Speaking of Social Media…

Promotion vs. Writing

By Columnist Marcia Meier
June 2012

One of the biggest challenges for a writer is deciding how much time and effort to put into promotion and marketing. We are writers, after all. Most of us would rather not deal with marketing at all. But at some point in our careers, it becomes a necessary evil. Today, I want to offer some suggestions for balancing these two tasks.
First, it’s important to set aside a designated time each day or week to devote to promotion and marketing. Your writing takes priority, of course, but you should also commit a specific percentage of time to marketing. I would say at least four to six hours per week should be the minimum. I usually set aside 90 minutes each morning to focus on social media marketing and promotion.

If you write fiction – novels or short stories – and you have not completed a book or collection yet, this blog is premature: You don’t have to worry about promotion yet. Keep writing and finish your manuscript. Once it’s done, then you can set out to establish your “platform,” begin blogging and engaging in social media, and promoting your work on social networks. At that point, there are any number of fun things you can do to attract readers, from blog tours to blogging (either as a character from your book, or offering portions of the novel, or even extra scenes and story lines that branch out from your original story).

If you write nonfiction, establishing your platform (that for which you are known), is important from the get-go. Agents and publishers will want to see that 1) you are engaged in social media as an expert in your field; 2) you are out in the community and world talking about and promoting yourself and the content of your book (Facebook and Twitter are crucial here); 3) you are doing everything you can to market your work with bookstores and online booksellers. If you can prove you have 10,000 followers on Twitter or 5,000 fans on Facebook, you have the beginnings of a solid platform.

With social media, it’s all about the content you share. Avoid self-promotion and DO NOT send a million tweets simply promoting your book. Successful social media engagement means offering something of value. So, snippets of information or guidance from your nonfiction book is fair game. Writing tips and information you find elsewhere on the Internet is, too. Go ahead and share a bit of your life. Let your followers and friends get to know you a little. All of these things add up to powerful social media capital. And that is gold when you are approaching an agent or a publisher. They want to know that you can attract attention and sell your book. Show them.

If you have some specific techniques that have successfully promoted your work, I’d love to hear them. Send me an email at marcia@marciameier.com.

And keep writing!