Myth, the Universe, and Everything

Here is something I've learned about myself. When I am doing marketing (viral or otherwise) for someone other than myself, I have no problem bringing the topic into conversation and gushing about it. The example of the day: I am less comfortable promoting a class that I teach than a class I enjoyed taking. In the latter case, I'm recommending something to people because I think it will enhance their life experience. In the former case, I'm promoting myself, even if I am teaching the same class I'd recommend when taught by another teacher. I do the same thing with books: I, of course, love it when people read my stuff. I'm happy to tell people about what I write and what my books (now hard to find) are about. Other writers, especially folks that I know (like a certain friend whose debut novel is coming out from Tor this fall), I will plug rampantly with no shame.

Given how much my professions (teaching and writing) require me bringing the audience to my work, this realization is somewhat troubling. It is probably a good thing that I didn't go into sales.

I was talking to Miss Mary, the storytime librarian at our local library (where I formerly worked), about how my Mom-Baby Fitness class in Branford has started off very slowly. She reassured me that word of mouth is what it really takes to get a class going on the Shoreline in Connecticut, and then gestured around to her baby storytime, the birth to two crowd, which often has twenty to thirty babies/toddlers attending, along with parents. It's a great crowd, and Bug and I love going. I don't think the space we have for Mom-Baby Fitness could handle that size population, but it's nice to think that things do grow by word of mouth.

That said, word of mouth seems to be a really elusive form of marketing that there's no clear way on how to develop it. Now, I haven't taken any formal classes in business -- in another life, that would have been my college major, but alas, that other me can't magically send tips back from the alternate universe in which I was a huge corporate success. I have read about marketing and about the challenges of hitting the right population by the two consumer-driven forms of advertising: word of mouth and (Internet based) viral marketing. Man, when that sort of campaign works, does it ever work! But when it goes nowhere, there's really no telling why it didn't make it.

With Haunted just being released, I've of course been thinking about word of mouth and viral marketing again, in context of the writing world. We had a fantastic review posted -- a four out of five stars, but with such thoughtful comments that it's clear the reader really got what the collection was about. It's just posted up on the product itself, as far as I know, but now word of mouth about books can spread in a multitude of ways: Goodreads, book blogs, facebook, wherever.

How do you reach your target audience? And how do you utilize social networking tools to accomplish what you want (rather than spending so much time on them that you lose work hours instead of gaining consumers)? If anyone out there has already found a balance they like, I'd love to hear about it! Otherwise, I'll just continue wading in these waters and trying to figure out whether or not I'm ready to swim.