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As a writer, when it comes to building your writer’s platform, social media is one of the easiest way to interact and build your brand. Everywhere you look it’s sell, sell, sell and you’re encouraged to promote you yourself.

Building a writer’s platform means marketing yourself. And with any form of marketing, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. You may not like the idea that you’re an internet marketer but you are. Unless you stay totally off the Internet, you have to get used to the idea that in your Corporation of One – you as writer, novelist, author – you have a marketing department (yes, it’s just you) and one area of that marketing department gets to work on the social media marketing side of the brand that is you.

Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves. (Philip Kotler, Principles of Marketing – via Wikipedia)

The most important thing to remember is you’re not ‘selling’ as such but building relationships. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are just three popular ways to do that amongst the many other options open to you as a writer. Although all three social media platforms are on the Internet does not mean you should treat them the same. Think leaflet, newspaper and magazine. They may seem similar – all paper-based with text and image but they’re very different and you should approach them differently.

Lucky for us writers, there are many articles out there that give us an idea of what to do and what not to do.

Be aware that people are no longer ignorant about the marketing tactics used by internet marketers anymore. They are tech-savvy. Everybody knows what you’re doing – and it’s not a crime to self-promote – but at least do it in a way to avoid alienating the very same people you’re trying to connect with. Because there is a fine line. They know what you’re doing; they understand you’ve got to do it but what they don’t like is you spamming, and screaming down their necks about your book, your blog, your product, you, you, you all the time. The emphasis is on ‘all the time’.

Be aware that not only is there a right way to involve yourself but also there is the level of involvement. There are some people out there who think the term ‘self-promotion’ is like being accosted by a salesman who knocks on your door on a Sunday afternoon when you least want to be disturbed. And with so many internet marketers doing it the wrong way ie spamming, it’s not surprising that digital marketing gets a lot of people fuming.

Some people get very involved whereas others may involve themselves by just doing the minimum. There is no right or wrong way when it comes levels of involvement; just be aware and don’t get upset when people do not respond or get as involved as you do or if they seem to interact too much in your opinion. There are the extreme lurkers (nothing wrong with that – lurker is not a nice word – let’s call them readers and everyone has been one at one time or another – you know days when you think you’ve got nothing to say) and the extreme participators (nothing wrong with that) but be aware you’ll meet the extremes and the ones sprinkled in between.

For example, when commenting on other blogs. Some people only read. Some people read and comment. Some people don’t read, don’t comment and just spam. People take time and effort to write blog posts – if the post helped you or you were inspired, comment and let them know. Every blogger appreciates relevant comments, relevant to the post. If you are going to comment, say something specific about the post so that the blogger knows that you’re not a spammer. I don’t mind people linking back to their own websites to relevant posts. But some people do mind that.

The best way to self-promote that doesn’t offend anyone?

Just hang out, be useful, participate and learn to really know your subject and be an authority on it. If you comment and provide something useful people who are interested will find you, your website and your articles.

What things do people do that irritates you? What advice would you give to aspiring writers so they don’t offend you?

[pic taken from here]

Similar Posts ~

Why Spamming Social Media Won’t Get You Very Far by Jennifer Mattern.

Social Media Etiquette 6 Lessons Learned From One Japanese Company’s Major Twitter Mistake by Neal Schaffer.

8 Twitter Habits that May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-followed by AugieRay.

What is a Writer’s Platform by Jessie Mac

How to Twitter by Jessie Mac

“Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days. What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Poet and Novelist

CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Daily Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)

What l have learnt:

• I saw a website offering a PDF, email and print options for their blog post. Great idea.
• You can still be rejected even if you’ve published many books before says Rachelle Gardner – The Learning Curve that Never Ends.

What I have done:

• Read ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter’ by Jeff Lindsay - watched some episodes of the TV series and then read the book. Enjoyed it.

WORD COUNT: Night Walker 128,000 in total. Friday 16 July 1700 words.

William Golding died in 1993 at the age of 81 having written 12 novels. There were other writings which included a journal of around 2 million words written over a period of 20 years.

It seems Golding was not the perfect man at all. He was clumsy, inept when it came to social etiquette and his life as a writer was without trying times.

Golding was rejected throughout his career as a writer. Lord of the Flies was turned down by 21 publishers. Faber’s reader Polly Perkins said the book was: ‘Absurd and uninteresting fantasy … rubbish and dull. Pointless’ quoted from the Spectator.co.uk’s post Reviving a Reputation by Philip Hensher. Here’s more:

After that, too, many of Golding’s novels were often greeted with a certain amount of carping. Even some of his best novels, such as Free Fall came out to a torrent of abuse. He never took the trouble to meet fellow authors, and at a Booker dinner in the 1970s is reported as sitting there with his wife, knowing nobody at all.

In the end, the daunting, sage-like hermit of his last years remained, as Carey respectfully and convincingly suggests, the same self-doubting, needy, self-critical but love-hungry man so unmistakably documented in Free Fall.

Golding was tormented by his own feelings of inadequacy. So we learn that even a great writer like Golding was still prone to all the negative thoughts all writers have experience. His self-doubt found its way into his writing. Like all of us trying to write everyday, these thoughts were probably like brakes on a car, crippling at times.

Golding was the eccentric recluse – the ‘archetype known to the trade’. The Independent.co.uk’s article William Golding, by John Carey said this of Golding:

As a writer, on the other hand – in his habits, obsessions and routines – he fits every archetype known to the trade.

As for the work – next to which all of Golding’s quintessential literary bad habits, the amour propre, the drunks and the misery, pale into insignificance – Carey is excellent on what gives the novels their distinctive patina: that odd mix of symbolism, derring-do and elemental human hurt. Here, inevitably, Golding’s detachment from the literary world works to his advantage. A sharper operator, who spent his time carousing with Kingsley and co., would have lost something in the process. You suspect that in the end he falls into Virginia Woolf’s invaluable category (first applied to Hardy) of “genius but no talent”. But it is this that makes him modern literature’s great outsider – not the sulks about Marlborough or the wasted days before the Bishop Wordsworth’s blackboard.

He was an island and was not ‘in’ with the literary crowd. The article also described Golding as a depressive and a drunk and he, like any writer could not dodge the bad reviews:

Free Fall’s middlingly hostile reception in 1959 is supposed to have set him back creatively for years.

Solitude was part of Golding’s upbringing. Christmas for William Golding meant family members spending time in separate rooms so writing and reading became his friends, a way to express himself and a way to participate. This is from Scenes From a Life

So I must have learned in the awareness of my own solitude that reading was a sort of companionship.

He read ferociously. He was not an island when it came to reading – see post by Lynn Price Ransom Notes about reading. So not only was reading a solace for Golding but as we can imagine he found comfort in his writing, his imagination and drink. As writers, we understand this. In the NewStatesman.com article William Golding the Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies Golding was said to have been “imaginative to the point of hallucination”.

He preferred to keep himself to himself. If you thought yourself as ‘a monster’ perhaps you too would hide. In the post A Talent for Writing and Falling into Things in the NYTimes.com, we find that

Golding was an intensely private man, one who gave few interviews and did not want a biography written during his lifetime.

The article also suggested he was aware of humanity’s potential for cruelty and the primitive nature of man. With this profound ability to understand human cruelty so well he thought himself as ‘a monster’. This brought about the fear of hurting other people for Golding and the urge to experiment. In an extract from ‘Scenes From a Life’, he hit his brother by accident and he described the ‘terror’ he felt creeping into the house and hiding ‘from everyone else under the dining room table’ even though later he found out that it wasn’t as bad as he had thought.

The article Author William Golding tried to rape girl, 15 spoke of his self-hate. The problem with journals, especially from the point of view of someone who seemed to be inside his own head most of time is that they’re very subjective, when strong emotions can distort events. Every man has a dark side but if you write about it and dwell on it, it consumes your thoughts. His dark side consumed Golding’s thoughts which led to musings, self-torment, and experimentation. Those who wrote about him may discuss his delusions snidely but to this man it was all very real. Demons feel very real when the demons are your own. And sometimes these demons inspire great writing:

“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis, and we’d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.” ~ William Styron, Writers at Work, 1958 (via Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen on Steffani Cameron)

He lived in a time when the writer’s platform was not something expected of writers. In some ways social media and blogging are the perfect platform for writers in that the Internet allows for the illusion of anonymity and privacy. But would Golding have used blogging and social media instead of writing in his journals or would he have done both? Would he show one persona in one and another in his private writings?

How many writers and authors out there who are only showing their ‘cheerful’ faces? I bet there are enough who can relate to Golding. But it’s not cool to have self-doubt, self-hate and be needy. No, of course, not. We don’t show that side of us until after our deaths.

What can you and I learn from William Golding?

That even with rejection throughout his life, he persisted. Sure, he stopped but then he carried on. We can do that too. Golding was full of self-doubt and still managed to write and get published. We can do that too. Even with the self-disgust, the drinking, the depression and not having the support of the writing community, he still kept going. We can do that too. He was dysfunctional socially and below par when it came to hobbies and personal pursuits and yet he still managed to write books and get them published. We can do that too.

So next time you’re feeling discouraged, think of William Golding and think if he can persist, then you can persist too. Are you moving? Are you persisting?

[pic taken from here]

Similar Posts ~

Stephen King – Read, read, read

Why Supporters Are So Important

“Fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.” William Golding – Lord of the Flies

CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Daily Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)

What l learnt:

• Do not send until you’re ready. Read Lynn Price’s Premature Submitulation post.
• This is funny – for people who are creating their own website – Time Breakdown of Modern Website (via amarketingexpert.com on Publishing Insiders Wrap-Up: Why Some Authors Fail). The latter states what you need to have on your website – what I’ve been going on about for the last few days.
• Twitter fiction: it’s not bad at all, good in fact – see Joel Friedlander’s Writing’s Next Frontier: Twitter Fiction for some great examples.

What I have done or decided:

• Added some iPhone apps recommended by Jane Friedman to help with writing.
• Going to cut down on blogging to a few times a week.

WORD COUNT: Night Walker 123,000 in total. Wednesday 7 July 500 words; Thursday 8 July 500 words.