Without an audience, your book could be great, but that’s all it will be. You don’t want that. You have a message and a story that deserves to be read by your audience.
That’s who you need to find: those who need and want to hear your message. My goal for my book is not to sell millions of copies. If that happened I wouldn’t complain, but more importantly my goal for my book is to spark change in women. I need to find those women who are done with “business as usual” and I also need to find the ones who don’t know how much they really need the Culture Rebel message.
How do you find your audience? There’s a couple of ways:
1. Blog. I started my Culture Rebel blog one year ago with the sole purpose of finding the audience interested in the message. After a year I have a steady following of those who are inspired by my story. Ironically, I find blogging more rewarding than the book itself! Think about it: each day a blog is posted (for free, remember), it hits the cyber world and has the capacity to impact and bless more people than you can imagine. A blog can go where a book can’t. I don’t get caught up with “numbers” for my blog, but on consistently posting short 500-1000 word posts that have to do with the Culture Rebel message. The key word is: consistent. That doesn’t mean it has to be daily, but create a pattern of frequency that people will begin to expect. I blog 5x a week and post faithfully first thing in the morning. People have began to expect it. Maybe for you it’s 2x or 3x a week. Whatever you do, make it consistent.
2. Tweet. Many don’t understand twitter. If I didn’t have a message I was seeking to bring to culture, I don’t know if I would find twitter entirely useful. It would be yet another time-sucker in the social media world, but not if you have a message. I find twitter to be one of the best ways to connect with like-minded people who I learn from and who I offer what I have to them. It’s a networkers dream. However, it’s a whole new world with etiquette to be learned. Jeff Goins has a great blog post about how to properly use twitter; 20 Essential Tips for Better Twitter Etiquette.
3. Don’t be afraid to promote your message. This is what I (and many others) struggle with the most. Even though I am extroverted, I shake at the knees at the the thought of even posting a blog post on facebook. Why? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I feel I’m not alone in the fact that I’m afraid of what people think. I don’t want to deal with the subtle comments (or sometimes downright direct comments) coming from people saying, “Who do you think you are?”- because I struggle with thinking that myself already! Here’s what I’ve chosen to do; I’ve chosen to get over myself. Donald Miller has an amazing post on “Some thoughts on Self Promotion and Why Arrogant People Think It’s Wrong”. If you struggle with this, read his post. It helped me realize that not sharing my story is the real arrogance – especially because the heart of it is not for self promotion, but to help and inspire others.
Take some time while you’re writing your book, or before you begin to start implementing the steps above. That way, when your book is ready, the audience that is desperate for it is there waiting for it.
