My Date with a Bad Redhead: Week One Summing Up

No, I haven't been invited to the Playboy Mansion yet. But week one of Rachel Thompson's The BadRedhead Media 30-Day Marketing Challenge helped me accomplish a list of cool things.
Focusing on Twitter:
--I fine-tuned my bio and display name, including a hyperlink to my new book.
--I experimented with 'pinning; a Tweet to my Twitter timeline.
--To help build my Twitter base, I began using ManageFlitter's Pro plan for $12/month. It's not quite as user friendly as my old plan from JustUnfollow. But JU is no more and CrowdFire, its replacement, didn't pass muster with me. My main issues with ManageFlitter so far are these: I'm not receiving notice when I've been followed or unfollowed. And I haven't figured out how to organize nonfollowers by date (and I don' want to unfollow anyone I've only recently followed). I've messaged MF about both scores and will update in my next report
--I've also learned o dump blank profiles and inactives.
--I'm learning how to target readers of my genre.
--Rachel provides other invaluable tips for maximizing Twitter use: the proper use of hashtags
, Hootsuite, Buzzfeed, Pablo by Buffer, etc.

The excitement continues to build in week two, which jumps straight into Facebook. The first chapter inspired me to set up an Author page. But let's save that for Week two's Summing Up.

My Date with a Bad Redhead

While the year is still young--the year I'd called My Year--it was time for a date with a redhead.

I'd accomplished a lot in 2018
--I'd moved, finally, to a very good address.
--I'd published the lead title in my new mystery series and started work on the sequel.
--I'd succeeded with my plan to garner more revies.
--I'd just won a much better job.
--I'd added the star of my little home: an Iron Gym pull-up bar with arm straps for vertical leg lifts. And in only a couple of weeks I've seen remarkable progress in both my core and abs.

BUT...

I still hadn't achieved visibility on Amazon and my sales reflected that. Luckily, a Facebook post by Claude Bouchard alerted me to a hot little book written by a bad redhead.





I felt skeptical...until I clicked the Look Inside button. This slender book gets right down to business, beginning in week one with Twitter. Day One alone taught me:
--To stop thinking of Twitter as a primarily a sales tool but more as a channel for networking and visibility, for connecting with readers.
--How to best use new option of a lengthened display name (up to 50 characters), including a hashtag.
--How to jazz up and verb my bio in  150 characters, including a link to my new book, The Big Bopper.
--How to use the Location section as space to add more copy.

                                           


My main takeaways from this first chapter: the absolute imperative of a You, not Me, approach, plus simplicity and speed from the heart of the center of Now.  Example: instead of a bio beginning with my start as Kelley Wilde in horror, the names of my trad publishers, my change of direction from horror to noir, my location, this:

Display name: Reb MacRath, #Award-winning Author
In lieu of a bio: I write short thrillers committed to the art of thinking small. At 5'4", my new hero does just that in his own unforgettable way. https://tinyurl.com/y8hf94om
In lieu of location: Of note: My first book, The Suiting, won a Stoker Award and has been called one of the world's 100 most influential horror novels.

I plan to tackle this 30-day challenge one trick, not one chapter, a day.

Here's a link to the Kindle edition, which you'll want to buy instead of the print.
https://tinyurl.com/ycocm4z7

The hard copy comes with a problem, I learned: the scores of useful hyperlinks embedded in the ebook are 'dead' in the printed text. You may not mind retyping, but often instead of a link that's spelled out you'll see Click here, nothing else.

Other than that, it's a terrific little book. And I can hardly wait till I graduate to week 2, in which we get to Facebook.