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How To Promote Your Writing On Social Media
Getting your writing seen is one of the most significant problems writers face. You can be as talented and hardworking as you like, but without your writing reaching the right audiences, it’s challenging to become successful.
The rise of social media is both a blessing and a curse for writers. Never has there been a greater opportunity to promote your writing yourself, but, because of this, the competition is fiercer than ever before, so it’s all too easy for your writing, however brilliant, to get lost amongst a sea of other voices all clamoring to be heard.
Understanding how to leverage social media to your advantage can be critical. Building a following can mean your work reaches your target audience, is shared by your fans and reaches new audiences too.
But how do you do it? Here are some useful tips:
Join online communities about your niche.
Whatever you are writing about, you must have a target audience in mind. So find them and reach out to them. You could write about almost any topic, and you are practically guaranteed there are groups of people that have joined together to form communities because they are interested in it. Join those communities and become active, ask questions, reach out to people and then occasionally, when appropriate, link back to your writing to see if they will take the bait.
Schedule posts in advance
If you want to use social media correctly, you need to get organized and be consistent. Don’t just randomly write a Tweet or post a Facebook post every once in a while. Start to build up a bank of material, engage with your followers at least a few times a week, and schedule your posts, so they go out at consistent times. This way your audience will know when you expect new content from you.
Interact with others. Social media is all about communicating. If you want your writing to do well, you need to be willing to put in some effort. Make sure that you take time to build relationships with others, comment and like their work, and be genuine and honest. If you only use social media to promote yourself and keep everything businesslike and transactional, it will be harder to truly engage with people and build a loyal following.
Write for publications with that already have a strong social media presence.
Despite doing all of the above, it can still be hard to build up a following on social media. So why not take a shortcut? Interact with other publications, write guest posts and promote them instead. This way you are giving back but also will avoid looking like all you want is to promote yourself and get exposed to more people while you're at it, so you can’t lose!
Promoting your writing on social media isn’t rocket science. However, to do so successfully takes time, planning and effort. Use the tips above to boost your social media profile, and help make sure your writing reaches more of the right people.
Bethany Cadman
Author of Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers