Kristen is recovering from a couple of all-nighters spent caring for a loved one. I’m sure she’ll have plenty to say about it over the coming weeks. She should be back tomorrow. I take that back, she will be back tomorrow,even if I have to drive to TX and make her write a blog post Weekend-at-Bernie’s style.

Today’s post is an excerpt from a bonus lesson from Lisa Hall Wilson’s six week Facebook course. Lisa is a fantastic teacher and one of my favorite online people. She is currently teaching four classes at WANA Intl:

Building A Tribe Using A Facebook Profile
Using Your Facebook Profile to Build Platform
How To Write In Deep Point Of View (POV)
How To Get Them Talking – Interview Like A Journalist

Thanks Lisa for giving us a sneak preview at this new lesson!

WANA Facebook Maven Lisa-Hall Wilson

Facebook Groups

Indie authors especially are very good at innovating and finding creative solutions to problems they face trying to connect with their readers/fans. Recently, former lit agent Nathan Bransford posted about the ongoing bully/gang-mentality that’s become prevalent over on Goodreads. People were leaving bad reviews of books they’d never read, or just didn’t like the title or subject matter of. (Read the post here.)

Authors had no way of policing their Goodreads pages, and real fans were turning away because of the bullies and bad reviews.

So they innovated.

How Authors Are Using FB Groups

I often get people inviting me (or force adding me) to closed groups which are really just book launch announcements. Not cool. That’s just spam. Don’t do that. However, some authors are using groups the proper way with amazing success.

Growing a tribe or community around your writing is usually a common goal for all writers regardless of their genre. Easier said than done. Building a community or tribe takes time, effort and intentionality.

To combat the lack of control over on Goodreads, authors have turned to closed FB groups instead.

Street Teams

When an author is about to launch a book, they may create (or fans create for them) a street team. I’ve seen these used as incentive to pre-order books. These are the most dedicated and enthusiastic fans you can have. They are your mavens, they generate word of mouth enthusiasm, share your work, post reviews, buy copies for family and friends. This is marketing gold you can’t buy.

Author Strategies

These closed groups are well organized and only genuine fans of the books are accepted as members. Some authors use these groups to send out information to join a street team, help get the message out about their books, events, coming soon and cover reveals, help name the book, etc. Some of these groups have tens of thousands of members. It’s a vibrant hidden community free of trolls because the author admin has the power to turf those who break the rules of the group. There’s no spamming, and readers find it a much safer environment than Goodreads right now.

Authors show up daily to talk to fans, to give that glimpse behind the curtain – they want to see Oz. Authors are growing these groups by placing links to them in the back of their books – as opposed to their websites. It’s an insider club.

Benefit of Closed Group

The big benefit for a closed group is that you have to be a member to see the content. It may show up in your news feed because you’re a member, but your friends won’t see it unless they’re also members. This way members can also share inspiration photos of guys (etc.) and it doesn’t show up on their walls or their friend’s news feeds. You can’t use a group with your Page though, only your Profile. Many Indie authors have what I call a place-holder Page but are only active on their Profile.

Book Promotion

Authors are inviting fellow Indies into these groups to help promote the upcoming book launch often. So XYZ author is invited to participate. The group members are alerted that “XYZ author will be here to spend time with you all. She’s giving away a copy of her… book.”

The author admin creates a thread linking to the free giveaway. The protocol is that XYZ author never mentions their own books. They talk about their favorite heroes/heroines in author admin’s books, etc. This helps promote author admin’s books and helps XYZ author get new readers – and nobody gets spammed!

Author Cooperatives

Authors are teaming up with others who write in their genres, etc. to offer book promos together, boxed sets, etc. This is all being done in closed FB groups.  Authors are sharing info and insights into marketing, promotions and ads. They’re working together to support each other. That’s the WANA way.

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Lisa has been using Facebook since 2007, and has been a paid administrator, content creator, and consultant for more than three years. She manages Pages for non-profits and small businesses in Canada and the United States. She’s a freelance journalist with nearly 100 articles published, and has counted non-profits such as World Vision Canada as clients. You can find her hanging out on the WANA Intl Facebook Page most days or at her website.

The post When Spammers and Trolls Take Over – Authors Innovate – Facebook Groups (WANA Class Excerpt) appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

In her seeming desperation, she handed me the keys to her blog. Again…

You’d have thought she’d have learned after I hijacked her site last time. Then again, knowing Kristen, she’s aware that I ‘sampled’ a couple glasses of wine while TechGirl and I made lasagna. Kristen’s call for help at an ungodly late hour is most likely a ploy Sun Tzu would be proud of.

Regardless, challenge accepted!

Actually, this is a fantastic chance to catch everyone up on the goings on in WANAville.

First off, thanks to everyone who joined us for the October WANACon Writers Conference. We appreciate your trust in us and hope you had as good a time as we did. For those who couldn’t join us, the session recordings are available for On Demand viewing here.

The next WANACon will be Friday February 21st and Saturday February 22nd, (hopefully) far enough from the chaos of the holidays that a conference track on what to do next with your NaNoWriMo creation makes sense, and close enough to Valentine’s Day for one on writing romance.

Keep up with all the details by visiting WANACon.com or joining our mailing list.

WANA Classes are going On Demand

We’ve heard you. And finally the technology allows us to bring you an “On Demand” class experience that is good enough to receive the WANA… ->

We’re not moving away from live classes, but with busy WANAs all over the globe, we’re structuring classes to be more flexible for those who can’t attend live.

We’ll be adding dozens of classes by amazing instructors over the next few months. Click for our Current Class List or to join our mailing list.

And a shameless plug…

Book Tours in Your PJs

On Friday, my company, TechSurgeons is adding an new Author Service – Virtual Book Tours. They’ll use the same tech WANA uses for WANACon and live classes. At an introductory price of $50, you can rent a virtual room for 6 hours for you and up to 10 others at a time.  You’ll be able talk to your readers, share web cams, instant message with the shy ones, display PDFs of sample chapters, extras, and ‘out takes’ or whatever creative ideas you have. Contact me for more details.

Remember WANATribe, -the- private social media site by authors for authors.

We have Tribes for all genres and interests. And if you don’t see the one you want, you can create it. Joining and using WANATribe is free.

As a thank you prize for reading putting up with my post, here’s a video of (I believe) George Clooney and Brad Pitt dueling with a flamethrower and fire extinguisher.  Inside sources claimed this was filmed just before they went to their respective makeup artists.

Okay, that was mean. Here’s an amazingly cool video of the Ohio State band performing their “Hollywood Blockbuster” Show.
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Geek in His (un)Natural Habitat

Jay Donovan is the official WANA Tech Guy and takes care of all WANA’s technology needs. He’s writing an “Expansion Pack” on the proper use of pen names to supplement Kristen’s “Rise of the Machines” and should be working on it instead of hijacking blogs and talking about himself in third person, but where’s the fun in that?

Jay’s company TechSurgeons LLC provides the geeky magic for WANACon and  WANA classes. TechSurgeons also hosts the WANAIntl.com & authorkristenlamb.com websites. He’d love to be your tech guy too.

Find him on Twitter at @jaytechdad or on Facebook

The post Blog Hijack Part Deux – WANA Goings On appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Not me, I have better hair -AND- an immunity to iocane powder

By Jay Donovan
Poor Kristen fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but a couple steps down is this: “Never leave your Tech Guy in charge of your blog.”

Kristen called me Saturday to see if I could approve comments for a couple more days and said it would be easy since she didn’t have anything to post for the first time in a long while.  Being a kind soul, of course I agreed.

Five minutes later, an epiphany…

I control the Horizontal.
I control the Vertical.

So I called her, got voice mail, and left this message: “Hi Kristen, it’s Jay. I just thought of a blog post to put up for you.” And I’m not proud about my loss of control, but I couldn’t help myself—I ended the call with an honest to God *maniacal laugh*.

You’d think she’d know better than to allow me to get used to having so much power. Especially since I used up all my willpower by not filtering last week’s posts through the ValSpeak filter.

You don’t believe me?  I find your lack of faith disturbing.

It think it is time we demonstrated the full power of this filter.
Set your course for Kristen’s last post: Learning to Drop the Donkey.

Original text:

All of us want to do a good job. We want to put our best foot forward. We all say that we want feedback and critique, but deep down, if we are real honest, we want people to love everything we say and do.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality. We can’t please everyone, and it is easy to fall into a people-pleasing trap that will steal our passion, our art, and our very identity.

Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational blog-messer-upper:

All of us want to totally do a bitchin’ job. Us guys want to totally put our best foot forward. Us guys all say that we want feedback and critique, man, but deep down, oh, baby, if we are real honest, like, wow, we want guys to totally love everythin’ we say and do.

Unfortunately, fer shure, this isn’t thuh reality. Us guys can’t please everyone, like, and it is easy to fall into a guys-pleasin’ trap that will steal our passion, oh, baby, our art, fer shure, and our super identity.

See what I could have done. Yet I resisted. But Kristen has to further tempt me with an idle blog, and her unable to see her site, let alone stop me.  *Maniacal Laugh* Sorry, #20 of the Evil Overlord list gets me every time.

Um, now what?  Anyone have a suggestion?  Bueller?

This blog moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

“I’ve got one.  The question isn’t ‘what are we going to do,’ the question is ‘what aren’t we going to do?'”

Good thought Ferris, how about a Kristen roast?

“That’s a righteous idea.”

Post your favorite Kristen story in the comments. I want good ones.  Sweet ones about Kristen pulling you back from the ledge. Funny ones about Kristen’s top #KlutzClub moments. The goal here is not just to make her ears burn, but to make to make her blush the entire time she’s in places the Verizon guy fears to go.

Here are the rules; I like my roasts medium-rare. Comments which are too mean will be nuked and replaced with that photo with you and your Aunt Gertrude from when you were 11.  Yeah, the one taken a split-second after her dog barfed down your shirt.  It doesn’t matter how I got a copy of it. Worry instead about it being the next big meme.  *Maniacal Laugh* Did it again. Damn!

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Geek in His (un)Natural Habitat

Jay Donovan is the official WANA Tech Guy and is writing an “Expansion Pack” on the proper use of pen names to supplement Kristen’s “Rise of the Machines”. He should be working on it instead of hijacking blogs and talking about himself in third person, but where’s the fun in that?

Jay’s company TechSurgeons LLC provides the geeky magic for the upcoming WANACon and hosts WANA’s WANAIntl & authorkristenlamb.com websites

Find him on Twitter at @jaytechdad or on Facebook

The post Blog Hijack: I Aim to Misbehave appeared first on Kristen Lamb.