Social Media Is Dynamite for Writers – Stand Back

Published 2015 by Advanced Social/Media Services.

Social Media is Dynamite For Writers – Stand back. This could expand your book sales!

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2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Guide to the Guide ...... 4

Chapter 1 - Understanding the explosive elements ...... 5

Chapter 2 – Developing a social media plan ...... 36

Chapter 3 – Your engagement strategy ...... 51

Chapter 4 – Can you use social media to increase reader loyalty? ...... 59

Chapter 5 – Measuring & Monitoring ...... 66

Chapter 6 – The Power of Social Media to do good ...... 70

Chapter 7 – How social media helped me...... 88

Chapter 8 – Arguments, mistakes and myths about social media ...... 93

Chapter 9 – Supercharging your social media with 12 Storytelling Techniques ...... 103

Chapter 10 – Some social media puzzles explained ...... 122

Summary ...... 133

Appendix 1 – Social Media Tools (some free) ...... 134

Appendix 3 –12 Blog Posts from my Blog:SocialMedia4Writers.com ...... 138

About the Author ...... 157

GUIDE TO THE GUIDE

At the end of each chapter there is a summary of key points to allow you to get real benefits from each section.

I encourage you to take notes as you read.

Please skip around to the sections that most interest you.

CHAPTER 1 - UNDERSTANDING THE EXPLOSIVE ELEMENTS

1.1 OVERVIEW

The term social media covers a wide and growing number of online services. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, microblogs, Pinterest,

Instagram, LinkedIn, Goodreads, Soundcloud, YouTube, MySpace and over a hundred other sites offer the facilities to interact socially with readers and other writers through the internet.

I won’t quote growth rates at you or tell you this is the final list of social media sites, as the facts are changing as fast as we can measure them.

Facebook has over a billion users and Twitter about half that.

That’s a lot of people. A lot of potential readers.

This book is about the explosive impact this global phenomenon is having, and will have, for authors, and how you can use that to your advantage. This is a global phenomenon. Social media is exploding all over the world. In India and Brazil for instance, it is

If you can find a country that social media will not affect please let me know. Even in Afghanistan it’s having an impact. They have set up a female only Internet café in Kabul. Social media is what they will be spending their time doing in that teashop. Social media allows those Kabul users to see pictures of their relative’s babies, kitchens and homes, to talk to their sisters and to enjoy a little freedom.

That is one of the critical elements of social media. The freedom it gives to individuals. More people can write and have their content read widely than at any moment in history. Everything in the publishing industry is changing, as the channels to readers through social media impact on all of us.

People have staged revolutions over the innate human desire for free speech. Sure, having enough food is important, but that’s not all people rise up over, just ask the people in Libya why they overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and his family in 2011. They weren’t starving. For many people it was simply about freedom.

6 The second critical element, for me, is the deep cultural change that is taking place because of social media. Industries are being created (social media support companies, app developers), evolving (TV, newspapers, publishing), and dying (record stores,

CD hardware stores and video shops) because of how social media and the internet is changing the world.

And that is only the starting point for social media’s cultural impact.

Where once the urge to

hide and be secretive

dominated, the need to

do well on social media

forces writers to open up

and be transparent. This

is a sea change for writers.

Although some are against this new era, openness and transparency are inherently good things, so I expect that this geni is out of the bottle for good.

In the past authors were expected to be unapproachable, distant creatures. Now most have blog sites at the very least, and a

7 growing percentage have Twitter personalities and Facebook pages too.

The next generation of writers, of which I am one, is likely to be even more connected with social media, as the need to do well in this area becomes a prerequisite for “success” as a writer not only in fiction, but also in non-fiction too, whether that “success” is through traditional publishing or through self publishing.

The same thing is happening in almost all other areas of employment and society. You just can’t escape it. We have literally never seen anything like it. It’s the impact of the internet squared, and the impact of personal computers multiplied by eight. And we are still at the beginning.

Social media is not only the fastest growing IT phenomenon, it is also what the most lively business meetings are about these days.

The old guard resists, as always, as they did with PCs twenty five years ago, and the internet fifteen years ago, and the young go- getters strive to prove that what they know instinctively about social media is true. But no amount of analysis is ever enough to convince the Luddites. If we listened to them we’d all still be riding horses and travelling by sail.

Here’s the reality. Social media will have a big impact on writers.

The requirement to market ourselves transforms the way writers think. Few writers would have thought that a selfie was important, until now. The people and organisations who learn how to use the power of social media will benefit, and the people who want to stay shackled to horse drawn technology will slowly fade away, and then die.

The aim of this book is to help you to benefit from this social media revolution.

Here is a suggestion on how to deal with those who oppose social media; use social media, but don’t rub that fact into the faces of the Luddites, the people who hate anything new. Your success through social media will speak more than a thousand words about their reluctance to come with you.

9 1.2 UNDERSTANDING YOUR MATERIALS – THE BASICS

If you don’t have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (for business & professional books’ authors mainly, though LinkedIn has some great author groups), YouTube (for visual, media & entertainment oriented books mainly), SoundCloud (for recording of you reading your work) and Goodreads (for your book lists and connecting with readers through groups) and Pinterest (for people who like collecting images or whose books have a visual aspoect) and Flickr (for dedicated photo & image people), get some accounts now.

You can start with just the big ones if you like. Set up a Facebook page, a Twitter identity and your choice of one of the others depending on what you write.

Deciding on your identity for each will be an important step. If you’re working for someone else you’ll have to keep in mind the impact of what you do on your job. Simply put, say the wrong thing and you could get fired. If you want to know what the wrong thing is understand this: if you’re negative, give away

personal or company information or break the contracts or agreements you are bound by expect trouble sooner rather than later.

If you’re your own boss you still have to think about limits. Only now your boss is your bank, your landlord, your friends, your readers and your spouse, not always in that order.

So keep in mind the likely impact of what you are doing when you decide to publish that blog post at three in the morning telling us all about what you got up to last night or why you despise a fellow author.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned about each of the main social media sites:

TWITTER 1. Twitter is a voracious micro-blogging site with a limit of 140 characters per post. It’s a some to many news and comment feed.

About 10% of Twitter’s users produce 90% of Twitter’s content.

Be among the 10% and you will get noticed.

2. About half of your Twitter followers will be occasional users, perhaps logging in only every few days or even every few weeks.

Your chance of reaching them is limited, unless they follow very few people.

3. The Notifications area of Twitter, accessed through the

Notifications button at the top of the Twitter screen, is the most

12 important way to connect with people. This is where people will mainly try to contact you personally. It’s where you will connect and have conversations with people. It’s where you will see all

Twitter posts where your Twitter name (@yourname) is contained in the message. You can send a message (a Tweet) to anyone with a Twitter name by mentioning their @name in the Tweet you send. Twitter messages are sent from the Home page on Twitter.

4. Direct messages (DMs) are almost always a waste of time.

Sure you will get a few important ones, but most DMs are auto- generated robot messages. You may decide to set up your own robot response to anyone who follows you, but it is likely that no one is even reading most of these messages. I know some people swear by DMs, but my experience has been that there are too many robot messages to get much value from DMs.

5. Lists are a great way to keep track of important Twitter users who you want to follow. Your Home Twitter messages feed will get overloaded with messages as you follow more people. If you create a list of people (whoever you want – fans – other authors –

13 your professional contacts) and make it private only you will be able to see who is on the list. Click your profile picture icon on the top right of the Twitter screen to access the lists options. I have separate lists for key writers I want to follow, journalists, literary business people and a few others. I love lists. You can put people on a list by clicking the gear wheel icon beside any Twitter name, after clicking it.

6. Somewhere between 10% and 50% of the people you follow will follow you back. The starting point is 10%. If you develop a useful Twitter presence your follow rate will increase. Even if it doesn’t, you can build slowly and surely with a 10% follow back rate.

7. Follow people that interest you every day or two. Even just

20. If they don’t follow you back within 2 or 3 days then you are within your rights to unfollow them. You do that by looking at who is following you or using one of the apps, many free, listed at the back of this guide. It’s not mean to unfollow people. It’s right. You followed them. If they don’t think you’re worth listening to, and won’t follow you back, why should you keep following them?

14 8. Twitter etiquette states that you should thank people who

ReTweet your Tweet (copy your Tweet to their followers) and that you should answer people who send you a personal Tweet, asking you a question or telling you they like your Tweet or blog. A high level of personal interaction or “engagement” is considered to be the Holy Grail on Twitter. I find it difficult to write more than about twenty personal responses a day on Twitter without Twitter cutting too much into my writing or working time. Twitter etiquette also states that you should not directly advertise/link to your book on Amazon in more than 10% of your Tweets. The rest should give value to your followers. That value will often be your blog posts. If replying to a Tweet, simply click the Reply word below their Tweet when you hover your mouse pointer over it.

This is how you build up relationships on Twitter, by replying to other people’s Tweets.

TWITTER SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths – Twitter is great for building numbers fast, building connections with real people and staying up to date on what people are doing.

Weaknesses – Twitter is limited in post size to 140 characters.

Your posts will be seen mostly by your followers who are online at the time you post.

Opportunity – Use Twitter to encourage people to go to your

Facebook page and/or blog/Flickr/Goodreads author page and you will drive up hits on those sites. Take the trouble to reply to all

Notification mentions and you will build a personal support network. I love Twitter for all of this. Tweetdeck, from Twitter, is a great way to see your lists and your Twitter mentions all on one page. You can also embed videos and images in your Tweets to make them stand out. Tweets with images or video attract more attention.

Threats – All your contacts are on view to everyone, unless you have a private account. Private accounts discourage followers

however. You will have to play to an evolving set of Twitter rules too. One of those is: don’t persistently mass follow (more than 50 a day, up to 2000 followers, is mass following) or your account will be suspended. It can take about a week, and a commitment not to break the rules again, to get unsuspended. Your account could get suspended permanently if you keep breaking those rules.

FACEBOOK

1. For Facebook you will need to decide

whether your personal account will be

enough.

2. If you are an author I recommend a

Facebook Page, in your author name, not just a Personal Profile.

They are easy to set up. Click on the MORE word, on the left hand menu opposite the word PAGES in Facebook. This is visible only when you hover your pointer over the word PAGES. Then click

CREATE PAGE. Alternatively search for help on creating pages or

17 visit someone else’s page and look at the top right corner for a

CREATE PAGE link.

3. A page is similar to your personal Facebook profile in that it has a timeline of posts on the right and applications such as pictures, videos and images of the people who like your page on the left. A page can be for an author, an organisation or a company. A profile is for individuals mainly and is limited in relation to how many friends you can have (5,000). A Page has no limit on the number of people who can Like it. Pages don’t have friends. A page is also different in the type of analysis you will get free of charge. All this allows you to keep your personal and author contacts and data separate. You can also have multiple people managing a Facebook page.

4. Once you have a page set up you will need a picture for your profile and for your cover photo. This is the image that fills the top part of the Facebook page. You can highlight posts or hide them from the page too, using the light gray down arrow at the top right of each post.

5. A Facebook Page is similar to a blog, but there are a lot of games and applications you can add on, which do lots of

18 interesting things, I have added Pinterest, Goodreads, and a dozen other applications, but I don’t have much time for the games.

Many people do. Follow whatever fits your own personality.

6. Facebook ads can drive people to your page, but don’t expect big numbers of people to Like your page at once, unless you are well known or are doing something truly different or unusual. I use my page mainly for interaction with close friends and key supporters. Paulo Coelho has over twenty one million followers for his page. He provides a regular stream of spiritual updates for his followers, and interesting images. He is a great believer in the power of social media.

7. Facebook is changing rapidly too. Advertising is becoming increasingly accepted on it. At BooksGoSocial.com we advertise

Premium client’s books on Facebook. We create the ads and target them at likely buyers who are interested in what the book is about.

The ability of Facebook to target people who are interested in what you write is one of the key reasons for using it for advertising. That personal targeting, by interest, geographical location, age, buying history, is a huge attraction for all types of advertisers.

19 FACEBOOK SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths – Facebook is great for building relationships with followers. You can start a group, a great way to get interaction, offer games and prizes and showcase a range of books through your timeline and targeted ads.

Weaknesses – Many Facebook pages do not generate the numbers of followers/likes you might expect. Keep updating and your numbers will rise, but it will take a long-term effort to reach significant numbers. And then Facebook will ask you to pay for your posts to be seen by the people who Liked your page.

Opportunity – Use Facebook to deepen relationships and reach out to the people who spend a lot of time there, especially through groups. Younger people love Facebook, for instance, but almost everyone has an account now. Some people can’t be separated from it. Find out where your potential readers are spending their time. If it’s on Facebook you better get good at it. Posts that do well on Facebook most often include an image/video and are either personal, tell stories, include inspirational quotes or ask questions.

Short posts are preferred by followers too. A Call to Action (CTA) is a good thing to include, even if it’s something obvious such as:

20 which of these do you prefer?, with a link to a blog post listing

various options.

Threats – Facebook is owned by a vast American corporation.

Nothing wrong with that, but keep in mind that they will change

the rules, and mine any data they can for ways to help their

advertisers reach your contacts and for them to

make money. Your control over

the medium is highly limited.

BLOGGING 1. The main blog sites are free for their

basic service. I use two free blog sites,

Wordpress and Blogger. I read an article

once that said there are over 50 free

blogging services. Tumblr (for short post

blogging) and Zanga are some of the other big names. Take a look at a few and create one that suits you.

21 2. Blogger and Wordpress are the two biggest free blog services in the world. Blogger is owned by Google. Wordpress is owned by the company that provides the server software for 15% of the world’s internet sites. Neither are going away anytime soon.

3. Blogger requires you to have a Google account, but is simple to use and set up. Wordpress.com has a more complex interface, but will allow you to add more additional elements and have greater control over the appearance of your blog because of the plug-ins available when you move to the self-hosted version available for download at Wordpress.org.

Wordress also has a huge selection themes and a clear upgrade path to more professional options, even when you stick with the Wordpress hosted, Wordpress.com service. Familiarity with Wordpress is, in my opinion, as important as learning Microsoft Word once was. But instead of saving what you write to your own drive, you can allow the world to see it instantly. What this will do for writers is hard to gauge, just yet, but it could lead to writers showing their unfinished work and receiving live feedback. Writer’s forums currently provide this sort of feedback too, but in a closed online environment.

4. If you don’t have any content/material for your blog, you can start with short posts about why you are creating the blog and what your

22 goals are. It will help if you decide to provide support for something related to what you do. For instance, if you are a musician who writes about music you might provide lessons on some aspect of musicianship, or if you are a chef who writes about cooking you might provide recipes.

5. If you want to promote what you do that’s fine, but mix promotion with advice or assistance and your reader numbers will go up faster. I know a new author who gets a thousand viewers a week to her blog.

She offers poems, lists of literary competitions, writing posts from guest bloggers and lots of other regularly updated content. She writes short blog posts every day or every other day. Some bloggers get millions of views with this approach.

6. Blogs are not as fashionable as Twitter and Facebook, but they are still great as sites for holding a showcase of your work as it evolves.

Independent authors and academic authors and everyone in between can produce great blog sites. Your readership may also grow fast, if you have something new and interesting to say and you illustrate your words well. Do not forget to include an image or two with each post and please use a font size above 16 to make the text readable.

7. Some of the most popular web sites in the world are blogs.

Huffington Post is one example. Lifehacker is another. Conferences,

23 events and trips are other great uses for a blog. And these days you can sell books via a blog too. And you can enable ads on many blogs and sell other people’s books too.

BLOGGING SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths – Blogs allow you more control over the look of your information. You can decide to change the content every hour, as ultra- dynamic news blogs do, or every few months as some static blogs do.

You are in control.

Weaknesses – Few people will come to your blog unless you get people to sign up to receive posts or send them there from Twitter and

Facebook and other sites. If you have a thousand people signed up a percentage will take a look at each post. That percentage will be determined by the quality, frequency and topical nature of your posts.

Opportunity – A blog is as good as a web site in many cases. You can create them fast using one of the built-in templates and have a reasonable looking site up within hours.

Threats – Blogs are poorly visited if you don’t update them regularly with good content. In addition the owner of the blog may go out of business.

24 If you use a less well known service this is more likely. The blog service may also change their terms of service to something that isn’t suitable for you.

LINKEDIN BASICS

1. In the middle of 2014, 300 million people were using LinkedIn. It is the number one social media site for businesses and professionals in

Europe and the Americas. If your book is in any way connected with business, this site is for you.

2. The new mobile LinkedIn app delivers news and updates efficiently to the 30%+ of users who now use LinkedIn on iPad, iPhone or an

Android device.

3. Following and tracking competitors, listing your accomplishments, keeping track of readers, and keeping a watch on industry experts are some of the key benefits of using LinkedIn.

4. If you use advanced search or LinkedIn’s premium services you can identify influential readers, join groups they are members in, and contact them over time as you build a presence in that group or simply inMail them directly. inMail is the email service built into LinkedIn.

25 5. You can showcase your skills on LinkedIn through slide-shows, videos, company pages or posts. SlideShare works on LinkedIn and you can post tweets and other links too.

6. You can offer a free excerpt of your book to increase engagement.

7. Be personal and interested when people contact you and your chances of making a valuable connection increase.

8. You can look at what key target contacts are doing on LinkedIn, then leave comments, engage, offer help or ask questions.

9. You can join groups. Then, after a while, you can create your own groups. Groups are critical to LinkedIn. You can share, comment, and invest time and energy in your groups to receive a substantial pay back.

Be warned though, without a real following in advance or a good reason for people to join your group, you may face difficulties building it.

LINKEDIN SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths – LinkedIn is a massive

and serious business social media

site. It is growing fast. If your book

26 is related to any business or profession you need to be on LinkedIn.

There are excellent free-to-join groups for almost all professions here.

Weaknesses – Most of your prospects will not follow you back if they think you are simply trying to sell them something. It can also be time consuming, like other social media.

Opportunity – Use LinkedIn to build a credible list of serious contacts.

Groups are a great source of new contacts. LinkedIn is great for job prospecting too and for researching who you should be contacting in an organisation.

Threats – LinkedIn rules will change. It may not suit you in the future.

Make sure your profile is constantly up to date too, as Google may list it first when anyone searches for you.

PINTEREST BASICS

1. More than 40 million people were using Pinterest each month in early 2014. It is a leading social media site for homemakers, lifestyle, photographers, the food, fashion and design industries and people with a strong visual sense.

27 2. Following and tracking competitors and people such as chefs, wedding designers, interior designers, shoe designers, and anyone with artistic flair is easily done with Pinterest.

3. You can let people click-thru and order the items you pin. If you are writing in any of the above areas this is the social media platform for you.

4. Pinterest is a sociable pin board. You pin pictures you find on the web or other people’s pins or photos you upload and put a comment on them all for others to see.

5. Some people are saying you shouldn’t pin images that don’t belong to you. This is definitely true for content that people try to protect on their sites or content that others make their living from. You should always credit material to the originator too. This is done automatically where you Re-pin content from other Pinners.

6. You no longer need an invitation to join.

7. Follow people, join groups, find your friends on Pinterest. The site allows you to do all these things. Create boards, which suit your style.

Boards are collections of photographs/images which you created or

28 which you pinned from anywhere on the web. And do give feedback and likes to other people’s pins and boards.

PINTEREST SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths – Pinterest is growing fast.

Some claim it is the fastest growing

social media site in the world in 2014. It

is an ideal place for people who are

visually motivated.

Weaknesses – You have to have something unique to offer to get high numbers of followers. If you are a little known brand with little visual appeal you will find this site a real challenge.

Opportunity – Use Pinterest to showcase your great visual appeal, if that is what you have. Link to the site from your blog and website to attract people who will love your style.

29 Threats – People can copy you and re-pin your images to their boards.

Pinterest could also change their rules and layout and become less interesting over time.

1. 3 GENERAL INFORMATION FOR ALL SOCIAL MEDIA

1. It’s not just about quantity of followers on all these sites, it really is about quality. There is no point in having ten thousand followers who never click on your links or talk to you, when five hundred interested followers can deliver more engagement and help you in practical ways. If you engage with people you will achieve more on all these social media sites. That doesn’t mean you should avoid getting ten thousand followers

30 or a million followers, it just means that you should at all times strive to engage with your followers.

2. There are differing views on how many posts you should make on all the above services. The important thing is that you set a schedule that won’t overwhelm you. That schedule could include four posts a day, four posts a week or four a month. It will be up to you to decide what is possible, given your personal situation. You must also decide which sites are for you. Track how people respond to your presence and your pattern of posting and adjust your plan when you see things that work and things that don’t.

3. There is an art to conversations on each social media site. The simple principles are to be positive, be responsive, be engaging and get involved. All these things are about attitude. Having a positive attitude is important. And if you don’t feel positive about it all, try pretending to be.

4. If you have time, take an interest in your followers, friends and contacts too. Visit their sites, comment on them, be genuine. Reciprocity

“if you give, you get,” rules in the social media world. The more you give, the more you get. But be wise, invest where it is likely to get you the most payback and learn fast where that is.

31 If you are wondering why should I bother with any of this think about horse drawn buggies and sailing ships. And wonder what happened to the people who built and operated buggies after cars arrived. Most of them went out of business. Social media is a communication tool. Would you have stood against the telephone, when it was introduced?

5. Track when you get the best responses and click-throughs, and what gets those good responses. A range of tools are detailed at the end of this guide, which can help you understand when you do get things right. They will help you track what type and style of response gets the best results. Consider the time of day, day of the week and style of content as well as the content itself when gauging the success of any post. For instance, on Facebook it is known that shorter posts, less than

40 characters, get higher rates of response and posts that include images or videos get more responses too.

6. Find out what your target audience is interested in. If they respond to tips on writing, provide them with that, if it’s appropriate.

A note on “social proof”. The concept of “social proof,” that your followers validate what you do, is becoming increasingly important in many areas. People will simply take more notice of you if greater numbers of people follow you.

32 NINE KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER ONE:

1. Don’t rub colleagues, friends or family who are Luddites up the wrong way. People who hate change are unlikely to welcome being insulted for their views. You’ll only end up making them more entrenched. Prove how successful social media can be in some practical ways and you will win some of the Luddites around. Many people don’t believe things until they see them with their own eyes. The final hold-outs may never believe, no matter what you do. Work around them.

2. Pick the Social Media formula that suits you. Decide if you want Twitter

+ Facebook + Pinterest + A Blog, or Twitter + LinkedIn + A Blog, or any of the dozens of other formula you can put together to get the “social media mix” right for you. There are a lot of other social media sites too.

They include sites for expectant and new mothers, cool musicians, photographers, engineers, and a thousand other hobbies and professions. If you can’t find one or two that you’d like I’d be surprised.

And remember, older online writers’ forums as well community sites such as Triberr and StumbleUpon are social media too. It seems that almost every site is building a social element to it these days.

3. Learn the basics and the advanced tools for each site you have chosen. Understanding all the options presented on the screen for each

33 site is the first step. Once you know how to Retweet (send someone else’s Tweet on to your followers), to Follow, to Mention and to create a list you are getting the hang of Twitter, for instance.

4. Be careful. Be open and honest and share, but be careful. Treat social media as a summer party with work colleagues, readers and competitors all present. Be aware of what is expected of you and court controversy, if you must, in a way that is legal and based on facts. Trolls may come after you, but ignore them, the way you would ignore someone raving in the street. Don’t take their opinions personally. Develop a thick skin. Not everyone will like you or what you do. Don’t be shocked when someone expresses their feelings.

5. Invest in Twitter. If you want to work only one social media site then in my humble opinion Twitter is the best. Set aside 30 minutes a day to get to know it. If you don’t like it after a week then you can find something else to focus on.

6. Register a page on Facebook if you have a book that could become popular.

7. Start a blog. A blog can act as a web site too.

34 8. Provide advice and assistance to your fans across all your sites and identities. Be responsive too. I reply to every message sent to me on

Facebook, and almost every mention or Tweet sent to me and every email I receive that isn’t spam.

9. Be generous. Track what you do. Watch what’s working. Do more of it. This is crucial.

CHAPTER 2 – DEVELOPING A SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN

2.1 OVERVIEW We have covered the basics of social media in Chapter One. You should by now have a good idea which social media platforms you might end up using.

The next stage of our guide is about how to develop a detailed social media plan as a writer.

Some parts of this chapter aren’t going to be relevant for all. But it will be worth reading through in any case for everyone, just to be familiar with the options in this area.

These are the main steps you will need to undertake to ensure any social media plan you develop is effective. This includes deciding:

1. Objectives. What are your objectives?

2. How. How will you get all this social media stuff done and still be able to write?

3. Resources. What resources do you have available?

36 4. Integration. How will you integrate social media with other promotions that might take place, either offline or from your publisher, if you have one?

5. Guidelines. What guidelines will you use for your social media development?

6. Content. How will your content be generated?

7. Monitoring. How will you monitor the results?

2.2 WHAT ARE YOUR STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES?

Your number one objective should not simply be to increase your

follower numbers. That’s a bit like chasing your own tail.

http:/ Possible objectives might be to develop as a writer, to develop your craft /www .netm arketi ng.co or to earn enough from writing to quit your day job. Another objective m.au/ wp- conte nt/upl oads/f might be to build relationships with your readers, to successfully self- acebo ok- follow - butto publish your work or to increase the number of reviews you have of your n- 300x2 49.jpg books.

These are all good objectives. If you don’t have well defined objectives,

perhaps now is the time to think about them.

37 The reason I am emphasising that

social media objectives should

integrate with your own personal

objectives, is because social media

can be integrated with your

development as a writer.

Social media is expected, over the next ten years or so, to become as integrated with the way we operate as writers as notebooks and pens were to a previous generation. Some writers will survive without integrating social media, but increasingly the writers that do integrate it with their writing will obtain a real advantage. These are the writers who will deliver on the promise of social media.

Even if you are a part time writer, it will be good to think through your plan.

And if you have a written plan it will provide something to measure success by.

It is well accepted these days that having written goals helps us all to achieve our objectives. Without goals we can drift. Making goals tough to

38 achieve, yet possible, provides a real psychological boost for all those who have an interest in achieving success.

2.3 HOW WILL YOU INTEGRATE ALL THIS WITH YOUR DEVELOPMENT AS A WRITER?

There are a number of challenges facing you in integrating your development on social media with your work as a writer. I believe that social media, in its widest sense, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all the other tools, can provide an online extension to whatever you have written or intend to write. I see the main written work, the ebook or book, as the core and the social media tools as the extension, providing access to additional material you may not have included in the work.

Social media also functions as the outreach and communication arms of the work, allowing you to tell followers about your work and respond to queries. This can help bring your work to life. You can do this in the following ways:

1. Provide visual images, which may not have been appropriate for inclusion in the book. These could be from your research, from locations or images you create. I include video, animations and still images, both

39 edited and unedited in this category. Everything from maps to infographics can also be included.

2. Communication. By telling people about your work or aspects of it, you are linking your promotion directly to your writing. By responding to questions you are also turning your work into a living thing. This could have been done in the past, but the author is much more accessible now and likely to respond to queries. I see this ability for the work to live and grow as a good thing, though I am sure some authors will want to have nothing to do with this. That is their right.

3. Deepening the work by giving extra text based information, possibly too lengthy to include in the work.

4. Providing updates to the work and correcting errors.

5. Giving the author’s opinion on the writing and also allowing readers to comment, both negatively and positively. With comments being moderated you can remove the worst excesses of personal attacks, while allowing valid criticism. The author or their representative can decide what that means.

These aspects of your plan may help you decide on what to talk about on your blog or social media channels. They can help you to see your

40 online work as being integrated with your work as an author. They take

nothing away from the hard slog of writing, but I hope they add

additional dimensions, which were generally unavailable to previous

generations of writers.

2.4 WHAT RESOURCES DO YOU HAVE AVAILABLE?

HTTP://BR OWNKISS.C A/WP- This is probably the key issue in the development of any social media CONTENT/ UPLOADS/2 013/03/O NLINE- plan. Resources, money, your time available, will all determine the RESOURCES -ICON.PNG success or failure of this plan.

If social media is starved of resources don’t expect it to achieve anything

but a token level of success. And if you don’t have the inclination or

willingness to take part in all this, I suggest you retain an outside agency

to do it for you. We do this work for some authors, though we

recommend splitting the tasks, and for the author to do as much as suits

them and the agency to carry out the other tasks.

When planning your resource requirements

you should also consider:

41 1. Set up and preparation time for the establishment of your social media presence.

2. Training costs and time. If you can self-train, great, but even for those who can do that it will take time and multiple efforts before becoming proficient in each social media tool. Be prepared for mistakes, dead-ends and abandoned schemes. And don’t put all your eggs into one social media basket.

3. Hardware, software and online tools. Some good sites have free resources, but you may find yourself upgrading to the premium services on the better sites. Make sure your hardware and software are all reasonably up to date too. You will find out pretty soon if they aren’t.

4. Marketing and promotion costs. If you need to redo business cards to include LinkedIn addresses or Twitter handles (names), or need to update book covers and web sites then all this will cost money. The low cost way to do everything is to replace at the replacement-cycle point, when the cover is getting old and the business cards are all running out.

Beware of updating physical materials with social media details that may change again.

42 5. Have you got or do you know people with general photography, artistic and graphic design skills for things like avatars and images for

Facebook and other sites? Will you need to hire someone or fund some training courses?

Understanding the resources required to make social media a success is important. If you are facing an uphill struggle start small. Pick key areas that can be improved and define a small budget for them.

2.5 WHAT GUIDELINES CAN YOU USE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA DEVELOPMENT?

Here are some things to think about as you integrate social media into your development as a writer.

1. What to post about, when to post, what “tone” to take (positive, generally), what to include and exclude.

2. Ethical guidelines. This references the need to be truthful and open, yet not give away personal information. Ethics in this area also includes the need to refrain from attacking others and the need to consider people’s feelings when you post anything online.

43 3. Content guidelines. Content should be accurate and be corrected as soon as possible if it is found to be inaccurate. We should be conscientious about our contributions, whilst being personal and sociable.

4. No SPAM. That you will not simply post advertisements for your books or use contact data extracted for purposes beyond which it was given. A small number/percentage of promotional posts are generally allowed, usually 10% or less of all posts. A content-first strategy will provide followers with useful information before ever promoting anything.

5. To remember that what you post will be around for a long time.

Social media can have a positive and a negative impact. We all have to think twice before we post.

44 2.6 HOW WILL YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT BE GENERATED?

There are a number of ways content can be

generated, you can write it yourself or have

others do it for you. You can curate content –

use other people’s content with attribution and

permission, if required – or get people to

create guest posts for you.

As you consider what you plan to do, keep the following in mind if you

employ people to create content:

1. Each outside person who will create content needs to be trained on your strategy and on the tactics you will be using to get the most out of social media. Training on subject matter, post series development, writing skills and editing skills should all be considered as well as any technical skills needed.

2. Each individual needs to be vetted as to their interest, positive attitude and commitment to the social media project. Commitment will

45 display itself by the interest taken, the willingness to go the extra mile and the speed of completion of projects.

3. Each individual needs to have time available to do the social media content creation and posting work. A specific period of time, whether that is daily or weekly, needs to be set aside to do social media tasks.

4. There are tools available that will generate content automatically, for instance some tools will Retweet content from another source at regular intervals, but you will still need to create original content for the vast majority of your work. Do not use automatically generated content for anything but a small percentage of posts or you will risk losing the trust of your readers.

While long posts can be

done on an occasional

basis, you would expect

that a short blog or

Facebook post, and a

number of Tweets,

could be generated on a daily basis without a significant time commitment.

46 There’s nothing wrong with Re-tweeting other people’s content, especially if you can monitor what is going out and the content maintains a high standard, but do please keep in mind that you will need to originate most of your own content.

The art of picking what to post and Tweet about is complex. It will take time and thought to work out what you can Tweet or post about on a regular basis.

It is important that whatever you do post and Tweet about, that the items are likely to be of interest to your readers and followers.

Understanding in detail who your followers are and what they expect of you will help you determine what to post. The tools section at the end of this guide provides details on how you can understand your followers better. Social media tools will tell you what time your followers are online, what they Retweet and talk about, and who your most influential followers are, as well as demographic information on their location, gender and even further information in some cases.

You can then ask yourself some simple question to help you decide what to post. You can also ask the others who are creating content to do the same thing. Here are the questions: What is your personal area of expertise? Can you combine your area of expertise to create something

47 truly unique for your followers? Can you bring your own personal perspectives and skills into this to help you come up with new content on a regular basis?

Can you plan your posts, create a series of posts for instance, so that followers can see what will be delivered in advance? This will help you and your colleagues to publicise what you are doing.

Later in this guide there is a section on how to create interesting posts based on storytelling techniques. You can also use those techniques to help you plan your posts and to expand your content into more complex areas.

2.7 HOW WILL YOU MONITOR RESULTS?

There are a variety of tools available to monitor and manage social media. Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are two management tools. There are plenty of others. An appendix at the end of this guide provides information on a variety of social media measurement tools.

Perhaps the most important metric of success is income generated or book sales. Any social media program that does not include such a metric is a waste of time, in my view. One difficulty however will be identifying the income directly attributable to your social media efforts.

48 There will be every reason to believe that all your new readers came in because of the fine work you’ve done on social media, but you will need data to prove that is the case.

One method of gathering this is to conduct reader research on a regular basis.

Further metrics could include the number of followers, posts, mentions and Retweets you get, indicators of the level of engagement you are reaching on social media.

49 KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER TWO:

1. Use the points at the start of this

chapter to help you develop a

comprehensive social media plan,

appropriate for you.

2. Take time to understand how to make

the best of your resources.

3. Have clear social media objectives.

4. Be imaginative about content creation.

5. Focus on measurable results.

CHAPTER 3 – YOUR ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

3.1 THE BASICS OF ENGAGEMENT

Engagement is about building relationships. It’s also about the quality of relationships you have.

The basics of engagement are responding to people, being real, being human, and not taking it all too seriously. If you think about engagement in any social situation, listening as well as talking, telling anecdotes, little secrets, having fun, those are the same things you can also do in social media to drive engagement there too. Social media is still a part of our world.

Social media is as complex as the world we inhabit. Whatever you like to do, whatever you write about, wherever you live, with almost no exceptions, there will be a specialist social media site catering for your interests, whether that’s thrillers, ancient architecture or romance novels.

If you don’t believe me look up your writing interests in Google or another big search engine.

51 You will find that others who are like you in their interest or beliefs will be more likely to follow you or be part of your community if you are involved in the same sites. I’m not saying that you must stick exclusively to your own group. I do think we should all be open to mixing with people of widely different interest. All I am saying is that when you are looking for reader engagement, it is a good idea to look among people who have similar interests.

You might now consider who you are targeting to expand your social media reach.

Some people wonder how to increase their numbers on Twitter. Twitter is designed as a social network where you follow people and people follow you back. So start following people. A percentage of the people you follow will always follow you back. And if they don’t follow you back within a few days you are within your rights to unfollow them. If they don’t want to see your Tweets, then it is reasonable that you stop seeing theirs.

If you are a celebrity or have a relationship with masses of people or you’re a big brand, you should get followers by simply letting people know what your Twitter name (or “handle”) is. For the rest of us,

52 following people and posting interesting Tweets are the main ways to increase our followers.

The number of people you follow each day depends on how much time you want to spend on Twitter and how many followers you have now. I recommend following small numbers each day (20-30), and unfollowing regularly people who don’t follow you back. You will be able to follow more people later on, as the number of people who follow you increases.

I can follow 20 people in 30 seconds, so this is not time consuming stuff.

On Facebook it’s mostly about knowing people first, for personal profiles.

This is the opposite to Twitter, where people who don’t know you are almost always happy for you to follow them even if they don’t follow you back.

You can Like “pages” on Facebook however, as these are the public pages of the people or organisations who create them. Pages are not personal profiles. You can create your own “page” for any book, series or promotion you want and detail the progress of that item through posts

about the subject.

Great successes have been achieved on

Facebook by small groups who create useful

53 pages where people can post their experiences with challenging life situations and provide practical support services

With Facebook and Twitter it’s all about what you give back to your community. If you want to improve engagement consider if there is there a way to build a community page on some aspect of what you do, to support other writers in your area, for instance?

On LinkedIn and Google+ there are groups and hangouts you can participate in. The more time you spend on all these sites the more you will get back from them.

If you are in a business to business writing environment LinkedIn is the obvious social media choice for you. I have over 500 contacts on

LinkedIn and I know that every time I spend time on it, especially in the great LinkedIn groups, I get a response.

The majority of my engagement is still on Twitter, where I get immediate worldwide feedback on a minute by minute basis to my posts.

54 The practical examples provided below are therefore aimed mainly at

Twitter, but also include Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ situations. But you may find that your daily routine includes mainly LinkedIn, with a

little Facebook. Each of our social media engagements can be different depending on our situation.

3.2 PRACTICAL ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES

An engagement strategy is deciding who you will follow, why you are following them and also what you will deliver to your community of followers as you build them up.

Here are some practical examples.

55 After identifying people in each of the segments below, by asking them

directly or by looking for the details of their social media accounts, you

can follow people who are appropriate to you.

On Twitter a percentage will simply follow you back. Some people will do

so because they like what they see about you from your profile or

Tweets. Others will automatically follow you back.

Simply asking people to Like your page on Facebook is the main way you

will attract new people there. You can also pay Facebook to advertise

your page.

LinkedIn generally requires that you know someone or get an

introduction before becoming a “contact”. Groups are the main way

people make new contacts on LinkedIn. Some people will accept you as

a contact even if you don’t previously know them. These will usually be

people who are involved in the same area you write in or your business

is in.

Whatever professional area you are in, here are some examples of

people who you might follow & engage with: i. Any local writers who use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+

etc, whether they are friends or not.

56 o Major authors who you would like to read your material, o Media people in your area, who might feature you. Media people are sought after, so it may be hard to engage with them, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. Occasionally one of them will reciprocate, o Among the people who follow each of the above people, on Twitter for instance, you will find contacts worth following. The openness of

Twitter, which allows us to see all someone’s followers, provides unprecedented access to lists of people who like an author, o People in bookstores, managers, buyers or staff, o Any agents or publishers’ staff.

Following people’s followers is done on the basis that if someone is following them, there is a good chance that they are interested in the type of books you are writing, if you write in a similar area.

You will end up following personal contacts of these people, but you will also have a good chance of finding their committed readers and persuading them to follow you too.

SEVEN KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER THREE:

1. Be human, talk, respond, open up a little when on social

media. It’s great for building relationships.

2. Look up local social media sites and

others related to your writing area and join

some. Make a real contribution and you will be rewarded.

3. Follow other people regularly. That means every day.

It doesn’t mean you have to spend all day doing it. Just a

few minutes out of your routine is all you need.

4. Unfollow people after a few days if they don’t follow you

back. I see no reason why I should read posts by people who

don’t want to read mine.

5. Think of any support service you might offer, building on

your expertise and consider offering some of that expertise more

widely, without charge, to provide real value for your followers

6. Ask people you meet for their social media names/handles,

then follow them and send them a message. Follow people you

58 know and people you don’t. There are a lot of people out there who will appreciate being followed.

7. Follow all types of people in your area of writing, and follow their followers too, they may well be interested in what you do.

Picking who to follow is a lot easier when you follow people who like the same authors you do. It’s the birds of a feather flock together theory in action.

CHAPTER 4 – CAN YOU USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO INCREASE READER LOYALTY?

Everyone knows what loyalty is. But sometimes it’s not as easy to define as people think. If, for instance, a reader stops reading your novels for a year, are they still loyal? Some may never buy another book of yours.

For me loyalty is a graduated thing. Yes, we can say we have loyal readers, but are we getting the maximum possible level of repeat readers? Are we encouraging people to recommend our books too, the highest level of reader loyalty?

If that is our goal, the maximum possible level of recommendation, can social media help us to achieve that?

Yes, it can, in many ways. But before I talk about that I want to raise the issue of communicating with your readers. To do this effectively you will have to start collecting your reader’s social media details.

One of the main reasons for getting these details is to ensure you know how to contact them when you have a new book.

60 Having your readers follow you will help with the main issue of this chapter, building reader loyalty.

4.1 HERE ARE FIVE WAYS YOU CAN USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO BUILD READER LOYALTY:

1. Improve your book by listening and responding to negative comments or suggestions posted on all relevant social media channels.

People who say negative things about your work may have something valid to say. Listen to them, examine their issues, and fix them if you believe their criticisms are valid. Deciding what issues are valid, will be a matter of personal judgement. If you are in doubt you may want to discuss any issues with your editor. If you haven’t got a professional editor and you see editorial criticisms of your work on Amazon, then it is past time you got one.

61 2. Ask people to recommend, Retweet or re-post something from you.

People talk about "who promotes you scores" as a key metric for understanding loyalty. The percentage who are willing to take action to recommend or Retweet you is an important number, as it’s not about stating intentions, it’s about taking action. You may say you will “help

promote” a book, but not actually do it, for

instance. Actions speak louder than words.

3. Offer updates, free chapters & special offers

to people who sign up to email lists or who follow

your blog. By making people feel part of a community in some way you will increase reader loyalty. Highly engaged readers become advocates too. A percentage of them will recommend you to others. Your Facebook page can provide special offers and your Twitter

& Pinterest posts can too.

Engagement is fast becoming a key metric for social media teams. How many Retweets, posts, photographs and comments people contribute on a daily basis is one measure of engagement. How that compares to your overall number of readers and followers is another.

62 But there are deeper measures of engagement too. How often are people coming back to each social media channel? And are people posting pictures to your Facebook group?

Some highly engaged people contribute in a truly significant way to sites, such as editors at Wikipedia. Can you encourage readers to be that committed too?

When you talk about engagement you need to define what you want from engagement. It may be light engagement or it may be deep. Only you can decide what is right for you and your writing

You can change your mind too as the social media world develops.

That’s one of the best things about social media. It’s not a world set in stone.

You can test, retest, then change. You can go for a light level of engagement then deeper, then light again.

And you can decide when that happens.

63 SIX KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER FOUR:

1. Think about how you measure loyalty. Is

it simply people who stay with you or are

you concerned about maximising their

engagement with you?

2. Start collecting social media names, where appropriate.

Then follow them.

3. Listen to negative comments and reviews. Fix where you can, and use an editor.

4. Ask people to Retweet, recommend and repost your posts and Tweets. Count how many do this and monitor what things they will Retweet and what they won’t. Some people will become increasingly loyal if you genuinely thank them for Retweets and mentions.

5. Offer updates and insider information to people who Like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter or Pinterest or on email.

See them as a community and reward them appropriately.

6. Measure engagement. Monitor what gets people involved in your social media sites and keep doing it. Encourage

64 engagement in all you do. And build relationships with individual readers.

CHAPTER 5 – MEASURING & MONITORING

There is a management principle that says that you can’t manage if you don’t measure. To be successful with social media you will need to measure and monitor what you are doing.

Social media book marketing is the biggest thing to hit book marketing since the ebook was invented. Publishers’ marketing programs are undergoing rapid change, because of what is happening in the world of social media. PR is a shrinking profession as new ways to reach readers emerge and the power of a small group of journalists and reviewers collapses.

Online marketing is pervasive. Self-marketing was something many authors did in the past without thinking. Now they are going on training courses to get it right.

An understanding of what word-of-mouth marketing is, where people tell each other about your book or books both online and off, and what viral marketing is, a similar, but mainly online phenomena, is spreading. Book marketing is coming out of publishers’ back rooms.

66 One of the key aspects of book marketing that is changing, is the things that we measure.

If you are looking to decide what to include in your measurement systems here are some suggestions:

1. Sentiment analysis – how many negative comments and positive comments are there on social media platforms about the author or their books?

2. Influencers – the numbers of followers you have, who have a lot of their own followers, and their engagement levels with you. Having a lot of influencers is good, but it’s better if you are also engaging with them.

3. Demographics – traditional measures of geographic, age, sex, status and interests of your online followers. It is useful to know who your followers are, where they are from and all those other pieces of demographic information. You’ll be better able to decide what to talk about online, when you know who you are talking to.

4. Sub communities – number and types of sub communities around your main social media presence. Sub communities may require separate conversations and talking points. This may have to be re-assessed as your community builds.

67 5. Base statistics on follower numbers, how many people are unfollowing you, or Retweeting you or your posts for each platform are important. Other platforms such as Goodreads, Pinterest, Flickr, other reader forums, LinkedIn, YouTube, your own blog, etc, should also be measured and monitored, depending on which of these you focus on.

Statistics are not the most important things in social media, but they are indicators. If social media is to deliver what you want and you have only a hundred followers, who are all dedicated to you, than that is a success to me. Quality trumps quantity on social media, as in most things.

6. You can also monitor new topics emerging from conversations with readers and prospective readers. You may pick these up instinctively or you could list them in a structured way.

7. You could also watch out for other author activity, sentiment & key metrics for people who write in your genre. This is a period of unprecedented openness in social media, where we can all see what

others are up to on Twitter and Pinterest

and many of the other major sites.

8. Keyword tracking – do you use key

words in your Amazon description? If you

68 don’t, you should think about it. Keywords are words that indicate succinctly what your book is about. If you are using key words you may want to check what other authors in your genre are doing on keywords.

Key words are part of your Amazon search engine optimisation (ASEO) strategy. ASEO is a new world of technical book marketing to help ensure your book/books come up as many times as possible in book searches appropriate to your content.

Digital marketing for authors is not just talking to people online. You should also be thinking about the return on investment for your time and how to measure that. The above metrics will help you make a start on that.

FOUR KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER FIVE:

1. To manage social media effectively you need to measure it effectively. To suggest otherwise is to doom yourself to the backwater of dead web sites and un-followed social media identities.

2. Let social media become part of your daily routine to improve engagement. And keep followers informed about what you are doing.

3. Pick the key metrics that suit you. You can change them over time as you find out what works and what doesn’t.

4. Understand other author activity as well as your own. This is not for you to copy what they are doing, you should be aiming to be unique, but to ensure you’re not developing blind spots.

70 CHAPTER 6 – THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO DO GOOD

I define good as those things that help people. Health, a better life, a job, happiness, success, these are all areas that social media has been proven to have a major effect. I believe that effect can extend into the world of the author.

I think it is worthwhile for authors to take a look at these areas, as they provide excellent examples of how social media is delivering a game- changing impact. Perhaps you are writing about these areas or you may simply see examples of how you could use your social media presence in new ways.

6.1 HEALTH

Social media is having a real impact on healthcare in practical ways, not just by providing information, which is a good thing, and has a generally positive effect, but in truly impactful ways.

One example of this is how people requiring kidney transplants are finding kidney donors in the United States and elsewhere through social media. Professor Jerry Wilde of Indiana University is one person who has

71 benefited from this. Jerry had a particularly difficult case. A previously donated kidney had grown a large tumour. He needed a new one. Fast.

The normal waiting list is three to five years for a new kidney. Jerry couldn’t wait that long. A friend of his started a Facebook page. Through the page they found someone willing to donate a suitable kidney.

And don’t get the idea that this is a unique case. Tom Brady, a quarterback, used the power of social media to get 10,000 people to sign up for matchingdonors.com, a web site that matches patients in need of organs with potential donors.

There are many more examples of surprising ways that social media has helped people improve their health. Here are some of them:

1. You can get support for your personal health goals through putting those goals out for all to see. By using social media sites to help you remember, you will keep on track and be reminded of the shame you will feel if you don’t stick to your goals.

2. You can use Twitter hashtags, such as #weightloss, to record and track your weightloss activity. There are apps and programs that will remind you about your weight loss goals as well and plug you into

72 communities of people who have similar goals. #amwriting is a writing hashtag you can use in the same way.

3. You can get better, more up to date, health information through social media. MyBreastCancerteam.com and MyAutismteam.com are just two examples of Facebook groups that provide real assistance to families. You can also use YouTube and other social channels to research techniques, success stories and how-to information.

Other examples of using social media for healthcare include the following. Many of these examples can also be used by authors:

1. Getting mobile messages when you need to take your medication

(start writing), via a timed social media posting service.

2. Finding good doctors (editors), seeing what else is available and getting feedback on such issues from social media contacts.

3. Keeping better records, all in the cloud, and telling professionals where and how they can access your records.

This list is far from exhaustive. Social media will impact every aspect of healthcare and writing in the future. We are moving into a very different world.

6.2 A BETTER LIFE

Everyone has heard about how social media helped bring about change in the Arab world over the past few years. But technology has been changing the way we are governed for a lot longer than that.

If you consider text messaging as social media then the overthrow in

January 2001 of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, must go down as one of the first major political movements created by social media.

Loyalists in the Philippine Congress

had voted to set aside evidence

against Estrada. Within a few hours

thousands of angry Filipinos held a

demonstration in Manila. The demonstration

was set up by text message and over the next few days a million people gathered to demonstrate in the capital city. By the end of January 2001 Estrada had resigned and the age of social media being used for political good had well and truly started.

74 I am no utopian when it comes to the impact of social media. I am well aware that social media is no more than a tool and that violently repressive regimes who are willing to murder their own citizens are not going to let any communication tool stand in their way.

I also know that the final results on what will happen in the Arab world, as a result of the recent series of regime changing movements, is far from clear.

But despite all of that I am still a long term optimist. The invention of the printing press led to the mass distribution of the Bible, the Reformation and huge technological progress in the West and eventually throughout the world. The invention of television brought war into our living rooms and drove global peace movements.

Now social media allows us to talk directly to people all over the world.

The people who wish to deny us our freedoms will have to work harder than ever to achieve their goals.

Although there are disputes about the impact of social media on the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya, it is certainly true that social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter, allowed people to express their dissatisfaction in ways that wouldn’t have been possible previously.

75 In my opinion, social media is as much an instrument of change as radio was when it was introduced. It is a means of mass communication - a new some-to-many communication system - where about 10% of users create about 90% of the content.

As for creating social change, the facts are that during the week

President Mubarak of Egypt resigned the number of tweets about political change increased ten-fold in that country. This fact was taken from a study by a Professor Howard at the University of Washington

(http://philhoward.org/).

In addition, videos featuring protest and politics were watched over five million times and the amount of online content about the political situation increased dramatically.

Waves of communication about social change spread throughout the region creating movements in a wide variety of Arab countries.

Governments tried to crack down on social media, but that seems only to have created a greater urge for information.

Now, it is true that we do not know how the new governments of Libya,

Tunisia and Egypt will perform in the long run for their citizens, but to

76 deny that social media acted as a communication tool, which aided change, seems wilfully blind to me.

Before this time despotic governments in Arab countries seemed immovable. Today many people in the region know that social change is possible. Social media helped to make that a reality.

It is also true that the hard work of demanding change still has to be done and it’s as dirty and murderously difficult as it ever was to effect social change in totalitarian societies.

Communications media can equally be used to suppress dissent, and there are many examples of it, but social media is changing too, evolving as we speak. The cracks in the system may be constantly being papered over, but there are cracks when none previously existed. That, at least, is a step in the right direction.

Literature used to be one of the methods of inspiring change. Sarcasm and parody were used to highlight inequality, the fact that we are all equal, but some are more equal than others, as George Orwell put it so well in Animal Farm. In earlier times the conscience of society was pricked by accounts of the conditions of the poor or by novels about people caught in terrible circumstances. Literature can still do all those

77 things, but aligned with social media, to help spread the message, great things may be possible.

One area of real impact, which I haven’t discussed so far, is the impact of social media on giving.

One example of this is causes.com, a site which allows you to support causes you pick through social media.

Causes.com has 170 million members and has raised over $40 million dollars for member-defined causes. Causes.com allows you to create your own “cause” project and to seek donations from your social media community.

Kickstarter.com sites for authors, where people subscribe to provide money to the authors in advance for books already enable us to sponsor and bring to life stories, which we might never otherwise hear.

Social media is being embraced by the charity sector too. A survey in late

2013 revealed that 17% of US charities were investing $10,000 or more on social media services.

I expect the long term impact of social media to be significant and unstoppable in every aspect of the author’s relationship with readers. We may not notice that impact for another ten years or more as the creation

78 and selling of books continues to evolve. I hope we see more positive

effects than negative. The rise of the harried writer is one negative

impact that will effect writers in ways we as yet cannot fully assess.

What we are living through is the biggest change in how writers work in

our lifetime.

6.3 USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO GET FREELANCE WRITING WORK Social media can help you get a freelance writing

HTTP://WWW. TWITTERBLOGP OST.COM/WP- job too: CONTENT/UPLO ADS/2012/05 /SOCIAL_RECR UITING_FISHIN G-FOR-TALENT- 300X300.JPG 1. You can create digital identities for yourself

with details of your qualifications and experience that people can access

easily. Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs allow you to put your best foot

forward digitally and to detail a wealth of information that wouldn’t be

possible in a few pages of a resume. In many cases our blogs and online

identities are replacing our resumes.

2. You can audit your digital identities to make sure they contain

nothing that would make you unemployable either. You can review

images, events and every post you’ve ever made and make private any

that might work against you. The same thing occurred when we sent

highly tailored job applications by post in the distant past.

79 3. You can also create a target list of media companies or publishers you are interested in working for, follow them and then follow some of their staff member’s public accounts too. You can sometimes start a dialogue too with these people, based on overlapping interests. Be genuine though. Don’t pretend to like cricket if you don’t and don’t expect to get offered a writing job immediately. See it as a research opportunity for your target organisations.

4. You can also use Twellow, a Twitter yellow pages, and Twitter itself to look up the names of people in target organisations, and then follow them and start legitimate conversations about your overlapping interests. You can also join groups they are in and contribute to them, if that’s appropriate, if you have something genuine to contribute that is. If you have a real interest in the same subjects as the people you are following you will make any following real and unforced. I am definitely not suggesting you harass people.

5. You can do online research before every job opportunity on the organisation you are thinking about working for. You can learn a lot about an organisation’s culture by tracking their LinkedIn, Facebook, and blog sites too. You will learn the basics from their website, but you will get under their skin on social media sites. People reveal where they are

80 going, what they are doing and what they are interested in on social media in a way that was never done before.

6. You can join LinkedIn and Facebook groups where likely media executives hang out and start conversations to build relationships.

Groups are ideal places to build relationships with people you don’t know. Being interested or useful to the group will help. If you are a programmer writing about a new programming language it is appropriate to join a group in that area, if you want something published.

7. You can turn your writing CV into a blog post, a video, a slideshow and an infographic too. There are services online which will take your basic materials and turn them into something exciting, or you can learn how to do these things yourself. A slideshow is an easy way to get across your skills in a bullet point fashion. Slideshare.com provide a free service, it has some limitations, but you can upload a PowerPoint type presentation and as long as you keep it short (up to 7 slides is good) you will have a way of sharing your key skills easily.

Other examples of using social media to get a writing job include:

81  On Facebook, where you can use the BeKnown app to search and apply for writing jobs. You can also use BranchOut, a networking app, to search for opportunities.

 On LinkedIn there are groups of like minded professionals in almost every professional specialisation. You can use these to build your network.

Even if you don’t use social media to get a writing job, it is very likely that your social media identity will be investigated and read by potential readers.

Social media sites for your industry will also provide you with specialist contacts. Bulletin boards are the oldest form of social media and you may still find some useful ones in your specialist area. If you’re a graphic designer writing about design, then Pinterest may be a good way to get your ideas across. If you’re a photographer then Flickr is likely to be a great source of information.

By combining social media research with these web sites and social media tools you can accelerate a search in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago.

82 6.4 SOCIAL MEDIA AND CREATIVE HAPPINESS?

Social media is proving so

good at making people

happy many are getting

HTTP://W addicted to it. WW.ISKOU K.ORG/EVE NTS/IMAG ES/NETWO RKING_IM AGE_SMAL L.JPG

In a study of 17-20

year old students in the US, when the students were asked to go without all electronic media for 24 hours, one of the key findings was that students used the language of addiction to describe how they felt about being cut off. The students hated being deprived of their social media fix and reported feelings of withdrawal, cravings and anxiety.

A second study of the happiness social media can induce found that boasting about yourself on social media can be as pleasurable as eating chocolate, making money or having sex. The findings also provide some evidence as to why people are willing to share intimate details of their lives on social media sites.

83 The effect of receiving constant micro doses of dopamine – the happy hormone – due to the pleasure of seeing mentions, posts or Retweets, social media attention, is reliable accepted to cause a mild addiction effect among users of social media. How mild will depend on the individual.

This addiction is likely to lead to greater commitment to social media over time. This effect is likely to multiply too, as more and more people commit time to social media and it becomes further entangled with our personal lives.

Social media drop outs may become the Luddites of the coming decades.

There is a view that our brain circuitry will be reshaped by social media.

We may become more intelligent or more outgoing.

If that is the case then social media will contribute to long term effects, which we cannot predict. Its effect on authors of all types is still ongoing, but it is already leading to a cultural shift from the inaccessible author to the phenomena of the accessible author, the author we can contact online.

84 It’s not all upside in the world of social media is it? We’ll have to monitor our usage of this medium. Balance is the important thing, I suggest, and an awareness of the changes taking place around us.

My recommendation is to ensure you get plenty of breaks from social media and to restrict the number of times you check sites, to ensure you are not investing too much of yourself in it.

Already we are seeing a decline in television viewing, the previous electronic addiction of the modern age. I see no reason for this not to accelerate due to the benefits and psychological effects of social media, including sites such as YouTube, which is still growing fast and illustrates a human need to share.

Internet addiction centres have been opened in South Korea and governments in other countries, China, Malaysia, the UK and the US, have all expressed concern about these issues.

It is likely that these concerns will continue while we come to terms with the long term impact of social media.

If you have targeted the mass market for social media projects, please keep in mind the likely long term effects that social media addiction will have on you and on your readers.

85 HTTP://BL OG.SYSOM OS.COM/W P- CONTENT/ UPLOADS/2 011/03/S UCCESS1.JP EG

6.5 SOCIAL MEDIA AND SUCCESS

Success is not a clear cut thing. If I get a publishing contract or sell five

hundred books as an independent author that might be viewed as

success. But for other people only great wealth signifies success.

I propose that success should be judged by the achievement of our

creative goals. President Roosevelt said, in his

inaugural address in March 1933, that

“happiness lies . . . in the thrill of creative

effort,” and I agree with him.

I rate the enhanced global cooperation from the use of social media as a

real success story for humanity. I expect we will see more of that play

out as social media driven interaction and greater connectedness shape

our culture over the long term.

All this seems common sense to me. If you are interacting with a large

group of readers, people all over the world, as opposed to simply

interacting with readers from your immediate neighbourhood, as most of

us did until only very recently, the tendency will be to treat those people

with respect, and cooperate.

I hope you will accomplish your achievements through the help of social

media. I see almost no area of writing that cannot be impacted in a

86 positive way by this phenomenon. Just make sure you get your balance right.

FIVE KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER SIX: 1. Your health can be positively impacted

by social media. Whatever ails you there is

a resource online that you can use.

2. Two aspects of a better life, political

change and giving to charity, are both being

impacted positively by social media.

3. When you need a writing job social

media can help your search, help you

connect with communities dedicated to your specialisation and provide contacts and in-context apps to help your search.

4. In this chapter we have also recommended that you seek a real balance in your life. Social media can be addictive.

5. As regards success, that will be up to you, but we will be delighted to hear your success stories so Tweet them to: @LPOBryan.

CHAPTER 7 – HOW SOCIAL MEDIA HELPED ME.

In April 2010 there were approximately one hundred and thirty five million blog sites in the world, as tracked by BlogPulse.com. By

2015 there are expected to be well over two hundred million blogs.

Despite the growth of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs have not died.

In early 2010 I read that writers were expected to have a blog and a

Twitter account if they wanted to get noticed. I had been writing novels in my spare time since 2000. I even won a prize at the Southern

California Writers conference in 2007, but despite that, and agents praising me for my writing, I still hadn’t signed an agent, never mind achieving the writer’s nirvana of a publishing contract.

In April 2010 I started my own blog and opened a Twitter account. In the first month I got a mighty 126 hits on my blog site and recruited about a 100 Twitter followers.

I read that it was important to create a series of posts that potential readers might find interesting, so I created a series over the next few

88 months about the research I had done for my novel. I also started following other writers, and their followers on Twitter. Then I created a couple of short YouTube trailers for The Istanbul Puzzle, my first novel.

It was all very time consuming. I started getting up earlier and earlier, but the process gave me hope that even if I didn’t win a publishing contract I could start selling my novels myself via Amazon.

Self publishing is not the despised world of vanity publishing anymore.

It’s not about spending thousands to see your book in print and hand delivering copies to friends and family. Most self publishers simply make their books available in ebook and print format by uploading them to

Amazon and the other main book selling sites. Then they start selling them all over the world.

In February 2011 I got 512 hits on my blog. I had about 3,000 Twitter followers that month. The following month I was offered a publishing contract for three books by Harper Collins UK. They loved the combination of a good novel and a social media presence.

I firmly believe that you have to have something good to sell, a good book, story or whatever, but you’ll certainly have a better chance of selling it if you have social media behind you.

89 I know that social media helped my book achieve a number eight placing in the overall UK Kindle paid-for book sales charts in February 2012 and that it helped sell the book for translation into 10 foreign languages and generate interest from LA film producers. I doubt that it would have achieved such success without the platform that social media provided.

The practical ways social media has helped me are as follows:

1. Making contact with people interested in me and my writing from literally all over the world. I am constantly surprised by the people contacting me and where they are from.

2. Helping me to win a three book global publishing contract with one of the world’s leading publishing houses. This was the culmination of a real personal dream.

3. Helping me stave off loneliness as a writer by having real interactions with followers every day. I received a huge amount of encouragement from Twitter and Facebook friends around the world as I wrote the puzzle series.

90 If you too want to achieve your dreams, you can use social media. It will ensure you have a better chance of getting noticed.

If you are not doing something with real meaning for you in social media though, you will find it difficult to put in the time necessary to achieve your goals. Follow your heart in social media, do the things you’ve always dreamed of doing. That way everything you do will have greater resonance and meaning. Don’t just do what you think is right. Follow your inclinations and share what you want to share.

If you can identify your themes, the things that drove you to write, and integrate them into your social media, either with a blog or in some other way, it will be easier to invest your time in it.

It may take a while for you to see results, and you may have to push yourself in ways that you have never done before, but personal success is possible with social media.

By giving ourselves the freedom to create we can achieve fulfilment and slow the never ending cycles of consumerism all around us. The joy of creating things is the cure for the sickness of consumerism.

FIVE KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER SEVEN:

1. Within less than a year of starting my blog and Twitter account I was attracting attention from people I really wanted to work with.

2. Most people will respond positively when they see what you are doing on social media.

3. Experiment and find out what suits you in terms of your social media identity and usage.

4. Perseverance is critical. Don’t give up.

5. Create what has meaning for you and you will find it easier to invest time and to connect with people about your passions.

92 CHAPTER 8 – ARGUMENTS, MISTAKES AND MYTHS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

7 key arguments for using social media:

1. To get noticed. It’s all right if you want to stay unknown as an

author, but if you want to get noticed these days, social media is a great

way to do it. Getting noticed is important for all types of people not just

writers. In the past it was ok for writers to hide away and not talk, not HTTP://WWW.TECHCLICKR.COM/WP-CONTENT/UPLOADS/2013/01/NEGATIVE-SOCIAL-MEDIA.JPG communicate; you were forgiven. These days people expect writers to be

able to overcome all that. Stand up, get noticed, be strong, the PR

people tell us. And they are right, readers want to hear from new writers

with new stories. We need new voices!

2. Social media will allow you to connect with readers, partners, and

all the other groups who you work or play with. Social media is a

communications tool where you can reach out to groups of varying sizes

and send them all a message, as well as sending messages to just one

person.

3. It’s a positive step to take. By taking action on social media you are

sending a positive message. There are many groups who will appreciate

this positive message. People under 30 – the Net Generation - are mostly

93 on social media already, so whether they are readers or other partners they will be encouraged that you are getting engaged with social media.

4. It’s good for your well-being to be more open and communicative.

In the old days, and for some sections of society this is still true, secrecy and cover up were the order of the day. I agree that many traditional things are good; family, culture and sport are just three, but we have found out, all over the world, that secrecy and cover up can be used by criminals who steal, corrupt political life or abuse children. Being open is symbolic, for me, of a rejection of the people who did those terrible things.

5. It should be good for your bottom line too. Using social media to increase your readership is a commendable goal. The bottom line is what’s it’s all about for many people. You can measure the impact of social media, click by click, so all the better. To deny that a new communications tool can have an impact on readership would be like a

1914 era writer saying the same about the telephone. The only question should be; how much will you get involved with these tools, not whether you should or not.

94 6. You can build a community of supporters who can help you too.

Who doesn’t want supporters?

Building a community is vital

online. They can be readers,

publishing industry people or

media types, whoever you

need to communicate with.

7. Develop ideas. Listen to what your communities have to say on social media. You can learn a lot. Listening is key to that. You can find out what people like and dislike, how many have expressed their views on each subject and how you can improve what you do. Listening and developing ideas from analysing the volume of negative and positive mentions, Tweets or other posts on any aspect of what you do will enable you to base your work on real feedback, if you do decide to take ideas on board. And it’s your call on whether you use the feedback you receive.

7 mistakes you can make when using social media:

1. Dabbling. If you only do a tiny amount you are going to get a tiny pay back. Unfortunately, like most things in life, you get back what you put in. This is why it’s so important to be involved in creating social

95 media content that you find meaningful. If you write about or Tweet about something you have no interest in then you will find it difficult to sustain your effort over the months ahead.

2. Ignoring it. Social media is coming and you can't stop it. Get on board or get left behind. Would you have held out against the telephone too?

3. Not aligning your social media goals with your writing goals. The goal of social media is not to simply acquire more followers. Sure, there are plenty of people who want to just do that, but a writer needs to align social media to whatever their personal goals are. Social media can be a hobby, but it can also integrate with your work by allowing you to extend that work online. Engaging/talking with followers is key. Focusing on quality posts, related to you book or books, not just the quantity is critical as well.

4. Thinking it's just a marketing and PR thing. Every aspect of what you do can benefit from the research, communications and feedback service that social media provides. Social Media can be everywhere.

5. Copying others, not innovating. I can understand it when you start off, you look at what’s been done by other big players and you emulate, but eventually copying won’t be enough. You’ll need to come up with

96 something new and innovative yourself. That will take real creativity and an environment where you feel comfortable to experiment, test, fail, and know you will survive. There are risks, but there are real rewards too.

6. Being too serious. Sure, social media is serious at times, but it’s also light hearted. Don’t expect all of your messages to be super cool and super important. Sometimes you’ll put your foot in your mouth with social media. Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world. And if you do make a mistake, don’t forget to smile!

7. Not moving on. Social media is changing fast. In the time it has taken to write this book some aspects are changing significantly.

Facebook is changing. Services are evolving. Twitter is changing how it will support the software that links with it, providing more options for audio, video and images. And LinkedIn is offering your contact details to anyone who is willing to spend enough to buy them! The only constant in social media is change. Keep up to date by following social media blogs and stay tuned for new developments. You will find a list of resources at the back of this guide. The most important services of the year 2020 are still only a developer’s dream.

6 myths about social media:

1. You don’t have to make a plan. Social media seems such a no brainer. Just get a LinkedIn account, get Facebook and start Tweeting.

Sure, that may work if you’re doing social media for limited personal needs, but if you see writing as a business, which it increasingly is for many, you will need a plan.

2. Social media is for the self-obsessed. I’m sure you have seen blogs and Twitter streams that are self-obsessed, but the goal of any good blog should be to deliver something positive for your audience. It’s not enough to write about your garden and your latest poem, write something that can help people. Give back. If it’s just about you, your readership is going to be very limited and they won’t come back very often. Create something of real value and you will be rewarded.

3. Social media is free. Sure social media sites such as Facebook and

Twitter seem to be free, but what about all the time they suck up? And

what about all

the other

things you

98 could be doing? Economists call that “opportunity cost”. The first thing to do is to work out how long you are spending on social media. The second thing to do is to work out what is the minimum amount of time needed to get the essential elements of social media done. Then, if you know how much your time is worth, you know how much you are really investing in social media.

4. Is social media just another form of advertising? Social media is much more than advertising. It’s a way to build connections to readers.

Social media has a traditional advertising element to it, but the aspect of building relationships, for a wide variety of purposes, cannot be ignored.

Social media is something new, which many traditional authors will find difficult to fit into their way of doing things, but that doesn’t mean they can’t develop new ways of doing things.

5. Social media will consume your life. Social media can take up a lot of time. It is addictive. But it doesn’t have to be. Many people use social media sparingly and still achieve good results. Social media can be set aside for a particular time in the day and then you can move on to other things. Time management is important. You can closely regulate the amount of time you spend on social media.

99 6. Your publisher or spouse does not “get” social media. But hold on!

Don’t assume that just because a “partner” hasn’t taken an immediate

interest in social media that they

don’t get it. Social media has

permeated all areas. If they

genuinely don’t “get” social

media your job will be to

convince them, with

whatever proof you can find, that social media can work for

your situation, and that it delivers results, as well as making us look

popular.

http://soshable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Effects.jpg

100 KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER EIGHT:

1. You can use social media to get noticed. You can also use it to connect with people, whether they are publishing industry people, readers or friends. It takes effort, but you will be rewarded.

2. Be open and communicative. The world is changing and the business of writing is changing too. Social media is leading to more openness, which is a good thing. You won’t get anywhere on social media without openness, but you can still decide on your personal boundaries.

3. Social media should be good for the bottom line.

4. Be consistent in your approach to social media. And make sure you get involved in multiple platforms as you uncover what is best for you.

Test and retest to see where you are getting real results.

5. Be innovative. Develop new approaches until you find the ones that work for you. Don’t just rely on your competitors for ideas.

6. Stay up to date. Keep an eye on the main industry blogs, including my blog socialmedia4writers.com and my industry social media news

101 Flipboard magazine style site on a regular basis to ensure you are not left behind.

7. Plan your time spent on social media carefully. You will have to make sure you are balancing the time spent on this with all of your other

priorities and commitments.

8. Partners may not “get” social media. They may need you to show them the practical benefits.

102 CHAPTER 9 – SUPERCHARGING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA WITH 12 STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES

There are a variety of storytelling techniques that can be used to enhance social media postings. Twelve such techniques are listed below:

1. Conflict. Since time immemorial we have gathered by the camp fire to listen to tales of monsters, murders and battles long ago. An interest in stories about conflict seems hard-wired into our genes.

Conflict doesn't simply mean having a bad guy and a good guy either, your antagonist or protagonist, it's also about taking on the "machine".

The challenge for writers as social media users is how to use storytelling techniques to increase the audience for any given online post, to build its emotional resonance. I use post to describe anything from a short Tweet to a longer blog post or article.

If you can frame your “writing brand” or your output as a struggle between good and evil, then you can build the emotional involvement that will inspire people to Retweet, mention or pass on your post. If you

103 do this, you will have reframed your post using one of the oldest storytelling techniques.

Using conflict is, as you know, about creating two opposing sides with different aspirations or desires. Conflict underlies much of human endeavour and the most successful stories.

The story teller’s ability to identify the conflict in any situation is critical.

Think about who your book will impact. Think about who will lose out and who will be helped. You can refer to the opposing forces in your book for inspiration for any post.

2. Empathy. Another storytelling tool for enhancing your social media posts, creating engagement and a sense of involvement is empathy.

Empathy is about compassion or rapport. In storytelling terms it is our ability to place readers in the shoes of our characters, to get them to understand what it’s like to be that character. So how do we do that in a social media post? Here are some things to consider:

2. 1. Speak from the heart. Talk about the personal and human impact of the post’s subject matter on yourself.

2. 2. Talk about the emotional and physical impact on others. Provide details, which would be hard to fake. Make it real.

104 2. 4. Explain how what you do impacts people generally. Don't simply name what’s happening. Describe how people react internally and externally to the subject matter. This is showing, not telling, which I am sure you are familiar with.

Empathy will be inspired when people see themselves in the position of one of your characters or of someone taking the advice in your book or reading about an historical subject, if that’s what you have written. If you have described this in personal terms, your posts will have a greater punch.

3. Tension. Creating tension, the need to read on, to find out what happens next, is another storytelling technique that writers can use to build engagement with followers.

I'm not suggesting that each post should have a cliff hanger embedded in it, but I am encouraging awareness of how tension can be used online.

Media, PR and marketing staff at many companies use these technique for adding tension to create interest in corporate stories. When you see leaks about new iPhones or other products this is what’s going on.

105 The majority of readers of such posts, about an “exciting” upcoming product, will not only look out for further posts about the story, they are

also more likely to become engaged with the

sites that deliver those teasing posts.

Foreshadowing is only one technique for

building tension. Dropping opposite types

together does it too. So does anticipation

of an event, an award or a launch. Any

looming major change, rescue stories or mysteries from the past can also be used to add tension. There are other tension building techniques too, as you know. Think about what engages you when you watch a movie filled with tension.

You may only use a few of these tension building techniques, because of your situation, but it is important to be aware that you can build engagement with tension if the opportunity arises.

Tension is a very useful tool. A launch date for a new book, a new contract, blog post or video trailer are all easy opportunities for tension.

Identifying others for your situation, that’s your challenge.

106 4. Characterisation. Another storytelling technique you can use to build social media engagement is characterization.

Characterization builds empathy between the reader and the people in your post or series of blog posts or Tweets.

Characterization is about revealing personal details. It's in the previous advice to "be personal", but we can expand on that idea to give real depth to a personal or business brand. This is about giving your author brand a character and about choosing what your brand stands for. Self- published success stories, such as Hugh Howey and Barry Eisler, have created a brand for themselves based on their vocal opposition to traditional publishing.

You can also reveal real personal struggles, growth pains, strengths, pitfalls and weaknesses through characterization.

The keys to fast characterization in fiction are markers. Where are you from, where you are based, how old you are, who are your supporters and your readers, these are all potential markers you can mention.

Think about how you can use such markers of character to give your posts the characterisation edge.

107 Show, don’t tell is one of the oft-quoted pieces of advice a writer receives.

But how is this done, in practice?

Instead of saying the main character is a good woman, for instance, you can show her taking an old man across the street, helping children, or saving people's lives.

But how can we do that in social media? Five star reviews on Amazon are just one example of how you can show the pleasure people get from your book.

Another way of showing, not telling, if you like your social media posts to be more personal, is for you to give examples of what’s happening in your own life, describing how you felt at important stages of your

108 journey, for instance. I am not suggesting you talk about what you had for breakfast. I am suggesting you talk about where you are on your writer’s journey.

The way to add real depth, of course, is by providing real detail. The truth always shows through.

Showing, not telling, is one of the most important techniques you can use to supercharge your output.

6. Spilling your guts! It takes real guts to be a writer. Readers can smell, straight off the page or from the screen, when someone is being honest in their writing. Putting in the honest details, all those heart wrenching feelings and episodes, makes a novel or any piece of writing readable and engaging.

We can use these techniques in social media too. We may not have much room in a Tweet, but it is amazing what you can get across in a few sentences, with a little thought. As either Voltaire, Mark Twain or

Winston Churchill once said, depending on who you believe, if I had time

I would have written you a shorter letter.

If you dig deep, and reveal something in your blog or Tweet or post, you will find it easier to build engagement. Keeping it bland is a recipe for

109 losing your followers. I understand there's a difficult line to tread between being open and being too open, but I encourage you to push that line as far as possible towards openness.

If you take a few gambles in this area you can develop an engaging, open style that will see followers come back for more and more, just to find out what's happening in your corner of the world.

7. Points of view. Point of view is about whose eyes are observing what happens in your posts or Tweets, whether long or short.

Don't assume that this is if no importance to social media. It is. Here are some point of view options to think about. At the very least they should give you ideas for new posts. For the purpose of this point, let's assume the Tweeting party below is a self-published writer:

7.1 Omniscient POV, "Everyone loves the new book." An omniscient narrator claims knowledge of every corner of the world. Generally considered an out of date style these days in fiction, you can still use it, with some tongue-in-cheek attitude, on social media.

7.2 First person. "I love my new cover!" You will, typically, create a character for this point of view, through whom the posts will be made.

110 The character could be you or a fictional character who will perhaps, on

occasion, voice some generally-unspoken thoughts to liven things up.

7.3 Second person point of view. "You will love our take on local history." http://socialmediaseminars.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/socialmedia1.jpeg

Rarely used in fiction, but often used in song writing, second person POV

has a place in social media. You can use

this POV to ask people to follow you too

- "you can follow us here," or get

people to ask questions - "you are

welcome to ask any question you like

about how I researched this book."

You can also alternate with first

person, between "you" and "I" posts, highlighting possible comparisons

in views between these identities.

7.4 Third person. Third person POV uses he, she, it and they. "Father’s

day present to buy? He will love our local history book." The most

common point of view in fiction, as you know, third person can range

from close-third, such as the post in the quotes above, where you

assume you know the thoughts of the person you are speaking about, to

distant third, "he might like our new local history book," where you don't

claim to know the inner thoughts of whoever you're speaking about. The

111 narrator here, the person who is making these claims, can be visible or invisible. If they become visible they can start to interject their own views, called narrator intervention, as well.

The reliability of the narrator is something to consider too. In general social media requires a reliable voice or narrator, but comedy posts – mild or not; "This is the best local history book in the whole world!" can use a less reliable narrator.

1. Social media can accommodate multiple points of view over time. The only limit will be your imagination and what is appropriate for your situation.

Using the senses. Sight, taste, sound, smell and touch are the five traditional senses that connect us to the world. When you read about them the written word comes alive, and engagement increases. But can we use senses in social media? Here are five short examples to whet your appetite:

 The electric blue of our new cover was chosen to illustrate X

 You can have the taste of success, champagne and caviar, if you read our new business management guide.

 My silence today online is simply because…

112  The smell of coffee in the café I am writing in is wonderful!

 When you touch our new cover you will understand the pleasure that high quality craftsmanship brings.

I know you won't be able to use each of your senses every day, or anything like that, but thinking about using sensory information in your posts will expand the range of things you can talk about and increase engagement with readers by connecting you with their senses.

Think senses when you are looking around for something to post about and you will be using a successful story telling technique.

2. Subplots are additional threads to a story, which add depth and allow you to weave complexity into what otherwise might be seen as a one dimensional series of posts. They are a staple of commercial fiction and

TV programs.

The techniques of sub plots can be used in social media posts too:

9.1 If you are posting as a local writer, for instance, you can talk about the person who helped you with some research, or about a building about to be torn down.

113 9.2 If you are an international writer you can also talk about "typical," anonymous or named readers – with their permission - by giving examples of reactions to your book worldwide.

9.3 If you are a long struggling writer you can post about your struggles to find the right way to tell your story, or about what inspires you. These can be up to date anecdotes or memories of what your life was like a long time ago.

9.4 You can talk about the trips you made for research purposes and what happened to you on them.

Sub plots are probably one of the easiest ways to post about what you do. Many people are doing this already without even knowing it.

10. Raising the stakes is a classic

technique for raising interest in a story. If

you make things important for the

characters, make it a life or death situation for instance, or more realistically, make what will happen have a deep impact on people’s lives, then more people will be interested in your online writing.

Can we use this technique in social media too? Yes, I believe we can.

114 Writers are not typically involved in saving lives or ground breaking research or real life murder mysteries, but we can find ways to raise the stakes. Here are some examples:

10.1 If you're a local writer, again, you can post/Tweet about an anonymous person who gave you a tip about a local scandal.

10.2 If you write about wine you can post about the dangers of alcohol.

10.3 If you're a business author, you can post/Tweet about an anonymous source who helped you to understand the inner workings of some corporation.

10.4 If you're an artist writing about your process you can post/Tweet about how you try to capture beauty or truth in each painting or sculptor you create.

10.5. If you're a designer you can post/Tweet about how your designs make your customers were inspired by your work.

In each case the stakes here are

about “important” things, they are

about family, business, and our urge

115 to create, one of the most important urges we have.

11. Romance, now how the hell are we going to involve romance in social media?

Can’t you guess?

Romance is, after all, often either the main plot or a subplot in most popular movies, TV shows and books. Isn't it time social media postings included a little romance too?

We can all use a little romance, and a little bit of emotional openness, to engage blog readers and post readers. Here are a few examples:

11.1 Offer a 2 for 1 price on books, on the anniversary of the day you met your wife, got engaged or got married or your readers did.

11.2 Similarly, you can offer free chocolates with your books or flowers or whatever fits in with what you are involved in, on a special day for you or on any special readers’ memorable day.

11.3 Respect the power of love. Simply provide links to romantic poetry, books or movies at special times for you or others.

116 11.4 Celebrate family and/or couples with images pages on Pinterest or

Flickr for anniversaries or special occasions. You can make these open only to people you know too, if you are worried about privacy.

Use a little of the magic of romance to spice up your posts occasionally and watch people come back for more.

12. The Cliff Hanger. Everyone who reads popular fiction and watches

TV knows what a cliff hanger is.

The viewer is hooked into coming back for the next episode, to find out what happens to the hero. Every genre uses the cliff hanger, so don't think it's just a pulp fiction or a B movie technique either. Some are just more subtle about it than others.

But can the cliff hanger be used for social media posts? I suggest yes. In fact I recommend it as a way to keep people involved and coming back.

So how can we use it? Well, it will take a little thought, but with a dash of openness I am sure you can come up with some real cliff hangers about what you do. For instance try talking about:

12.1 The uncertainty about how many books you will sell.

117 12.1 The uncertainty about the story

you are writing.

12.3 The uncertainty about your next

novel.

12.4 The uncertainty about how many people will come to your launch.

Any time you are organising an event there is always anticipation and anxiety. You can use that.

12.5 The uncertainty about how a performer will perform at your opening. You can focus on the people performing as well as on the event.

12.6 Are you going to sell one million or two million copies of your new book? You wish? But maybe there is a realistic prospect of big sales.

Who knows what will happen?

12.7 Are you going to become number one in your genre on Amazon? If you are at a certain point, number ten or a hundred even, the race to the next level is always interesting.

With a little ingenuity I am sure you can come up with some real uncertainties, which aren't about lack of confidence, but are playful and

118 honest. You may not want to literally hang from a cliff, but a little uncertainty is good in life. It keeps us guessing.

TWELVE KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER NINE:

12 ways to use storytelling techniques

were outlined in Chapter 9. They are:

1. Conflict – create a good and a bad side to what’s going on. Then put these sides in opposition. Conflict is a vital element of a compelling story and should be used if at all possible in social media too.

2. Empathy – build rapport, show how you feel and take an interest in your followers. Real empathy will be worth ten types of faked empathy, and we can all practice building our empathy muscle.

3. Tension – build tension by withholding something. Make us wait to see what happens next. Tension is a vital ingredient in many types of story. You can find tension in unusual places too. Keep an eye out for how you feel about your book.

119 4. Characterisation – provide telling details, markers to instant characterisation. This works even when the characters are known, because people will need reminders occasionally as to who is who, and what type of person the characters in your posts are.

5. Show, don’t tell – let the reader of the post feel the rain on their face.

Don’t say it’s raining. You can tell sometimes, every writer does, but show as much as possible. And do it when it counts.

6. Spill your guts – honesty and openness are easy to spot. They’re credibility’s foundations. Readers will pick it up off the screen. Honesty is always the best policy, isn’t it?

7. Point of view – I, you, he, she, they, we, all want to say something.

Let your different voices speak. Just think about what each of these points of view can say about your writing for a quick way to some creative ideas.

8. The senses – involve sight, taste, sound, smell and touch to help us stay in touch with what you’re talking about. Senses add greatly to anything you’re writing.

9. Sub plots – side stories can liven things up, collect them and use them. They can really attract people.

120 10. Raise the stakes – make it about something important. Every post should be about something important. Think about what’s real and what’s important that you may not be revealing yet.

11. Romance – you can find a little romance almost anywhere. Use it occasionally. We all connect with romance, even the most stone hearted of us have a little private tear now and again and a beating heart.

12. A cliff hanger – you can make us wait to find out what happened.

You can keep us hooked and drag us back if your heroine is about to be unmasked or is about to do something heroic. You can also use reality or a touch of playful fiction in your posts and your Tweets too.

121

CHAPTER 10 – SOME SOCIAL MEDIA PUZZLES EXPLAINED

Social media can be viewed as a series of puzzles. When you first start in

social media it seems that everyone knows what you don't. The

HTTP://WWW.SAND PIPERBEACON.COM/ BLOG/WP- mysteries of social media are revealed slowly as you browse and CONTENT/UPLOADS/ 2011/06/HOTELS- SOCIAL-MEDIA.JPG experiment and learn. This chapter will explore some important pieces of

the social media puzzle, of relevance whether you're new to social media

or an old hand.

1. What are the goals of social media participation?

The first puzzle I'd like to explore is what are

reasonable goals for social media participation? The

reason this comes first, for me, is because how you

answer this will affect every other social media action

that you take.

If your goal is simply to increase sales of your books, then there will be a

series of steps you need to take to build relationships with people who

122 might be interested in reading or them, if you have more than one book to sell.

This would, however, be a very restrictive and stunted use of social media. It would be like installing a telephone in your offices and only using it for sales calls.

Every aspect of your work can be impacted positively by social media, if you let it. Research, industry knowledge, motivation and planning can all be helped by social media tools, which allow you to connect with people, listen and communicate.

You can also use social media as a creative tool as well as for all the above. It will allow you to express whatever you want; your love of

Tolkien or photography or Joyce or whatever.

You can use social media to build relationships too. Real relationships.

So when you are thinking about goals for social media, think about the many other sides of this puzzle, and think about the hidden layers that social media can open up for you.

2. Is social media a dog chasing its own tail, a self reinforcing bubble, or is it something that will last?

123 There has been a steady drum beat in the media over the past few years of Luddite type criticism of social media. Some commentators claim that it is all a waste of time, that social media is banal and trivial and that it will all pass.

My personal view is that social media is here to stay and that it forces cooperation and openness. To be otherwise on social media would lead to being flamed or being shunned. Cooperation and openness lead to increased learning, as we take on board new ideas too.

I don't think every Tweet or post is a symbol of progress, but there are enough positive ones, I believe, to make it obvious that social media is of benefit to humanity, overall, as a communication tool.

I do think there is a danger of over hyping social media, the way radio was over hyped in the 1920’s, with a large number of radio companies coming to Wall Street to sell shares.

But because many of those

radio stations went bankrupt

it doesn’t mean that radio

was a medium set to die.

Radio was hugely

124 important in the Second World War and since too. Rock & roll and the popular music revolutions of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s are just some of the things radio enabled. I believe social media will have a similarly important role in the decades to come.

3. Could social media be an agent of change in our culture?

As I said above, there are a number of commentators who belittle social media as an agent of change. I disagree with that view.

Social media could be as much an instrument of change as radio was, influencing politics, popular culture and comedy to name but a few areas. Social media, like radio, is simply a means of mass communication.

I believe the future of social media is bright and that it will be a force for positive social change, but I have no crystal ball to show you so I can’t prove it.

4. Where is social media heading?

Social media is changing fast. Facebook’s shares go down again, then up again, then down again. Google+ changes its look and feel, again.

Twitter is used to assess the political mood and the likelihood of a stock

125 market crash. Soon it will be used to predict riots and stock market

rallies.

Try searching for #socialmedia on Twitter and you will be assaulted by

HTTP://WWW.D DW.US.COM/WP - wave after wave of developments in social media. Every minute. No! CONTENT/UPLOA DS/2011/10/SO CIAL-MEDIA- CUSTOMER- Every second. SERVICE.JPG

But where will all this lead us? I see three clear trends, each of which

could lead to big developments:

4.1 The visual web. Instagram video, Google glasses and local YouTube

feeds may allow us to travel almost anywhere and experience everything

as ultimate-voyeurs, but beyond that expect artistic photojournalism,

fashion fabrics that change colour with your Tweets, permanent people

tracking, your visual life on a site, celebrity holograms at your local

fashion outlet and rebranding sites that will let you see how you might

appear with a few nicks and tucks.

The visual web may someday be a 3D phenomena too. Our screens may

surround us and allow us instant access to the thoughts and

recommendations of other people, and even to see what they are seeing.

We may eventually be able to piggy back onto other people’s lives, feel

what they are feeling, either through text or through visceral monitoring,

126 heart, sweat, body chemicals and the manipulation of our own senses, but all that is far off. Whether we get there is another thing, completely.

4.2 The auto posting trend. Expect your phone to auto post your location to your life-blog and your audio-to-text tweets to Twitter. Going beyond that we may be tracked by location posting sites for curfew enforcement, remote working and spouse spying applications – if things go the way they could.

Auto posts already make up a big percentage of the posts you see. That includes re-posts and posts simply made at a more appropriate time. The question seems to be, not whether you should auto-post an update on what you are watching on TV, but why you think your followers will be interested in learning that? Perhaps we will have training courses and later, degree course in “deciding what to post” and “deciding what to listen to and who to follow”.

4.3 The digital divide. The erosion of the middle class will lead to a divide between those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to pursue hourly deals on energy to heat our apartments and hologram delivered pop concerts and BiggerMac deals and the few of us who will need instant security services, auto-taser fencing and within-a-minute helicopter-extraction from urban locations. Security zones will extend to

127 elite stores, clubs and hotels, all invisible to the rest of us by their anonymous exteriors.

Whether that will lead to a sharper fragmentation in society is hard to predict. Certainly in the US there is a new elite culture emerging, the

Harvard/Princeton class, who intermarry and live in a gilded bubble, but such elites have always existed and I expect that any rise in this sector will eventually be undermined by the self-destructive nature of such arrangements.

5. How did we survive before social media (BSM)?

If my memory serves me we did just fine BSM. Sure, we had to wait to hear gossip, and read newspapers or magazines to find out what was happening around us, but we didn’t know what we were missing. The internet was initially about newspapers and selling or buying things and searching and we used it less (it was slow), and BSM we read more and spent more time watching TV, but I don’t think we were any healthier or wiser as a whole.

BSM we just didn’t know stuff. I can’t tell you whether it’s that important in the big scheme of things that we have intimate knowledge of each other’s lives, but I reckon this social media trend is unstoppable now. It’s

128 a genii that’s got out of its bottle. And I don’t know what spell will make it go back in again, but it will have to be a powerful one.

The only thing that could impact our use of social media is disruption to our electricity supply. And that would lead to a lot of deaths in our electric driven world. We will, I believe, be doing social media differently in the future, but I don’t think we are going back to the days BSM.

And yes, much of the above may happen before 2020. So if you want to

write about the number one social

media brand in that year, consider

incorporating some of the above

elements. In any case it will be

your ability to tell a good story that will make or break what you write. Luck still plays an essential role in all successful writing, but you do know what they say about luck; it’s better to make your own – the hard way, through lots of hard work.

For me these were five of the biggest puzzles about social media. You may have other ones you think are more important. I hope you will consider sharing those with us.

129 Please Tweet me on @LPOBryan if you have a puzzle you would like to share with readers. For me this is one of the most intriguing aspects of social media. How it is developing.

130 THREE KEY POINTS FROM CHAPTER TEN:

Some of the puzzling secrets of social media in my view are:

1. Do you know what your goals are? Are you taking

full advantage of the opportunities that social media is

providing or are you just using it to help you sell

books?

2. Is social media chasing its own tail? Social media

has real benefits. That is not just my opinion. Like

almost every human activity you can criticise time

spent on it. You can also suggest that the human

connections made are not as strong as the connections

we use with people in our local area, but I do believe

you can build useful relationships with people all over

the world with social media in a way that was

impossible before.

3. Is it an agent of change? Only time will tell

whether the changes in our societies as a result of

social media are long lasting or if we will eventually

turn away from technology. I strongly suspect that

131 technology will develop further and further. It may plateau at some stage and we may need to change how we do things, such as the annual obsolescence of many devices, but software and the internet are changing too fast and more and more people are finding innovative ways to use the web and getting employed in it, so I don’t think this wave of change is over yet.

132 SUMMARY

We have covered a lot of ground during the preceding pages.

Understanding social media, planning for social media, types of engagement, ways to monitor social media, arguments for and against are just some of the topics we have explored.

I intend to update this guide with changes and for errors readers find on a regular basis. I would be delighted to hear from you with corrections and suggestions.

I hope that you enjoyed taking the social media journey with us and I wish you well as you sail away into deeper waters. Please do get in touch with any stories you have of successes or failures on the way.

Finally, thank you for purchasing this guide, and well done for making it to the end. Your commitment to learning will stand you in good stead in the future as you develop your social media presence.

If you wish to know more about what I do to help promote authors online, see TheBookPromoter.com.

All the best from Dublin, Ireland.

Laurence O’Bryan

133 APPENDIX 1 – SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS (SOME FREE)

A selection of the most popular tools for social media are included below. This is not a complete list, but hopefully it will help you and inspire you to look for more!

Listening & monitoring: http://topsy.com/ Topsy - Real-time search for the social web Topsy.com allows you to search the global Twitter stream for mentions of names and phrases, as needed. http://www.twilert.com/ Twitter alerts via email by Twilert Twilert.com is a similar tool with options on searching in a geographic location. http://socialmention.com/ Real Time Search - Social Mention allows you to search current mentions across many social media sites. http://addictomatic.com/ Addictomatic: Inhale the Web create a custom web page with the current mentions for your topic http://www.fbsearch.us/ Facebook Search – Inside Facebook searches Facebook http://www.icerocket.com/ Icerocket blog search – search for blogs and more http://klout.com/home Klout The Standard for Influence – the key influencer score

Creation: http://wordpress.com WordPress.com A key blog creation tool, free for most uses http://www.tumblr.com Tumblr – Free short picture and graphic posting uber-cool blog creation https://www.linkedin.com/ LinkedIn – The business to business social media site http://www.blogger.com/ Blogger – Free Google blogging creation http://www.twitter.com/ Twitter – the gold standard in short blogging http://checkthis.com/ Checkthis – create a web site in a few clicks http://www.wix.com/ Wix – create another web site in minutes http://www.facebook.com/ Facebook - the number one social media site world wide

134 http://www.youtube.com/ YouTube – the number one video sharing site worldwide http://www.flickr.com/ Flickr – the number one picture sharing site worldwide http://www.pinterest.com/ Pinterest – the number one picture/style/fashion sharing site. You may want to use visualwatermark.com to copyright your images. https://plus.google.com Google+ - Google’s answer to social media http://soundcloud.com SoundCloud - Record and share sound for free – audio social media

Management of multiple social media sites: http://bufferapp.com Buffer – schedule Twitter & Facebook posts & track click through’s http://www.tweetdeck.com/ TweetDeck by Twitter – schedule, monitor and manage Twitter feeds http://sproutsocial.com/ Social Media Management | Sprout Social – schedule. monitor and manage http://hootsuite.com/ Social Media Management - HootSuite – schedule, monitor and manage http://xeeme.com/ XeeMe – create a single identity for all your social media identities

Insight & analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/ GoogleAnalytics – a lot of new analytics coming through here http://tweetreach.com/ How Far Did Your Tweet Travel? | TweetReach – does what it says https://bitly.com/ bitly | shorten, share and track your links – shorten links, then see how many use them http://twittercounter.com/ Twitter Stats by Twitter Counter – track your Twitter growth https://crowdbooster.com/dashboard/network/influencers Crowdbooster Dashboard - Your Network – analyse your Twitter network http://www.socialbakers.com/ Socialbakers (Facebook, Twitter…) marketing, stats – more stats https://viralheat.com/ Viralheat | Social media analytics – serious social media analytics

135 http://www.Retweetlab.com RetweetLab will assess sentiment, best day of the week to Tweet, your use of #hashtags and a range of other metrics

Miscellaneous http://www.justRetweet.com/ JustRetweet allows you to Retweet others Tweets and ask other to people to Tweet yours or follow you http://www.tweepi.com Flush & Follow Twitter users: Tweepi – follows & flushes people 20/50 at a time http://socialmedia4writers.com/– my social media blog – lots of posts! http://who.unfollowed.me Who Unfollowed Me on Twitter: Twitter Unfollowers – see who stopped following

HTTP://TWUBS.COM TO REGISTER A #HASHTAG

136 APPENDIX 2 – SEARCH OPERATORS & ADVICE FOR TWITTER

Below is a list of current Twitter Search operators, with an explanation:

“quotes” around your query allow you to find specific phrases.

OR allows you to search for two items

A minus sign (-) allow you to specify words you don’t want to see in the results.

To find tweets from a named user use: from:nameduser

To find tweets mentioning a named user use: @nameduser

To find tweets about concerts near a certain location use: concerts near:”London”

To specify a distance from the city use: concerts near:”London” within:25mi

To find tweets posted after a certain date use: since:2012-11-10

To find tweets posted before a certain date use: until: 2012-11-10

To find tweets with a questions use: ?

To include Retweets use: include:Retweets

137

APPENDIX 3 –12 BLOG POSTS FROM MY BLOG: SERVICES4AUTHORS.COM

#1 UPGRADING YOUR SITES

I just love that moment when someone says, ‘You need an upgrade.” It’s the way we live today, almost everything is fluid, from Presidents to web sites.

So, I’m upgrading. Much of this is in preparation for the launch of my next novel, The Nuremberg Puzzle. Here is what I will be doing:

1. Creating a new Facebook page. A page is different to a personal profile. It allows you to accumulate huge numbers of Likes, not the maximum five thousand friends you are allowed with a normal profile. Be aware though that Facebook restricts who sees your posts to a percentage of those who follow you. Each of your posts may reach only 10% - 20% of the people who like your page. To reach more you will have to pay Facebook to boost your post (wider advertising of your post), with no guarantee that you will get anything back from such a boost.

2. Moving my WordPress.com blog to a hosted .org site so it will improve on Google search ranking and have a cleaner look as a site & blog.

3. Updating my Amazon author page. I am always amazed at the number of authors who don’t list their web site, Twitter name, if they have one, and their complete bio.

4. Creating new videos for my YouTube channels, BookTrailers4You. Interviews and readings are all possible with YouTube.

5. Publishing posts on other sites. I have reached out to about 100 crime/mystery sites and will have posts on about 20 by the end of the year. Great reviews on respected sites can really boost your book sales.

138 6. Updating Goodreads with the books I used for research, Instagram with images and Pinterest too.

7. But most importantly of all, updating my Twitter profiles, Tweets and background images to reflect the new book.

It seems like a lot to do, but a few minutes a day is enough to get all this done. And writers who don’t market themselves online these days have a tiny chance of success!

139 #2 GREAT ONLINE WRITER'S COMMUNITIES

I have joined many online writers’ communities. The ones I found most useful were:

Authonomy - The Harper Collins site for aspiring writers. I attended a one day event they ran and got published as a result! I am now translated into 10 languages. What's not to love!

Backspace - I was active in this community for years. Their articles were very helpful.

Funds for Writers - I applied for an ArtsCouncil Grant here in Ireland, and I'm still waiting to hear good news! But this list for US organizations - http://www.fundsforwriters.com/grants/ - may help. This is a list of UK organisations - http://www.fundsforwriters.com/grants/ - that may help.

Goodreads - This site is mainly for readers, but you can register as a writer and run giveaways. I had 500 replies to a giveaway. I also enjoy some of the reading groups.

Preditors & Editors - Although I only used it a few times it opened my eyes as to what could happen to a writer.

International Thriller Writers is a useful genre group. They also run an amazing conference every July in New York. I attended one. It was fun!

Writing.ie - The Irish writing site with a constant flow of new articles on craft and great interviews. I attended a great PR for Writers day - free - as a result of this site.

WritersDigest - I attended online courses and strongly recommend their list of the best writers sites here - http://www.fundsforwriters.com/grants/ (pdf).

140

#3 - 13 SOCIAL MEDIA TIPS ALL AUTHORS SHOULD KNOW

1. Each platform is different. Facebook is a great relationship and website-hits builder. Twitter reaches new readers quickly. Instagram is good for brand building. Google+ is important for SEO.

2. Use tools such as TweetDeck.com and Bufferapp.com. They will save you time.

3. Different Facebook posts work in different ways. Pictures are good for engagement & shares, not always for click throughs. Link based posts (copied URLs – Google it if you are not sure what that is) are better for generating hits on your sites. Text only updates are good for questions and feedback, but will get less response.

Remember Facebook only shares 10% to 15% of your posts with your followers. They want us to pay to let all see them, which is why I recommend Wordpress blogs. You can use the free/low cost Wordpress.com option or the more expensive, host it yourself Wordpress.org option if you want a more sophisticated site.

4. Make your headlines work hard. Headlines that ask questions get answers. Headlines that tease get clicks.

5. Tag people you talk about in your posts. It helps people to discover your posts.

6. Enhance your pics. If you are in any way visually inclined you can use Picmonkey.com or Canva.com to make them even more interesting.

7. Engage. Answer all comments and notifications. When possible, or course! I allocate 30 minutes at the start of the day for getting back to people.

8. Be positive & excited. People can read between the lines so easily.

141 9. Keep Tweets less than 90 characters. Keep it short and sweet!

10. Tease. Ask if people know (Do you know . . .) or want to see or can guess ...

11. Tweet your best content again a week later. It's called Evergreen content. Weave it in again!

12. Try short videos. You can do a lot in 30 seconds. See BookTrailers4You on YouTube for some examples. The early 30 second ones are made by us. If you have less time try Instagram 15 second clips and Vine 7 second clips.

13. Link to Google+ & autoshare your posts there. It's great for SEO.

142 #4 - EXTENDING YOUR STORY WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

One aspect of social media for writers, which has been little discussed, is the idea of extending your story with social media. Social media is part of the new wave of communications, which is dominating the minds of hundreds of millions, with its instant tribal culture, its visual cortex stimulating nature and its snappy story-telling ability.

The challenge for writers in the 21st century will be how to integrate social media into their story telling.

I propose to take this challenge on for my new novel. Here's what I’ll be doing:

1. Using a hash tag #yournovelname on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and other sites to share links to images, videos and posts related to the story.

2. These images and posts, on my blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and my guest posts on other blogs, will add both fiction and non fiction elements to the story. For example the history of the Catholic Church in the World War 2 is a matter of historical fact, which can add depth to the story.

3. An online map, linked by social media, will allow readers to see where the locations for the story are in the world.

4. Conversations, via comments on the blogs and through Twitter will ask questions, answer questions, and explore the story in the book.

5. Book giveaways on Goodreads and my blogs will add excitement, I hope.

7. Links and posts on subject specific sites, about Pope’s Pius XI and XII, will engage people interested in those subjects.

The launch will be part of my ongoing experiment in using social media to extend the story and to attract readers.

143 #5 - HAND SELLING BOOKS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

I believe we are in a new age of hand selling or screen selling

(screlling?).

I have heard it said that one of the main benefits of a good bookstore is that you can have good books recommended to you. You can also meet authors when they come to the shop to sign their books.

But social media allows me to meet and greet readers and other authors and answer their questions. And I don’t have to wait long, because I engage with readers on social media every day. We get about 1,000 hits a day between this site, my social media for authors site, and

BooksGoSocial.com.

The main benefits of screlling are:

* You can meet people from all over the world and communicate with them.

* You can engage long term with readers, answering different questions over time and building up relationships.

* You can keep a track of people’s names or identities so you can tell them when your new book comes out.

144 * You don’t have to waste time and money travelling around and you won’t get wet if it’s raining.

The downsides are:

* You mightn’t make make strong connections with people, as you don’t get to meet people personally. However, I believe it takes more than one physical meeting to make friends with people any way. Multiple meetings and shared interests are just the start. And long term social media friendships can be meaningful too. I know this is true. I meet people who contact me on Twitter.

* You don’t get to see the cool sunsets from a different town if you go on a book tour. But book tours are almost dead anyway, unless you are a mega-author, which few of us are.

145 #6 - 7 MUST-DO TACTICS FOR PROMOTIONAL TWEETS

We all know that Twitter should only be used for self-promotion for about one in ten of the Tweets you send out. But that still means you can send the occasional Tweet, as long as you have given value to your followers in your other Tweets, either linking to something they might be interested in, replying to Tweets you have received or ReTweeting.

When it comes to the moment you can Tweet something promotional there’s some important things you can do to ensure you get the desired response, and don’t annoy your followers.

Here’s my take on how to get this right:

#1 Include a hook early on. Your title alone is not a hook. Your tag line could be a source of inspiration or you could quote from a review you got. Without doubt, the stronger a hook is, the better the Tweet is.

There is a real art to getting Tweet hooks right. Note the Tweets that hook you and emulate them, but add your own twist. If you can’t think of a hook don’t Tweet your book. I mean it. I def won’t ReTweet anything without a hook.

#2 Include a short link. Use Bitly.com or Bufferapp.com or one of the other services for creating short links. A link to a blog page or review of

146 your book is good, as long as the post or page has prominent buy links for your book. I worked with someone who had no buy links on their book pages, and who wouldn’t put them in when asked. Then he wondered why he wan’t selling any books!

#3 Include a # tag such as #ebook, if it’s an ebook, or #crime,

#mystery, #romance #literary #memoir etc if you want to identify your work with a genre. Don’t use more than two in any one Tweet.

#4 The only reason not to use a # tag is brevity. You’ll get more reads on your Tweets if your whole Tweet is less than 100 characters, so don’t overload your Tweet with #Tags.

#5 Include a picture to make your Tweet more attractive. Tweets with images, which show on the Newsfeed, achieve a greater number of click throughs. Don’t do it all the time, but this is a good way to vary your

Tweets.

#6 That’s the next point. Vary your Tweets. Change the wording, the attached images and the links to keep things fresh for your followers.

#7 You can Tweet your excitement about where you book has reached on the Kindle chart, a review you have received or some other good

147 news. This is a form of hook. It is also genuine and likely to attract real interest.

Getting your promotional Tweets right is important. You get orders and start conversations if you get this right. You can lose followers fast if you don’t.

148 #7 - 7 TRAITS OF THE SOCIAL WRITER

Writers are under increasing pressure. Low advances, intense competition and the pressure to self-market, to engage on social media, are making our jobs more challenging than ever.

I want to embrace this challenge. I hope you will too. Here are seven traits of the social writer. Being social is about using the social media tools that we are presented with.

1. Embrace pro-activity. If you have never written a blog post, never

Tweeted or made a YouTube video, now is the time to learn. Old dogs can learn new tricks. See a post as a short article you have been asked to write, a Tweet as a link to something interesting and a YouTube video as a chance to talk.

2. Embrace openness. I know many people think this means discussing our health problems or what we had for lunch, but it’s not. It’s about professional openness. That means talking about the ups as well as the challenges of being a writer. It means talking about our journey. It means discussing the work that interests you and the craft.

149 3. Don’t be afraid. Follow people on all the social media services. Don’t be shy. Many people I follow thank me for bringing my writing to their attention. Others don’t value it, but I am happy that I have found lots of people who do like my writing.

4. Do it every day. There will be some days you can’t, but aim to weave

30 minutes of social media into your daily routine. If that means giving up on TV or Soduko so be it. Do you want to find people to read your work or not?

5. Seek real connections. Look to transcend the tools. If you can make real connections with people, do it. It’s about helping, encouraging, being positive, all the things that make us social beings in the real world.

6. Work with others. Expand your potential by pulling people together into a network if you can. That can mean helping the writers in your writing group grapple with all this or helping people online. If you can share your good fortune in some way you will receive a return.

7. Keep yourself fresh. Read widely, spend lots of time offline, write daily. Keep your mental and physical ready for the ups and downs of the writers life. Social media is part of the writer’s journey these days, the way newspapers and radio were for earlier generations of writers.

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#8 – 5 FREE TOOLS OF SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS FOR WRITERS

Social media helped me get a global publishing contract. I am now translated into 10 languages. It helps me every day to promote my novels and the novels of the authors I work with. Here are the main five tools I use to build, manage and continuously develop a social media presence:

1. A blog. WordPress and Blogger are both good. You can use the free/low cost Wordpress.com option or the more expensive, host it yourself Wordpress.org option if you want a more sophisticated site.

WordPress.com is a good starting place for blogging. It has more design themes than Blogger, Google’s blogging tool. It also has a simple interface and lots of ways to use social media. Wordrpess.org allows integration with Google analytics, more add-on extensions and greater control over the look and feel of your blog. Many large firms use

WordPress.org as their web site content management system. You decide which one you want, but get blogging.

2. Twitter. My main account @LPOBryan has over 95,000 followers. I also have other accounts. Each of these accounts has been built up by

151 following readers over a four year period. The accounts I promote writers through now reach hundreds of thousands of real followers. I firmly believe that each Tweet you send should have valuable content, a link to an interesting post, news for writers or a great new picture on

Pinterest. Make each Tweet valuable and you will not lose followers,

3. Bufferapp.com a service which allows you to schedule Tweets,

Facebook posts and LinkedIn posts. This is a real time saver. It allows me to surf writer news sites, find an article I think will interest people

(adventure, interesting history, writing themes are what I like to read & post about) and press a button at the top right of my browser, Chrome, and the item link is auto-posted automatically at whatever time I have set up in the bufferapp settings. This is an amazing tool. I still use the free version daily.

4. Tweetdeck. is another great free tool. Instead of having to open

Twitter for each account or each list you have created and check messages, follows and @Notifications, each account is on screen all the time in a column format, once you open your Tweetdeck page. Lists, by the way, are the best way to make Twitter useful. Using Tweetdeck I can respond to everyone who mentions my Twitter name in a post, wants to ask me a question or say anything to me. Tweetdeck has transformed

152 the way I manage multiple Twitter accounts. My goal is to reply to everyone within a few hours of them sending me a message. It also allows me to schedule Tweets & retweets for later in the day and include inline pictures, pictures which appear below your Tweet for your followers to see.

5. Tweepi, for adding followers every day. I can add 50 followers who might be interested in my books or social media support services in about four minutes with Tweepi. I can also unfollow people who don’t follow me back and people who have stopped using Twitter. Tweepi is great for building your follower base. I see it as tapping people on the shoulder and saying “follow me back if you are interested” and then leaving them alone if they are not. I see no reason to read people’s

Tweets if they won’t read mine, so that’s why I unfollow most people who don’t follow me back. There are some exceptions though. I follow some writers, media people and amazing Tweeters and never unfollow them. I put them in a Twitter list to make sure I can see their Tweets easily. I love Twitter lists. Did I say that?

These are the main tools I use for building our presence on social media daily. I love technology too, so that makes it easier for me to do all this.

153 #9 – ONLINE CONTENT CREATION STRATEGIES FOR WRITERS

One of the most challenging tasks for any writer is what to create for social media. Twitter is important and we can Retweet, reply and link to other content with it, but if you have a blog or web site with valuable content you can draw people to your own site and expose them to your books, your writing or your plans for the future.

But what should you write about on your site?

I recommend that you consider creating a series of posts on a particular subject or in the run up to a milestone, such as the launch of a book.

Some other things to consider when you’re creating content:

* Setting a timetable – every Wednesday morning for instance – so that your followers will know when your material is coming out.

* Encouraging people to follow your blog or site with a prominent FOLLOW ME button near the top somewhere. With most blog sites the site will automatically email all followers with your new posts. (BTW Please follow us too!)

* Consider your target audience and your area of expertise to create suitable posts

* Listen to feedback and respond to comments

* Post occasional competitions, images and videos too, if you can

* Be positive, open and interested. Show your best side! An occasional moan can show the truth of what’s it’s like to be a writer – underpaid, overworked, challenged, but mostly people want to be inspired in one way or another. Good news always gets a lot of visitors

* Focus on helping people

* Describe your journey too.

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#10 – BUILDING LOYALTY AMONG YOUR READERS ONLINE

There are three classic methods for building a loyal following of readers online:

1. Provide something of value. Are you an expert? Can you share some of your expertise? Are you funny? Are you knowledgeable on a specific subject? Find something, if you are not. Find a subject you can provide your own take on and write about it on your blog or on Facebook or wherever else you hang out online.

2. Build trust. Trust is built through reliability, honesty, respect. Do you treat your followers with respect? Are you honest and reliable in your responses?

3. Provide something new. The new-kid-on-the-block phenomena allows everyone with something to say to get some limelight. The challenge is to maintain the innovations. Keep delivering new things and your audience will be loyal and it will grow. You may not be Neil Gaiman, but you can reinvent yourself.

Give and you will receive is the key message. Loyalty begins with your loyalty to your readers.

155 #12 – SOCIAL MEDIA CONTROVERSY 101 – 4 WRITERS

Would you be willing to court controversy to promote your writing?

There are more books than ever getting published. Millions! Seth Godin predicted there would be 12 million published in 2014 in the US. He was probably right. How many will be published this year?

That’s up from 300,000 in 2003 too, where most writers imagine we still are. And that’s excluding the millions published (self published mostly) in the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia and all the other English speaking places around the world.

So how can you get noticed among this vast crowd?

Controversy is one way. When I publish a controversial post on my blog the readership jumps 1000%. But is it worth it?

Ask Salman Rushdie. The controversy over The Satanic Verses propelled him to become an international literary icon.

Ask EL James. The controversy around 50 Shades of Gray made her a multi-millionaire

Then ask Stephanie Meyer. The controversy around the vampires in Twilight helped her to huge success.

So the question for you is, where is the controversy in your book?

But please consider this, are you willing to stand up for what you believe in?

Here is another question for you, do you think it is the writer’s role any more to take a stand, or should writers simply entertain?

For more blog posts in this area visit: Services4authors.com

156 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

So what makes me competent to write a guide on the explosive impact of social media and its impact on writing and writers?

Hundreds of thousand of Twitter followers, over a variety of Twitter accounts, a popular Facebook page, Pinterest page, LinkedIn page, Goodreads account, and blog sites are just the first reasons.

Being a novelist with a global publishing contract, translated into ten languages, all with the help of social media, is another. One of the reasons Harper Collins gave me that contract, apart from truly good content, was because I was active and successful on social media.

This is one of the keys to social media success in my opinion. You have to marry two things together, something good to sell, yourself, your book, and when you have that, you can use social media to help you succeed.

I am also a digital marketing lecturer, a course material developer, a facilitator, an optimist, and a believer in the power of technology. It has paid for a good living for me and my family and has supported millions of others all around the world for twenty five years and more, straight through three recessions and a depression. I don’t think it’s going to stop doing it now.

Social media is explosive too. If you’re blocked in some way, and you need to break through, use the tools and techniques in this book to help you.

When I started with social media I knew none of its secrets. Each of the key points in this guide would have been a revelation.

Please come to my blog Services4authors.com for regular updates on my take on the world of social media.

Most people these days want to be a part of social media. Everyone wants to know its secrets. I hope you have found some of them here.

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