Saturday, April 26, 2014

Social Media and Writing

Marketing your book can be a daunting job. Authors need a platform to sell books, and they need to connect with their readers--but authors also need time to write and to edit.

I've seen some of my author friends play Facebook games, post pictures, chat and then escape to coffee shops to write--but once they arrive--they end up spending even more time reading status updates on Facebook, and other social media websites. 

Don't let social media steal your precious time!

I've found a few helpful tips that keep my time online short. I hope they will be of help to you also.   

1. Spend a set amount of time each day for social media--for me its 1 hour. This can be split up into 30 minutes in the morning and 30 at night. 

2. Schedule blog posts and messages to automatically post for you.

3. Spend a few moments pinning images from your blog to Pinterest. By doing this--your blog's URL will attach to the images. This will increase traffic from Pinterest to your website.
 
3. Keep Tweets (on Twitter) short. By doing this your message will have better odds at being  retweeted--followers like to be able to have room to add their username and comments. 

4. Research and make use of apps that can assist you. For example, Hootsuite, MarketMeSuite and many other apps will allow you to post to Facebook, Twitter and others, all at once which saves time.

5. Remember, being an author is a social business--but it is still a business.

HAPPY WRITING!

3 comments:

ilima said...

Cool tip about short tweets.

Angelica R. Jackson said...

Haha, with as many times as we've chatted on Facebook, now I feel guilty for monopolizing your social media time!

But seriously, maintaining a presence while also trying to maintain a balance is definitely something that can get out of hand. Thanks for the tips!

Jessica L. Brooks (coffeelvnmom) said...

I'm sorry, what was that again? I tried to read this a few times but Twitter kept distracting me. :D

Just kidding. (Kinda.)