At this point where social media has been used for almost all activities (promoting, selling, research, e-commerce), sending generic posts could just waste your time as they might be considered spam. In other words, once you decide to use social media platforms to advance your writing ambitions, think well and hard. Social media planning is now very important because you have to maximize the use of your time, energy and resources to get faster to your target market. Each moment you delay counts, as each moment produces a new writer who could forge way ahead of you in getting the interest of your target niche. So, as with all other undertakings, you have to know what you want and what you have to do to address these wants. The keys would be research and practice.
Research enables you to see what works and what does not. It also enables you to channel your resources so that each expended resource bears fruit. Following are some ways that could help you maximize the use of your resources.
Do not send messages en masse. Find the right audience. LinkedIn is a good source of editors, agents, and even clients. Know who to connect with and when to connect.
Use Twitter to do an audience research. You can try experimenting with your articles by sending two titles of your work to see which gives the better response.
Twitter's hashtag system enables your topic research to be easily found. Before you pitch that magazine article, see if the topic has already reached its saturation to the point where another entry on the same topic will no longer be of importance and will thus not be read anymore. Pick a topic that will get the interest of your readers.
Maximize the use of social media platforms to research the top writers or editors in your niche area by checking out whose names usually pop up in your niche.
Check names of people who have viewed your profile on LinkedIn. Send a friendly message and ask if you could be of any help. You might never know the value of the additional information that you may get from people who share the same interests as you.
Practice, on the other hand, enhances your collaboration and contributing skills. As these are enhanced, you get to have better and more engaging exchanges of ideas.
You can practice your social media planning skills by the following:
Limit your tweets to a maximum of 140 characters. This way, you will put in just the essentials and are more likely to be read.
Get other people's opinions. This would help you a lot when you need first person quotes to add credibility to your material.
The writers' world is not a sanitized one. You have to accept the fact that there will be those who do not agree with your point of view.
Be an expert in your niche. Join discussions. In LinkedIn, you get opportunities to answer queries and give opinions in your field. Let the world know that you are well versed in what you are writing.
Another hat you could wear as an author is the marketer's hat. Before you even think about publishing a particular topic, make sure that you have built the right connections who will be able to support you. Your network of connections will be of great help once you have actually decided to put your book out.
Social media planning will actually encourage the artist in you. Your creativity would spell the difference between being just passed on by readers or being given the attention that you so rightly deserve. Do not dismiss ideas for sometimes the weirdest of ideas can be the ones that work. And unless you try every little avenue, you will really never know.
