By Heather Andrews Miller
Social media can be extremely helpful in promoting your writing. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other platform, potential clients can find you easily.
Make your site attractive, utilizing bold and attractive headlines. Have your contact information readily available. Images attract people to your pages, and there are free photo stock websites so your page will be eye-popping and attractive.
Realize that you cannot post the same message on each of the social media sites. Cross posting, although convenient and time saving, is disrespectful and customers will spot your duplicated messages instantly. Although potential clients may have a presence on each site, you must pay attention to each platform’s style. Your formatting may not look the same on one channel as it did on another, so copying may result in lost headlines or distorted images. You must write a new message for each platform!
Pay attention to the demographics of the different channels. Facebook is popular with middle-aged users while Instagram tends to attract younger people. Twitter can reach multi-level consumers as re-tweets go to more people than the other sites when shared. LinkedIn has more men followers than women. Finding and watching the statistics on each platform will enable you to view valuable marketing information about your audiences by watching these analytic summaries.
Your content should be warm and welcoming as well as professional. Read other writers’ posts that you like, then try to create a similar ambience on your posts. Upload a friendly recording of one or two minutes. You can create longer, more informative videos on YouTube. Post frequently, even daily or at least weekly. As most writers are fluent in more than one genre, feature poetry one day, creative nonfiction the next, and a newsletter or press release over the next weeks to show your versatility.
These brief samples of your written works, with links to your website, are useful but your actual posts, written error-free and full of interesting facts, are invaluable for marketing. Embrace social media for the valuable tool it is and have fun doing it!
Heather Andrews Miller is a former feature reporter with newspapers during her career. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta and keeps busy writing for various publications and teaching a memoirs class to local writers. Heather enjoys numerous musical activities, visiting with her three adult children, and frequent walks with her dog Ramsey.
