email list and then sell them more stuff.

That's very high-level and just the framework. The main idea is that you need a strategy behind your activity.