it's December, and let's face it, we could all use a break. Unfortunately, marketing stops for no one, especially when you're still fighting for attention in the void also known as "the internet." Fortunately, though, I've got 4 tips that take most of the effort out of marketing so you can have your cake and market it without thinking about it too.
When people reach out to their built-in support system for help promoting their projects, almost 100% of the time they make the same mistake: not making it as easy as possible for them. The fix? Pre-writing two or three generic tweets or Facebook posts (made easier with Twitter's new 280 characters) that people can simply copy and paste into their own feeds. This also allows you to maintain a consistent voice and description for your project.
Seriously. That's it. I promise it will increase the number of people helping you promote by at least 20% because while people want to support you, they're busy with their own lives and thoughts, and the effort of coming up with a tweet about someone else's passion project is more than you might think. It'll take less effort than it took me to make up that statistic, and that was a very easy statistic to fake.
Best practices: include any preferred hashtags or @ usernames and links. The people you're sending these to should literally be able to copy, paste, and post with no further work. If you're feeling fancy, attach an image or two to the email if they want to include that as well.
So you've read our press release and press kit posts, but still aren't having much success actually getting outlets to cover you. Fear not- you're probably working too hard! Instead of scouring the internet yourself, keep an eye on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of other shows in your genre or theme. Whenever they post a new article or interview about THEM, go to the source, find the source's "contact" page, and get in touch yourself! Better yet- mention the other article in your cold email; something like "we loved your article about our friends at [other show] and thought you might enjoy our show as well!"
This shows you're paying attention, you're connected to something they've already proven they care about, and it personalizes your outreach.
Best practices: if there's no obvious contact form or email on the site, wait about a week and then try asking the show who was covered directly for the email of the reporter or publication (especially if you're already e-buddies with them). In most cases, they'll be happy to share the love.
This tip might not sound like laziness, but it very much is in the long run: write a template for the following scenarios in advance so that all you have to do is copy, paste, and lightly personalize them as needed:
Best practices: Keep all of these templates in the same document, somewhere really accessible like a Google Drive doc or a digital sticky note, so you don't have to go searching for them.
I'm obsessed with the social media scheduling tool RecurPost. The UI isn't great and there are definitely things I would change (like a mass edit option), but it has completely transformed the way I go about my social media, because half of social media is just maintenance. Reminding people about the link to your series, reminding people to leave a [Stareable] review, reminding people that you exist. You could try and post something, anything, at least once a day, but that sounds like work, and this guide is for lazy people. Here are a few ideas for easy, breezy, repeating posts you can set to a schedule and then completely forget about, cutting your social media efforts in half:
Best practices: every once and awhile, switch up your schedule, even if your posts are unchanged, because you want to make sure there's some variety in this highly automated system. Also, no matter how busy your social media pre-schedule is, make sure to post improvisationally occasionally to remind people it'snot just a bot.
Marketing is a draining exercise, especially when you're also doing fifteen other things on your project and working a full-time job and maintaining a social life and taking some time to relax. Hopefully, some of these tips will help lighten the load as we move into the holiday season so that you can start 2018 refreshed and ready to work.
