Using social
media sites as free advertising shouldn’t be advertising… but you can still be
very effective at getting your name and “product” in front of the public. And
while many people consider using multiple social media sites to be too time
consuming, there are a lot of ways to reduce the time needed and still be seen.
As a writer,
artist, or while promoting any kind of service, you need to keep your personal
life and professional profile separate. It’s a good idea on a site like
Facebook to open a personal timeline and set your privacy level so that only
accepted friends can see your posts with no followers; then open a PAGE which
is automatically open to all to see even if they haven’t LIKED it or aren’t
friends on your personal timeline.
Many of us
like to connect with old friends and family members who might live a bit away —
by limiting the exposure on your personal page you don’t run as much risk about
having some “embarrassing” childhood incident broadcast. Meanwhile you can pretty much control the
content on your page so that it is about your writing, your books and the
writing industry. Facebook allows settings that permit you to decide if people
can comment, make posts and if necessary even block some individuals.
Familiarize yourself with the privacy and posting settings and be sure to
monitor your page frequently.
By the way, the tiny triangle in the
upper right hand corner of the FB comment box (hover the cursor over it) will
allow you, as page owner, to delete someone’s comment if it really shouldn’t
appear on your page.
Twitter
allows you the opportunity to post short 140-character (or less) messages which
will enter the Twitter-verse. This is a terrific venue to publicize special
triumphs, new releases, share blog posts, and simply say “Hi” to the world. You
don’t have to follow everyone who follows you but do try to be consistent and
follow some people back (personally I usually follow back writers, authors and many
in the publishing industry). Make sure that you include your special interests
and career in your Twitter profile so people with shared interests can find
you. Twitter also allows you to post pictures but be careful because your
character count is reduced to accommodate. Use your Twitter settings to
automatically post tweets to Facebook or Google-plus.
Other good
social media sites to get involved with include Pinterest, Instagram,
Google-plus, LinkedIn and special interest groups (such as Growing Bolder for
the over-55 group). Be sure to read their online guidelines to learn how easy
it is to link many of these sites together so that posting to one will update
several others.
Now the
caveat — the key word is SOCIAL. If you want people to read your posts, tweets
and such, don’t barrage them with straight-up advertising. Share accolades,
backstories, events, cross-promote your friends in the same genre/interest, and
most of all INTERACT. Respond to their comments (nicely please), visit their
blog tours and chats, and comment on their blog posts. Post INTERESTING
information and not only about yourself. When I got into this business I was
told (about Twitter) to never post more than three “about me” tweets for every
ten I make; this is a good rule for all social media sites.
Writing
Exercise: Write 20 to 30 tweets about
yourself, your books, the industry, and about other authors. When you are
finished with writing these, review them and number each specifically about
yourself and your books as number one, number two for random industry news,
number three about other authors/artists and number four for everything else.
Number one should be the least.
Writing
Prompt: Have you read a book where a character really got a “raw deal” and
might be pretty annoyed with the author’s handling of the story? Write a short
email from the character to the author telling him/her what the character feels
and why — keep this in the character’s POV and voice.
Challenge Assignment: Write approximately 350-words about your
inspiration for writing a story – are the characters based (loosely) on anyone
real? How personal is this story to you? When you are finished you should have
a good blog post that will “advertise” your work without being an advertisement.
Edit it and post it if possible. [If you
don’t have a blog, you should, you can send this to me for posting in the
Potpourri Parlor https://ccepotourri.wordpress.com/be-part-of-the-potpourri-parlor/]
