Today’s post is not so much about writing as about marketing your writing. I’m signed up to a blog by Firepole Marketing, which I find very helpful, even though I’m not selling a service, like consultancy, or a product with wide appeal. Last year and this year I took part in their Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt.
The idea is to complete a huge list of challenges and earn points. There are prizes for the winners, but I couldn’t hope to do every challenge. So what’s the point of taking part? The Scavenger Hunt is designed to get you using social media, networking, blogging, multimedia, and writing & researching. All things you need if you’re promoting online.
Some challenges I was already doing, or knew how to do, so those points were easy to collect. Many were things I had not tried or didn’t even know about. You know how you put things off? Well, this is a great way to get them done. I tried out lots of things, some I will definitely use again, some I won’t, but at least I made an informed decision.
I created my first boards in Pinterest, joined a new group on LinkedIn, created a newspaper in Paper.li, asked a question on Quora, and created a new header for my blog (see above), my Facebook page, and my Twitter account.
I found some new blogs to follow for history research, tried out PicMonkey for pictures with text over them (see below), and created my first infographic.
I wrote an elevator pitch for my books, created a PowerPoint presentation and shared it on Slideshare, and booked a job on Fiverr to finally got my book launch video properly edited.
And all in three weeks! Thank you Firepole Marketing. Oh, by the way, I came 11th!