Given that I just released a new book in Germany (Der Schattenseher), have a new series coming out later this week (HELLstalkers) and have another book coming out in January (The Spirit Banner) I’ve been thinking a lot about promotional efforts and thought I’d focus my post this week on working with a Street Team.
Originally developed by urban record labels to help get the word out about music groups that had not yet hit it big on the national level, street teams are groups of fans who “hit the streets” to generate excitement about a band, a group, or a project. In the last several years, the concept of using street teams has been widely embraced by the entertainment industry, record labels, corporate brand managers, and new media companies worldwide. 
The street team concept works just as powerfully when it comes to promoting your latest book or series. The central idea is to turn exclusive groups of your fans into enthusiastic promoters. In exchange for spreading the word about your books and helping to build your audience, you reward them with exclusive content and opportunities that are only available to members of the team. In this way you provide an incentive for them to continue their promotional efforts on your behalf. What you end up with is an effective grass roots promotional machine totally focused on spreading the word about you and your work.
Putting together a street team is a relatively easy task that any writer can do and the widespread use of social media and the mobile web make them more effective than ever at spreading the word.
First, you need to create some means of recruiting and communicating with the members of your team. When I created the Street Knights, a street team for my 2005 novel HERETIC – Book one of the Templar Chronicles, i set up a special sign up form and mailing list through aweber. This inexpensive service let me create a professional looking sign up form that was simple to insert into my website and then allowed me to manage all of my communications with the team through a weekly email newsletter. Other ways to accomplish this include using Twitter Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and other free discussion group sites. I personally prefer the amount of control and tracking that aweber provides, which gives me a better handle on how effective my team is being.
Once you’ve gotten your street team up and running, you need to give them things to do and ways to spread the word. Here are just a few examples:
- Using twitter to tweet about you and your works, blog posts you’ve written interviews you’ve done, or even retweeting your own tweets
- Emailing friends they think might be interested in your work
- Commenting on blogs that interview you or support your writing through reviews
- Referring people to your blog, podcast, or vidcast
- Supporting your social media efforts (supporting you on Digg, StumbleUpon, Friendfeed, etc)
- Reviewing your work on their blogs
- Regularly leaving comments on your website
- Participating in your forum
- Adding a banner, badge or button to their website, MySpace page, Facebook page, etc
- Reviewing your work on Amazon.com and B&N.com
And tha’ts just a start!
Remember though, that this is a two-way endeavor and you’ve got to offer something in return for their efforts. I usually try to offer some variety of things to my street team members in an attempt to offer something for everyone. Some of the things I’ve done in the past have included:
- Using their names as characters in my books
- Offering exclusive content – such as character dossiers, character diaries, and special short stories written just for the team
- Running a contest for signed limited edition books or actual physical manuscripts
- Instant Messaging avatars of the characters or series logos
- Myspace background images
- Wallpapers
- Screensavers
- Promo packs of stickers, bookmarks, flyers, etc
- Html banners
- Members certificates
- Opportunities to get ARCS or limited edition copies before anyone else can
- Free books
The happier your street team members are, the harder they will work on your behalf. And a solid grass roots promotional push can mean the difference between a book rising on a tide of word-of-mouth sales and sinking after just a few short weeks on the shelves.
(If you’re interested in participating in a street team to see what its like -or to get ideas for your own promotional efforts – I’m in the midst of putting one together to help promote my new cell phone series HELLStalkers and invite you to join in. Simply visit the HELLstalkers webpage and sign up for the mailing list.)
