#WWoW!: @dochappycamper Talks About How to Get the Most Out of Author Support Groups and #Tweet Teams #MyWANA

Welcome back to this week's edition of Tammy's Tidbits here at Writer's Words of Wisdom. Each week, the four of us share what's worked and what hasn't worked well for us during our journey to becoming published authors. Our stories vary as do our experiences, but that's what makes our group unique. What works for one, may not work for another but by sharing what we've learned, we help others determine their own course. It's a win-win situation for all involved!

This week I'd like to talk a bit about author support groups. There are many out there. Some are geared more toward specific genres and heat levels, while others welcome everyone and their work. Some focus more on specific aspects of the business such as Marketing for Romance Writers. Some focus on building your brand and connections such as MyWANA (We Are Not Alone) and to a lesser extent tweet teams.

No matter the group they all have one thing in common: rules for participation. These are the guidelines for all members to follow if they wish to participate in the group and be supported by the other members. They have rules for what can and cannot be posted in the groups and whether promotions are allowed at all. If the group is focused on marketing for example, they may only wish to talk about ideas and "how to" market your work, not receive nonstop BUY ME NOW spam.

One set of rules I'd like to focus on in particular are those concerning participation on tweet teams and the blog sharing site Triberr. When you join these groups you are expected to share ALL participating members posts whether it's tweets or blogs. This means you are NOT to pick and choose which posts you want to share and which you'll ignore because you or your followers don't like the subject material.

Unless the groups are set up to allow selective sharing when you participate, you can't do it. Not only is it rude, it's unfair that you expect your posts to be shared by all and you get to be exempt. These support/share teams are set up so all participants get their posts shared across the board and put in front of more potential readers/fans. If you break that chain, you not only screw your team members, you get labeled as an author behaving badly.

You know you don't want to be labeled AABB (another author behaving badly). We've talked about it many times before. You are in this business to build bridges, not burn them down. If you don't agree with the rules of a group, don't join it. Plain and simple. If you find you can't share posts for all members because you are personally offended by the subject matter, then quietly leave the group. You don't need to make a horrible scene as you leave. You don't have to explain yourself other than to say you don't feel you're a good fit. Leave it at that and keep on friendly terms with them. You never know when those connections will come in handy later.

To sum it all up: participation in author support groups, tweet teams and sites such as Triberr is not a one way street. If you're not prepared to RECIPROCATE, you need to VACATE your spot to someone who will.

Until next time,
~Tammy

Learn More About Tammy

Tammy Dennings Maggy is a best selling, multi-published poet and erotic romance author with Siren and Sassy Vixen Publishing. Her writing explores many facets of romance from ultimate betrayal to finding your soul mate. Her poetry serves as a companion to her novels and has inspired entire series all on their own. Tammy and her alter egos Lia Michaels and Stephanie Ryan make up the core authors at Sassy Vixen Publishing and together they've created the shared world series Temptations Resort. Look for the first books in that series to come out later this year.

Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.

Check out:

Tammy's Website

Tammy's Blog

Tammy's Books on Bookstrand, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  and iTunes 

Sassy Vixen Publishing

Friend Tammy on Facebook

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If you'd like to share your experiences in the publishing world, please contact us about setting up a guest appearance. We'd love to hear from you!

#WWoW! Just Link It.

Let's talk about LINKING. My rule of thumb is when in doubt, just LINK IT! What am I talking about? Really, everything. All of your social networking accounts, blog, website, tumblr - literally everything - should be linked.  Because then you are doing the work once while your impact is huge. It's that easy.

Are there accounts you shouldn't link? Nope but there may be some more geared towards different types of posts. It's still okay to link them because there is always overlap and as long as you aren't spamming out oodles and oodles of promo, your goal should be to extend your reach (and sell more books).

Now time to get to work!

First and foremost, have your blog connected into your social media sites, particularly facebook and twitter. This means each time a post goes up on your blog, it automatically goes to these programs for you. Here's promo without anymore work than setting up your single post. You can set up these links in the SETTINGS account of your blog. Blogger allows you to link with Google+ also and I recommend you do it even if you do nothing else with Google+ (yet).

Link your blog to Networked Blogs on facebook. You can search for the app on facebook and select SYNDICATE to connect your blog. Here is another way for potential readers to find your blog and follow you. It is becoming more and more popular so jump on it! Doing this also means your blog posts are automatically sent out via facebook. If you have an author's page, you can even choose to have them sent there instead of your profile.

Other TOP TWO places to link your blog (that have a bit more to it than just linking):

Triberr - Build your reach exponentially. See my previous post with specifics on this site. This is a bit more involved than just linking though completely worth it.

Goodreads - Thousands of readers use this site. If you don't create an author's page and utilize it by linking, you are missing a big opportunity for networking regardless of the horror stories we see with reviews on goodreads. Check in about twice a week to see if you have any messages, reviews, etc. Most importantly, link your blog to post to your author page! See mine here.

Another place to link your blog is in search engines that give potential readers more places to find you. Most have widgets for you to add to your blog but some just simply place you into a database to be more searchable. My favorites are: BlogNation - BlogTrain - Blog Lovin' - Writing Blogs - Linky - AuthorsDb. Be sure to set up all your links in each of these - most require your blog rss feed so have that handy - so each time you post in one place, your information spreads out across the web.

Finally, make a list of all social networking sites you belong to or any on-line accounts.

Here are some of the most common: facebook - twitter - google+ - LinkedIn - tumblr - stumbleupon - YouTube - Picasa. Go into the SETTINGS options in each of these and be sure you have linked as many of them together (and with your blog!) as possible. There are other sites you might choose to use and regardless of which ones you choose, just be sure to link them.

Remember every time you link it, you reduce your work in half while doubling your reach.

I don't suggest you spend hours a day on these sites.

In fact, linking your accounts means your time spent on marketing decreases even though you are visible in more places. Once these accounts are established (& LINKED!!), you will need to do little more than your regular blog posts. A few of these places I mentioned take extra maintenance but it's minimal and worth it.

How does this help your business?

You will advertise to a wider audience as you increase your reach. You will write more because your time spent marketing will decrease. It's a simple case of Win-Win.

So, what are you waiting for? Just Link It!

And Keep Writing!

Paloma

#WWoW! The Impact of the Atomic Tribe!

First, let’s talk about Triberr for those who haven't discovered this incredible marketing tool yet. (If you have, you might want to skip to the ATOMIC TRIBE section below.) Triberr is a unique blog post distribution platform that groups alike bloggers together by tribes of their choosing. Bloggers (that’s us) auto-feed our daily posts into these tribes who then share our posts with their social networks. This takes our message and distributes it among a larger network. Our audience expands at the same time that we deliver a variety of content to our followers. It’s a clear win-win.

But for all this to work, strategically select your tribes to match your needs. The key is not to waste your time and to deliver content to an audience interested in what you blog about. Check out the bonfires to find others like you. Also look for my tribes - I am chief to five strong tribes - and see if one fits you.

For those of us visual learners, I downloaded this image below from Triberr. It uses Twitter as the example but Triberr has the capability to do the same thing with Facebook and LinkedIn. (And I hear there are more improvements in the near future to include other social networks.)

I cannot recommend Triberr enough. Seriously, it’s the first on-line tool I’ve found that actually saves me time. And as an author, my time is precious. It’s measured in word counts, deadlines and line edits. There is no time to waste.

NOW, let's talk about using Triberr wisely...

Joining too many tribes is just not effective. Be selective. Choose tribes that fit your topic area. This ensures your tribemates tweets will be somewhat interesting to your followers. It's then also more likely your tribemates' followers will be interested in your tweets.

Tribes that require approvals will have the most active tribemates. It's an obvious truth. I require members of my tribes to approve all book-related posts daily. The only caveat I have is when a tribemate posts more than one blog post per day. Then the minimum expectation is to approve at least one. This works best, in my opinion, but be sure whichever tribe you sign up for has rules you can abide by. Rules are listed under their tribe page.

Don't join tribes with members not pulling their weight. EVERY MEMBER MUST BE ACTIVE for Triberr to work as it should. Look for tribes that require approval. I know I already said this but it is very, very important! Here's why: the tribe as a whole has a higher REACH possibility than each member as an individual (all our twitter followers put together is called our "reach").

The NUMBER ONE RULE is: It only works if every tribemate does their part!

Make your posts stand out! This is the biggest mistake I see bloggers making!! It's simple: You are a writer so write a good post title. When using Triberr (and therefor, twitter), your title is nearly more important than the actual content. If your title is good, people will gravitate to it.

How do you do this? USE # (HASHTAGS) and @"person mentioned" so it feeds into twitter in tweet language. Use # on searchable/ common words. For example, #Review, #Author, #SexySnippets, #*blog hop titles*, #*book series*, #*memes*, etc. If you are in a Hop or Meme, the group should have a standard hashtag for all members to use.

USE @*guest name* if it's a guest post. Incorporating these will maximize your reach on twitter and increase the chance of your post being approved quickly when a tribemate has to choose because of the limit. It also ensures that your guest is included in the post and then the tweets go to their followers as well. 

IMPORTANT: If you do not want your blog title to look funny with the # and @ signs, go into Triberr after your post goes live, click on My Posts and edit the title there. It will then go out to your tribemates with the symbols. I PROMISE using these symbols will increase your blog traffic. I've tried it & I have the stats to prove it.

Now, here's where we need your help: the Writer's WoW website has an Atomic Tribe. Atomic Tribes are benefits to Prime Members of Triberr. An Atomic Tribe has followers who share the posts promoted by that Atomic Tribe. What's different about this? No one becomes a member - everyone's post are not shared - only the posts of the primary blog are shared. Why would you join an Atomic Tribe? If the blog you'd be sharing stands for something you believe in - if their content is consistently relevant - if you want to share the information with your followers. We believe WWoW! is the perfect Atomic Tribe for all authors to follow. 

CLICK ON THE LOGO and consider following us. Then you can enjoy a s’more around our campfire!

Leave us a comment and share your experience with triberr so far. Don't you love it? Or tell us if we've swayed you to use this awesome platform. Look for me on triberr - "Paloma Beck" - I'd love to add to any of my tribes based on the type of books you write so check out my tribes. I run a tight ship but members get good results. Oh yea, and don't forget the most important thing... Keep Writing!

Paloma