Welcome to the second part of my series on how to promote your web fiction! In this series, I will be going over the paths that an author can take to generate traffic to their web fiction or serial. In this part: how to utilize social media!
Before we begin, I just want to reiterate that the cornerstone of a successful promotion is outreach. This will be an important concept throughout this article.
Reddit:
Reddit is a great place to generate traffic to your site, however, Reddit abhors self-promotion. Thus, there are few places that you can actually post to that will be aligned with your serial that has any weight or worth. There are places like https://www.reddit.com/r/shamelessplug/ that you can post to without worrying about backlash, but it is unlikely to get you any kind of momentum. Below is a few subreddits that you can post to and a few thoughts about how to post there successfully.
r/writing is a community of writers who post about the craft in general. Self-promotion is only allowed on a specific forum thread (listed as “[Check In] Off-Topic Discussion and Self-Promotion”) and it is replaced and renewed once a week. This is a good place to post links to your serial, but don’t expect more than 6 or seven views from it per day, even if you are upvoted to the top. Instead, the best way to post on r/writing for promoting is by answering people’s questions on the main subreddit forum. Keep an eye out for topics that are about your genre, or specific tropes (or clichés) that you employ. Make sure that you add a link to your serial as an example to their questions, but only after you craft a thoughtful answer with value.
Keep in mind that though you can generate traffic from here that you will be doing so from other writers. Though writers are readers they may not be the best people for your audience as writers tend to care about things in the craft (tropes, story structure, prose) that readers don’t.
This is a horror story subreddit where “stories are true, even if they are not”. It is also one of the most trafficked and popular fiction subreddits on Reddit. Getting the number one spot in this forum can mean THOUSANDS of views on your page, but it is only worth posting there if you genuinely enjoy writing in the horror genre and if it is aligned to your story. So if you scare easily and your serial is a superhero story I would not post here, It is VERY unlikely that you will retain the people who come to your site from there, and it is more likely that you will see a spike in traffic only to see it fall back off to where it was the previous day. If, however, your serial is a horror story or very dark in nature THIS IS YOUR PLACE!
Before you write on /nosleep you should know its specific rules. All stories are supposed to be told in the first person and by someone experiencing something creepy. You must also never comment “out of character” in your post and the link to your serial must be discrete. Stories must be at least 500 words long and at least 1000 words long if you plan on doing multiple parts. Further, if someone can look out their window to disprove your story it will get deleted. /nosleep enforces their rules with an iron fist. I would read the most popular stories for a week or so to get an idea and feel for what the audiences like and do not like before posting.
I have also had some YouTube narrators approach me to narrate my stories that have done well on the subreddit (you can find some of those in the “fan stuff” section of my site). I did see an additional boost of traffic from one, but the conversion to reader was small. These narrations can be shared as promotional material on your social media profiles, however, as video tends to do better than text.
Like r/nosleep but for sci-fi, not as popular but FAR more aligned for sci-fi authors! The audience still assumes that all stories are “true”, but the restrictions are more flexible.
Stories must be science-fiction; this includes: hard SF, soft SF, 4-, cyberpunk, time travel, space opera, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, dystopian and others under the sci-fi umbrella. Stories must also be 1000 words or less. Links to your site must not be in the body of the post, however, but can be added as a comment.
This is most aligned for erotica, and possibly good for certain romance stories. The community does not seem to be thriving, however.
A good place to post and cross-post your stuff from the other subreddits. Stories must be at least 1000 words, a link to your site is allowed in the post, and any genre is allowed (except for erotica).
As of right now, the community here is not very large and most people posting are writers (and not readers). This might change in the future but I have not seen more than a couple of views trickle in from here.
DeviantArt:
DeviantArt took a giant hit once Instagram became popular. This is not to say that the social media page is not still thriving, but as 90% of its users are all artists starving for attention, it was only natural that most of them left to where their audience was gathering. With that said, the writing community is even smaller and EVEN MORE STARVING. It is, however, an INCREDIBLY passionate community. This is where you will find most of the poets online and short story writers. Make sure that whatever you post has a link to your site, but do not expect great results. I have tried to post “previews” of my chapters here with a link to the full thing at the end, and though I have attracted a couple of very vocal and active readers to my site, it was not worth my time to put in the energy to really build an audience there. I would not suggest using DeviantArt if you do not already have an account there, and I would not expect those who follow you to go off-site. With that said, if you are going to try it aim for a “Daily Deviation”. This is a daily feature of artists that administrators hand pick and it is the most prized feature on the site. You can suggest your writing pieces to the following moderators:
https://doughboycafe.deviantart.com/
https://beccajs.deviantart.com/
Tumblr:
Tumblr is generally not a good platform for your actual chapters but can be good for quotes, poetry, or memes related to your genre. I have not seen somebody use this space to effectively promote their writing pieces AS POSTS, but I have seen it used (and have used it) to generate traffic indirectly. If you are going to use Tumblr use it like Pinterest with blogger outreach in mind. Do not promote directly here, instead post memes, comics, and “shitposts” (I actively hate this term) that your audience would enjoy and then mix it in with a few pieces of your work. It is best if you can find an already popular group Tumblr to suggest your stuff to. As an example: I created samples of my “Nihilist’s Horoscope” (my reader magnet) in a graphic format and then joined a Tumblr blog that posts philosophy-based memes and shitposts as a contributor. I would post my graphics on my Tumblr first, then reblog them in the group Tumblr. This audience could not be more aligned with my work and I saw a sharp uptick in follows on my Tumblr and a sharp uptick in readers on my site. The best part was that because they were so aligned they were reading through my serial more than dropping off. (Note: these graphics linked DIRECTLY to my mailing list opt-in with an offer for my reader magnet, I do not think it would be half as effective if I did not have a way to capture them).
If you can’t find a group Tumblr that fits your needs, you can also “suggest” posts to more popular blogs. Don’t be afraid to do this but you might want to be a part of that blog’s audience for a time before doing so as it will be perceived as spam.
Facebook:
Facebook is “the must place” that most people advise that you go to if you want to be serious about promoting your work. The reality? Skip it if you hate it. Facebook is AWESOME if you can afford to advertise on it, but not so much for organic reach (more on advertising there in a later article). No one likes self-promotion, not even your friends, and if you post your stuff on your normal profile you are going to get a very apathetic return. Instead, you can create a page and gather followers, but Facebook will only put your posts in front of a very small percentage of your followers unless you pay them to “boost it”, which means that you must have a ridiculously high number of followers to see any kind of organic return. Joining groups and trying outreach there might be your best bet, but the groups for serials are small. Only put the time and energy into Facebook if it is intuitive to you and if you LOVE it. Otherwise: pass.
Twitter:
This is the second “must have” that people insist you have. I have never used it, and I have only ever seen extroverts who genuinely love the platform use it effectively. Mathtans of Time and Tied had this to say about it:
The main thing with this aspect of social media is being SOCIAL. People won’t follow you for what you do, but rather who you are/why you do it. Don’t keep the default as your avatar (you’ll be considered a bot), don’t use auto responders (Direct Messaging people about checking out your stories when they follow is a sure way to be unfollowed), and don’t over-promote yourself. Stick to a 10:1 ratio at best, meaning for every 10 non-promotional tweets you send, allow yourself a promo. Related, don’t string all your promo tweets back to back. What are the other things you’re tweeting then? Simple, RT (ReTweets) of the work of others, responding to questions, or just humanizing yourself by talking about the chapter you’re working on or your writing struggles.
Pinterest:
Pinterest is possibly the best place to post if you have an outreach strategy. The half-life of pins is much greater than that of anything else in social media, and it is one of the few places that doubles as a search engine. Pinterest, however, is a long game. If you are going to use it for your web fiction you have to be creating useful and beautiful pins that solve your audiences’ problems. A great and free resource on how to do exactly that can be found here.
Pinterest should be used side-by-side with a blogging strategy. Write articles with beautiful pins attached to them that solves your reader’s problems in a related niche to your story. The most obvious topic that a writer can blog about is writing, but this can differ by genre. As an example: a fantasy writer might find success in writing blog posts about D&D Campaigns. Ask yourself what problems your readers face and make sure that you are the go-to authority to solve those problems. This will take time. You can read more about this outreach strategy in a previous post.
The Bottom Line:
Social Media can be a powerful tool in your promotion arsenal. It is not the end all be all, however. Most promotional guides like to throw in advice like “make a viral video and post it on Facebook!” as if it was that easy. If you are going to spend time on a social media platform, spend time on the ones that you like, and remember that simply self-promoting will give you very little traction.
Join me next week as I show you how to promote your web fiction with specific websites aimed at readers and the web fiction community!
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