My blog had slipped into hiatus for a while because I got locked out of my blog, but am now back with a guest post by Sabine Reed, in which she talks about authors on social media.
The topic of self-promotion by writers has been discussed in my blogs before —Sabine offers her take on the subject today.
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For a writer, however, creation of new content mainly refers to new books.
Writers should write. The more books you have out there, the greater the number of people who will find out about you.
In fact, most experienced writers such as JA Konrath have been saying the same thing for a number of years. And don’t forget that Amanda Hocking had a number of books published within a span of one year, and shot her way to fame not because of her promotional activity but because she had a lot of work that was read by a lot of people who generated sales for her future work. And, of course, because she wrote great book that were well-liked and readers recommended her to others widely.
In light of the same study, another way to get your name out there is to generate new content by way of a blog or articles. It will also raise your ranking on Google, and if you create good content, people will be driven to your blog. It’s your choice of course whether you want to spend the valuable time you have writing your new book, or writing a new blog post.
In the long run, I think, for a writer, another book would be a better bet.
Re: social networking as a means of promotion – I think this will be an ongoing debate for manmy years. As a newly published author myself, I have found twitter and facebook to be useful initially, but in order to spread word of my novel further I am forming the impression it is more vital to get my book into as many libraries as possible. People reluctant to purchase a novel by a new author may be more inclined to purchase an author's future work if they have enjoyed the experience first time around.
Paul
http://www.tworubbersouls.com
Social media is the part of the Internet where the content is generated by users of the service rather than conventional publishers. Such content ranges in scope from short comments on blogs, status updates on social networks and 140 character "tweets", to lengthy blog posts sometimes even containing original research. In comparison to conventional academic publishing, the social media landscape is extremely varied. Although the age demographic of social media users is becoming older and more inclusive, the typical social media user is aged 18-30, spends more time online and gaming than watching television, and gains a much higher proportion of their information by searching and social recommendations than through traditional publishing channels. Social media is the backbone of their information infrastructure. This talk will address the following questions:Social Network Analysis
Getting more product out there is important. A friend of mine, who is successful, told me series work best. So when beginning, it'd be good to concentrate our time on developing one or two.
The main thing about social networking is if you use it, use it wisely, but i certainly agree, the most important thing is to write. Having said that I've found Twitter to be hugely useful for researching my novel, which I'm starting serious work on in the New Year.
I agree, but at the same time I think that every little bit can make a difference if used cleverly.
Still, I agree completely when it comes to the fact that more books increase the likelihood of selling. Unfortunately a lot of us can't just churn out books in short order.
Am in total agreement too. New to writing and promoting this year, I feel I have spent too much time on networking and plan on reversing that trend next year. However, getting to know other authors has been a huge encouragement as a newbie!
Amanda Hocking has mentioned, on more than one occassion, exactly what you said here, Sabine: She wrote stories she liked and she wrote a lot of them.
So off I go to get on with my writing thing.
I think all writers should friend Damyanti and then spam her constantly with advertisements for their book and asking her to buy their stuff.
I'm just kidding Damyanti. /hugs.
I agree with you Sabine. You are very wise.
I agree with Sabine all the way.