Passive Marketing in Lit

The Triangle of Engagement -- Passive Marketing in Literotica

Preface: There is a concept in online marketing called "The Triangle of Engagement". These represent a set of overarching principles to guide greater engagement in an online environment. Regardless of the product or service, the triangle of engagement applies. I'll try to summarize it here, based on a couple of assumptions, specifically around Literotica.

This essay focuses on passive marketing in Literotica, taking full advantage of the tools available to you as an author.

1. Product

As a Literotica Author your product is your stories. There are twin drivers at play here.

The first is the quality of your stories. The principles that drive the quality of story are universal. A quality story varies around the edges, but at the core there are just four universal foundation blocks.

1. A character or characters that readers are drawn to, that they can relate to, and whose journey draws and holds their interest. (FOCUS: Read widely about what makes a compelling character. Then, write compelling characters.)

2. A story arc that readers are interested in, that captures their attention in the opening, holds their attention in the middle, then delivers on the promise of the story. (FOCUS: Read widely on how short stories, novellas, and novels are constructed at the technical level. Read widely in the story format you're writing or plan to write. The best teacher is stories that grab and hold the attention of readers.)

3. A story that is not just technically proficient, but technically perfect. This all lives in the editing phase. Since many stories here on Lit are self-edited, then you'll want to read up on editing and get really, really good at editing as a process. If you are fortunate enough to draw a quality editor, then listen to your editor. There should be no space between you and your editor. It should be a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. You may hate the rules of style and grammar. You may disagree with the rules of style and grammar. Suck it up. The rules don't care what you think of them. The readers don't care what you think of the rules. If you make the slightest error someone will point it out.

4. Set the Hook: This is a truism of online marketing. You have, on average, less than ten seconds to set the hook. Depending on reader speed, that's the first paragraph of your story. Maybe, being charitable, it's the first two or three paragraphs. I'd like to think it's a little wider because you'd think Literotica draws people who want to read, but the reality of the metrics is universal regardless of subject matter on the web. You MUST open strong. In the modern media world, they (the readers) are going to open your story, read the FIRST SENTENCE and based on that instantly decide to read the FIRST PARAGRAPH of text and then either keep going or bounce to the next story. They might then scroll down and scan (but not read) a little deeper, but if you don't hook them fast, they've bounced.

The second is the quantity of your stories. There is a sweet spot when it comes to quantity of stories that is tied closely to quality of stories. Think of it as your classic X and Y axis. If you write a lot of stories, but their quality is low, you'll land in one point on the graph. If you write great stories, but the quantity is low, you'll land in another point of the graph. Your objective, to engage readers, is as high a quantity of stories you can support while maintaining the highest possible quality.

So, now you've got the product part down. Since we're doing this for free, you set the parameters of your product as the author/editor. It's entirely up to you how much attention you want to pay to quantity and quality. Find your sweet spot. Since the time we spend writing/editing comes out of the larger work/life balance, find the spot where you want to reside and then nestle into it. Economically, like all hobbies, it's a utility-based opportunity cost calculation.

2. Passive Marketing -- What You Control

Passive engagement is driven by passive marketing. The measure (KPI or Key Performance Indicator) of passive engagement in any online environment is the "View". It's a one-way metric. It tells you that someone, somewhere, was exposed to your story and clicked on the link to see it. The higher the view count, the more you've passively engaged your readers.

Let's look at Literotica from the bottom up. You've got five shots at passive marketing in Literotica: title, description, category, and tags.

Title: You've got 35 characters, including spaces, for your title. Write the best title you can. You can find plenty of articles on the web that go into the nuance of title writing. Title writing itself is a miniature art form. A quality title should draw the eye and engage the reader. Specifically, for Literotica, go out and take a long look at the titles listed in whatever category you're writing in. What titles draw your eye and attention? What unifies them? What principles can you glean from them. Apply that knowledge to your own titles.

Short Description: You've got 60 characters, including spaces, for your short description. Write the best short description you can. Like title, it's a mini-artform of its own. A quality short description should draw the eye and engage the reader. Think of it as a long title. As with the title, so with the short description. Go out onto Literotica and study them. See what works. See what doesn't. Apply that knowledge to your own titles.

Category: In terms of passive marketing, there is a lot that goes into category selection. Here's the deal there. Literotica is your primary marketing place. With views as your primary metric of reader engagement, there are categories that simply draw more eyes than others. As an author, you make the decision which category you're going to write in, just as marketing organizations decide where to place their ads. What's a good number of views for any given category varies widely. Temper your expectations accordingly.

Tags: Tags are the keys to the Literotica search engine. Consider your tags carefully and ALWAYS use as many tags as Literotica allows. You can have ten tags. ALWAYS use all ten tags. Review other stories to see which tags are common and fitting for your stories.

These four elements are specific to the story itself and are the primary drivers of story engagement under your control.

There are two more elements under your control, which are general elements concerning you as the author. The first is your screen name. The second is your profile. These are both opportunities to passively engage readers. So, put some thought into it. If, after you've been here a while you want to improve your screen name, don't be afraid to create a new account. Your screen name is presented alongside every single story and, at a subtle level, is impacting your engagement. This is another area where you can review story lists in your category and glean a good screen name. Don't be attached to your screen name, unless you're one of those rare people whose using their actual name as a screen name. As for your profile, write the best profile you can -- something interesting and evocative.

3. Passive Marketing -- What Literotica Controls

Literotica provides a variety of passive marketing opportunities for you, so let me run through them.

First, on the Literotica home page there is one marketing opportunity which you should not pass up. It's, perhaps, the most powerful passive marketing tool available to you. In the "News" section on the top page, there are always blurbs about contests and challenges. If you want to drive your passive engagement, then participate in every contest or challenge you can. You don't have to win. You just have to get your story title and author name into them, so they appear on the subsequent pages of contest lists. If you rock the contest with a good quality story, you'll increase the downstream engagement on your other stories.

Second, if you scroll into Erotic Stories, you've got a pair of opportunities for passive marketing. The first of these goes to the foundational element of quantity of stories, and that's the NEW stories link. New stories is a go to link, whether it's the top end or within a specific category, it's the heavily trafficked gateway into your stories. It runs on a 7-day cycle. When you publish a new story, you get seven days of exposure with the new flag and on the subsequent category pages.

In the wider web of internet marketing, this actually isn't far off the gold standard based on marketing research. To drive maximum engagement, you want to hit that NEW list as often as you can with quality content. This is the part where you'll get some people saying "that's why quantity matters more than quality" -- and from a strict marketing standpoint, they're not wrong. A low-quality new story will win out on views over an old, better story. We might not like that, but it is the way the world works. The unwritten rules of engagement (views) don't care what we think of them.

Finally, the Vaunted Red H: Regardless of what we, as individuals, think of the Red H, it works. From an engagement standpoint, you want as many Red H's as you can get. There are an infinite number of arguments whether it's a valid marker of quality, but it is a perceived marker of quality and perception is reality.

Other Types of Passive Marketing in Literotica

There are a few other niche passive marketing opportunities in Literotica that you can use.

The first is adjacent marketing, or cross-marketing. When someone reads your story, if you hit the quality marker, they might click on your profile to see what else you've written. This gives you yet another opportunity to stick the landing with your awesome title and descriptions. Though small, this is a not insignificant avenue into your work. As numerous people can tell you, if you get one story that does well, whether it's as a new story or in a contest or challenge, it will result in a small percentage of readers also navigating to your other stories and reading them. As long as you keep hitting the quality market, they'll repeat that process, and you'll see many of the views on your other stories get an uptick.

The second is linking to your stories in your signature here and then participating in the forums or chat. Again, it's a small but impactful way to market your stories. You can also post about your stories, mention them in conversations, and cross-market there. It doesn't really matter which forum, it's all about getting that link in front of people, whether it's to a specific story or to your stories list. The foundational elements of quantity and quality with their X and Y accesses applies. You could also engage fellow authors to hype your stories in their posts and form a cabal of cross-marketing authors working toward a shared goal of increased exposure.

Tying It All Together -- The Strategy

Now, you may have made it to the end of this and thought "Holy Crap Paul, I just do this for fun, how about I just keep doing it my way." Absolutely, have at it. Do it anyway you want. This essay is intended to help people who want to take it a step further.

If however, you are an author who wants to increase their passive engagement, then these tips will help you. From a strategy standpoint, I recommend this: have a strategy. Take that part of this wonderful little hobby of ours seriously and it will pay off for you with those delicious little views that make us feel yummy and lead us to enjoy our hobby.

The elements of a passive marketing strategy are simple -- write well, write often, and take full advantage of the limited tools available to you. After you've tuned your screen name (if you need to) and profile, take a look at your story list. Don't be afraid to delete those early stories you wrote that are simply not good, when you were learning the ropes. Don't be afraid to delete anything that didn't get a Red H. Then, set yourself on a calendar, where you write and publish on a steady basis. Over time, you'll see your passive engagement steadily rise.

To Infinity and Beyond! (Social Media)

Finally, if you want to increase your exposure as a Literotica Author, make a profile on your favorite social media app and write about your writing, cross-market your stories, and deliver added views from there.

If you want to monetize your output, then get over there into Smashwords or Amazon or your preferred self-publishing platform and cross-market there. It's all learnable, it's all doable, if you want to take the time and travel down that route. Once you monetize something then you can do real ROI calculations and, perhaps, buy yourself a cup of coffee once a week, maybe take a vacation, or, if you've nailed the quantity and quality thing, quit your day job and write Bigfoot Erotica for a living.