Y is for Yelling Into the Ether

When I was a young girl, I was out driving with my mom during a rainstorm. We were trying to get back home from the grocery store in our VW bus. Living on an island, the storms sometimes turned furious in a matter of minutes. Of course...we broke down and when we got out to walk to a nearby store, I could see my mother's lips moving, in a grimace from yelling, but all could hear was the pounding of the rain on my hood and the roofs around us.

Blogging reminds me of this sometimes. Yelling into a tumult, trying to get your voice heard...It can sometimes be quite frustrating. As a writer, I'm supposed to have a platform. I'm not published yet, and I write fiction...what could I possibly have to offer to the raging blizzard of words out there?

There are a lot of very good websites for getting a grasp on the inner workings of promotion. Aside from what your publisher will do; set up radio interviews, etc. There is a great site called Marketing Tips for Authors. For those poets out there, WordTech has an excellent tip sheet for getting your poems seen.  Marketing professional Amber Naslund over at Altitude Branding has a free PDF download on how to use social media for product elevation. You or I may not be ready to launch anything yet...but it never hurts to get prepared...It's my form of posititve thinking. 

What about you? Do you sometimes feel like you're yelling into a hurricane? How do you connect with other people on the internet? If you have a product or a book coming out...how do you get yourself seen? I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Until next time...Go Write!

Photograph by db*Photography, Uploaded on March 15, 2008.