Experimenting with SM Boosters

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on May 16th, 2011 at 06:00 AM | | Tweet

Marketing techniques like sweepstakes and contests are all the rage with writers these days, A chance at winning, say, a book, or some book-related swag in exchange for viral buzz is becoming as common as the old cliche of balled up paper ripped out of old Smith Coronas.

After taking part in a couple recently and seeing how they work from the inside—and, actually winning a couple—I thought I’d put one together myselfhttp://www.letstalkaboutwriting.com/2011/05/chronolgy-of-water-giveaway.html. So far, after 24 hours, I’ve spiked my stats on my writing blog about 25%. But that could all die down, so I’m not inking results just yet. Over the next couple days, I’ll tweet the contest daily, post it once more on Facebook, and, of course, I’m referring to it on this blog.

But, here’s the thing. I’m really not just doing this to market my own writing. First, I really love the book I’m giving away. Second, it’s important, in my line of work, to understand online behavior, so I guess I’m using this as a focus group experiment for viral buzz-building in general. And third, yes, I really do want to build my platform for a book I’ve written and hope to sell in the next few months.