Day #23 – Social Media Takes Time

By Dawn Frederick

One of the hardest parts of building a strong author platform is the many, many hours of time one has to invest in social media. A common complaint is that audience isn’t growing fast enough. Despite the time invested in let’s say an a la carte menu of the various social media tools readily available, sometimes certain approaches will not work regarding one’s book or writing platform. What should you do?


Reevaluate the current approaching being used for each tool.

Ex: Let’s say you’re using Twitter as a way to promote a new book idea. All of the tweets completed thus far only talk about the book and that folks should buy it. Before this series of tweets, you had more conversations with others on Twitter, talking about life, writing, etc. Now the # of followers is slowly depleting. The problem? You’ve quit engaging in honest conversations with others on Twitter. The “I” has gotten the way of the “we” part of this effective social media tool. It’s time to go back to the basics, and reach out to readers on a more personal level.


Reconsider which tools to be used in building an effective platform.

Ex: Is the book idea more heavily based in images and/or artwork? It’s worth considering Tumblr as a medium of communicating to current and future readers. How many folks fell in love with the Dog Shaming Tumblr? Many. How did it become some popular? It was funny, allowed readers to engage with one another in sharing funny stories of their dogs doing bad things, and it was a visual presentation (dog with sign written by owner describing “issue”). If your book is visual, why aren’t you on Tumblr?


Come up with a revised plan and try to find some assistance.

So you don’t have the “time” to invest in building the necessary readership for you or that book idea? That’s fine. It’s still very manageable. All you need to do is come up with a plan, put it on a calendar, and execute it.

In this day and age, there are lots of tools to manage one’s social media time. There are programs to send out tweets scheduled in advance. There are people who’d happily love to be hired to do the work for you. There is at least 30 min to 1 hour every single day of the year to make your presence known on social media. If you have time to watch an average of 5 hours of TV a day, redirect some of that time into social media. I promise it’s not that hard.

To our readers:

How have you learned to tweak your social media approach, what worked for you? (Especially regarding your book, its genre, etc. )