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character blog.

robertbevan

Troubadour
i'm working on a little project, and i'd like some opinions about it.

i set up a google account under the name of one of the characters in my novel. from there, i set up a blogger account for him. it's an advice column in which he insults people and gives really bad advice. (it's supposed to be funny, and true to his character.)

i've made two posts so far, and they're both fictitious. the idea is that i'll post some fake questions to get the ball rolling and let readers know what they're in for, and then if real people ask questions, i can pick and choose ones which i can come up with a good response for.

it's something that's fun for me, and i'm thinking it might work well as a marketing tool. have a look and tell me what you think. thanks.

Ask Cooper
 

JCFarnham

Auror
I was going to say that as long as people have a way to realise that it's linked to your books then its all good. Then I clicked the link and saw the two huge covers...

The power of viral marketing is pretty well known I like to think, so you might well be onto a good thing! One point you need to be aware of however is testing the audience over the coming weeks and months. It may well be that "showing your hand" too early will lessen the power of it. However you won't know unless you find you start to get sales from it. The problem then is testing that.

There are some (aka loads of) joke accounts on the social media networks that have seen success. So It certainly could work, but I definitely think you need to keep an eye on it and tailor it depending on reaction.
 

robertbevan

Troubadour
One point you need to be aware of however is testing the audience over the coming weeks and months. It may well be that "showing your hand" too early will lessen the power of it. However you won't know unless you find you start to get sales from it. The problem then is testing that.

i don't know what you're talking about... especially the bit in red. do you mind elaborating?


also, thank you for the response.
 

JCFarnham

Auror
No problem.

With Viral marketing-type campaigns often the trick is to present something utterly ridiculous as fact and get people to believe it's a real thing. There was an example of a youtube video consisting of a HUGE waterslide some guys had built. You saw them slide down it, jump off the end and land perfectly in a small paddling pool. A while after this had circulated (views in the millions), I believe it was leaked that it was faked and a viral ad for an FX studio. I may be wrong, but that's the story I've heard thrown around a lot.

There are plenty of other examples of such campaigns though. Like the scandinavian [?] musician who created an anonymous account on youtube, a created very symbolic, short music videos intended to create a kind of "man hunt". I don't know if it was ever revealed but people became very sure it was one artist in particular. Thing is, whether or not it was intended by that artist, she's gotten more interest in her more public music.

So you see, when I say watch when you "show your hand", I'm telling you I think you should be careful with telling future followers exactly who Cooper is. I'm not suggesting removing all mention of the books (you wouldn't get any sales at all), nor am I suggesting making it obvious. What I'm saying is, if viral marketing has anything to teach us, you need to tailor this effort as you go along. Change things here and there, see what works...

Just giving you some ideas from the kind of marketing we've been seeing recently on social media sites, and how marketing has changed since their invention. It's not all that simple any more haha.

I'm not yet sure how you should proceed with this, but I do think you're on to a good thing here. Especially since Cooper has quite a recognisable "vocal tick" shall we say ;)

EDIT: I say, keep the links to your books for the moment.
 
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Kit

Maester
As soon as I get some chapters up on my weblit-in-progress, I plan to do regular blogposts from the POV of one of my characters. One of the things I like about weblit is the opportunity to interact with readers and have them involved in the storyline.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Personal preference, or technical reason?

I'm hoping technical.

Neither. Tumblr has a younger, more creative audience that would be more inclined to pick up on it. Tumbler does also favor shorter and more visual entries (letter format is a little visual), but those are secondary.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I'd call that personal preference really, not yours of course but some ones you know.

Err . . . I'm not just parroting people. You should do some research about Tumblrs emerging (well, fully emerged by now) role in social media networking and marketing. It would be a far more effective platform for what Robertbevan is doing than blogger. Creative, short aand visual are the traits for doing well on tumblr, and if your work has those traits, blogger can't compete.
 

JCFarnham

Auror
Err . . . I'm not just parroting people. You should do some research about Tumblrs emerging (well, fully emerged by now) role in social media networking and marketing. It would be a far more effective platform for what Robertbevan is doing than blogger. Creative, short aand visual are the traits for doing well on tumblr, and if your work has those traits, blogger can't compete.

Didn't say you were parroting.

I'm happy to take your word for it, but my point is I've never seen Tumblr do anything "different" you know. More or less just a blog platform with a repost function. Admittedly that could be useful if someone pushed it to Twitter lengths (ie, setting trends amongst interested people - better marketing, I'm sure you'll agree), but really it seems to me that most people use it to dump random stuff on to. More so than most platforms (not pinterest mind you.. that thing is made for dumping stuff on haha).

I orginally asked technology or personal preference, because the way I see it he could achieve an awful lot of the same things which ever medium Robert choose. Blogger is perhaps slightly less customisable than say word press for example, but then again that's nothing to go by (if you have the skills you can compete easily). I'm perfectly happy with it for my purposes... again that's nothing to go by. Hmmm. To be honest, I've seen plenty of awesome things done with most blog platforms. It just a question of spending time on it and getting things right. No reason you can't make a really visual, creative blog off-tumblr. So yeah, the more effort you put into design where ever really the more you'll get out of it :) See what I'm saying?
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
How to (Properly) Use Tumblr to Market Your Brand | Search Engine Journal

Here's an article. The tech difference is minor, but it has a major impact on the type of content people post and the audience it attracts. Tumblr lets you see all your posts at once - completely useless if they're all blocks of text - and the result is that creative, young artistic types - understandably, not authors so much - have flocked to it. People go to tumblr for quick jokes, the kind that robertbevan is creating. Hence, he should go there, and it will be more likely to be picked up by people there.
 

robertbevan

Troubadour
thank you devor. i read the article in the link. one of the things it said is to use tumblr in combination with other social media.

i'm thinking i'll keep making regular blog posts, then putting the same posts up on tumblr, linking back to the original blog. i've never used tumblr before, so i'm going to hold off on doing this until someone here tells me it's not a stupid idea.

thanks everyone for your input.
 

Ankari

Hero Breaker
Moderator
Alright, I've created a tumblr page. You can check it out here. It just makes too much sense. Especially since you can link you facebook and twitter account through tumblr. I'm still going to create a regular blog, but the importance of claiming your tumblr url compelled me to open up a tumblr account.

Thanks for the article, Devor.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
i'm thinking i'll keep making regular blog posts, then putting the same posts up on tumblr, linking back to the original blog.

Duplicating content is going to get you punished in search engines, so I think you have to pick one.
 

robertbevan

Troubadour
Duplicating content is going to get you punished in search engines, so I think you have to pick one.

i'm going to assume you're talking about something to do with not getting as high up on the list, rather than that i'm proposing doing something illegal/unethical. (but please tell me if i am!)


and i'd like to pick your brain a bit more. let's say that it hurts me on the search engines. for this project, are search engines really so important in this case? i mean, if people are searching for my stuff, then that means they already know about me, right? and how many people are out there searching for a half-orc advice column anyway?

i thought i was just looking for random people to stumble upon my stuff, think it's funny, and show it to their friends.

i'm sorry if i'm coming off as an idiot. i'm honestly just really ignorant about how all this stuff works.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
i thought i was just looking for random people to stumble upon my stuff, think it's funny, and show it to their friends.

It will hurt the "random people" part. If you expect people to search "robert bevan blog" then you should be fine. But if someone searches "testicle jokes," you won't come up if you're duplicating content across two platforms. And if you ever decide to do more with your blog, like attach it to a full website, then it won't have any value.

I would highly suggest deleting the content on blogger and switching over wholly to tumblr for what you're doing. You'll have a lot more luck there because 90% of the people there are people you want to appeal to. On blogger, it's probably more like 5%.
 
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