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Tip Thursday

Lugh

Entry posted by Lugh in Writing Tips

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Herm, we've had a resource, a writing tip, an editing tip... how about a site tip?

 

How to promote your story on GA:

 

Just as you'd find with a book placed on the bookshelf in a store, your story can get lost on GA among the other stories if you don't make it stand out. Most importantly, imo, is to have a story that engages and interests readers and then try some of these other tips to help improve your fan base.

 

1. Post regularly if you are writing a serial work. We ask that you don't post more than one or two chapters a week to avoid flooding the system. On average, that amount of time seems to also provide the most readership feedback.

 

2. Make a discussion topic for your story in the appropriate forum. Individual forums for Promising/Hosted or the Stories Discussion forum for all other authors. Post a link in the topic whenever you update chapters if the story is a serial piece.

 

3. Mention the story posting in your status update. Do NOT spam by updating about your story posting multiple times unless you are posting for each new chapter posted.

 

4. Create a banner link or place a text link to your site signature to send readers to your story.

 

5. ALWAYS respond to comments and reviews by readers.

 

6. Read and review for other authors. Most people will check out the work of another author who is actively participating on the site and in GA Stories.

 

For more information on how to promote your work or anyone else's for that matter, please read the FAQ: Basic Care Guide of Authors

 

As usual, if there is something you would like to see explained or a tip written about, PM the idea and we will see what we can come up with in a future tip.

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option

option 14

Posted

Tags & Description.

 

Use relevant tags that apply to the whole story, & use enough, but not too many, to give an idea of the story. approx 5 is ideal

 

Write a decent description of the story, like you would see on the back of a published book. About 5 sentences is good

  • Site Administrator
Cia

Cia 59,540

Posted

  • Site Administrator

Tags are limited to 6 maximum in GA Stories anyway. I agree with having a good description as well, though that is also limited by the software.

comicfan

comicfan 13,407

Posted

Most people, myself included, are browsers. If you can't interest us in the description we probably won't stop to read. A good intro will get you noticed. Don't also be afraid to ask at the end for comments. People are more willing to leave them if they know you want them, and they see you answer them.

Lugh

Lugh 2,229

Posted

FYI, there is a 500 CHARACTER limit on the description. This includes spaces and punctuation. If you would like five sentences, they would have to be very, very short sentences. Personally I would like to see a concise, attention grabbing description in the description and a more lengthy blurb in the story note, which allows up to 800 characters. Together they can provide quite a bit of useful information...

 

HOWEVER, neither of these things really has much to do with "promotion" the idea behind this specific tip was to get people TO your story... granted getting them to open it is a very good idea, but you have to start somewhere, yes?

option

option 14

Posted

500 characters still allows 5 sentences with 10 words of 10 characters each, plenty of space for a proper description.

 

 

The description is what is seen on the list & search pages, & on the author pages, which is how stories are found.

 

This description could then be used in peoples signatures, as per point 4

eg; Heres my new story: [Description]

 

It can be the first post of the story thread, as per point 2

 

 

The description is also pretty much the only thing promoting existing stories, as thats what a reader sees on the author pages etc

 

 

Promotion is about promoting something, so you have to state what the something is.

Lugh

Lugh 2,229

Posted

ah but you are not reading all the rules for signitures either then... because putting the "full" description in the signiture, along with a link and any "additional" information will put the signiture over the character limit... so I guess what I'm trying to say is... please pay better attention to the rules and guidelines before making suggestions to our authors that are impractical for them to do.

 

Honestly, the better option here, option, would be for the author to use the 'my media' link in their signiture, although, a banner link is more visually appealing and tends to get more clicks. In case you haven't seen one it looks like this:

 

[sharedmedia=stories:stories:2770]

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