I've been told I need a social media presence. I work full time, and have a family so I have to be extra creative and targeted about where I invest my time.
- Email list. Is there a target size before I should query?
- Social media: What's my goal? Colleagues in the writing community? An avenue to create my email list?
Building a social media footprint is like raising kids. The job changes, but it's never over; there's no one right way.
If you're just starting out, your only goal is to sit down and work on this for 5/15/30 minutes a day (you get to pick the amount of time. The important part is doing x minutes a day consistently.)
That's all.
If you researched other writers' websites for 30 minutes, that counts.
If you read articles/posts on how to build a mailing list, that counts too.
If you attend a seminar on book promotion, checkity checkcheckcheck.
If you're like me and love love love to set numerical goals (10 more followers by Tuesday!) you'll miss the essential first step.
The essential first step is establishing, then maintaining, the habit of working on your platform on a regular basis.
Doing this regularly is more important than hitting any sort of numerical benchmark when you start out.
If you set numerical goals and keep missing, you'll get discouraged. If you get discouraged, it's VERY HARD to build a habit.
What to start on?
1. Make sure you have a website.
2. Explore the various platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (yes, it's still there). Give them all a try and see which one suits you. Build your following by being an engaged follower. Follow people you find interesting. Don't worry about who they are. Some of my best interactions are serendipitous. Don't try to limit yourself to people you think will be useful. You DO NOT KNOW who those people are.
Of course you should follow me and talk to me, if only so I can assess how tasty you will be when I need to gnaw on a writer. (Twitter @Janet_Reid)
Don't wait to query until you have some sort of number of subscribers or followers or you'll never query, and I can't fall in love with your soon-to-be best-seller if you haven't queried me about it.
3. Learn how to write a newsletter. Draft, then send some practice ones to your friends (the ones who tell you if you spelled stuff wrong, or you have an unflattering photo.)
Don't worry about content yet, but book give-aways are always popular and a great way to give your already-read books a new home. (The books you give away don't have to be yours.)
But the number one thing to do right now is get disciplined about doing this regularly.
I have four things on my standing To Do list, and I write them on my date book so I have it in front of my eyeballs every single day.
1. Torment writers
2. Crush hopes and dreams
3. Play Wordle
4. Play NYT spelling bee
You'll get better at this the more you do it, so start and keep going.
Any questions?
Related posts:
Can A Writer Set Some Privacy Boundaries (aka known as Does Visible Mean I Have To Be Nekkid?)
How Should I Prep My Website Before Querying
11 comments:
This is great advice - thank you!
I just wanted to add that the new social media app Threads (which kind of feeds off of Instagram, if that makes any sense) seems pretty good so far. It's like Twitter but without the mean girls and other toxic waste
I used to do social media for a living. My advice:
1. Choose one or two social media platforms you are comfortable with and enjoy. You need to be somewhat active, and if you think a platform is a cesspool, you won't want to spend time there.
2. Be social. Get to know people. Interact. Social media isn't a broadcast medium. Unless people already know who you are and hang on everything you say, no one wants to be blasted with ads for your book. Social media is about garnering word-of-mouth, that elusive, unquantifiable yet most important path to sales. To do that, people have to want to talk about you.
3. Give more than you ask for. Aim for an 80/20 split. 80 percent (4 out of 5) of your posts should give something: information, a laugh, inspiration - a reason people want to follow you. 20 percent (1 out of 5) can be an ask: buy my book, give to this charity, whatever you are trying to sell.
4. A scheduler can help. Hootsuite has a free version if you're only following one or two social media accounts. Facebook (Meta) allows you to schedule on FB and Instagram, and I'm sure Threads soon, too. Look around for the right one for you.
Enjoy it. You're not going to want to keep up with something if you don't like it.
(The books you give away don't have to be yours.)
*sneaks into Janet's office looking for books to giveaway...* 😉
BTW, I don't understand all the consternation over Twitter (now re-branded "X"). If you're concerned about "toxic" content, you don't have to follow people you don't like, and you can block or mute content that offends you.
"But I HAVE to follow these people!" you might protest "because they're part of the industry." No you don't. Think about this: If you don't like who they are on Twitter, do you really want to work with them, or know them IRL? As a wise person once said, you are not a beggar at the publishing banquet. You have choices.
Just a few thoughts.
I've got accounts on the new socials (Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Post) mostly to claim my name. Most of my activity remains concentrated on Facebook and Twitter. As Colin mentioned, I keep Twitter manageable with selective following and with muting and blocking as necessary.
BJ Muntain, thanks for the great tips!
Colin Smith, when it comes to Twitter, I cannot unsee the death wishes and one creep's repeated attempts to get my publishing contract canceled. I obviously never followed people I find to be awful, but sometimes people I follow interact with them, and the bile winds up in my feed.
And without derailing this post with tangents, I'll just say that I found certain types of bigotry were/are acceptable on Twitter.
In the end, I never felt happy or uplifted after being on Twitter
I agree with Colin. I have to work with all I have to not respond to toxic tweets on my timeline. Have deleted tweets multiple times to keep myself from being toxic. Just stick to the things you love. For me it's writing, Liverpool, Wordle, and books. Your following will build over time. I find it works better if you try to be positive as much as possible. Although I have a pathetic 2100 followers.
Any thoughts on having a YouTube channel as part of the social media blitz? It's a different beast and I have noticed a good many authors seem to have these channels lately. As if we need another headache to deal with.
I like BJ Muntain's 80/20 split. I tend to do a lot of retweeting when an author friend has a review or new release posted, and I'm not sure whether that falls into giving or asking. But as I look over my posts, it does make my feed look pretty billboardish. I'll have to make a point of posting more dog and flower photos.
Thanks. I needed to hear this advice today. It's the frequency that makes it most effective. I need to do something every day, even if it's only that five minutes.
I do have a webpage, having recently redone it as my old host is disappearing. My new page is nowhere near as elegant as my old one, but that's okay. It exists, has the basics, and it has a way to contact me.
I tried Twitter and could not make it effective social-wise. I want to try Threads, but that means I need to be a member of Insta (I'm not yet). E.M. Goldsmith, I've got a YouTube channel, thought I haven't used it to its full capacity as an author. (Mostly posting my own personal projects, and secretly posting stuff for those in my RWA Academy classes or Seminary classes, etc.) I am tempted to do more with YouTube Shorts (similar to TikTok) but haven't had the time.
My biggest challenge is time. The Day Job takes up too much of it and I resent it for that. However, it pays better than my author career at the moment. If someone offered me either a cool half-mil or a place in a PhD program, you can bet your sweet bippy I'd ditch the day job as soon as the finances cleared.
The only thing to remember about Threads is that's it's not available anywhere in Europe (for contravening EC privacy regulations) so you'll miss out on a sizeable chunk of your potential readers. And I, too, don't like that you can't have it independently of an Instagram account, which feels manipulative and controlling. (But of course we all know that Mark Zuckerberg would never do that, right?)
And Twitter being rebranded as "X" hardly inspires confidence these days. My feed is now a steady stream of junky adverts that I care nothing about, while I never see the tweets of so many people I follow and am actually interested in. A few of them dribble in here and there, but the flow is nothing like it used to be; and I'm sure the situation is mutual. (I don't pay the monthly protection money, by the way. Surprise, surprise.) If most people don't encounter your tweets unless they buy a blue tick, it's hard to see how effective that site is going to be as a publicity tool / kindred community.
The fact that anyone who pays can buy whatever "verified identity" they please, authentic or not, also raises huge red flags. I am Spartacus!
OK, crawling back into my grumpy hole now...
Wow, you do Spelling Bee AND Wordle every day? I'm impressed! P.S. Great advice about social media.
Quick question all: What if you intend to write under a pseudonym? Not saying that you never want your mug seen or will refuse to do publicity for a book (should you get one published).But, what if you intend to write under another name so that, for instance, if your son googles your name all of your porn-lite/erotica books don't pop up (I do not, nor ever would write in this genre...just making a point). So you have this website and all your social media under your real name, or you create a pen-name that your agent or publisher may want you to change. Then what?
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