October 31, 2021
Congratulations on your forthcoming book! As if writing a book wasn’t already a big deal, now you’re going to be published (or published again), and that’s an accomplishment worth celebrating.
To get the most out of your new book release, this Cheatsheet includes some very basic steps you can take to start to cultivate what publishers, agents, and authors refer to as an Author “Platform”. Like the name implies, a platform is a foundational structure on which to build other things, like your social media presence, the industry credibility of your writing, your unique personality and writer-voice, and most important, your following of online readers, writers, wannabe-authors, and other contacts who will begin to care about and follow what you say, share, and promote online.
This Cheat Sheet is specifically for writers who don’t yet have a platform and a following, so they can dip a toe in the water, realize they won’t drown from too much work, lay the groundwork for their future author platform which they build on, and help them feel good about themselves as an author and a media presence.
THE BASICS
There’s a basic skeleton “stack” that you can easily put together to begin to cultivate your platform and online following. These elements will together help you unify your message and get you and your book out in front of a variety of potential readers/buyers from different communities to build interest and get people excited enough to buy your book when the time comes. That promo stack includes:
- Website
- Amazon author page
- Facebook author page
Note that all of these are FREE. You can, of course, pay someone to host, build, and manage your author website, but there are a number of sites that allow you to do that at no-cost, including WordPress.com.
Website
Your website, wherever it’s hosted, should include an About link with your bio and experience, a link to your upcoming book with the cover, description, and any editorial reviews or blurbs, and that’s all that really needed at first. You can always build on this content later, and create a blog, or other links related to your writing, work, and passions so readers can get to know you.
Tip: Don’t include TOO much content here. It’s easy for viewers to get bored and leave if your website it too complicated and doesn’t answer their question quickly.
See related article for pro tips: https://blog.reedsy.com/author-websites/
Amazon Author Page
Next, your Amazon “Author Page”. This is what readers will see when they look YOU up on Amazon. When they look up your book title, that will be a different page. But you’ll use a site called Amazon Author Central to develop the page that comes up when someone clicks on your name.
Tip: Editorial reviews are key here, which means professional reviews, or “blurbs” (testimonials from other published authors), but don’t forget to write a compelling bio about your background, experience, and writing credits. And if you don’t yet have any writing credits, that’s okay – just include a short paragraph about your background is fine at this stage. More tips here: https://greatstorybook.com/how-to-make-amazon-com-work-for-you-part-1-author-page/
Facebook Author Page
Your Facebook “Author page” is different from a regular Facebook social media page, because here you can establish yourself as an Author and specifically post content related to your upcoming book, other books, and your writing.
Audience: Most Facebook users tend to be in the GenX range, as Facebook became popular when they were in their early 20’s. But it’s also widely used by Boomers and Millennials.
Tip: The advantage of a Facebook author page is that here you’ll reach older audiences for your book. Also, hashtags aren’t as important on Facebook as they are on other sites. More tips here: https://gatekeeperpress.com/how-to-create-a-facebook-author-page-2019/
Instagram Author Account
Instagram could be your most important social media page. Why? Because it’s become one of the most popular social media sites among Millennials, GenZ, and teens. Instagram is primarily about pictures so your post will always start with an image, and you can include text content (of any length) to caption your picture and influence what your audience thinks about it.
Audience: Variety of younger audiences, including teens, GenZ, Millennials, and GenX
Tips: As Instagram (sometimes called Insta or IG) is all and only about images, make sure the image you share is cropped to the right shape and dimensions (square), high resolution, crisp, and eye-catching. Viewers are much more likely to view, like, and appreciate your accompanying text content if your image is top notch. If you don’t have your own image to share, you can find free high res images at pexels.com and unsplash.com. Hashtags are super important here, as viewers like to type in keywords in the search bar and find a feed of content related to their unique interests. Hashtags will include your post in those searches and help you reach new audiences and build your following. Instagram users also LOVE emojis (no more than 1-2 per post).
There’s a HUGE writing community on Twitter, made up writers of all different ages, cultures, experience, and publishing types (self-published authors, traditionally-published authors, and everything in between). So it’s a great site to include as you’re building your platform. A “tweet” is just the name of a post. But, unlike Facebook and Instagram, there’s a length-limit on Twitter – specifically 280 characters (which translated to between 40-70 words including spaces). This length limit is how Twitter became popular many years ago, because viewers get the chance to read small bits of content and view a wide variety of content quickly by scrolling through very short posts. The tricky part is that you need to be very strategic about what you’re posting. Words really matter when you only have 280 characters!
Audience: A variety of older audiences, including Millennials, GenX, and Boomers. The advantages of older audiences? They’re loyal, discerning about what they buy, and they have money to invest in books.
Tip: “Pinned” tweets are a way to have an important tweet always-visible as soon as someone visits your profile page because it always stays pinned to the top of the list. A pinned tweet can include a compliment someone gave you on your writing, or a writing “success” (getting a story accepted for publication by a literary journal).
Goodreads
Then, once your book is about to be released, it’s also a good idea to create a profile on Goodreads. That means finding your book on Goodreads, claiming that book as yours, writing a welcoming message to your readers, and treating that as one of the profiles on your author platform as a way to track reviews and interact with your readers. Learn more here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/program
Profile Strategies
- Make all of your social media profiles (meaning the text you include there and also the banner/photo) similar but not identical
- Use the same 1 or 2 profile images for all of them – for consistency of brand
- Include links to your website or Amazon author page in your profiles
- Create profile names that are similar and “autherly” (writertowles, towlesauthor, etc)
- Add something about your book writing on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more of a professional networking website, but it has a lot of street cred and it’s to your advantage if your readers can read a little bit about the writing part of your life wherever they read about you.
Hashtags
A “hashtag” is a word or two words preceded by a “hash” symbol or “#”. These became popular years ago as a way of including your content in a category of similar content for viewers interested in that topic. Example: If you’re a travel writer and you’re going to Hawaii to create a blog, vlog (video blog), or other content on your travels, you would include something like #Hawaii #Maui #travel #explore #happiness at the end of your content (room-permitting) so readers interested in those keywords will see your Tweet or content when they search for it.
Posting Frequency
Try to post new content at least once a week on all of your social media sites. This can be original content that you write yourself, or else forwarding/sharing/retweeting content that someone else has shared (adding a comment from you about what you like about it). And as you get closer to your book release date, post more frequently to help build momentum and excitement.
Reach out to me for questions and stay tuned for more content forthcoming to support new and first-time authors. Congrats again on your upcoming book release and there’s lots of support available for new authors. Book promotion is not rocket science, you can do this!
Helping you SHINE,
Lisa Towles
Tell Me a Story 