Building your platform and (cringe) social media. For a few, ok several, years I have been trolling the internet for answers on how to build your platform. Wait. What? Platform? Yep. Platform. Not the thing you stand on but in publishing terms its your reader base, followers and everyone interested in what youre writing. The statements are everywhere that you need to build your platform, know the demographics, know the interest level and what theyre interested in. Easier said than done, right? As an author you have to promote your book. It doesnt matter if youre Stephen King or Jack Mason. Granted my involvement and energy expenditure in the promotion is far higher than Stephens but we all have to promote. So how do you build your platform? With the internet its both easier and harder to do than in days past. The internet provides you easier access to a greater number of people but the other edge is it provides the same access to everyone else. Its not as easy to get noticed. The Twitter feeds fly by with new tweets, re-tweets, people selling their wares, recommendations and what theyre doing updates. Facebook feeds are full of friend updates, Farmville updates and whatever else. Social media has become a stream of noise. You cant keep up when you have 50 new tweets show up every 20 seconds. (Ok, so I need to trim my feeds down.) Occasionally you see a juicy morsel you can sink your teeth into but otherwise you just want to run away. You dont have time to watch and read it all. You have a book to write, a job to do, a family or other responsibilities. Its easy to get wrapped up in the streams and lose your focus. However, as an author, social media is where you need to be to promote your book, yourself and your brand. Its where you build that platform of readers and followers. Its where you connect with other authors, agents, publishers, editors and the list goes on. Its a necessary evil. The key is to minimize your time with the various social media sites while maximizing your reach and visibility. Everyone... wait thats a strong word. A lot of people tell you you need to tweet 4 to 6 times a day, post on Facebook daily, update your blog a couple times a week or more, visit and post on other blogs, post on YouTube, Google+, Good Reads, blah, blah, blah. Theyre right. You do need to do those things. Yes those things take time. You have to promote. Just because you wrote it doesnt mean they will come. If youre financially set you can pay someone to do those things. If you cant afford a $15,000 marketing campaign you could check out Fiver. $5 will can get you a lot but you have to be careful. You can also do it yourself. Before you get all nervous and jittery and jump up and down screaming you dont have the time let me give you a couple tips. As I said earlier you want to minimize your time but maximize your reach. The key here is to integrate your blog, website, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and whatever other social media account you have. You want to be able to post in one or two places and have that post carry automatically to other sites. For instance I am posting this on my site which happens to be a WordPress blog. By setting up a couple plugins and WordPress this single post will automatically post to my Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts. A little later in the day Ill take this post and send it out on Facebook which will again hit Twitter. So Ive hit most of the major sites with just 1 or 2 posts rather than having to visit each one to post. Its certainly a time saver. Watch your analytics. Pay attention to when people visit in relation to when you post. Change your times and frequency to get the widest reach based on your page views. Engage your readers. Dont just try to sell your book to them. They need to get to know you and be able to relate to you. Get to know them. Post things that encourage them to comment on and be active. Take time to respond to posts and comments. If they engage theyll stay around and thats what you want. How you manage your social media campaign is entirely up to you. There is no magic bullet or formula to give you an instant platform. It all takes work just like it took to write the book youre selling. Keep at it and persevere. jackrmason
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 01:41:24 +0000
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