The Masquerade Crew is Expanding: A major or minor step?

Just like the universe in general, The Masquerade Crew is expanding. This happens all the time on this site, since we are always trying to improve our services by reaching more and more people. After all, what's a book promoter without reach?

I ask that, but there are lots of blogs that don't even try to reach more people. Unless it's a hobby and you don't care how many people visit your blog, I think the goal of any book blog should be to reach more people.

How we've expanded in the past

In addition to ever increasing our following on Twitter and Facebook, we've expanded by posting more. Some days we've had as many as six posts. The way this site is promoted allows that many posts without inundating any one particular promotion channel.

By separating our posts into these different promotion channels (@MasqCrew, @PromoMasq, and @MasqRev), we've been able to expand how much we are able to help others as well as ourselves, for those that help promote this site via Triberr get promoted by us in return.

This method of promotion has given us amazing traffic levels. I couldn't be happier with the results so far, and the authors we promote and feature probably feel the same way.

But there is one tiny flaw in our system.

General or Specialized?

The Masquerade Crew doesn't really specialize in any genre. There's probably a few we haven't hit, and there are certainly ones we don't cover on a regular basis, but in general anything goes on this site (if not as a book review, definitely as a promo).

That policy has hurt us a little bit because some people are looking for something specific. And sometimes it's difficult to sift through all of our posts.

Now, we've tried to cater to specific interests by having a theme of the month or the week and by having specific genres covered in the book club. The theme idea has worked well, and although I'm sure we'll continue to tinker, it's not going anywhere.

The book club has shifted focus one or two times since I created it, and currently it's basically an over glorified newsletter. Members get one email a week on average. But the original idea was to cater to specific interests. After all, when you sign up, you tell me which genres you want to hear about. I've only rarely sent genre specific emails.

An Expansion of the Romance Kind

When Romance month turned out to be such a success, DeeJay and I started planning this expansion. First of all, there's a new blog.

Masquerade Romance

And a new Twitter account (well, not exactly new but it is now connected with the new blog).

@RmTwts

The first post (a book review) went live today. It's a repost from Romance month, so there's not much to see, but hopefully over time it will be a great resource for our Romance fans.

There'll be book reviews (obviously) and eventually promos. Also, the blog will feature syndication and guest posts that are related to the Romance genre.

The Grand Picture

Little should change here at the Masquerade Crew, especially in the near future. All of our traffic is centered on the main site, so until the new blog holds its own, this site will continue to be my main focus.

The eventual goal is to have a network of Masquerade sites, each catering to something particular, that way each of our fans can focus on their specific interests. The main site will always be the hub, but by posting fewer book reviews, we'll actually be able to support more and more reviewers. Reviews will continue to be posted on the main site, but it won't necessarily be the main place for our reviews.

And there are other benefits to having more than one site, such as how the book club factors in, but I'll save that for another time.