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Message Boards As A Marketing Tool

POD Authors Reach Out to their Target Audiences

by Pat Ballard

Whether your book is about How To Find Socks That Your Dryer Ate or Ten Ways To Rid The World Of Hunger, it has a targeted audience. Every book has a targeted audience. With the Internet being, just possibly, the best tool that has come along for writers since the first printing press, one of the easiest things for an author to do is find that targeted audience -- and Message Boards are one of the best ways to reach that audience and group of potential book buyers.

These boards are listed under many different names: Message Boards, Chat Boards, and Web Boards, just to name a few. If you go to Google.com and put in "message boards," you'll get around 4,000,000 listings! That's four million!

Message Boards can be a great way to get the name of your book, your name, your website address, and even your email address, "out there" to the masses. So each time you post, make sure you add your website, if you have one (if you don't, you should) and make a reference to your book.

Look for boards on all the major news program websites like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and on your local TV stations' websites. These websites usually offer a place where you can get in on a discussion. Watch for the perfect place to post your opinion, then sign your name, and add whatever information you think is relative.

Each board is different. Each has its own set of rules. So before you start posting, be sure to read the rules. Also, read a few of the postings and replies, to get a feel of the "personality" of the board. That way, whether you post a new topic, or reply to an existing one, you'll know how to fit your message in and not look like a "newbie." There is one rule that you must never break: Don't ever go to a Message Board that is about one topic and start talking about a completely different topic. For instance, don't go to a board talking about Tommy's Tool Box, and enter a message on how to Bake Grandma's Oatmeal Cookies! The potential ways to use these boards are as many and varied as authors, themselves. Following are a few examples of how several authors took different approaches to using Message Boards to their advantage:

Regina Pounds, author of LORD EAGLEBEAK, says, "I have never tried to 'sell' from/on a message board. I started out on bookbugontheweb.com with an introduction of Theo's Ghost and myself. I followed the example set by other authors and noticed that no one posted replies. Since I am of the generation when 'modesty' was a virtue and 'bragging' frowned upon, I didn't enjoy this approach. Some authors on that and on other boards relentlessly posted about their own book. To me, that's overkill. It easily turns readers off. My new approach was to offer advice whenever I spotted a chance, with a link to my webpage included. That gave me good name exposure and visitors to my sites. I also asked for advice, which is an even better way to attract attention. My announcements of the Christmas and Easter contests I ran netted me nice emails, so did an announcement of my Interview series at breakaway, my iUniverse.com community for readers and writers."

Diane Meholick, author of A Switch in Time (Did John Wilkes Booth really die in 1865? Take a journey back in time with modern day actor Roger Eberth and find out...) Diane says, "I signed on a message board group for John Wilkes Booth fans. No kidding, there is one out there. I mentioned my book, talked a little about it and my thoughts on Booth, and suggested people go to my website if they'd like to purchase an autographed copy. Three of the people who regularly hit the Booth board ordered a copy of my book from my website. Another board I signed on to was called Tips and Critiques for Writers. It dealt with writing instruction and researching topics to authenticate your stories. Again, I signed up, talked up my book, and got three sales out of it."

Sarah Mankowski, author of ECHO'S VOICE, says she has never tried to market her novels on a Message Board, but she does provide one on her Word Thunder site. She also offers this advice, "Most message boards require registration. Use the registration form to your advantage. Beyond the standard Username, password and e-mail address, many registration forms let you give additional information, if you want to. If you're promoting a book, you want to add info about it. Include information about your homepage, the URL and a description. Always include the URL in your signature. Be sure to give your complete URL beginning with http, so that readers can reach your site in a single click. " Not all boards require registration. So if you're uncomfortable with registering, or don't want to take the time, just keep browsing until you find the ones that don't require anything except your comments.

When I published my first novel, Wanted: One Groom, in October, 2000, the first thing I did was build a website, www.patballard.com. The second thing I did was start looking for other websites with the same interests as mine. Since I write romance novels with Big Beautiful Heroines, I went to Google.com and put in every word that could possible be associated with the size acceptance movement, then proceeded to contact webmasters requesting link exchanges, and putting messages on message boards. My website went from getting around 20 hits a day to getting over 100 hits a day.

One of the most rewarding things to come from my Message Board postings was that Bob Toovey, the Webmaster of www.sizenet.com -- one of Europe's largest plus-size websites -- contacted me with this note, "With regard to your posting on the SizeNet notice board, I would like to invite you to write a small piece about you and the book to be featured on SizeNet. If you are interested please let me know. Also, we are starting a series of product reviews. If you would like us to review the book, is there anyway we could receive a sample or a complete book for us to review? We are always interested in promoting anyone who is creative in this manner and hope that we can help in some way."

As a result of this note from Bob, Wanted: One Groom has stayed on Sizenet's "recommended reading" page, a very complimentary book review was done, the first two chapters of my second book, Nobody's Perfect, are available as a download, and I'm a judge in the writing contest that Bob has recently run. All of this because I posted one small message on a board telling the readers about my book and letting them know that it was available in Europe.

However, all boards don't reap this kind of result. I recently ran across one that supposedly received 12,000 visits a week. I was excited because I planned to visit it a lot and get in on some of the serious topics! It didn't take me but a couple of days to realize that there were very few serious topics on this board. Most of the visitors to this board seemed to be just passing the time of day, posting and replying to topics that didn't come close to the subject matter of the board. I did go ahead and post a new message, asking them their opinion on romance novels. I received around 20 replies. So, even though I was disappointed in the board, I'll visit occasionally and post a comment here and there.

* * * * * But what if you don't have a clue about using the Web and don't know a chatroom from a broom closet? When respected novelist Terry Davis' American Book Award nominated Vision Quest was re-released in March of 2002, he his book buyers were out there -- and hungry. The trick was finding them and spreading the re-publication word.

Enter freelance writer/publicist Kelly Milner Halls and her "do it online" pioneer philosophy. "Because I'd written about Davis and his colleagues in the 'coming-of-age' sphere extensively," Halls says, "I knew his key audiences were Internet literate and could be sparked by an electronic wave."

Without resorting to SPAM, Halls set out to gently inform -- through electronic newsletters, message boards and listservs. Without bells or whistles, Halls built Davis a smart, professional website www.terrydavis.net and emailed a brief notice to relevant webmasters and simply asked if they'd share the news with their participants.

"SPAM wasn't an option or a necessity," she says. "All I had to do was tell them this exceptional book had been born again. The sentimental weight and literary strength of the book caught fire from there." Dozens of online and print articles later, Vision Quest maintains a respectable 50,000-ish sales ranking at Amazon.com and is selling at a brisk but consistent pace, even through a modest university press. "I'm thrilled," says author Terry Davis. "I never knew the reach of the Internet before. But I am certainly a believer now."

Yes, the Internet and Message Boards can be very good marketing tools. But, remember, as Sarah Mankowski admonishes us, "Message Board participants will resent the author that appears out of the blue to advertise a just-published book. Many consider this spam."

So be careful with your postings. Be polite. Be considerate. But...be persistent!

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Pat Ballard is a freelance writer and the author of three novels.

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