Building Your Writing Platform-How Much is Enough?

  Okay. I admit it. I’m out of control. I started my fourth blog. Whaaat???

I hear you saying, “Sharon, you are not a model for other bloggers on keeping up with the three (whaaat???) blogs you already had. So, what’s the deal?”

The thing is, I’m insecure. Nobody knows me. Nobody reads my books. Nobody . . . You got the idea. So how do I combat the insecurities as I do battle to convince myself I’m a professional writer? Yep. I write more. Not on my novels, of course. I write tweets for my four accounts, I blog on my four accounts, I post on my five Facebook pages, and try to periodically update my website. And ask me to guest post for you, and I’m there.

All of this, okay, sure, I know it . . . all of this is the illusion of a platform. My attempt to point a dozen fingers at myself so that people will find me, notice me, read me. But if people don’t see the hands on which the fingers reside, they never see them pointing.

Ah, the conundrum. No hands with fingers pointing? Then how do people find you? Hands with fingers pointing, but, still, how do people find you?

Platforms are the stuff of conference sessions, on-line classes, and dozens of books. All part of your marketing plan, right? I was pretty green about the jargon of the writing field when I first began to professionalize my writing. In my first writing conference, I saw a session about “developing your author platform.”

Platform, I remember wondering? Platform shoes? Train platform? I was bumfoozled. What in the heck is platform in relation to writing. It sounds silly now, I know, but I honestly didn’t get it.

At the session, I learned that an author’s platform is simply about increasing your visibility and name recognition. That’s it. The corollary being that visibility/name recognition translates to book sales. Okay. I got it. McDonald’s has huge visibility and name recognition. Starving? Get a Big Mac.

But are people “starving” for the kind of books I write? And where Ronald McDonald has maybe a dozen others vying for that burger sale, I am in a sea with millions of authors, thousands of whom write culinary mysteries. One fish in a large sea. How would anyone cast a hook my direction?

Supposedly, the theory goes, I become a household name because I offer substantive content on my Twitter, Facebook, blog, and website accounts. And because I offer substantive content, I will be “discovered”. Oh, and I must write great books, too.

Discovery hasn’t happened yet. And I know I’m not the only author to be wondering what else I can do. So I started another blog. Maybe this one will be the straw that turned to gold (instead of breaking my back). 

Oh, FYI. Whereas, STREETWALKER is still on Amazon, MISSION IMPASTABLE isn’t available right now while I change publishers. One more impediment.

Want to read more? Check out this article

Article from Writer Unboxed on Writer Platforms:

http://writerunboxed.com/2012/10/22/building-a-writer-platform-how-much-is-enough/

Please point a finger at me! Tweet or post on Facebook to get people to read this article. Here’re a couple to copy/paste. Thank you!

Twitter: What #writing platforms are supposed to do and how much is enough. Read @good2tweat’s post http://bit.ly/2vkbQdx

Facebook: Authors, do you ever wonder how much is enough for your writing platform? Does your platform translate to sales? See what Sharon Arthur Moore thinks. http://bit.ly/2vkbQdx

Building Author Platform While Tearing Down Writing (Time)

Members of both my critique groups have asked how I can be spending so much time on building my author platform? “Aren’t you losing writing time?”

Yes, indeed, I am. I try to keep up with two blogs, two Twitter accounts, a website, and two Facebook pages. Social Media Networking, indeed! I hardly ever see real people. Mostly my day is spent with virtual “friends” and “followers”. I am losing big writing time as I prepare blogs, tweet, and FB postings.

I post (mostly) on this, my writing blog, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I post on my foodie blog (www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com). I try to write one or two of these articles a day so I have a storehouse to pick from when it is time to post. Then I must replenish the stock.

Everyday I post on Twitter accounts @RomanceRighter (where I give relationship advice and share links to relationship articles among other things) and @good2tweat (recipes, links to food articles, food quotes, etc.). I keep a tweets page for each account minimized on my desktop so I can post something every hour or so throughout the day. That keeps my name floating around so no matter what time someone signs on, I am there.

On Facebook, I have a personal page and a fan page. Truly, if I could figure out how to do it, I would eliminate the personal page and just do the fan page. That would be more in line with my writing goals, and it would have a sharper focus. Most of my posts there are to drive people to my Twitter accounts or my blogs.

Except for Twitter, I don’t post much, if at all, on weekends. I give myself that time off. Ha! Instead I spend the weekend preparing future postings, trying to get ahead of the daily grind of having meaningful posts.

So why am I spending these hours doing what I never thought I’d be doing? Why don’t I just write, as I saw myself doing when I “transitioned” a few years ago. Because it works! I have seen more traffic at both blogs, and people I don’t follow on Twitter are following me. How they found me, I don’t know or care.

As I have addressed on these pages before, the new reality is that I must market my own materials along with the publisher. When I attend the Southern California Writing Conference in San Diego next month, and meet there with agents and editors one-on-one, I want to be able to say, “I can let 2500 people know instantaneously that I have a book contract. And those 2500 are connected to tens of thousands more people.” So I build my platform, friend by friend, follower by follower.

But the underlying purpose of it all is based in my writing. I’m thinking of buying one of those books on being a weekend novelist, since that seems to be where most of my writing time comes from these days.