….well maybe 'evil genius' was exaggerating a bit.

ray

Hi, my name is Ray.  I wrote a short ebook about my lifelong quest for greatness and how it ended up collided violently with my midlife crisis. Naturally I wanted to let all my friends know about it.  (everyone between 35+ yrs on Earth) So I went where I always go to visit my friends - Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Oh, and on their mobile phones.

It started out with a post to my friends on Facebook….(850 or so)

fb friends/fam - i wrote a short ebook called wheniwasgreat.com - if you like it (or the idea of it) PLEASE SHARE THIS POST with reckless abandon - a couple of mentions - Ed S, Sr., David C and…. — with Tom K and 7 others

and then one more a little later…

Guys - please don't unfriend me when you reach the annoyance tipping point after all of my posts about #wheniwasgreat - it will only last a day or two - help out when you can - please SHARE, LIKE, POST, TWEET if the opportunity presents itself - thanks everyone - ray

Everything was pointing them to the www.wheniwasgreat.com site as well as the FB Fan Page

My friends got to work and it didn’t take long to see some forward progress.

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and with a little encouragement it kept getting better and better…

totalrecall
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This is neat.

…then i sent loads of tweets to athletes and celebrities that i think are cool and/or interesting (100+)

@jonstewart i wrote a story so you would invite me on @thedailyshow http://t.co/ZCoGuGZi #wheniwasgreat RT if you want to hang out

@kingjames - nice championship year http://t.co/ZCoGuGZi #wheniwasgreat RT i’ll cheer for u next year 2 - u need 3 more to catch up to me

….after that, we location targeted loads of impressions to people that we think like to read books on their mobile devices - SD, LA, SF, SEA, CHI, BOS, NY, DC - I’m in the biz. One reader sent me a note and asked me to stop stalking him on his mobile in CT. Pretty cool when a friend sees an ad for your book on their smartphone 3,000 miles away. 

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…then i got on the nets

I posted and sent messages to 20+ athletes with FB Fan Pages that I thought might enjoy the read - I was never famous and I think we have some other things in common

"Hi Ray (Lewis), Ray here - you are one of the fiercest tacklers I've ever seen. I had a couple of pretty good hits in my day too. I played rugby for the US National Team a long time ago. Check out the hit in the first 30 secs - www.wheniwasgreat.com - if you do end up reading the short ebook, send me a note and let me know what you get from it. Go Ravens - ray"

I posted and sent messages to motivational themed FB Fan Pages that I thought might enjoy the read - this should be right up their alley

"I wrote a short ebook that you may enjoy - should be right up your alley. www.wheniwasgreat.com - if you do end up reading it send me a note and let me know what stands out. If you like it - please share with others of like mind. all the best - ray"

Next I posted a couple of notes on NBC, Olympic, USA Rugby, IRB Rugby + FB Fan Pages - rugby is going to make it’s redux in 2016 Olympic Summer Games for the first time in almost a century and we are the defending champs - that’s fun

"I played rugby for the US National Team a long time ago. Ask Brian Hightower - he announces rugby for you - we played on the Eagles squad together. I wrote a short ebook about my quest for greatness and coming short of the Olympics - www.wheniwasgreat.com - It's raw and kind of quiet/loud at the same time. Real stories - a lot of joy/pain with a nice ending. With your upcoming coverage of rugby in the 2016 summer games, I thought this might be timely. If you end up reading it, shoot me a note and let me know what you get. If you like it, please share with others that you think might enjoy. Sounds like a good candidate for a Made For TV Movie if you ask me. All the best - ray"

I think it would be cool if someone made a movie/musical out of wiwg, so I posted a couple of messages on LinkedIn where I thought people might hang out that make movies/musicals

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So far in the first two weeks we’ve seen over 6500+ uniques from 31 countries

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…and, readers seem to be getting some cool takeaways from the story.

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Even non-ruggers seemed to be enjoying it.

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I thought you might appreciate our approach so I tweeted you and a couple of your buddies

@solomocoolguys - @mightryg launches 1st ebook using borderline evil genius #sociallocalmobile plot go 2 wheniwasgreat.com/solomo #wheniwasgreat

Your guess is as good as mine as to whether this gets any legs to it, or not. It will be a fun ride either way.

Our goal is to get 10,000+ uniques from all over the world and 1000+ FB Fan Page ‘likes’ (www.facebook.com/wheniwasgreat) by the end of October. Oh, and to get invited to be a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - I love that show.

Wish me luck.

If you have any zany schemes you want someone to experiment with in real-time. I’m your man. I have virtually zero budget and am wide open to pretty much whatever.

If I don’t hear from you, no problem - no pressure. Just wanted to let you know what we are up to. I’ll send you a note when we hit our goal and let you know what the next milestone looks like. Maybe 100,000+ uniques in 50 countries by year end, or something fun like that.

tweet me maybe if you want to help us get where we are trying to go or if you just think what we are doing is fun.

That would be GREAT - @mightyrg

It took us a month to get to 1,000 FB Likes, only took us a week to add 1,000 more - see how we did it!