Most people don’t like to plan but it is a necessary step to achieving your goal. Balancing planning and reserving creative juices and clear brain time is a tall order for authors but they have to do it. 

Social media is one of the things that have many authors confused. When you are on the outside looking in, social media looks like random posts and tweets but smart people know that all this chaos is to facilitate the accomplishment of predefined goals. There are several things that an author should consider if s/he wants to be successful in social media. These include:

1. Why do you need social media? Some of the reasons include: selling books, building your name/brand, and connecting with your audience.

2. What are your goals? Authors have several goals including creating a niche following for their books, building author platforms, and gaining followers.

3. How much time can you spend daily on social media? To successfully implement a social media strategy, you must dedicate time every day to participate in social media. It is better to split your time into small chunks so as to check on comments and updates over shorter periods.

There are many social media platforms that you can use and there are reasons why you should use every platform instead of the others. We shall look at some of the social media sites and the reasons why you should or should not use them.

Google+

It is a social network that integrates all properties of Google that have any social element. The result is a single platform that covers YouTube, Gmail, and the layers also integrate with your calendar to make planning easier. Your search engine rankings also improve because the social network is owned by Google. The following are the reasons why you should use Google+.

You can easily meet relevant people

You automatically get better search engine rankings

Google+ communities are smarter and more focused – they are the ultimate social connections.

You can make deeper connections with Google+ hangouts and even host live events which are automatically recorded and posted to YouTube

The only reason why you should not use Google+ is when you have a well-established Facebook Page.

Twitter

It is a fast and fun way to interact with your audience and other people in the industry. It has become more mainstream thanks to the popularity of #tags which drive the conversations on the social network. Twitter also has downsides. For instance, it is more difficult to connect with people and 140 characters are very few to say all you have to say.

Facebook

You can use Facebook if you already know people on the site and are familiar with the platform. This site is not good for meeting people other than friends and family because it is difficult to meet new people who are relevant to your writing.