The Writer’s platform

Today’s markets fluctuate rapidly. Bookstore chains we once thought a permanent market are disappearing. Faith based bookstores are folding quickly. Others are opening up, and internet sales seem to be the biggest mover of books.

Which brings up the question – instead of opening brick and mortar storefronts, why not open a used book store – or even set up an online bookstore? Or all three?

But in today’s shifting market, the role of the fiction writer has shifted – you must be a salesman. You have to have a strong social media presence.

I get it, I truly do. You got into writing because you love writing. You didn’t get into fiction because you wanted to be a social media maven. And it seems like a lot of work that keeps you from your writing. It seems like a lot of time consuming work, and it’s hard enough finding sufficient time to get in 1700 words a day in your novel.

In reality, writing sufficient social media materiel to provoke interaction takes less than 15 minutes a day between LinkedIn, Twitter and blog posts.

It’s a fact that all writers must have a social media presence. Yes, it takes a LONG time to develop a following, which means you need to get started this very second. I’m not kidding. If you haven’t, you must. Michael Hyatt proved that a long time ago.

You need a website as your base of operations. But a website with very little content will get you visited, read, and… maybe they’ll come back once more to see if you have anything new. After that, you’re forgotten. You have to have a constant stream of new content.

Twitter – If you’re using Scrivener, here’s a great way to generate content. Just tell followers you’re getting ready to work on your new novel – then tweet your word count every day. Scrivener 3.0 lets you do that inside the program with a click. Just edit the default text to say “Today’s progress in my upcoming novel, Rum and Bones!” And Scrivener shows a graphic of your estimated word count and current progress.

Easy.

The most resistant writers to any social platform are the very people who need it the most. Self Published authors HAVE to have an active social media platform – Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog, Facebook and probably even Pinterest or Instagram. Try several and see which ones are your niche. Why so crucial for self published? Because only 5% of your followers on social media will buy your novel. If you have 100 followers, that means sales of… 5 books.

How do you get started?

• Start new projects in Scrivener – I made three. One is Twitter, the other LinkedIn, and the third is Blog. Make a folder in it, and call it 2019. Then make more folders, one for each month. Finally, make text files and number them by the days in the month. I actually nest my tweets by the day. 30 days in the month equals 7 tweets times the number of days. So you see 30 tweets when it’s collapsed, but in reality there’s seven times that number – and I plan soon to expand to ten per day. I’m almost at that now, since my blog entries are tweeted when published, and I tweet my word count every day. That leaves just one re-tweet a day, and – I’m at ten. A good starting goal is three tweets a day, but plan on expanding to seven within six months. I always write my LinkedIn posts first on Saturday mornings, then my blog posts. Sunday mornings I write all 49 tweets for the week.
• Next sign up for your social media platforms. Get started with Twitter and LinkedIn. Make sure you configure those with photographs of you and a different color scheme and graphics. An account with no picture gets zero followers.
• Apply for a front end with Buffer or Hootsuite. Alas, Alternion was a good third option, but it’s been abandoned by its creators, and no longer works. My recommendation is a paid account with Buffer, who bills you $15 a month. You can get started with Hootsuite instead for free, but my support for Hootsuite is ending, and I’ll explain that in a post later this week.
• Begin loading tweets and linkedin posts into your front end (Buffer or Hootsuite). You only need one LinkedIn post a day during weekdays.
• After three or four months, you need to choose your next social media. Michael Hyatt recommends Facebook. He and I agree on the fact we’re both not fans of Facebook – but with 2 billion users world wide, it’s too big a market to ignore. However, there’s also Pinterest and Instagram. See which platform you get the most traction on, and invest all your attention there.

Remember this, social media is about conversation and interaction. I’ve had industry movers like Steven James, Michael Hauge and others like tweets I’ve written, and respond to them! Invest in others for 80% of your media content.

For more information, there’s no substitute for Michael Hyatt’s Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. (Not an affiliate link! I don’t get paid for this.)