Find the "Big Dog"

This week I am once again reminded of the power that comes from a single mention by a big dog; a mention by a person that is a guru in your particular field. In my case, a single mention by John Kremer in his newsletter resulted in hundreds of people going to my new Self Pub News website. Hundreds. For a new site, that is a very good thing.

Could you duplicate that effort? Quite possibly. The important thing to remember about websites and blogs is that it is a numbers game. Often you can correlate the number of sales with the number of people who visit your site. Remember that ratio is not large; this is one of the main reasons why you must increase traffic. You always need to be looking for ways to increase the number of people who come to your site.

So how do you do this? First, you need to decide who the major players are on in your field. As it happens, I have two fields, distance/online learning and self-publishing. With that second one, I have had the opportunity to interview many of the "big dogs" right here at SmallPress Blog. This includes, of course, John Kremer. So, when I started the new site last week, I made sure to send him an email announcement. The rest, as they say, is history.

However, if you do not know the person/people, you need to change that. One way is to start posting on their blog or in their forum. Another possibility is to just cold email them. These are real people and often they respond just like everyone else.

If your field is self-publishing and book marketing, imagine how nice a mention by Dan Poynter, John Kremer, Fern Reiss, Seth Godin, and so on, can be for your site. In my case, I provide a service to the independent publishing community. This service, the SmallPress Blog and now Self Pub News, means that I must interact with many of the major players in the field.

Think about it. While this works less well for fiction, imagine the traffic if you can get John Grisham to mention your legal/crime book on his blog. I think thousands of hits is not an unreasonable number (and, no, I don't know if Mr. Grisham has a blog, but you get the idea).

The point is that you need to build relationships with the people that can make your career, your website, your book become successful.

Some things to remember are:

1. Build real relationships. No one likes to feel they are being taken advantage of by the new guy. In other words, don't abuse the relationship. Constantly asking for help gets old fast.

2. Look for the "big dogs," but don't hound them. Yes, lousy pun, but you get the point.

3. You need to promote the "big dogs." One way people reach that level of big doggedness is that others link to them and mention their writing/blog/book.