The creative talent and diversity possessed by New York City’s spoken word poet’s never ceases to amaze me.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I see someone perform and think that if they simply had more exposure they would have a huge following.  The problem is that 9 out of 10 spoken word poets believe that promotion, or self-promotion is either “beneath them” or simply a job that someone else is supposed to do.

Then, on top of that, the one spoken word poet that understands the importance of self-promotion is often not going to get the results the seek because they don’t know what they are doing.  From what I have seen, poets – specifically spoken word poets, struggle more than most other writers when it comes to building a fan base and getting their words into print.  I aim to change that.

In this article series, I am going to show you the basics of effective self-promotion.  If you want to build a huge following of thousands of people, I will tell you, step-by-step, what you must do to accomplish this goal.

Step #1 – Get Organized

Effective self-promotion begins with organization.  You need to have a very firm grasp of the following:

What you are doing
Why you are doing it
How you are doing it
Where you are doing it
When you are doing it
Who you are doing it for

Now I know this might sound simple, but once I outline the specifics for each of the items in that list, you will quickly come to understand why pretty much no one is properly doing this stuff.

What You Are Doing

Your goal is simple; you want to expose your work to the more than 35 thousand people that are searching for your work every month via the Internet. (Yes, you read that number right, but more on this later)

Why You Are Doing It

You are doing this because it is both the most effective and cheapest (in many cases it is free) way to find people who have already shown an interest in what it is that you do.

How You Are Doing It

You will use a simple funnel, you will allow people to find you on the Internet, and then you will allow them to connect with you and get to know more about you and your work.

Where You Are Doing It

You want to connect with your fan base on YOUR OWN WEBSITE OR BLOG or at the very least, on your Facebook FAN PAGE.  Notice that I did not simply say “on Facebook”.

When You Are Doing It

Self-promotion should be seen as an extension of writing.  First you write, and then when you are finished you let your fan base know that you have new material for them and you also tell them how they can gain access to it.  Sometimes you will publish this material on your site and other times you will publish a snippet and then let them know that they can see you perform this piece at an upcoming event.

Who You Are Doing It For

You are promoting to find people who are NOT POETS and have expressed an interest in finding spoken word poetry online.  I need you to really understand that.  You are NOT looking to find people that do what you do, you want to find people who simply appreciate what you do and want more of it.  Many poets make the mistake of promoting their poetry mostly to other poets.  Then they wonder why their fan base isn’t growing and get frustrated.  The reason is simple; most of your promotion efforts are not targeting the right people.
Once you know all of these things, you will be well organized and ready to move on to the next stage in the self-promotion process, which I will cover in the next article.  I chose to break this article into a series so that you would have time to absorb the information and go through the process of actually implementing it or seeing what it will take for you to implement this plan.  With that being said, if you like the information that I am covering, let me know by commenting on the article here on my blog.  I am going to reader-feedback determine the release schedule for the rest of the articles in this series…so the more comments that I get from my readers will force me to post the next article that much quicker.

Tags | poetry marketing, social media marketing