When You’ve Got The Time, But No Money To Promote Your Book

Recently, in my promo plan in a month series, I talked about getting to know your capabilities in promotion — what you can afford, both in monetary and time values. While the money one is often easy to quantify (especially if it's ZERO), the time equation can be more difficult…and if you let yourself, it can be the dish that runs away with the spoon (the spoon equaling every bit of your day.)

So if you're an author looking to promote with your time and DSL connection, only, here are a few things to take into consideration:

Be Realistic About Your Time Budget

With a zero money budget, you really need to be aware of what your time budget is. How much time per day can you allot to promotional efforts? An hour? Two hours? Fifteen minutes? Be realistic about what your day will allow. Often times, this means spending a couple of days jotting down what you do with your hours.

If you have a full time job away from the home, that will be a little easier. But don't forget to account for ALL your hours — lunch breaks, the hour when you get home from work, just before bed. TV time. Kids Time. Significant Other Time. Take two or three days and a little notepad, and jot every hour of your awake time. Then when you're done, you'll have a better idea of what a daily budget for time will mean.

Ways To Promote Online

Remember the number one goal of book promotion: To get people to know about your book and about you. Here is a list of possible options that you can spend your alloted time each day:

• Website
• Writing Your Own Blog
• Commenting on Other Blogs
• Social Networks such as Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, etc.
• Email newsletter
• Message Boards/Conversations
• Email Loops/Conversations
• Blog Guest Spots/Tour
• Write Articles

What To Do With That Time

Let's say that you can offer an hour and a half of time each day for promoting you and your book. So, you need to plan that hour and a half the same way you would plan an agenda for a meeting otherwise, that time will get away from you. BE DILIGENT and ruthless here. You have one and a half hours each day and NO more. If there are days sometimes where you can push that a little, great — consider it a bonus. But do not count it in your daily budget plan.

But take the list above and any other items you've added in (and please, add your suggestions in the comments!), and allot your time: 

30 minutes: write my blog
15 minutes: read other blogs/comment
15 minutes: update social networks messages/requests/etc
40 minutes: email loops

This could be one day of online promotion.  And believe me, that time will fly by so you need to set yourself some reminders (or grab that kitchen timer) and stick to the plan. 

Optimizing Your Efforts

The most effective way to build your time is going to be finding ways to optmize your efforts and make them count in more than one place.

For instance, new tools offers the ability to update ALL of your social networks sits in one place are popping up all over the place. FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Digsby are some that allow you to update/see multiple social networks at once. There are other options out there, so look for the one that suits you best. The idea behind these services is to work better and smarter.

Some ideas:

Using Status Messages to Benefit You

The best way to manage your online efforts is to decide on a game plan and use the various means to promote that plan. For instance, if you have a blog — rather than crossposting that blog to facebook, myspace and other places, keep your blog in one place and then use your status messages on facebook, twitter, etc to let people know what you've blogged. Include a title and a link. But a word of caution — don't use your status message to ONLY display promo information or people will quickly tune you out.

I LOVE status messages on all my friends and associates, I find them entertaining. However, what I love about them is the personal connection. A friend recently posted "I love caffeine" as her status message, and it instantly made me smile and feel connected.  

Remember that the goal is to help people to get to know YOU, to want to know more… so interject some personality as well.

Placing an RSS feed of your blog or website news page on other avenues, such as your myspace or website pages.

Don't spend your time copying/pasting all of our content into five different places. Instead, take the RSS feed of your blog and use one of the many tools, such as SpringWidget, to take the headers/content of your blog posts and put them somewhere else– such as your myspace page. 

Offering an email subscription option to your blog

Feedburner.com gives you the option to create an email subscription to your blog, so people can sign up and receive your posts in their inbox. A great way to be present every time you post.

Placing a Social Bookmark Widget On Your Blog

Make your posts work for you.  If you place a social bookmark widget on your blog, then people can note when they like a post. 

Email Signatures on all message boards and email loops

I've discussed this one before, but can't stress it enough. Email signatures DO count, they DO matter. Make yours the best it can be — it should offer a one line idea of what your product is (either your tagline as an author, or a one line snippet review of your book), plus a website address and your name. The biggest mistakes I see in signature lines is too much information. Focus your signature on ONE thing. I have five different signatures that I use in different circumstances, depending on what's relevant to the discussion and what I wish to draw attention to. But remember, an email signature should be read and understood in under 3 seconds.

Mostly, remember that promotion isn't a one-stop shop deal and you're done.  You'll be doing this for months, before your book and after your book comes out.  So take a deep breath and pace yourself.  Building an audience for any avenue takes time. 

Jeannie Ruesch
http://www.jeannieruesch.com

SOMETHING ABOUT HER
Available April 10, 2009 by The Wild Rose Press

~ "A wonderful debut!" ~NYTimes bestselling author Gaelen Foley

~ "A wonderful, romantic story, with engaging characters and an enjoyable storyline.  I look forward to her next book." ~Audrey, co-owner of BookLovers Bookstore, Sacramento, CA