Top Three Tips for Emarketing

Hi Folks,

Awhile back, a lady sent me a request. “Harvey, would you go to my Facebook page, These Three Words, and ‘friend’ the page?” (This is not the actual name of the page, of course.)

In her friendly but business-like email, she then explained a bit of what the page is about, how often she posts to it, and so on. It was generally a good email. But she didn’t include a clickable link.

I emailed her back a quick note asking her to send me a link. I could have stopped there, but always striving to teach, I explained that I was running too hard to take the extra time at the moment to copy/paste the title of her page into a search engine, browse through the responses, find it, go there, and click Like. (Of course, I did take the extra time to explain all that. Wordy, I am.)

She did respond with a link, which I clicked. Then I clicked Like and was done.

But in the brief email that accompanied the link, she also expressed that she wasn’t sure what I meant by “running too hard.” She added, “Perhaps if you slow down a bit you will enjoy your visit to my page.”

Problem is (and this is a problem for which I am grateful), at the time I almost always had several manuscripts awaiting editing or proofreading. I also (at the time) usually had one or more writing seminars to prepare for and new ones to develop and write.

I also had, and still have, blog posts of my own to write and schedule, and free advice to hand out via email when folks ask (and when I know what I’m talking about). Oh, and of course my own writing takes precedence over everything else.

So I had to wonder. If hers was one of those edits in the queue, would she still want me to slow down? But I digress….

Remember, when you ask someone to do something for you, it’s always more important to you than it is to them.

Here, then, are my top three tips for emarketing via email:

1. If you send an email asking the recipients to visit your website or your Facebook or other social networking page, make it easy by providing a link. If they have to go digging to find it, they probably won’t.

2. Include a direct link to your website (Facebook page, etc.) in a “signature block” at the end of every email you send out. Most email programs provide a way for you to set this up so it will appear automatically.

3. Include a brief description along with any direct link (in your email body or signature block or on a website) unless the link itself is self-explanatory.

Visitors have literally thousands of choices when it comes to which websites they will visit and whether they will subscribe or bookmark those sites. Remember that it’s always more important to you that the visitor remains on or subscribes to your site or newsletter or blog post than it is to them. Making it worth their while is never a waste of your time.

‘Til next time, happy writing!

Harvey

I am a professional fiction writer as well as a copyeditor. For details, or just to learn what comprises a good copy edit, please visit Copyediting.

My Daily Journal now appears on my main website at HarveyStanbrough.com. To sign up and receive an email notifications, go to the website and click The Daily Journal in the header.

 

7 thoughts on “Top Three Tips for Emarketing”

  1. “Free gift for error spottings.” Brilliant! Particularly for my efforts as through the grace of a Dysgraphia many slip by both spell check, husband check, and are a major turnoff for oh so many. Going to add to all my efforts. Thank you again for lighting up my writing life.

    Pinned this and the follow up article.

  2. “Remember, when you ask someone to do something for you, it’s always more important to you than it is to them.”

    So true. And writers seem to think that because you’re a writer, you will happily volunteer to help them out without the realization that other things may be more important. I’ve had writers I didn’t know email me, directing me (really!) to promote their books, or ask for the “foot in the door” because of some commonality we have.

    • Yep. I suspect the willingness to make unsolicited requests is a direct result of some moron teaching them to be “bold” rather than polite. 🙂

  3. Gads, the type of marketing you described is pretty gutsy. Not for me, but then I’m terrible at marketing. These are all great tips (I actually do one of them!). I really like your description of what you do. I’ve seen blogs with names like “Joe Baloney – Starving Writer’, and wondered if anyone ever visited.

Comments are closed.