It turns out that building your platform is almost as important and time consuming as writing your novel. While I enjoy writing and spend most of my time there, I am finding some rewards also in the marketing side. Here are my results 3 months after beginning to promote my writing via social media.
178 Followers Nov. 2, up from 115 Oct 2
Many of these new Followers were through involvement with the
I also sometimes participate in
I like tweets of others, retweet, followforfollow, and direct message with other writers. This month I used a new #art because my posts were about how art influences our ideas about whether women were present as disciples, and I got interactions from artists. Many Twitter connections are writers or Christian leaders. My original tweets don't get much engagement, but the Retweets that got engagement were:
- the ordination of women in Poland (from the Junia Project)
- how the ESV Bible promotes a complementarian male viewpoint (from Beth Allison Barr)
- how divorce can be lifesaving in spite of harmful half-truths spread by Focus on the Family (from Gretchen Baskerville)
157 Followers, up from 112 Followers Oct 2nd
I am finding the most likes from posts with good quality images; people cannot click live links to a full blog so I am putting bits of blogs as comments with images. Most popular posts:
-How Jesus brought equality and mutual service, giving biblical references
- reposted image of encouragement by sharing a light
- personal story about my mom as a lay preacher
Many Instagram followers are Christian writers, thinkers, and activists from around the world.
By looking up profiles of those who like my posts, I have found several books I want to read on similar topics of Biblical women and women empowerment. In addition, through Instagram I learned about the new weekly YouTube posts by Etherealbooks and I am using their advice on structural editing, copy editing, proofreading, dialogue tags, and paragraph breaks.
Facebook Page
90 Followers; 201 engagements in Oct. up from 168 engagements in Sept., 184 post reach, down from 406 post reach in Sept.
The higher post reach in Sept was from friends sharing a post on their personal page. It was a simple post about an inspiring friend, not a complex or controversial post about women in the church.
The posts with the most engagement were about white evangelical racism (Anthea Butler), Spanish artist showing man and woman at Emmaus, personal story of my mom, personal photo for Thanksgiving.
It seems some people don't want to follow a Facebook page, or maybe prefer a Facebook friend. I have connected with new Facebook friends through my interactions. I follow Pages by other authors such as To Love, Honor and Vacuum, and Beth Barrett. I am most enjoying posts from the Biblical Christian Egalitarian Group.
This month I also updated my LinkedIn profile and tagline to expire some financial qualifications, leave some financial advisor groups, and join writers and authors groups.
Kommentare