Marketing as a Part of the Creative Process

Hello Violets!

I know we were scheduled for a rerun today, but since I’m back from the conference I wanted to report in.

The conference was Inspiration Central. Lots of great sessions on marketing, which I’ll be sharing with you over the next few weeks. I also got a lot of great ideas for promoting my upcoming release of Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris, which comes out in November.

One thing I wanted to share with you today was something I heard during a session with Eric Maisel, a creativity coach. He talked about not engaging in either/or thinking. He encouraged us to keep from thinking we were good writers but not good marketers, that there was nothing to be gained from that kind of thinking.

Instead, he encouraged us to rewrite that scenario so that our creative process included marketing. That we bring the full force and passion of our creativity to marketing and promoting our books, rather than telling ourselves we didn’t have the correct skill set. I thought that was a wonderful way to rephrase that.

Then after I got home, I stumbled on How to Avoid Marketing to Yourself by Robert Gorell, which had some major resonance for me...

Social media marketing should be a largely introverted activity, one where the marketer spend more time listening, researching, and refining their message than they do actually pushing one. It should be about creating environments, and playing in existing ones, where you learn juicy details about what’s actually important to your customer segments. Yet for most, it seems “social media marketing” has come to mean the tactics by which one goes about hunting down customers and annoying them under the guise of “friend”-ship.

Is he singing our song or what?? Marketing that is an introverted activity? One that requires active listening (an introvert’s special skill)? I am SO there!

So, let’s all put our heads down this week and do some brainstorming using our mad creative skills and come up with some outside the box, creative promotional ideas! I have one percolating for Mary and I. I’ll be back and share it next week.

Until then!

Robin