Marketing tip: A personal touch goes a long way
Several months ago I received an email from an author named S.J. (That is a purposefully androgynous pen name.) S.J. was doing a blog tour to help promote the launch of his/her first novel and wanted to know if I would consider letting him/her do a guest post on my personal website.
I’d never had anyone do a guest post, but S.J. mentioned that he/she had read all my books, so I wanted to help. Why wouldn’t I? S.J. had supported me, so I wanted to support S.J. in return. (S.J. is also a loyal reader of my blog and even mentioned his/her favorite post in the message.)
S.J. had been writing professionally for many years but was a first-time novelist, so I thought readers of my blog would appreciate some thoughts on what he/she had learned from the process. Here’s the post.
The same week I received an email from another debut author, whom I won’t name. He asked me if I wanted to interview him on my website. I asked him if he’d read any of my books, and he said no. Then I asked him if he’d ever read my blog, and he admitted that no, he hadn’t. I never heard from him after that.
Do you see the difference a personal touch can make? S.J. took the time to personalize his/her outreach to me, and it resulted in a guest post on my blog. The other author used a copy/paste/generic approach, and it resulted in nothing. If he had opened his message with “Hey, I haven’t read any of your books, but I just ordered a couple for my sister…” our interaction would have been very different. Keep that in mind that next time you reach out to a fellow author for help!
Source: Maria Murnane
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