Sunday, April 24, 2016

Saddle up with the promotion Posse

I've been a proud member of Sunny Frazier's Posse for the past five years and I'm very grateful to her for teaching me about promotion and for guiding me along the way. I've asked her to tell us about how and why she formed the Posse.



   It was a simple idea, really. I began learning (and loving) promotion early on in the Internet age. As I watched others struggle, I wondered why should they beat their head against the wall trying to navigate all the information out there? I mean, I’d already done that and had it under my belt. I was linked to lots of sites that fed information to me without any work on my part.

   Perhaps it was hubris that had me announce “I can take 5 years off your writing path if you just blindly follow my instructions.” I didn’t know if that statistic was right, I made it up off the top of my head. The message was, even if you don’t understand everything you read right now, trust me—it will all fall into place.

   Understand, these weren’t my ideas, they were culled from all the sites coming into my computer. I eliminated blogs that didn’t really add anything to our collective knowledge or were a time-waste. I sought information that could boost a person’s career.

   There was a secondary requirement: members had to go over to sites where fellow Posse members were blogging and add their two cents. It was a subversive move. Suddenly, that site had dozens of comments. Posse members were a valuable commodity for site owners. We identified ourselves as Posse and people realized we were a force to be reckoned with. I was even getting requests to “send the Posse over.”

   About a month ago, I developed a FB page for the Posse. I invited the 87 members and then opened it up to everyone. There’s no charge, everyone contributes and we still support wherever one of us is posting. However, I started doing a Round-Up every Friday listing all the topics discussed that week. It gets posted all over the Internet. I also found fun Western photos to illustrate the posts.

   Why the “Posse?” It’s a tip of my cowboy hat to the fact that I worked for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department and yes, we have a Posse. They ride horses and go into the rugged foothills to locate lost hikers. While the San Joaquin Valley of California isn’t exactly the “Wild West,” we do have rodeos and cowboys. It’s an image that works as we “ride together” to promote.  
  
Sunny Frazier 




Sunny Frazier writes the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries, set in the Central Valley of California where Sunny lives. A military veteran (Navy, Vietnam Era), she worked for 17 years with the Fresno County Sheriff's Dept., 11 of those years as Girl Friday for an undercover narcotics team. Her books are based on real cases and real places from those days--as well as a bit of astrology, which she's been doing for 45 years. Her character, Christy, has her own Face Book page where she doles out astrological tidbits and Sunny is the head honcho of the Posse, an intra-promotional Face Book group for writers.  

Books 2 & 3 of the series can be purchased on Amazon or at Black Opal Books. Book 1, "Fools Rush In" will be reprinted later this year.