Being Accessible
We live in a world of instant gratification now, wouldn’t you agree? Many of us don’t do so well with that delayed gratification of things nowadays. So, we have to make it very, very easy for people to find us. They just don’t do it on their own, my self-published indie authors. Today, people have to practically trip over us to find us. We need to put ourselves in their path in a bunch of different places in their lives, so they don’t have to do any work to find us.
And when they do find us, most likely, they’ll do a quick Google search to see if we’re for real and how credible we are. At this point, our webpage better pop up, my authorpreneurs. If we don’t have a webpage, we’re not being accessible or professional, our prospects’ attention will go somewhere else.
In addition to our websites, it also helps is we have a social media presence. As a matter of fact, it would help if we had more than just a presence, but instead, all over it. Again, remember, we want our people to practically be tripping over us. Where ever they are, we want to be too so they can bump into us.
Most likely, a lot of our old friends are on Facebook. A lot of people we went to high school have accounts. Facebook is a great way to reunite with old friends. Sadly, we won’t get a lot of our old friends buying our books, but a few will.
Regardless, we still want to have a Facebook presence because our old friends will occasionally tell others about us. And who knows what kind of doors will open from our old friends’ networks. Plus, when we’re trying to enter one of those doors of opportunities, it helps to have one of our old friends working for that organization and vouching for us.
We definitely want to have a presence on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where the professionals hang out and interact. There are a lot of business people on LinkedIn who we can help that can also help us in return. We should be networking on LinkedIn and having a presence on this social media site. People have contacted me a few times and offered me great opportunities to do more of what I do for pay because they liked what they saw on LinkedIn about me.
To tell you the truth, social media sites are practically limitless. There are so many of them. We’ll never have time to do all of them well. However, my philosophy is to have my profile up on a bunch of them, because who knows where our next customer will come from. And remember we want to be easy to find, right?
But, as I said, we don’t have enough hours in the day to try to dominate all the social media sites out there. So, maybe have a profile on a bunch of them, and then just concentrate the majority of your time on a few of them where a good percentage of your market is hanging out.
Next, in our authorpreneurship business, an email list is worth its weight in gold. All successful authorpreneurs these days have an email list. If your time is extremely limited, then I’d say to cut back a bit on the amount of time you spend on social media and focus on your email list.
You see, when we post things on our social media sites, people have to take the step of going to their social media account and scrolling down their page to find us. With an email, we just pop up in their inbox. There is no extra work there for them. We’re right there in front of them in their inboxes.
With our social media posts, all the social media companies use an algorithm to determine who sees what. The social media company decides who gets to see our posts. They decide. Not us. We have no say over who gets to see our post. And most reports say that the percentage of people who actually see our posts is pretty low.
This kind of stinks, doesn’t it? Now with emails sent from us to our people, every one of them gets our email. We are right there in all of these inboxes. Our email numbers on who gets to see us is way better than our social media numbers. Email makes us more accessible to our customers and future customers.
Being accessible to others also involves things such as how we’re presenting our information to others and where they are gaining access to it.
For example, some people love to listen to a book. So, we need to also convert our books into audiobooks. Some people prefer eBooks. Some will want our information in a workbook. Others may benefit from our content being in a pamphlet or through a subscription service.
We have to consider is what ways people would consume our content. We need to stop thinking of our book as just a book. And begin thinking that the most valuable part of our book is the content inside of it. So, how do we get that content out of our book and in front of more people? Do we do it through videos? Speeches? A play? A movie?
Ask yourself this next question. Where are people hanging out who could benefit from our content? Obviously bookstores, right? But hold on. Bookstores are just the tip of the being accessible and available ice berg. I spoke before about non-traditional markets and special sales. These are the places that our customers are hanging out beyond the four walls of the bookstore. Amazon is a significant player in this wide-open field beyond the confines of the bookstore.
Other places where we could be accessible to our future customers might be in the train station or airport. While people are waiting for their next train or flight, maybe they will come across our book in the bookstore there and then read our book on their way to their next destination.
Maybe they will see our book at one of the many gift stores all around this country. Or perhaps they’ll see our book on the nightstand of a Bed and Breakfast that they are staying at. The key here is to be accessible. To have our books available in as many places as we can think of.
Do you have your books in the prison libraries? How about the libraries on this country’s Navy boats? How about at concerts or sporting events? What about at the back of the room during your speeches or workshops? Have any large associations, organizations, corporations, government, or non-government, non-profit entities ordered your books in bulk yet?
With some imagination and a good work ethic, we, our books, and our authorpreneurship business could be accessible and available all over the place. With enough work, people could be practically tripping over us as we seem to be turning up everywhere they are.
Watch the free video lesson on this chapter!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9E2WaamWvA&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=74