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jarzebiny
Jul '18

Hi all!

I am Jarzebiny, and in the real world, I work as a marketing designer and art director in e-commerce. I design stuff like emails, ad campaigns, etc.

This is by no means a comprehensive guide, but I thought I'd share my post from another thread (check it out over here8) and maybe it'll give people some ideas on how they can drive traffic to their novel/comic/whatever.

It's a literal copy+paste from the other thread, but I plan on coming here later to clean this opening post up a bit so it's more organized.

I dub thee the unofficial "I need some ideas for marketing my content" thread!

This is NOT a "promote your comic here" thread so don't post your novel/comic. Again, this is where we can throw around ideas for marketing and promotion of our work, via avenues like social media, blogs, etc.

Here's the original post! Again, I'll clean this up at a later time with formatting that makes it more digestible, just in a bit of a hurry at the moment.

Feel free to throw out your questions, ideas, suggestions, whatever!

Maybe you could branch out a bit and find a subreddit that's writing related, or just related to some topic in your novel :slight_smile: I've also heard good things about Facebook groups and Google+. You could also create your own Facebook group (or even a simple blog, using a site like Squarespace or Wix) and start posting relevant and useful content there - like writing advice, how you created your characters, etc. It's always good to have your own site where people can consume your stuff. I've just started to work on my comic but I will eventually (after a few chapters and more interest) create a site and a place for my stuff to live online that I control.

You have to give people ways to find you and if you have a site that has relatively good SEO (search engine optimization - so, lots of word-heavy content like blogs and articles), it increases your chances of getting found on Google and other search engines.

You can use the same approach on a platform like Pinterest - create boards that are relevant to what others might like. A fan art board, a meme board, an inspirational quote board.

As a follow-up to that kind of content on Pinterest, you might also try to commission art (if you're not good at it yourself) of your characters. Make sure it's sleek and polished. Look at some ads on Pinterest (they're called promoted pins) and see what catches your eye. Throw an eye-catching, intriguing line of copy on there (can be a quote by one of your characters, or a snippet of a review someone left about your novel), turn that into a pin (a post on Pinterest) and then link that to wherever your novel is. Pinterest is phenomenal because the return on your original post is great...It has a very broad reach.

Think of your novel as a product. When you see marketing for movies,shows, books, what do you see? It's pieces of the story that will resonate with people. Trailers, quotes, posters, memes. Create a meme from your novel and share it on Tumblr!

Sometimes, posting on social media can feel like you're shouting out into the void. You have to find your target audience (the people you want to read your story, who are genuinely interested in what you do) and engage with them. I recently discovered something called Amino Apps which markets itself as "network of communities [that] lets you explore, discover, and obsess over the things you're into." Kinda like a Twitter+Reddit combined. Definitely gonna check that out, it sounds like the perfect way to find a community that's into your stuff. You can also create your own "Amino" on there, so basically a little fan community for your novel. It's great!

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libs
Jul '18

Imo social network isn't good for increasing your fan base. You should use it to give news to your fans rather than advertise it. And memes would only confuse people if they haven't read your novel already

Here's a helpful link:

jarzebiny
Jul '18
3

Good info! This article is a great example of creating resources that will be helpful to others and help them find you. Because of their article, they've probably driven a lot of traffic to their own work.

Just to paraphrase some of what it says, for those that don't have time to read (with my own thoughts in parantheses):

  • Social media takes time to ramp up and works better if you have an established fan base already. (Kind of a catch-22, since you have to start somewhere. Doesn't mean it's bad, but it will take awhile. It takes time and this is true even for established brands/creators. think it's excellent to have a fanbase somewhere, be that on Tumblr, Instagram, Amino, etc. It's not a waste of time by any means.)

  • Submit/list your work on web comic listing sites like Web Comic Directory to give people other ways to find you.

  • Groups like Facebook and Reddit are great but don't go to shamelessly self-promote. Chances are you'll run into other creators doing the exact same thing and get very little engagement. Although, this article does say that Reddit worked well for the creator at one point. So, look into it.

  • Paid advertising is good but costly (as mentioned in the article) and not recommended (at least not when you're starting out). (You really have to target the right people with ads, that's a whole other animal there.)

Imo social network isn't good for increasing your fan base. You should use it to give news to your fans rather than advertise it. And memes would only confuse people if they haven't read your novel already

Agreed (on the memes). That being said, social media takes time. A lot, sometimes. You'd be silly to ignore it. If you consistently put out quality content, you'll gain some kind of following. It might not be thousands of people, but a start.

I think most of my earlier points were just ideas of how to drive traffic, which, in turn, can generate a following for you on various platforms. For example, you write an article on how you do a particular coloring style for your work. The result may be that people read it, share your article, like your Facebook page, organically increasing your following.

A good place to get an idea is to look at some influencers you like (be it YouTube creators, creators on Patreon, etc.) and see what they post to get an idea of what people engage with. Not just advertising, or posts that say "hey check out my latest update!" Maybe it's works in progress...Advice on how to improve a technique...Etc. And I guarantee you they are consistently posting, weekly or even daily. Regular posting is key.

1 year later
dan
Sep '19

I've previously written up several of my tips for promotion, both free and via paid ads, with data from my site analytics to compare efficacy:

https://demonarchives.com/tag/tutorials/7

Some of it is out of date slightly, after Project Wonderful went out of business. But they seem to be being replaced by comicad.net, so that's good.

closed Sep 11, '19