TDE: Let's Die on Some Hills

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The following is a transcription of this episode. For the full transcription, please visit the show’s webpage.

Devin Davis: [00:00:00] Are you hoping to grow your readership or your following on social media or on any platform really? Then maybe you need to learn about Targeted Daily Engagement today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis.

And today we are actually going to cover a little bit about marketing. Usually I'm the guy in the tiny house living in Northern Utah who takes time out of his day sometimes to tell you all about writing and about how you absolutely have all the time that you [00:01:00] need to write that work of fiction that you have wanted to do for so long.

Especially if you have a nine to five, like me.

 Today we are going to talk about something a little bit different. We are going to be covering kind of a marketing strategy. We write our books, we publish our books and then we need to get people to buy our books.

So here's the deal, guys.

First of all before we get into the Targeted Daily Engagement, let's go ahead and remember that NaNoWriMo started November 1st and I hope that all of you have started this fun and exciting race or competition. I don't really know what type of competition we're supposed to consider this to be. I guess it's a race against yourself.

Just to, because if you manage to crank out 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo, which is this entire month of November, then you get the [00:02:00] prize of a certificate saying that you completed NaNoWriMo. It's really a fun way to come together with groups all across the nation. Some people in the world are also doing NaNoWriMo, who don't live in the U S.

And it's just a great way to make big progress on whatever works you have in progress. And so I am doing NaNoWriMo as of the date that this is airing. If you are not a patron, this is released to the public on November 3rd. And so I have been doing NaNoWriMo for two days already. And if you are interested in kind of following me or pairing up with me, I do have a writing group called Writing in the Tiny House.

And my profile name on NaNoWriMo is author_devin_davis. So author Devin Davis separated by underscores. I try to keep things pretty straight forward and easy to remember. But we [00:03:00] added underscores into this username this time. And so go ahead and follow me and, you know, become my buddy on NaNoWriMo.

And that way we can continue to make progress on our works in progress together. And that's awesome just because we all need more motivation in this world, and in times like these. So yeah, if you haven't started NaNoWriMo yet, we are only a couple of days into the competition. So get going. I hope that you have plenty of ideas.

The trick is simply to get started. That's how it is with mostly anything in life. The trick is to start. And so for me, in order to successfully do this, I have to write about two hours a day, which I think is going to be doable. And that's two hours, not every day. I will have my weekends off and I still need to make time to do this podcast and a couple other things like [00:04:00] that.

So, yay. I am working onTales from Vlaydor, Installment Two, which is entitled Otto.

 I'm excited to get it done. I think that I'm going to get about two or three, maybe even four short stories done this month.

So if you're stressed out, that's great. Go ahead and be stressed. That means you're making progress and you're challenging yourself. Make sure that you're pacing yourself. We don't want you to fry or burnout or lose motivation or whatever. So with this first episode of Writing in the Tiny House, I'm going to be covering a marketing strategy. And to be perfectly honest, Targeted Daily Engagement, engaging on NaNoWriMo on the websites and in the competition is a way to do Targeted Daily Engagement.

I'll cover more on that in just a second. But while I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago, I was staying with my good [00:05:00] friend, Crystal Brown. She is a yoga instructor in Hawaii, and I got her to record a guided meditation. And so a little bit later with this NaNoWriMo competition when stakes are high and we are stressed out and we want nothing more than to just finish and cross that finish line. The final episode in November of Writing in the Tiny House is going to be a guided meditation so that we can all be a little more grounded and cross that finish line a little bit more gracefully. But until then, let's talk about Targeted Daily Engagement.

 When we go to advertise the things that we've done, when we go to post on social media and we do all of these different things. We are self promoting. I hope that if you are a serious author that you already have a website started and going, I do. My website is authordevindavis.com. And [00:06:00] if you go there and you visit that website, you will see that it is pretty basic. Author websites don't need to be elaborate. They don't have to function in a really big elaborate way. What you absolutely need on an author website is who you are, what you've written and where those works can be found, if you are hoping to sell those works.

And for me, because I'm also getting into narrating audio books, I am going to be posting some of the stuff associated with that as well. So it doesn't have to be big. You do not need to reinvent amazon.com. You don't have to have a shop. You don't need to have like a store on your website where people can find your books and purchase them directly from your website.

Unless you want to figure out a way to do that. If you have your stuff on amazon.com or in Barnes and noble and on all of the different places, it is perfectly okay to provide links on your web page to [00:07:00] get there. So we have a link forBrigitte, which was released at the end of October, and a way to get to Amazon.com in order to purchase an e-copy of Brigitte.

And I have a link to Writing in the Tiny House. I have my picture. I have a brief bio. I have a link to a page with some of my audio book stuff. It's not uploaded yet. It's not posted yet, but I have a page made for it already so that people who are interested in hiring me to do their audio books can see my audition reels.

So you need to have a website. Secondly, if you are doing Targeted Daily Engagement, you need to be active on social media. And this is how you do that. The thing is, on social media, we get inundated every day with people who are self-promoting. We get inundated with ads. We get inundated with [00:08:00] people who say some dumb thing and then a link to go buy that dumb thing.

And to be honest, people are put out by it now. Targeted daily engagement is a very organic, but a very positive way to draw attention to what you are doing, to your website, to your works in progress, to everything that you're doing as an author or as a business owner. What you do is you get onto your social media platform and you modify your profile to reflect every thing about the one thing that you are willing to promote. So for me, the easiest thing to promote is this podcast. And so under my profile information, I have my author website, which has the podcast. I have all of the Writing and the Tiny House Pictures.

I have the same author photo as my profile picture, as my profile image, as I do [00:09:00] for my author section of my website. And it's the same picture that I include in the, about the author section of my book. If you purchased a copy of Brigitte, at the very end, there is an about the author section and it is that picture that I have on everything.

 It is everything that you are hoping to promote. So all of the personal stuff, you get to kind of put that aside, or you get to make a separate profile for you to promote your business or your writing or whatever it is. You are hoping to sell your services. You're writing.

Whatever it is. Then you go to what some people call the watering holes. You go to the forums, you go to the groups. If you are focusing mostly on Instagram, you go to the hashtags, you go to the people who are actively involved in what you are doing. People who are interested in what you [00:10:00] are selling or in the activity that you are promoting.

Service that you want people to know that you do and you go there and you find the questions and you find the topics of conversation and you post every single day relevant, meaningful stuff that is not self promoting. That is not directing people or saying, go visit my website and spend money. Content good content.

And. It will help people find your website. It will help people find your product and it will bring people to whatever you are doing. So with me, with targeted daily engagement, I am promoting a podcast about writing. I'm also. Promoting my writing. And so I get onto the Facebook groups specifically for me, it is Facebook that I mostly focus on just because I [00:11:00] have been getting more attention there, but really I encourage you to find.

Anywhere to try a lot of different things because so many of them can work. I focus on Facebook. I focus on Reddit. I have tried to focus on Instagram that it has been harder to do on Instagram. And so, I mean, I still post to Instagram pretty often. Because it's easy to post on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter at the same time.

But the point is to find the discussions, the point is to find people searching for help and become the life of the party, bring value to those discussions. And then when people see that you are somewhat of an authority figure on this or that subject, they can find. Your profile and see what you actually represent, and that will direct them to your website or to whatever it is that you have [00:12:00] built into your profile.

And they did that without you doing the obnoxious self-promoting. And with that. Pushing people to click on this or that. And it is without spending money on Facebook ads or on amazon.com ads. If you want to do those things any way you can, but that is not a part of this targeted daily engagement thing that I'm talking about.

There are a lot of different facets to anybody's marketing strategy and targeted daily engagement can be a big part of anyone's marketing strategy. It is a very good one. To build a presence to build a following. If you're doing a podcast to build a listenership, if you are doing reading and writing and things like I'm doing to build a readership, it is a really good way to bring people into the circle and to get them to stay just because their introduction to you and to what you represent.

Started [00:13:00] off so positive to begin with and you weren't being a salesman in order for them to get there. There's nothing wrong with being a salesman. But like I said social media is inundated with self-promoters and some people have turned sour from that. So this is a way to do that without the self-promoting specifically.

So that means that when you're on. The Facebook groups or Instagram or whatever, most people are going to be asking for help or insight to a problem that they have. And so that means that you can go on and share facts. It also means that sometimes you go on and share opinions and. There is always the chance that somebody is not going to like what you have to say.

So I've run into this already a couple of different times where I get on and say something completely truthful, [00:14:00] but it would be kind of beyond the scope of somebody's experience in the group or whatever. And so they they choose to. Proved me wrong, which is fine. I mean, you can say whatever you want on social media apparently.

And we have found out that. Sometimes it's not about being right. It's about being loud. And so with all of that, you get to decide on if you get to engage in arguing, or if you get to be the people who are building an obnoxious thread filled with research on this and that in order to prove that you are right.

Or you can step back and you can take a breath and you can let that thread eventually kind of Peter out in die. The thing about social media is everybody can get on and everybody is very, very brave when they are allowed to be anonymous. There is also a lack of context and a lack of tone when all you are reading is text and sometimes memes.

And [00:15:00] so there is plenty of room to be. Misunderstood. There's plenty of room to be offended. And there is plenty of room to pick fights or to have fights picked with you. So what I recommend in cases like this, just because it is bound to happen. Especially if you are sharing opinion. And you are sharing opinions about something where there are a million different right ways to do it.

I recommend stepping back, calling a friend and kind of belly aching to that friend and letting the thread on the post die. I don't feel like there is any reason to die on a hill about this or that in regards to social media, especially if you are trying to build a following based on good impressions and based on establishing yourself as a professional and as a reliable.

Source in whatever field you are going to [00:16:00] be talking about. So I don't necessarily find value in dying on Hills, even though I have been so tempted to do so. I mean, yes, being a writer is great at the same time. I am a business person and Going into the business side of things is something that a lot of aspiring writers have not researched yet.

 Sometimes there are differences and it's fine. We had some things happen just this morning and it's. So that's, that is what targeted daily engagement is. And if you do it every single day for 15 to 30 minutes, I am not going to stand here and predict for you what type of good things that it will do for your following and for your growth.

But there are plenty of podcasters who do this, who have seen a 25% increase in listeners per month. Through doing targeted daily engagement [00:17:00] and targeted daily engagement is free. It costs your spare time, but it is lights on the wallet. So that is what targeted daily engagement is all about.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Again, Brigitte the first installment of tales from Vlaydor is available to purchase on amazon.com unless you are a patron to Writing in the Tiny House, and then you will. a free copy of Brigitte very soon. If you are interested in becoming a patron and supporting this podcast, I will give you a copy of each installment of Tales from Vlaydor as they happen.

Devin Davis: Just go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and make an account and a pledge. Follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is at @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is @authordevind. And thank you so much for joining me today [00:18:00] and hopefully I will see you on NaNoWriMo.

Have fun writing guys.