by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1
I’m always looking for ways to engage readers and recently found a few to share with you.
A writer friend shared in an interview that she had been posting #funwordoftheday on her social media sites, and I asked if she’d mind if I copied her idea. She agreed after threatening to make me the villain in one of her books and killing me off…actually what she said was, “Sure. I stole the idea from someone else, anyway.”
- Here’s what I came up with. Five days a week, I post a new word and sit back and laugh at what my readers come up with.
- Then, yesterday I noticed Amy Lilliard, another writer friend, was doing Pun Day posts. She and a friend both make up a pun and Amy puts it on her Facebook page and lets her readers pick the best pun. These have really generated a lot of comments from readers.
- Another way to engage readers is to create a Character Board for your latest WIP on Pinterest. I’ve just started one for Book Two in the Pearl River Series set in the Cumberland Plateau. I’ll post about it on Facebook and ask for input on what kind of clothes my heroine might wear…or what kind of shoes—(that’s a two-for—two social media sites for one post). There’s a four-year-old in the story, and I’ll probably give Ella her own site on Pinterest.
- A couple of years ago there was a Twitter post going around where you posted the title of the book you were reading and then added “And then the murders began.” So I thought I’d try it:
- Polls are a great way to engage readers. I’ve created polls to see if my readers preferred the beach or mountains as a setting. You’ll notice my next book is set in the mountains…
- I’ve also asked my readers to help me with a name for an Elvis Impersonator. I had the first name, Vic, but I couldn’t come up with a last name, so I asked for help on Facebook. I received over two hundred responses, and one of them was Vegas. Bingo! Vic Vegas it was.
Readers are interested in the lives of the authors they read, and they like to connect. If we take the time to share a little bit about ourselves it’s a win-win situation.
Do you have any ideas you’d like to share?
Deception, Natchez Trace Park Rangers, Book 4
When ISB Ranger Madison Thorn arrives in Natchez to investigate a white-collar scheme, she has no idea she will be thrown back into the violent crimes division–or that it will get so personal. She’ll have to work with her childhood-enemy-turned-handsome-charmer to unravel the clues before it’s too late.
Patricia Bradley is a Carol finalist and winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, and three anthologies that included her stories debuted on the USA Today Best Seller List. She and her two cats call Northeast Mississippi home–the South is also where she sets most of her books. Her romantic suspense novels include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. Deception, the third book in the Natchez Trace Park Rangers series, releases August 2, 2022. She is now hard at work on a new series set in the Cumberland Plateau around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her writing workshops include American Christian Fiction Writers online courses, workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference, the KenTen Retreat and Scrivenings Press Author Retreat where she was also the keynote. When she has time, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.