Using Technology to Raise Your Profile: Writers at Large

The first workshop this morning at Writers at Large! in Brighton with New Writing South was:   How to use technology to raise your profile and how to find the right form of social media for you, facilitated by Julia Lampam.  @julialampam  jlampam@wiley.com

What is social media?
Content created by consumers as well as professionals using public technologies.

What forms of social media are there?
Dig and delicious are book-marking sites on the web.
Blogger and Wordpress enable you to creat your own blogs.
Plaxo, Ecademy & Linked in are professional CV-ing sites
Use Flickr for Photos, Vimeo for uploading longer videos

Make sure that your social media are staying current and that you are posting regularly.  You will not be taken seriously if you do not stay current and engaged.

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR USING SOCIAL MEDIA:
Social media is all about people and building relationships.
Develop an on-line personality that reflects your real personality.
Social media is the soft sell, not the hard sell.
Don’t expect someone to see every comment that you make.  Don’t say something once.  Repeat it a few times at different times throughout the day.  What time of day is most effective for what you want to say?  Is the evening more sociable?
Stay in your lane:  you should comment about what you know about and not put yourself out on a limb.
Be professional.  What do you want people to know about you, really?

USING TWITTER:
Find someone you know and follow them.  Follow their followers to find like-minded souls.
Retweet comments is a form of compliment.
DM is a form of email.
Mentions means someone has referred to you, and it will go into a separate Mentions column.
Hashtags # help trends to be focused together, to see what people are saying about the same topic.
Apps help you to share what you say across different forms of social media.  But different forms of social media require different voices.
Find the powerhouses using Twitter.
@bubblecow – he gives away lots of free information, but he is also selling an editing service.  What he gives away for free helps you to trust that what you would buy from him would be valuable.
You can use lists and wefollow to find lists of other types of writers, readers, interests, etc.

USING FACEBOOK:
Authors can create fan pages for their readers.
Give sample chapters away and ask for opinions of readers.  Start a conversation with them, engage with them.  If you do a series of books, create an identity for that series on Facebook.  Publishers also create pages for series.  Facebook relies on pictures and video to share its information.  Facebook ranks highest nationally for effectiveness in promoting your work.  Repetitions on Facebook don’t work as well as on Twitter.  On Facebook, you’ll have to find lots of new ways of saying the same thing as well as refreshing your old postings.
 
LINKEDIN:
A more professional platform, it really is an on-line CV.  Use it to share professional news.  It isn’t a conversation, but there are lots of groups that you can join within LinkedIn that might help your work.

BLOGS:
Hyperlinks let you connect from your work to a bookshop or on-line seller like Amazon.  Blogs and sites should feel like your work.  Match up your real personality with your on-line persona.  Be who you are and be authentic.  Blogs are effective tools, but you will need social media to bring people to your blog.  Blogs are promoted effectively through Twitter.  

PROMOTING YOURSELF AND YOUR BOOK:
Talk about the journey of your writing process.  Share the highs and the lows.  Tell them the story of what you are doing, but remember to respond to people – Twitter and Facebook allow you to have these kinds of conversations.  You also can promote your work by joining on-line reading groups and on-line groups with people who have shared interests: gardening, political issues, etc.

WHAT ABOUT CONTENT?
Don’t give away a lot.  Give away a chapter to whet people’s appetites, but not much more.  It is better to give away information about your process than to give away your product.  Letting people have a relationship with your process will help you sell the eventual product more effectively than repeatedly asking people to read your work and give you feedback.

Lastly, she gave away books as prizes in a quiz:  That woke everybody up!  I didn't win any of the following books, which will help you use Social Media more effectively:
Social Media 101
This is Social Media
Facebook for Dummies