An Idiot's Guide to Building an Online Author Platform

Please do not read this if you use Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and Dlvr.it with confidence.

Do read it if you want to learn a little more about any one of these type of accounts.

I was helping a friend start to build an online presence today and realised that I should write down what we were doing so that it would be easy to explain to somebody again. So here goes…

 

Facebook.co.uk

Think of this as a big noticeboard describing all the things that you do to anyone in the world who wants to find out.

·         Click on Create a Page

·         Click on Artist, Band or Public Figure and work through the clearly explained steps

·         Start with a simple description of yourself and a good picture, keeping in mind you can change anything that you have said and any pictures that you have uploaded at ANY time.

·         Don’t be afraid to click on any of the sections and see what happens. It won’t break anything.

·         Only put on words and pictures that you would want the whole world to see about your work.

Twitter. com

Think of this as a room full of people that you have invited to a party to talk about common interests. Whatever you say can be passed on. This creates excellent advertising by word of mouth (aka tweet) but equally can create bad press. Speak wisely.

·         Click on sign up and follow the steps

·         You can click on ‘skip this step’ at the bottom of the screen when it keeps asking you to follow others

·         My advice though is to do a search for a topical keyword eg. YA Author  to start off otherwise there is no-one at your party to talk to!

·         Keep your picture on all your accounts the same. After all this is your brand.

Blog

A blog is like a diary. You can chose to write about your writing, your book or anything else of pertinent interest. Ideally, you would like as many people as possible to read your blog so that you build up your presence online.

There are many different ways of doing a blog. You may have the facility on your website or you may have to use one of the numerous blogging sites available on the web. I find www.blogger.com an easy one to start with. Just as with Facebook and Twitter, once you sign up, they lead you through the start-up step by step.

Once again, you have to ‘bite the bullet’ and experiment. You can always take off whatever you have put on. This is also a public document so only post what you want everyone in the world to see.

This is an ideal forum to showcase your writing. Everything you write in your blog should be broadcast on Facebook and Twitter. The website below will do this for you automatically.

Dlvr.it

Dlvr.it does exactly that. It delivers your blog as soon as you have posted it to various platforms that you have chosen. It is very easy to set-up and it takes all the hard work away from you. As soon as you click POST on your blog, your Twitter and Facebook accounts will show a link straight back to the blog.

It is also possible to link to Tumblr, LinkedIn, Statusnet, RSS feed and Delicious. However, I would wait to link up to these until you are confident with your blog, Facebook and Twitter.

Good luck. This is a journey worth travelling. You are about to embark on a worldwide conversation.

 

 

Julie Cohen's Advanced Novel Writing Course

  

(Julie Cohen who is officially Ace).

Hi there and thanks for visiting the baby blog of the Ciren Writers.

It's my turn to write a post and I said I would do one about Julie Cohen's Advanced Novel Writing course held a couple of weekends ago in Reading.

Trouble is, how to pack 8 hours of BRILLIANT information, feedback and guidance into 500 words? Tricky. And I've already used up loads saying hello.

Anyway, as well as being a wonderful day (and I would advise anyone lucky enough to spot a Julie C course to sign up immediately) it got me thinking...

A couple of my writing friends said recently that they have stopped going on writing courses as they feel like frauds. They said they aren't really writing much at the moment and don't want to be the kind of people who Just Go On Courses and never actually finish any serious pieces of work themselves.

Well, I reckon it doesn't really matter if you do. Nobody ever advertises a writing course and says Small Print: We're going to check on you all in six months time and if you haven't at least churned out a novella, we'll tell everyone on Twitter that you're The Inflatable Boy and have let yourself down.

Exactly. Being an amateur writer and hoping to get published...or maybe even not...is a long enough road as it is. Going on courses and learning from talented, generous people who can inspire you even to write a paragraph more, is one of the best things of all. 

And spending a day with ten or so other people who just love to write and just hope to be alright at it and just want to have a go? Well, for me, that's one of the real bonuses of writing. Learning and listening and chatting about stuff.  And eating cake. Obviously.

So, even though Julie's course had me scrambling to open the laptop again as soon as I got home, for anyone who writes - or isn't at the moment and feels really guilty about it, I say, go on as many courses as you want. Hold your head up high and be a Serial Courser if you like.

Writing doesn't always have to be about achievement and worrying about agents and trying to get published. If it makes life a little bit more fun and a little less gloomy, then in the words of the lovely old farmer in Babe, that'll do. (Pig.)


Thanks for reading this and please visit again. We're not sure if we'll be any good at doing a writing blog but we're giving it a try!  Floss did the first post, I've now had a go and Anne will be doing the next post soon.

Bye for now
AJ
(Where Things Are Mostly Cheerful)

PS: Julie Cohen's new book Getting Away With It is available from Amazon and all good book shops now.  Read all about it and her other books here: http://www.julie-cohen.com/books/