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BALANCING WRITING WITH BUILDING AUTHOR PLATFORM
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Arabella
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Jan 04, 2014 09:35AM
Seriously Rachele: limit the time you do social media. You don't have to blog every day. Your book's the paramount issue here. Give yourself a hour to do social media. Spend the rest of your time on research and writing. You didn't mention if you have a day job---so, if you are a mom or you work in office, time is even more precious. One hour for social media. The rest on the WIP
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it IS tough to balance. For me, add in a devil of a tendonitis and I find I have very little time to do the social thing...and it hurts, so I keep it light.good luck, Rachel. Maybe find some guests to schedule in your blog to help out
I don't know about balancing but I do know that your book's subject is an interesting one for me. Having 2 dachshunds out of 3 with skin allergies, I know it can be a pain!
Dear Rachel,I'm having the exact same problem actually. I have college full time, two jobs, a German Shepherd + 3 cats, and a baby on the way, so finding time to both write and promote myself as an author is a challenge!
What's worked for me so far is just setting time frames in which to get things done. When I get home from work around 4 pm I'll have between 6-8 pm to get one hour of writing and one hour of promoting in. On days off (rare, but it happens!) I'll set 4 hours where I do three hours of writing and 1 hour of catching up on social obligations.
Btw...my German Shepherd has such dry skin :(. I've tried oatmeal shampoo (sparingly because I know GS have low water tolerance), supplements, etc., nothing works...
Just the same as what other people have said. It sometimes takes time to get the balance right. I've found that I can generally save blogging for the weekend and you can use apps like Hootsuite and twitters of Tweetdeck to schedule posts. Saves you the hassle of having to keep going on there to update.
I squeeze in the social media around writing. For me, writing is always the priority. It doesn't matter how much platform building you do if the book is never finished ;)
I guess I'm a very private person. I hate blogging, twittering, and trying to build an audience on FB. I am so bad at it that I think it is sort of counter productive. So I am letting all that sort of stuff just hang while I work on my book. Maybe not a good idea, but that's my life.
Ron, you are building your audience now. By interacting with people on Goodreads, you are building connections. When it comes time to release your books, people here will know you and will be more likely to support you. I'm spending more and more of my "social media" time just on Goodreads and Reddit (/r/fantasy and /r/fantasywriters).
I'm sick of trying to market my stuff on Facebook and Twitter and feel I'm doing more connecting to my readers through Goodreads and Reddit. It's much more valuable, both to my sales and to my soul, to have those personal connections to people. I want to know my readers and I want them to know me. I don't want to be a faceless drone spamming book blurbs in 140 characters.
Nick wrote: "Ron, you are building your audience now. By interacting with people on Goodreads, you are building connections. When it comes time to release your books, people here will know you and will be more ..."Nick, I was about to comment the same thing but you typed the words first :) I feel the same way. I want to know my readers and them to know me. I'm on Goodreads a lot but I have yet to try Reddit.
Social media used to not be very fun for me because of how hard it was. It's still quite the challeneg for me. I feel like a ghost when I go 4-5 days without posting, like the hard work I've had all the times before meant nothing.
Really, I found what I enjoyed most was talking personally with other authors and readers and if they happened to show interest in reading my book, I was happy to comply. I love doing review swaps because it helps both me and the author I'm friends with.
I would be happy to swap reviews with another author.My latest book is an intense thriller with political overtones. I tend to read thrillers, Sci Fi, and supernatural stories.
If you think we are a good match, contact me on here. I don't generally give 1 or 2 star reviews - if I don't like the book I tend to stop reading it (of course, I can alter this habit on request). You can rate my book any way you like.
I recently started back on my second book and have spent less time promoting my first one although I am trying to find that balance between both. I started most of my promotion through Facebook and have recently focused more here as well as on twitter. I have not yet set up an author page or blog but have done quite a few guest blog posts and some interviews. I just find it difficult to focus on so many different things at one time and if I add those to my list, I am afraid my writing will suffer even more than it is now. I write urban fantasy/PNR and if anyone is interested I am available for friendships on Facebook with people of similar interests. I also am involved in advocating for the innocent and wrongly convicted, and I promote LGBT causes. My Facebook page is Rose on FB
Have finished two books and am working on my third in the trilogy. I find I do not have time for blogging. I feel I need to find something interesting to blog about and that in itself is not an easy task.
I find the thing I struggle with the most is finding and connecting with readers. Of course, none of my work is out there at the moment, but there is a sample chapter available on my blog and on here under my creative writing.Other authors are easy to find, helpful ones harder and readers seem like they live on a different planet. I can see what everyone means. Building that base is hard, especially when you don't know where to go or how to communicate with them so it doesn't sound like you're just a rampant advertiser of your own work.
Looks like it has all been said. I hate technology and never had a FB account until I had my first book published. I now have a twitter account and a blog. don't for one minute think that I have an answer, I don't. I try to give myself so much time answering questions letting people know I am alive and hopefully building up an audience but limit that time. By September last year it felt all I did was go on-line and my writing suffered. I then set out to go out in the real world and make contact with my audience. As it's YA I go into schools to talk books and have actually completed a few workshops, hoping that the children will talk about me. Now I really must go and write something. :)
I have limited time to write because the obligations of being a carer militate against long periods of concentration in the day. If I write in the middle of the night, I get more done because there are fewer potential distractions. I probably spend a fair bit of time on Twitter, minimal time on Facebook but I probably don't blog as often as I should. The beauty of Twitter is that I can do it in the evenings whenever commercials come on the TV. I enjoy coming over to Goodreads and joining in a few discussions too. I do need to be more organised though!
It's all about balance and what works best for us. As most people have said you have to pick your social media spots, go to them on a regular basis yet not spend too much time on any one. I find some days I get too immersed in Goodreads, Facebook and LinkedIn and then I'm not as keen to write since I've already been on the computer for ages. I've cut way down on Twitter since I was spending a lot of time on it and I don't have a blog.
For me, I pick some days for a straight writing day with no social media until later at night when I'm too burnt out to write.
Then there's work of course, that takes priority since they give me a paycheque LOL!
A few weeks ago, I deleted my Twitter account. There were so many people clamoring for attention with no reciprocation. The whole thing seemed to be a complete waste of time. Since then, I've been lurking the boards here at Goodreads and feel that my time will be better spent developing friends and fans here than anywhere else.To the OP: I concur with most everyone else, set aside a small amount of time each day for SM and spend the rest of the time working on your book.
I find this an issue also. I am trying a new schedlue and only an hour a day on social media. I just resarted my blogging. what exactly do you do for social media. I use facbook (hard to not get caught up in it) twitter Gooedreads and my Blog.. Im nt sure how to use twitter so any tips will help
Cathy wrote: "I find this an issue also. I am trying a new schedlue and only an hour a day on social media. I just resarted my blogging. what exactly do you do for social media. I use facbook (hard to not get ca..."Social Media can be daunting to setup. I was struggling with Twitter for a while too. Although, it's Facebook that eludes me. Being someone who refuses to pay for the services of advertising. Nothing is more powerful than word of mouth, in my humble opinion. Contacting people on Twitter can be wonderful! I'm in contact with a self-published author who has had her fantasy series optioned for a major motion picture (incredibly excited for her!)
I've also met beta readers on there, helpful tips from editors, other authors offering advice and support. It's mainly about making the right connections. Twitter doesn't really offer a way for you to find potential readers, so much as be a way for them to contact you and you make contact with other people in the industry.
Hashtagging is essential (this symbol #), and a bit of research along with following other authors. The people will come. I've been on the network for three weeks and find myself with over 600 followers currently.
If your promoting and marketing then focus on that. If your working on writing a book, story or article then focus on that. Don't try balancing them because it can be stressful and you won't be as on the mark for either. Take time in concentrating on one particular job and see to it that it meets expectations.
Use Social Media if it works for the platform you're planning to build.For instance, one of my writing projects is a comic strip about sports. Twitter has become a huge way for me to connect with fans, because writing a comic is not much different than writing tweets: you have to be funny and succinct. It works, and for every follower I get with a funny tweet, I get a potential new reader.
It doesn't work that way with every type of writer. And every social network is different. Humor is good anywhere, but wit is best on Twitter. After all, the soul of wit is cut off once you go over 140 characters. Deeper thoughts and anything with graphics is better on Facebook. Google+ is where you go for the nerds and early adopters (and stubborn hanger-on-ers). Pinterest is where you go when you photoshop your words onto photos. And Path is where you go to be alone.
The point is, if you need to think about what to post on social media...don't. It might not be what works for you. And that's okay. Because when it comes down to it, the social media bandwagon (and Facebook in particular) has crested. And if I find the next best way to reach my readers...
Well, I'll probably keep it to myself. Don't need it getting ruined by everyone getting there. ;)
I think that if you can use writing to promote, it can be a good thing. I like to put updates on what I'm writing on my FB page. A sentence or two that keeps people interested in what I'm working on. Or I recently wrote something for a free publication
it gave me time to write something different that I enjoyed doing and it connected me with a new editor that I liked and then it has also given me around fifty likes on FB in the first week. So the writing was the marketing and vice versa.
I'm stuck in how to obtain followers on Facebook. It probably doesn't help that I haven't published any of my work yet
The best thing to get followers is to give them a reason to follow, and putting things out helps. Whether it's published work or doing a blog and putting up regular posts, that's the best carrot possible to get followers.
