Monday, October 12, 2015

Street Teams

Street teams are a growing trend in the social media world. When I first got into the publishing world last year and was learning about author pages, Twitter and the rest of what makes up the promotions side of writing. As I was meeting people in the writing groups and asking questions of my publishers I noticed a number of them people I worked with had their own street teams.

For anyone that doesn't know, a street team is the new version of the well known fan club. People band together as fans of either a specific book or the author in general. Then as the author posts updates, events and links to their work the street team will help to share everything allowing the author to gain a much further reach than they would be able to on their own. The members of the street team attend online events and basically become social media assistants for the author as they work to grow their name and exposure to their books.

I am a member of a few street teams for friends and authors that I truly respect. I receive their updates  and do my best to not only share what they post but also to engage in discussions with them from time to time in order to learn from those much better associated with the business and how to promote. It has been an eye opening experience to say the least.

I personally do not have a street team of my own at this point. I have instead focused in increasing not only the visibility of my current works but also the number of published books I can claim as my own. I have been a part of several anthologies that were either published by or in conjunction with people that have these street teams and so I follow them closely in order to make sure I am a part of all promotional activities. When appropriate I also mention my other work as an author so if someone likes a story I have in an anthology they know I have written other books as well.

I joined a version of a street team for people learning twitter. Instead of being a fan club though we are more of a support group. We favorite and retweet each other's tweets and share new ways to use Twitter so everyone is familiar. It is amazing how much you can learn by simply following a few groups and joining in on a conversation or two once in awhile.

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