How public are you?

Thank you all so much for your amazing support at the Albuquerque Museum Author Fair! I had so much fun meeting you, and I can’t wait to do it again. It was a blast! If you’re in the Albuquerque area and you need to get some RAD books for the holidays, be sure to stop by God’s House Church on Small Business Saturday (November 25), and see me!

That, I think, is the perfect lead-in for today’s topic.

This month, we’re talking about all the ways you can get yourself better known, better seen, and read by more people—and today’s point is one that we introverts have a hard time swallowing.

How many public events do you go to?

The answer needs to be a lot. I try to do at least ten local events every summer, and a few more scattered through the rest of the year. Generally, my goal is to do at least fifteen events in any given calendar year, though understandably, that doesn’t always happen.

Here’s the thing though:

The more you go to, the more your local community will know who you are—and at least in the US, people in every state love people from their state. We can use that to generate a larger statewide audience that we can spread to our region, then to the country.

Unfortunately, events can also be one of the most tedious parts of marketing. There’s not always an immediate result, some events are slower than we hope, and others end up being cancelled at the last minute, after we’ve already done a mass of prep work and gotten everything ready to go. I don’t like when that happens.

The thing with events is that they’re a great way to connect with an audience you might not be as easily able to reach online without an extensive use of ads. See, not everyone is online all the time. I know, it really seems like it is, but there’s a wave of people who would rather go to a bookstore or a local shop than do their shopping online—and that’s a group of people who are great to have in our back pocket. They’re the people who are avid followers, the people who hunt around for any books by their favorite authors, because they read more than they internet. And those are the people you’ll find at public events.

What do I mean by a public event, you ask?

Author fairs, craft shows, book fairs, anything that has a large variety of people selling their stuff, and that is open to the public. Remember, events that people have to pay to go to don’t always generate as much revenue. A lot of people would rather go to a free event and spend more money, than pay for entry and not have enough cash to spend on the stuff they’d like to buy.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Make sure you’re visible. That’s the biggest thing. You should be social online, yes, but you should also be social in person. Be a person of your city, your state. Let people in your city know who you are and what you’re about. Go to enough events that people start to recognize you. You can be the next big name in your city, and it’s not hard to springboard that into something much bigger—but it all starts with doing events, with getting yourself seen and heard, and being someone that the people like to see.

It’s a little like politics, isn’t it?

If you’re not telling everyone you know about what you do, then you’re missing out. People want to support people they like—especially their friends. So talk about it. Go to events. Keep a box of books in your car. Don’t shut up about writing, just like a politician never shuts up about what he stands for.

[love]

{Rani D.}