All posts by NewEngland_Muse

I'm a traditionally and self published author. I write in the genre of children and YA at the moment but working my way up to adults. I'm a sports loving, photo taking gal who loves to sing/dance to my own enjoyment. I love to laugh even at myself. I am also owned by 8 birds and 2 hamsters, and yes they know it. :)
Maintaining your brand, Social Platform

Keeping your social platform updated

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2013-02-04 08.49.23

Once you have started working on your platform do you keep it updated? The last few weeks I been going over my platform making sure my links are working, my list of books is updated and so forth to make sure it is as current as possible. Doing this daily for a few weeks has slowed me down but I found out how much I had let things go.

It had been a while since I had done this. What I found was links that were not working and my list of books didn’t showcase all that I had written. Stuff like this can make a viewer go to another page and not return to your business. I am like that also.

It is not fun and takes some time to keep one’s platform current but it is needed. Getting it started is one part of the work. Maintaining it is another. And when you start on your platform off don’t do like me. At first I went to just about every site that was out there determined to make my mark through that social media. What I got instead was frustration, becoming tired and putting up weak material. To keep that all up can drive a person crazy.

Not all platforms will work for you, choose the ones that do. When you do get your brand online started, maintain it. Three or four well done social media sites is way better then 10 poorly ones.

Social Media, Social platform for writers

Do you have a social platform?

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index

Do you consider your writing a business? If so do you have a social platform to go with it? Is it important to you to start one?

I feel it is. Why this topic for the week? I have quite a few writer friends who don’t have one, feel they should but haven’t started or feel it is not needed. For years I would harp to them about social media and why I felt it was important for us as writers. It fell on deaf ears. I even offered to show them for free what I had learned and that also fell on deaf ears.

When I first started my platform I had just finished the first draft of my first book. I had read an article in Writer’s Digest where the author stated the importance of a platform. She left her Twitter handle for us to follow. I did. That was the bread crumb that got me on my way.

Since then I have given a couple of workshops on creating an author’s platform and I am due to give another one in a couple of months. Thanks to my platform I met my two current publishers, editor and graphic artist. Through my platform I have had submission editors helped me with my query letter to submit to publishers. When you have a sea of people in these groups it can be scary to reach out or know where to reach out.

All of these came through due to my platform I started. By the way it was all free. My brand is what I work on and what better way then social media? Use what works for you, there are enough different outlets to choose from just toss what doesn’t.

It took you a long time to write your book, edit and revise it and get it in tip-top shape. Don’t you want to help it move alone or would you rather it just sit on your computer?

Author's Platform, COntent for your social platform

Finding content for your social platform

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Social-DraftWhere do you find content to talk about for your blog and or social media platform? For some people it’s no problem as they talk about their business and the different aspects of it regardless of what their chosen field is.

To others they may pause in front of their computer looking at the sky hoping something will fall that they can use. As writers do we solely talk about the business and our books or do we do a few articles on things that shows our readers who we are or even more so do we do a balance of both?

personally for me I try to do a bit of both so an overview can be seen. Does that effect me opposite of what I am trying to accomplish I do not know. When I am looking at other author’s pages and I read their content that is useful I appreciate it. When I learn a bit about them I appreciate it more.

Finding content can be difficult if one blogs or post on their platform frequently causing the need to find content on a regular basis. At one point I started making a list of things to talk about so that way I would have topics to look over when the time came. That has helped me. Also reading other people’s blogs can give you ideas of what might work or not work for yourself.

Content. A topic that can deter people from branding themselves, and if one can’t over come that who knows what we might be missing from that person who can make a difference in their lives as well as our own.